Romance

She’s Got It Bad by Sarah Mayberry

Karen Wheless


Another pretty good series book – always a nice surprise. (Not that series books can’t be good reads, but it can be hard to find the few I like among the dozens that come out each month.)

She’s Got It Bad by Sarah Mayberry (HB 464)
(2009, Contemporary Series)
Grade: 4

Twelve years after Liam Masters left town after kissing his best friend’s sister, he finds Zoe Ford all grown up… and drastically changed. The sweet 15 year old is now a sexy tattoo artist. But she’s hiding a secret in her past that led her down this path. Can Liam help her find the woman she wants to be… and can he learn to put the past behind him as well?

At first, I was impressed by the unique characters in this book. Not many romances feature a tattoo artist who is sexy and strong and tough (and more or less comfortable with who she is). Unfortunately, the author didn’t quite follow through. There’s a lot of hand wringing about the Good Girl Who Went Bad Because Of Her Terrible Secret, especially in the middle of the book. And the hero’s inner conflict also felt a bit cliched (he has a Bad Daddy, unsurprisingly), even though it was handled well. But the author redeemed herself in the last part of the book when she didn’t completely backtrack on the heroine’s past and turn her into a romance pod person. I would have liked a little more development in the last part of the book (and maybe a little less predictability in the middle section) but the writing was good and the book was enjoyable to read. Not perfect, but a refreshing change from the typical series romance.

I still have mixed feelings about Harlequin Blaze. I still find the books a little too sex heavy, especially when the books are short anyway. I’d rather take away one or two of those love scenes and invest those pages in more emotional development. But it seems like many of the good Harlequin and Silhouette writers are writing for Blaze, especially if you aren’t fond of baby stories. So I have to take what I can get, and hope I can find the good ones in between the all-sex-no-story books. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say…)

Karen Wheless

I've been reading romance since I discovered Kathleen Woodiwiss at age 12. I love all kinds of romances, especially emotional and angsty stories. I finally cut back my TBR pile from 2000 books to only 400, but I still have lots of books left to read!

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