Deborah Coonts
Author of Wanna Get Lucky?
About the Author
Deborah Coonts is the author of the Lucky O'Toole Las Vegas Adventures published by Forge Books. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Deborah Coonts at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ.
Series
Works by Deborah Coonts
The Complete Lucky O'Toole Novella Collection (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series) (2018) 2 copies, 1 review
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Southern Methodist University
- Awards and honors
- NYT Notable Crime Novel for 2010, Double RITA™ Finalist: Best Frist Novel and Best Novel with a Strong Romantic Element
- Short biography
- My mother tells me I was born a long time ago, but I'm not so sure--my mother can't be trusted. I do know that I was raised in Texas on barbeque, Mexican food and beer. I currently live in Las Vegas where family and friends tell me I can't get into too much trouble. Silly people. I have owned my own business, been a tax lawyer and a flight instructor, and have survived a teenager. And now, I make stuff up for a living.
I write a mystery series set in Las Vegas--funny, sexy and romantic. I've been told they are comedic thrillers--sounds like an oxymoron to me, but you get the drift. The first in the series, WANNA GET LUCKY?, came out May 2010. There are currently five books in the series, LUCKY CATCH being the latest, and three between-the-books novellas. - Nationality
- USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
After Me by Deborah Coonts is non-stop suspense from beginning to end. Kate Sawyer is a former NYPD undercover cop, living in Portland, Oregon in the Witness Protection Program and undergoing experimental stem-cell treatment for a genetic case of early-onset Alzheimer’s. She knows she was badly injured badly in an operation that went terribly wrong, but that is about all she knows. She comes home one night to find a dead man in her bathtub, and a note that says I know what you’ve done. show more What has she done?
You can never quite get your footing in After Me, because Kate can’t get hers. You see everything through her perspective, and it is in turn sad and funny and hopeful and frustrating and scary. With no memory all she has are her feelings, but can she trust them? What about the people who say they care for her? Do they? She believes she’s done a bad thing and that she is therefore a bad person. Kate uses her phone as her lifeline, recording events and facts so she can learn them again every day. And she writes the things she so desperately does not want to lose on her body with a Sharpie. Kate’s world seems so small and heart-breakingly bleak and hopeless. But as the danger increases, we begin to see a toughness in Kate, a determination to find out who she is and what she has done, and some hope. The medical treatments seem to be working, but her memories are shadowy, and she isn’t even sure they are all her own memories.
After Me is relentlessly paced. Because Kate’s memories are so small you see how much of life is shaped by what we remember, and that makes everything feel small and close and very unsettling. The action just won’t stop; you are constantly anxious about what will happen to Kate next, and if the people she has come to trust and care about are friend or foe. Did she do something terribly wrong, or is she the victim here?
I highly recommend After Me. It’s an excellent story that I did not want to end. I’m looking forward to a sequel, another story like this from Deborah Coonts – or this would make a great motion picture.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. show less
You can never quite get your footing in After Me, because Kate can’t get hers. You see everything through her perspective, and it is in turn sad and funny and hopeful and frustrating and scary. With no memory all she has are her feelings, but can she trust them? What about the people who say they care for her? Do they? She believes she’s done a bad thing and that she is therefore a bad person. Kate uses her phone as her lifeline, recording events and facts so she can learn them again every day. And she writes the things she so desperately does not want to lose on her body with a Sharpie. Kate’s world seems so small and heart-breakingly bleak and hopeless. But as the danger increases, we begin to see a toughness in Kate, a determination to find out who she is and what she has done, and some hope. The medical treatments seem to be working, but her memories are shadowy, and she isn’t even sure they are all her own memories.
After Me is relentlessly paced. Because Kate’s memories are so small you see how much of life is shaped by what we remember, and that makes everything feel small and close and very unsettling. The action just won’t stop; you are constantly anxious about what will happen to Kate next, and if the people she has come to trust and care about are friend or foe. Did she do something terribly wrong, or is she the victim here?
I highly recommend After Me. It’s an excellent story that I did not want to end. I’m looking forward to a sequel, another story like this from Deborah Coonts – or this would make a great motion picture.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. show less
Deborah Coonts's book is hysterically funny, strange, light-hearted and a mystery in so many ways! Deborah is a nut-case, she's so funny! I had a great adventure reading "Lucky." Here's the thing about Coonts; she's a wonderful mix of a good writer, a satirist and a student of people. She's also a comedian.
