Florida in February!

Romantic_L_eads Recommendations and reviews of romantic fiction

ROMANTIC LEADS BY JANINE TAYLOR

RELEASED FEB 2000

At this time of year most of us in Canada are wishing we lived in a warm climate. For those who won’t be traveling south this winter here’s the next best thing, a couple of contemporary romance novels about returning home to Florida after years of self-imposed exile.

Catching Kelly

By Sue Civil-Brown (Avon – Jan 2000, $7.99)

If you like cute and eccentric contemporaries, this is an author who delivers.

Web-page designer Kelly Burke has spent eight years avoiding going home to Florida. She’s fighting an inferiority complex. But who wouldn’t feel inferior after being brought up by a famous actress, an opera star, a circus performer, a renowned artist and a concert violinist?

Even so, Kelly knows that when ex-football star Seth Ralston moves in on her naïve quirky relatives she’s the person to save the family fortune.

Blunt and practical, Seth is amused by the family and irritated by Kelly’s accusations. What neither of them realises is that Kelly’s crazy family is scheming to get Kelly home and Seth is the tempting bait.

Funny and sweet, Catching Kelly handles a complex emotional tangle with grace.

The Inheritance

By Jasmine Cresswell (MIRA – 2000, $6.99)

Isabella Joubert lives a staid existence in Chicago, it is her attempt to safely remove herself from her family’s morally bankrupt business of high-tech arms smuggling.

She’s been away seven years by the time she arrives at her father’s deathbed. Belle is dismayed when he tells her of a secret DVD and bids her to “make things come right” with his last breath.

The disk contains detailed records of the briberies of officials that had enabled her family business to thrive unencumbered by government interference. Belle views the contents and is shocked to see a film of her ex-lover, Customs agent Sandro Marchese accepting a quarter-million dollar bribe to break off with Belle and look the other way while her father smuggles military secrets.

Sandro shows up in Chicago to warn Belle that the word is out she has been named heir to the Joubert family business and she has a disk containing everything needed to operate the secret smuggling network.

Feelings still run high between Belle and Sandro but she refuses to be taken in by him again.

Belle’s disdain and anger turn to fear and confusion when her home is vandalized and her neighbour is murdered. She discovers new treachery everywhere she turns and doesn’t know who to trust. Belle discovers she must rely on Sandro who is now intent on sending her family to jail.

The Inheritance is a thriller with romantic underpinnings. It’s hard to tread the fine line between genre mystery and romance without disappointing fans of one or the other. Except for a few spots of slow-paced filler dialogue, Cresswell has managed to find a great balance.

Janine Taylor is a Halifax writer. She can be reached at romanticleads@hotmail.com

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