Joan Elliott Pickart (1943–2018)

This is an excellent example of why I decided, at two different times, and after giving it a fair shot (at least a dozen books each time), that I did not like romance novels.

Let's start with the characters. Just their names drove me nuts: Alida, pronounced ah-lie-da rather than the ah-lee-da my brain wanted to pronounce it as, so that kept pulling me out of the story to correct my pronunciation (yes, it's a weird tick I have--I recognize this); but even worse was Paul-Anthony. Now show more Paul-Anthony by itself isn't all that bad. But all the characters in the book had a habit of saying the name of the person they were addressing every time they spoke, and by the time we're introduced to his brothers, John-Trevor and James-Steven, and a glance at the page shows a good dozen Paul-Anthonys, John-Trevors, and James-Stevens, it got really, really irritating. It reminded me of this supercilious school counselor we met with who'd apparently read somewhere that using a kid's name made it more personal, and she prefaced every sentence she spoke to our daughter with her name, until I wanted to punch her in the face. *sigh* Okay, okay, the names were goofy and way over-used. I'm over it. (I'm really not, but I'll pretend I am.)

Then there's the plot. Alida and Paul-Anthony meet in the mist, have sex on the beach, and she refuses to tell him her name. You can see the entire plot from there, can't you? Yep, exactly. She gets pregnant and wants to keep it a secret. He stalks her until she gives in. And oh, yeah, throw in the obligatory bit about her not believing in love because she had one bad experience. It gets an extra half star because she only doesn't believe in love instead of hating all men. There's another half star because he doesn't go apeshit when he finds out about the pregnancy. The last half star is because there's a smidgen of a suspense plot regarding her work--I guessed whodunit right away, but at least it was there.

Gah. At least it was short. And thank goodness I discovered that there's much more to the romance genre than books like this one. show less

Okay, I don't like Romance novels because of the flowery and (no offense to Romance-lovers) sometimes illogical and unreal stuff it generally has. But I gave this one a try 'cause I found this old copy on my shelf (probably my sister borrowed it and forgot to return) and I don't like having unread books on my shelf.

Anyway, I liked this book. It doesn't have that super flowery stuff. It's a stereotypical storyline with a huge buff masculine guy named Burke Madison who's a criminal lawyer and show more Morgan Gray, a typical petite lady, who dislikes it when someone calls her cute or remarks on her tiny stature. They both happen to meet at a supermarket and it turned out that Burke was her new neighbour. Also Burke has this obsession about accomplishing some new feat every year and this year he decided that the new feat has to be 'falling in love'.

Slowly the interactions between the two of them grew and they fell in love with each other before they knew it. The whole story revolves around the both of them figuring out that they actually love each other.

One plus point about this book is the good humor. There are a lot of good punches in it that I found myself laughing at. show less

mmmph. First - I'd read this before, I recognized it when I started. Second - I really do not like Pickart's style. She also wrote The Parker Project which was by far the worst of the Family Secrets books I've read - and for much the same reasons as this book.
So she decides that what she wants is a kid - total focus on the kid. Also, Do Not Want a workaholic man. Then she falls into bed with him - twice. Oh, and incidentally they get married to solve a visa problem (I'm an FSB, it doesn't show more work like that. Though the author did say that wasn't true to life in a foreword). Puppets dancing on the author's strings - not exactly cardboard, it's worse. Strong characterization totally ignored whenever the author needs them to do something out of character.
It's a great pity - I like family series. I'll even give it one more try and read another MacAllister book. But I think I'll be putting Pickart on my 'don't bother' list. show less

This was cute. It's a M&B Desire, and I hadn't read one that i liked up until this one. but I do enjoy this light story. the characters had motivations just strong enough to keep them going, and while I wouldn't say it kept me awake at night, it was pleasant enough to finish.