Simply the Best by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Stepping out of her regular stories, Phillips adds a murder into this one. But, it doesn't detract from the romance, the genre she is really known for and trying to solve the mystery lets our two main characters get past their initial meeting which was both good... and not so good.

Rory Garrett (she uses the name Meadows so people are less likely to connect her to Clint Garrett, Chicago Stars football player) is used to things going wrong in her life. But her recent life is really taking the cake on that. A failed business, a bad attempt at a one-night-stand, and breaking up her best friend in Chicago and Clint are just some of the recent examples. But she's not prepared to find a body. Nor is she able to understand why Clint's agent is so darn hot, even if she knows there can never be a real relationship between them. 

Brett "The River" Rivers is used to being perfect. His life is built around being the best sports agent in the business. And that's about to be paid off with a promotion to Vice President at Champion Sports Management. But he's just made two massive mistakes and now he's not sure how to hang on to Cliff as a client. And it seems foolhardy to run around with the man's sister when Brett just can't help but be so darn attracted to her. 

I'm really not sure about the murder but it does create an external reason for Rory and Brett to be thrown together. Of course, there was a last Big Misunderstanding and a rather over-the-top end scene to the two being together but I overall enjoyed the book. 

Chicago Stars #10

Three and a half stars
This book comes out February 14, 2024

Follows When Stars Collide

ARC kindly provided by Avon and Harper Voyager, and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

This Heart of Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It is a testament to Susan Elizabeth Phillips writing that there is some major WTFery and I still somewhat enjoyed the book.

Molly Somerville is the younger sister of Phoebe from It Had to be You. In that book, we saw her as a gawky teenager. She doesn't feel like she's changed much other than becoming a fairly successful children's author. And she has a crush on Kevin Tucker that results in the aforementioned WTFery.

Molly is a complicated character; she does a bad thing but she does realize (belatedly) that she was very, very wrong. She's a screw-up who has been masquerading as someone who's perfect. But she's not and Kevin takes great delight in pointing that out. Not that he's perfect. He knows he's getting close to the end of his football career and his childhood was... interesting. Most of his summers were spent at a summer camp run by his minister father and attended by gray hairs. When he and Molly need to get away for awhile, the camp seems like the perfect place to go.

But it's not the place he remembers. It's full of family, fun, and now... Molly.

Three stars

This book came out February 6, 2001

Follows Dream a Little Dream

Followed by Match Me if You Can

Borrowed as ebook from Libby

Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Dr. Jane Bonner grew up a freak (in her words.) She was beyond intelligent and it disgusted her father and gave her (more a less) a complex. For her children, she wants something different. She wants them to be normal. At 34, she is ready to have a baby with somebody stupid so that her children have a chance to be "normal." When a chance to sleep with Cal Bonner, quarterback for the Stars football team, comes up, she grabs it with both hands.
Cal only dates women in their early 20s. So when his friends hire a 28-year-old (he is told) prostitute for his 36th birthday, he doesn't expect to be intrigued. And he really doesn't expect to find out that she only slept with him for his sperm. He decides that his child won't be a "stray," forces her into marriage, and whisks her off to a tiny mountain town in North Carolina.
This book holds up surprisingly well and I think a lot of it is due to the humor that SEP injects into her stories but also the relationships she builds with her characters. Most of the story is Janie and Cal figuring each other out but there is a big chunk of Jane interacting with her mother- and grandmother-in-law and the relationships that these women build. Add in a B plot of Cal's parents rekindling their own romance and you have a story that even new readers will enjoy.

Four stars

This book came out February 1, 1997

Follows Heaven, Texas

Followed by Dream a Little Dream

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own

Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

This is definitely a nineties romance with a heroine who is too sweet to live and a hero who is so overly masculine that he might die from testosterone poisoning. But it also has a sweet story of the hero's mother (in her fifties) finding new love after she's been widowed for four years. And Gracie Snow does show some signs of being a strong heroine; Bobby Tom is just a jerk.

