I just finished reading. I had a hard time putting it down. Funny with a entertaining mystery. I really enjoyed the character. I got a little bored with love story of Nick and Roxie, I felt the explanation of their in thoughts of each other was on and on. In the end, I did enjoy this book. ( )

I just begun reading and I can't stop reading or laughing!! They should make this book into a movie!!
Roxie Tremayne is fresh off of a divorce from her philandering husband, Brian Parker, and she's ready to shed her old, staid, good-wife persona. She goes blonde, gets her navel pierced, gets a tattoo, and trades in her proper Southern lady wardrobe for high heels, short skirts, skintight jeans, and clingy tops. Just as she's ready to jet off to Paris (or the Italian Riviera, or anywhere but Raleigh, North Carolina), she's called back to her small hometown of Glory, NC to tend to her ailing mother.
Nick Sheppard is now the sheriff of Glory, but not so long ago he was the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He and Roxie had a brief, intense fling in high school, but since she was the prim Homecoming Queen and he was more the juvenile delinquent sort, their love affair seemed to be doomed from the start.
The sparks fly once the two of them meet again, and it's so much fun to see how this second chance at love progresses. And worked in through the romance is an entertaining mystery involving a crazy bunch of senior citizens from the local assisted living center. ( )

Funny and light hearted. Would read more of hers.

Contemporary romance with the thinnest of mystery plots. The characters and situations are funny, which makes the book light and fizzy, but there's not a great deal of substance to it. There's a lot of lust here, but the love is not particularly well-developed and the climax is flat. The suspense element is tossed in offhandedly and there's no drama to it. Still, the writing is entertaining and it's an easy read. ( )

Reviewed for queuemyreview.com; book release Dec08

Karen Hawkins normally writes historical romance novels that I love to read. She’s one of my ‘must-buy’ authors, so when I saw that she had a contemporary romance coming out, I bribed Quinn into letting me be the one to read and review it! Hawkins’ trademark humor and witty dialogue are just as delightful in “Talk of the Town” as any of her historicals.

Roxie has had enough of being the good girl. It may have taken her the best part of her twenties and a nasty divorce, but she finally got the message—bad girls have more fun! So she dyes her hair blond, tattoos her butt, and gets a navel piercing to ‘celebrate’ the end of her marriage and intends to head for Paris as soon as she’s finished crying. Unfortunately for Roxie, her mother has an attack so Roxie is forced to delay Paris for a trip back to her hometown of Glory. On her way into town, she’s pulled over for speeding by her old boyfriend. My, my, my…she used to be the goody-two-shoes and he was the bad boy, but now it seems their roles are reversed. She’s looking for trouble, and he’s determined to avoid it…but he can’t avoid Roxie.

Nick knows everything about his town. Since moving back to Glory and becoming Sheriff, he’s made it his business to play by the rules and keep the peace. As soon as he sees the new Roxie, he knows trouble is bound to follow. She still affects him the way she always did, but he has no intention of allowing her to pull him off the straight and narrow. Apparently Roxie doesn’t intend to pull—she intends to yank…hard.

Hawkins did a great job of making this reunion and role reversal an entertaining read. I liked that her definition of a bad girl wasn’t too far out there. It was more a matter of Roxie throwing off the etiquette and social restraints she’d always lived with. And watching Roxie’s influence on Nick and his willingness to allow emotion back into his life was heartening, yet Hawkins still gave it a grand dose of humor. Some of the secondary characters had me laughing out loud, especially the older group (you’ll know ‘em if you read the book) with their C.S.I. antics. I could easily see this becoming a mystery-romance series without much tweaking and I’d certainly buy the books!

The Southern small-town atmosphere was the perfect backdrop for a story where everyone knows everybody else’s business and spends at least a portion of their day gossiping about it…if you’ve never lived in a small Southern town, I’ve gotta tell you that Hawkins hit it dead on with this story. There was humor, there was a pretty good mystery, there were plenty of clues and red herrings, there was an entertaining dog, and there was also plenty of hot sexual tension between the hero and heroine…and it all was done with a light hand to keep the story from becoming too ‘heavy’ or serious.

If “Talk of the Town” is how Karen Hawkins does contemporaries, then count me in. My only worry is that she may slow down writing her historicals, but it certainly wouldn’t be a hardship to ‘console’ myself with more contemporaries like this one. ( )