Five miler

Three dogs, two people, and tons of mountain bluebirds. It's spring!

Can you see the birds in the trees?

Look at them all behaving so well!

True Love by Jude Deveraux

Oh, Jude Deveraux. I don't know why I still read your stories. They are so... twee. Alix is just TSTL and Jared... why the hell is he keeping all these secrets from her? He knows that she is the One For Him but still won't let her know all of the information she should be privvy to. These are the things that piss me off most in reading romance novels. Add to that the insistence that Jared has that he's too old for Alix (why spell it like that anyway?)
Well, part of the reason I still pick up your books is nostalgia because you, Ms. Deveraux, were one of my favorite authors  when I started reading romance and I can't get enough of the Montomery/Taggert family. We get to see Jilly again! She's one of my favorite characters that never got a story. So happy to see her HEA.
But the main reason is because even though I have all of these frustrations with the story, you absolutely pull me in to these people's lives. You even address Jared's secret keeping and how Alix deals with it! When she forgave him, I immediately did as well. What other author can make you do that?
Overall, this book is a wonderful addition to the Deveraux canon and I can guarantee that if you loved "Sweet Liar," "High Tide," or any of Deveraux's contemporary novels, you will LOVE this book as well.
Solid three and a half stars here.

New Dog

And now the running may be cut down further. I have... acquired a dog. She is a ten-year-old Golden Retriever who I inherited from my grandmother. While she is an older dog, she is still incredibly active and I'm walking her three times a day about .75-1 mile each walk. It takes up some of my time and, while lower impact than running, it is sapping some of my energy. Good thing she's so darn cute.

If You Give a Rake a Ruby by Shana Galen

Why, oh why, do I have a beer and then request books on NetGalley that I'm not sure I'll like? Obviously, because I have good taste.
I didn't read the first book in this series so I felt like I missed some of the byplay, but it wasn't absolutely necessary to have the full background.
Fallon No-Last-Name is one of three "Jewels of the Ton." Beautiful courtesans with mysterious pasts who were actually sponsored (not... quite... the right word, but the closest I can get) by an earl and his countess. But Fallon is now in the sights of Warren Fitzhugh. Not because he wants her for his mistress. No. He thinks she has information that will lead to the man who is threatening to kill his friends. He quickly discovers that, not only is she not one of the baddies, she's actually someone he could spend the rest of his life with.
Fast, fun read that took a little bit to get into but was something I fell into quickly.

Surprising Lord Jack by Sally MacKenzie

Frances Hadley's aunt is trying to sell her into marriage. But... the guy is a scumbag. So she does the only rational thing - dress like a boy and run away. Only, she doesn't get very far. Her horse comes up lame and with the rain... she ends up in a room at an inn. It's a very full inn and the room is generally reserved for the Valentine family. But there's a big party at their house so they probably won't need it.
Except... that Jack Valentine, the youngest son, is trying to escape his mother's machinations. So, he ends up sleeping with someone he thinks is a young boy. No problem. It happens during this time period.
Except... someone recognizes that Frances is not a Francis and, when Jack realizes that, he realizes that she is compromised. Apparently, not so much for sleeping with him but for sure being dressed in boy's clothes. But, she's not really traveling in their circles so Frances doesn't see this as an issue.
Except... there's a slasher in town and he's killing "unchaste" women, a category into which Frances seemingly now falls.
A fun romp and a cute love story. I'm really enjoying this series and can't wait for the next book, Loving Lord Ash.

Too Hot to Handle by Victoria Dahl

So much better than the previous book in this series (Close Enough to Touch) but still not up to the level of my favorite Victoria Dahl book. Merry, the heroine of this book, is the best friend of Grace, the heroine from the previous book. She is definitely easier to connect to although she still wasn't completely likeable. A lot of this is personal prejudice about an inexpert people trying to do restoration. If she really loves this ghost town, she should be trying to get an expert in to save it. #Reallifeintruding
Merry is supposedly a "good girl" and Shade, the hero, is supposedly a cad. But, we don't really see either of those qualities in these two. Merry is the one who is trying to keep the relationship light and the worst thing Shane does is hide that he's the actual owner of the ghost town Merry is trying to restore. And he doesn't want it to be fixed. She, on the other hand, is sneaky (the mailbox, trying to get "secret" work done on the town) and vacillates between wanting and not wanting him, then hiding the relationship from her friends.
And on top of all that, the condom use is only... okay. Used in the first encounter and not thereafter.
And yet, I liked the book. A HUGE step up from the last one, as I mentioned before. I think most readers won't have the issues I had with the conservation and therefore will be more willing to suspend disbelief.

Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...<quick pause for breath> ...eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Okay, my perception of this book may have been colored by the fact that I got it for free from NetGalley. The description of the book is rather misleading (i.e., doesn't mention that a lot of the stories are repub) and I don't always remember to check stories before I buy books, my own fault I know, but it doesn't lessen the disappointment.  If I had paid for it and not known that a lot of the stories were repeats from the end of other books, I may have been less favorable, like, maybe only three stars instead of five.
But this is Suzanne Brockmann. One of my go-to-authors and there was a lot of added content like author commentary about how she wrote stories or where ideas came from. There were quite a few new stories including one I particularly enjoyed about Sam, Robin, and Gina being stuck with three kids and the flu in a country that has been hit by a terrorist event.
A great collection of stories and a must read that sent me back to my library to re-read the entire Troubleshooters from "The Unsung Hero" (Troubleshooters 1).

Five stars

This book came out April 28, 2013

Follows Breaking the Rules

Followed by Some Kind of Hero

Opinions are my own

Reread in June 2022