Gracie Snow is trying to expand her horizons. She's leaving working in a nursing home and teaching Sunday school for the bright lights of Hollywood. Her first task? To get former football player Bobby Tom from Chicago to Texas where he's supposed to be starring in a movie.

Bobby Tom knows he's hot stuff. He's tall, handsome, and rich. He can get any woman he wants. But he doesn't particularly like this short, plain woman who is trying to make him do something he doesn't particularly want to do. Yes, he signed a contract but so what? They can take the delays out of his paycheck. Is he avoiding his hometown where he actually requested the filming take place? Yes. His hometown is threatened with losing the biggest employer and they are trying to bring tourism to the town by creating a shrine out of his childhood home. And it's just all too much. But annoying Gracie Snow is making the trip at least a little bit better.  By the time they make it to Texas, he's willing to pay her salary in order to keep her around.

Four stars

This book came out April 1st, 1995

Follows It Had to Be You

Followed by Nobody's Baby but Mine

Borrowed as ebook from Libby

Opinions are my own

When Stars Collide by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I'm having a hard time figure out what I think of this book. I was uncertain about the two characters in the beginning, didn't really like that the reveal of why Olivia doesn't like Thaddeus at first (and it's ridiculously quick resolution), and REALLY thought there was too much drama at the end and Thad was a jerk. This book could have been saved with the elimination of any of the 16 reasons the HEA doesn't happen or the streamlining any of the 212 storylines. If this had just been a forced proximity between an opera singer and a football player, this could have been an amazing book, especially by this author. However, all that being said, SEP is an amazing author and I eventually grew to like Olivia and liked Thad other than his (out of character) ridiculousness  at the end. 

Olivia Shore is a world-famous opera singer. She is the perfect choice for a luxury watch brand. Too bad the man they've chose to be her counterpart is such an amazing jerk. This tour is definitely just adding to the problems heaping on her life that are coming out as physical ailments.

Thaddeus Walker Bowman Owens is thirty-six. Not particularly old unless you're a football player. And not particularly galling unless a much younger, much more egotistical player is now the starting quarterback for the Chicago Stars while he is still second string. And now he has to travel with a woman who not only looks down on him, she seems terrified of him. What else is he to do except try to figure out why that is and whether he can't help her figure out her life. 

Three stars
This book comes out June 29th, 2021

Chicago Stars #9
Follows First Star I See

Followed by Simply the Best
ARC kindly provided by William Morrow and Custom House, and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Reread as ebook from Libby February 2023, as hard copy May 2024

Dance Away with Me by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

If you like a Man Who Steps Up, this might be a book for you. It takes awhile but Ian North eventually falls in line. Tess Hartsong is emotionally brittle. Her husband died young and, two years later, she is still working through her grief (because grief really, really sucks.) But she decides that a rural area is going to be the place to heal. Also healing? 2 am dance parties. But her neighbor isn't into that. At least the male half isn't. But he ends up as a single father and Tess steps in. Well, "steps" might be a soft word for it. She is sort of barreling her way through life, undirected and decides to take on an orphan as well as teaching all of the teens in an abstinence only town all about prophylactics.
I have to admit, I was hoping for another Natural Born Charmer or Breathing Room. Both start with female characters on a journey (okay, it's a common plot device,) and we get to see them move through the book. And it took me several days to figure out why this book didn't quite hit that button for me and I finally figured out that the amount of resolution nowhere nears the amount of angst. Tess is so bottled up for most of the book, then sort of nuts, but then, poof!, she's all good. In both of the other books I mentioned, we get to see more healing and getting to see that depth of character is part of what makes those books so good. Also missing in this book? Relationship development. At least between Tess and Ian. It all felt so surface and SEP is usually so good at creating the kind of relationship that I sigh over.

Three stars
This book comes out June 9th
ARC kindly provided by HarperCollins Publishers, NetGalley, and Edelweiss
Opinions are my own