Rhonda Nelson

From the cutesy name of the southern town (Bless Your Heart, North Carolina) to the population of quirky female characters, this novel is a clumsy, tone-deaf "murder mystery meets Harlequin Romance meets Steel Magnolias." I guess for a freebie I can't complain. It wasn't boring, it was just really dumb.

The Future Widows Club (FWC) of the title is a group of women who are, or were, married to horrible men. They get together to laugh, eat, and celebrate their future status as widows. Because show more widow-hood is better than divorce. Club rituals include: pre-planning the funeral; buying the fabulous outfit, with hat, that you will wear to the funeral; and increasing the amount of life insurance on the SOB you�Ûªre married to. Several of the women are Lifetime Members, or actual widows whose husbands have passed away.

Jolie, the newest member of the club, is married to Chris Marshall. He cheats on her with every floozy in town, beats her, and has swindled her mother out of her life savings to finance his crooked business dealings. She is invited to join the FWC and it becomes a lifeline for her as she is sticking with the marriage until she can recoup her mother‰Ûªs money and gather enough evidence to send her rat-bastard husband to prison.

Then Chris is murdered in a gruesome way. Jolie, having recently performed all of the FWC rituals (funeral, outfit, life insurance, etc.) looks VERY guilty. Fortunately for her no one in the town seems all that interested in finding Chris‰Ûª killer, and the investigation is headed by none other than handsome sheriff Jake Malone ‰ÛÒ the love of her life. They broke up briefly for some stupid reason and that‰Ûªs when she married Chris, to her eternal regret.

The murder investigation is all wrapped up with a ridiculously minimal amount of stress for Jolie, and of course she and Jake end up happily ever after. The Big Surprise at the end of the novel was both idiotic and disturbing.

If you‰Ûªve read this, you may agree with some of my issues in the following spoilers section:

Chris Marshall was shot through the chest, and HIS DICK WAS CUT OFF. Later, the missing, frozen penis was found GLUED TO A STATUE in the center of town. No matter how bad the guy was, that is some disturbing shit, right there; but it was actually played for laughs in this book. I found that really hard to accept.

Jolie was reluctant to ‰ÛÏout‰Û the FWC because it would expose this secret society and some of the members might suffer further abuse at the hands of their husbands. So instead they claim it is a bridge club. Who the hell plays bridge in this day and age?! Among the people who DON‰ÛªT were almost all of the members of the FWC, which seemed to make it a very shaky alibi. Why not just say it was a book club? Then they could have said that while they were reading a book about a woman whose husband had died they got the ideas for Jolie to do all the ‰ÛÏfuture widow activities‰Û to make herself feel better. So simple! But then that would have lessened some of the unnecessary drama of the book.

The big reveal of the murderer at the end of the novel was bad and creepy. Charter member of the FWC, ditsy Bitsy passes away. She leaves a box for some of the Lifetime Members to open privately after her death. The box contains various incriminating objects and a letter in which she confesses that she actually murdered several of the husbands, including her own and Jolie‰Ûªs. At the time of the murder, Jolie was a woman she barely knew. (And remember, she cut off his pee pee!) So basically, Bitsy was a deranged serial killer. Are the women justifiably horrified? No! They chuckle affectionately and have a big bonfire where they burn all the incriminating evidence.

Now I don‰Ûªt know about you, but if I was the prime suspect in the unsolved murder of my husband, and I had a signed confession and evidence that someone else did it, I think I might hold on to that.

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Former Army Ranger (hero Will Forrester) is now working for Ranger Security. His first job is to find an elderly man (Theo Watson) who has gone missing on a treasure hunt in search of buried family jewels that date back to the Civil War. A close friend of Theo’s (heroine Rhiannon Palmer) is also concerned about the disappearance of Theo. Will and Rhiannon eventually join forces to try to find him. Along the way they try, and fail, to fight their strong attraction to each other. This was an show more enjoyable Harlequin Blaze with a likable main couple. Will was a real Southern gentleman, and Rhiannon was quirky and caring, especially for her old friend Theo. A good, sexy read! show less

Actually two books--The Professional is first, even though The Player actually the first book in the series (The Professional is book #13, I think?) and it was a bit disconcerting at first to step so far back in the series after jumping in to the latest one. Although I do always enjoy a two-fer...:)

Both stories were decent on their own. I have to say I liked The Professional more, and on its own may have rated it a bit higher. Overall it had a bit more substance to it than the second book, show more which perhaps can be attributed to it being a later book, or maybe it's just that I read it first. I enjoyed the Jeb and Sophie, loved the senior citizens at the retirement village, and thought the mystery was interesting. There were quite a few humorous scenes in the book, especially between the hero and his "grandfather" Foy and the heroine and her substitute grandmother Cora. Those two senior citizens were quite the characters! Jeb and Sophie's scenes, too, were entertaining. The biggest complaint I have with The Professional is that the heroine's personal problem was solved waaaay to easily by the hero. Seriously, he just showed up with his big, bad ex-military buddies, put the fear of God into the baddies, and they were gone forever. Very anticlimactic.

I do have to say that though I really want to read the next book in the series (it's from the POV of "The Professional"'s twin, and we hear a lot about him in his brother's book, so my interest is hooked) I'm not sure I'm going to be standing in line to read all the books in between The Player and The Professional. There were so many similarities in just these two examples that makes me wonder how much originality I'll find in the other eleven. Both books have a studly ex-military guy who magically falls for a woman on first sight (he feels it physically both times, which was a bit disconcerting--and no, it's not just in the way you're thinking, it's a gut clenching kind of thing) even though he definitely is not interested in anything even remotely resembling a relationship at the time. Both men decide within a matter of days that this woman is it, he must have her for all eternity. Both men are still reeling from a military tragedy that they ended up leaving the service because of. In both books, the female lead's reaction to the hero is so similar that the exact same phrase was used to describe it--she feared she'd have an "immaculate orgasm" before he even touched her. Now this might have been okay once, but to read it twice in the same digital file was a bit off-putting. I might not have even noticed if I hadn't read them one after another.... show less

I enjoyed this one--definitely a good 3 1/2 stars. It had a lot more substance to it, I thought, than the other two I've read so far by this author--The Player and The Professional--and for that I've bumped it up to four. The beginning grips you right away with a bit of a surprise--at least I wasn't at all expecting it--and the story continues from there.

Shelby and Eli are another couple with a history, which I do tend to enjoy. There was a great deal of angst in their tale, due in large show more part to what happens at the very beginning of the novel and what had happened between the characters a few months earlier, and for the most part it was believable. The side romance between Mavis, Shelby's assistant, and the editor of the local paper, Les, was adorable. The suspense part of the plot--which is clearly there to bring Eli and Shelby closer together--is...just okay. The person behind it was quickly uncovered (as they should have been) and I guess I understand that character's motivation, but it seemed almost as if it would have been the actions of...someone of another gender, maybe? (Trying hard not to give anything away, obviously.) It ended up feeling as if that whole aspect were a bit tacked on, and that some other method could have been used to push the hero and heroine together.

Overall I did enjoy Shelby and Eli's romance. I'm definitely interested in seeing what else this author will write in the future.

(I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.) show less