No one likes to be alone during the holidays, and for New York's most posh dating service it is the season to bring lonely hearts together. Eve Dallas, on the trail of a serial killer, has discovered that all of the killer's victims have been traced to Personally Yours, an upscale computer dating service. As the murders continue, Eve enters an elite world of people searching for their one true love - and a killer searching for his next victim.

I’ve decided that this series is just fantasy for women. It has no staying power—I forget the plot almost as soon as I finish the book. But what a fun ride while it lasts! ( )

I was in need of an Eve and Roarke fix, and this did it! I think this is one of the better ones I've read. The emotions surrounding the Christmas season give it a little bit of an extra kick. ( )

I assume by this point, everyone pretty well knows what J. D. Robb's In Death series is about: mid-21st century, homicide cop married to billionaire with a shady past. Each book has a mystery/police procedural story as well as advances in the characters' personal lives.

Holiday in Death, unsurprisingly, takes place around Christmastime 2058. A serial killer who dresses as Santa is targeting the clients of a dating service: raping and murdering them, then decorating their bodies with a "Twelve Days of Christmas" theme. The hunt for the killer is well done, and Eve makes a wrong turn that's emotionally affecting, and well as showing that she's human. It's just that serial killer stories get to be pretty much same-old, same-old after a while. It's always a guy killing his mother over and over again. Ho-hum. But that's a matter of taste, or at least a matter of how many romantic suspense and mystery books I've read with serial killers in them.

What was great about this story is how Eve deals with the holiday, her first since meeting and marrying Roarke. She's got her usual disgruntled attitude toward her fellow humans, and, as usual, hates shopping. On the other hand, her life is now becoming full of people who matter to her, and the process of coming up with gifts for them shows how much her life has changed.

Holiday in Death also begins the McNab/Peabody/Charles Monroe triangle, and the real start of the McNab/Peabody relationship. We'd met McNab in the previous book, Vengeance in Death, but that one only showed the beginnings of sparks between the two.

One of the lovely things about this series is the leisurely way in which the secondary relationships develop. Eve and Roarke did take 3 books from first meet to wedding, but it was still a pretty romance-novel-ish pace. McNab and Peabody, and other relationships in the series, proceed at a more true-to-life rate, and because the main characters are happily committed, we readers can enjoy the small developments without too much impatience. ( )

I really wish I could stop reading this series because they do nothing for expanding my horizons. Instead, they keep me in this little complacent world of shoddy plots involving so-called misunderstood yet hard-ass heroines and their perfect, rich, handsome, and dare I mention perfect again spouses. Still, they're fun and fluffy and they're just about the only books I can handle in my life right now.

In this installment of the Eve Dallas series, we find that Eve yet again is obsessed about a case to the point that she never gets any sleep and Roarke has to put his foot down before they have sexy times in random rooms in his huge house. Eve is allowed to bully her friends and invade their personal time, and yet the moment they stand up for themselves she gets her feelings all hurt and instead of apologizing to them the friends end up apologizing to her. That's just wrong. We all know someone like that, one who feels they can do and say whatever and when you call them out on how bitchy and inappropriate their behavior is they get this self-righteous attitude and this turns into the "poor-me" angle which I really can't handle, so I'd rather not find it in my books, thank you very much. There's enough of that in real life.

Was this a lecture or a ramble? In any case, this is my book crack and I'll be relieved when I've read every one of these books so I can move on to something else.

Fun. ( )

More of the same - Eve struggling to cope with her past (which is especially difficult this time, as the victims are brutally raped before murdered), and tries to adjust to a life in which she now has a husband and friends who care about her. ( )