"So Damn Lucky" is the best trip you'll ever take to Las Vegas! If you've never been there, you only have to pick up this book to experience it. I laughed myself off the chair in the show more first chapter visualizing the exact characters she portrays that I'd seen there myself! This is a side-buster of a book, and a great mystery, too. Viva Las Vegas, absolutely captured and delivered in the hands of "Lucky" and Deborah Coonts...Elvis is definitely still alive there, so are aliens and missing persons!
If you're looking for a book to make you laugh and read like a bandit, and that will keep you wide-eyed with the joy of finding out about crazies and cons, this is the one for you. I found it a refreshing oasis from the books I've been reading lately. It's not always good to have a steady stream of the serious and fantasy world...once in a while it's so nice to have a sorbet between courses. "So Damn Lucky" is the raspberry sorbet of a book that will have your literary palate tingling!!
4 stars
Deborah/TheBookishDame show less
"So Damn Lucky" is the best trip you'll ever take to Las Vegas! If you've never been there, you only have to pick up this book to experience it. I laughed myself off the chair in the show more first chapter visualizing the exact characters she portrays that I'd seen there myself! This is a side-buster of a book, and a great mystery, too. Viva Las Vegas, absolutely captured and delivered in the hands of "Lucky" and Deborah Coonts...Elvis is definitely still alive there, so are aliens and missing persons!
If you're looking for a book to make you laugh and read like a bandit, and that will keep you wide-eyed with the joy of finding out about crazies and cons, this is the one for you. I found it a refreshing oasis from the books I've been reading lately. It's not always good to have a steady stream of the serious and fantasy world...once in a while it's so nice to have a sorbet between courses. "So Damn Lucky" is the raspberry sorbet of a book that will have your literary palate tingling!!
4 stars
Deborah/TheBookishDame show less
Reviewd by Marissa
Review copy provided by Forge
There are several reasons why I like Deborah Coonts’ character Lucky O’Toole. First off, she has a demanding yet rewarding job at a high profile, high-class hotel/resort in Las Vegas. She also gets to wear designer clothes without worrying about how expensive they are, and she can wear high-heels and not trip or stumble in them (and her feet don’t get sore after five minutes like mine do!). Her tall, handsome, talented boyfriend looks show more good in both jeans and evening gowns. Her mother is an out-spoken ex-prostitute-now-madam. Her father is also her boss. Her assistant can anticipate her needs, even before Lucky knows what those are. Lastly (and probably the best of all), she gets to drive high-performance sports cars without paying for them. Yes, Lucky seems to have it all. Only in this book, she starts losing some of it.
It’s a fun ride whenever Lucky gets in the Ferrari and this time is no different - and another great adventure as I attempted to solve the mystery right along with her. This third installment in the series has Lucky dealing with magicians, UFOs, an ex-lover, a new lover, an old woman who wants to marry her dog, and an over-sexed couple from Muskogee, not to mention the usual chaotic family and friends. I’m hoping that some of these new characters make future appearances in Lucky books down the line.
It seems to me that the third book in a character series is typically where an author “jumps the shark” and tries to make the character more interesting by having them do outlandish and ridiculous things. Conversely, the character starts to die a slow and painful death, becoming less and less interesting with each book. Lucky, however, does not disappoint. She is strong-willed, just out-spoken enough to be interesting, and keeps her attraction to several men going strong. I mean, just because we decide to become monogamous with someone doesn’t mean we lose appeal for any other man on the planet; yet most books would have us believe that’s how it should be.
Coonts pshaws that theory. Lucky has a lover, Teddie, yet she has been fascinated and attracted to two other men at the same time – Dane Paxton, six-foot-four of rugged Texas stock, and Jean-Charles Bouclet, a yummy French chef she is currently working with on a new restaurant. *sigh* Yes, Lucky really does have it all.
Favorite Quote: “Are all men compulsively self-absorbed?“…”Is there an antidote to gross stupidity, or is it an incurable part of the Curse of the Y Chromosome?” show less
Review copy provided by Forge
There are several reasons why I like Deborah Coonts’ character Lucky O’Toole. First off, she has a demanding yet rewarding job at a high profile, high-class hotel/resort in Las Vegas. She also gets to wear designer clothes without worrying about how expensive they are, and she can wear high-heels and not trip or stumble in them (and her feet don’t get sore after five minutes like mine do!). Her tall, handsome, talented boyfriend looks show more good in both jeans and evening gowns. Her mother is an out-spoken ex-prostitute-now-madam. Her father is also her boss. Her assistant can anticipate her needs, even before Lucky knows what those are. Lastly (and probably the best of all), she gets to drive high-performance sports cars without paying for them. Yes, Lucky seems to have it all. Only in this book, she starts losing some of it.
