The romance and marriage of Nick and Billie. ( )

Janet Evanovich is very honest about this book: 'I wrote and published the original in 1989....Charlotte Hughes and I now have made it bigger and better.'
Charlotte Hughes may have made it bigger, but she did not make it better. Friends who have read the original smaller version liked it; no one I've talked to has liked this version.

The characters are typical Evanovich and delightful; the plot seems to be going along nicely, and then the padding begins. Plot is going in all directions and the charm of the Evanovich books is no where in sight.

I bought this book after reading the first four or so chapters; they were a delight. Then the book got boring; I started skipping paragraphs, then pages, then raced on to the improbable ending. ( )

Wealthy newspaper owner and horseman Nick Kaharchek meets divorced mom Billie Pearce when she makes polo lessons at his stables part of her summer self-improvement program. Though she's hopeless at polo, Billie is so cute that Nick begins to invent excuses to spend time with her. First, he takes care of her when a horse steps on her foot; then, he arranges for his nutty cousin Deedee, a self-absorbed airhead, to board with Billie while her kids are away. As if that isn't enough, Billie must also contend with a bomb-setting teenager, professional wrestlers, an outbreak of spiders and threats from a mysterious intruder.

This is no Stephanie Plum mystery - and I didn't go into it expecting one, I enjoyed it as what it was, crazy fun, romantic hi-jinks with impossibly neurotic characters by the bucket load. The only thing that brought the book down for me was the 'voice' the reader used for DeeDee - it set my teeth on edge every time I heard it. ( )

Nothing earth-shattering in this story of a romance between a millionaire and a single mom who decides to get some horse riding lessons. Add in his cousin who is marring a wrestler and his other cousin who seems determined to blow everything up and you get a story that really is quite fun.

Not something that you really could describe as great literature but it's a harmless entertainment novel. ( )

I enjoyed this! I expected the suddenness of the relationship between Billie and Nick to become really implausible, but strangely, it worked. I pretty much had the bad guy figured out by the end, but that doesn't bother me in a book like this -- it's really not about the mystery. I don't think this series has the same charm as the Stephanie Plum series, but I think it should stand well on its own! ( )