It’s a fun ride whenever Lucky gets in the Ferrari and this time is no different - and another great adventure as I attempted to solve the mystery right along with her. This third installment in the series has Lucky dealing with magicians, UFOs, an ex-lover, a new lover, an old woman who wants to marry her dog, and an over-sexed couple from Muskogee, not to mention the usual chaotic family and friends. I’m hoping that some of these new characters make future appearances in Lucky books down the line.
It seems to me that the third book in a character series is typically where an author “jumps the shark” and tries to make the character more interesting by having them do outlandish and ridiculous things. Conversely, the character starts to die a slow and painful death, becoming less and less interesting with each book. Lucky, however, does not disappoint. She is strong-willed, just out-spoken enough to be interesting, and keeps her attraction to several men going strong. I mean, just because we decide to become monogamous with someone doesn’t mean we lose appeal for any other man on the planet; yet most books would have us believe that’s how it should be.
Coonts pshaws that theory. Lucky has a lover, Teddie, yet she has been fascinated and attracted to two other men at the same time – Dane Paxton, six-foot-four of rugged Texas stock, and Jean-Charles Bouclet, a yummy French chef she is currently working with on a new restaurant. *sigh* Yes, Lucky really does have it all.
Favorite Quote: “Are all men compulsively self-absorbed?“…”Is there an antidote to gross stupidity, or is it an incurable part of the Curse of the Y Chromosome?” show less
Sophia Otero Stone has lived most of her life putting her dreams to one side to raise her children, support her husband, and now, to care for her aging mother. Those dreams center around making wine, and she has been growing grapes--excellent grapes, grapes developed from her own father's varietals in the Italian village of Friuli. But her husband Daniel died five years ago, and she's been working for Butchy Pinkman, a new-money guy in Napa Valley. His ambitions extend mainly to making a show more successful, popular, cheap table wine, Pink's Passion. And it is successful and popular. It's just not the wine Sophia wants to be making.
But Daniel had always refused to buy their home, insisting renting was a better deal. And land values have risen dramatically in the few years since his death, with the new money moving in. Sophia's home and land--with her grandfather's grapes--has been sold, and she's gotten thirty days' notice.
She's going to lose everything she cares about if she can't find a way out in thirty days.
There's not much time, and the buyers are ruthless. And Sophia doesn't have many allies, and the ones she has don't have any greater resources than she does.
Coonts does a marvelous job of taking this situation and ramping up the tension while keeping the characters and the situations real. When Sophia hears that the new guy in her life, fellow/rival winemaker Nico Treviani, has apparently betrayed a vital secret to those after her land and grapes, she listens to his side of the story! Just like the intelligent, reasonable person she's supposed to be!
Sophia, Nico, her daughter Dani and son Trey, and Nico's nieces Brooklyn and Taryn, are all interesting and complicated and real. Even the bad guys are believably, humanly bad.
Recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the author. show less
But Daniel had always refused to buy their home, insisting renting was a better deal. And land values have risen dramatically in the few years since his death, with the new money moving in. Sophia's home and land--with her grandfather's grapes--has been sold, and she's gotten thirty days' notice.
She's going to lose everything she cares about if she can't find a way out in thirty days.
There's not much time, and the buyers are ruthless. And Sophia doesn't have many allies, and the ones she has don't have any greater resources than she does.
Coonts does a marvelous job of taking this situation and ramping up the tension while keeping the characters and the situations real. When Sophia hears that the new guy in her life, fellow/rival winemaker Nico Treviani, has apparently betrayed a vital secret to those after her land and grapes, she listens to his side of the story! Just like the intelligent, reasonable person she's supposed to be!
Sophia, Nico, her daughter Dani and son Trey, and Nico's nieces Brooklyn and Taryn, are all interesting and complicated and real. Even the bad guys are believably, humanly bad.
Recommended.
I received a free electronic galley of this book from the author. show less
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 26
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 795
- Popularity
- #32,057
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 69
- ISBNs
- 141
