I’ve read dozens of books this year. This one is by far the silliest.

I wasn’t expecting great things from this book - and I wasn’t surprised in that respect! However, I also wasn’t expecting such a bizarre, convoluted story. A story that used a whole lot of paranormal aspects - I hate when a book genre-jumps on you!

I also wasn’t expecting not only the heroine but also the hero to be too stupid to live.

There’s a lot of thinking about sex in this book. The oh-so perfect lingerie model heroine - Grace TSTL Broussard, with her raven hair - has all these psychic sex flashes whenever she touches the oh-so sexy hero, Declan TSTL McKenna. Declan has a special family psychic curse/gift of his own - he can read emotions. Oh, and if he falls in love the woman’s going to die. Why is this the case? Well, you see, his ancestors were cursed in Ireland by a scorned woman who happens to have been half fairy and half witch.

No. I’m not joking.

Now, I love paranormal romance, but when I pick up a romantic suspense novel I expect my characters to solve the problem with their intelligence and detective skills, not by walking into a ballroom and ‘reading’ everyone’s moods! The book was neither decent romantic suspense, nor a satisfying paranormal romance.

Speaking of the ballroom, why oh why did we meet so many characters in this book?! It’s a Harlequin/Mills and Boon for Heaven’s sake! It’s a short book with a cast of thousands, and we seem to meet them all at once. In the end I wasn’t even paying attention to who was who.

The main pair bumble along in their vaguely psychic investigation, resulting in a too stupid to live moment I cannot believe made it past the editor. Not only does the heroine - knowing something is very wrong - take off on her own in the middle of the night, but when the ‘hero’ (he’s not a hero) finally shows up, Declan ‘I came unarmed even though I know the heroine’s in mortal danger and I am a PI and former detective’ McKenna ends up doing something equally as stupid as the heroine.

There is no decent resolution to the curse thing. Are they still cursed at the end? Are they free of the curse? Who can say?!

Grace basically does EVERYTHING in this book, and while I’m all for girl power...uh...she was paying Declan EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS A DAY to screw up so badly. Hardly fair. And as girl-powery as I may be, I prefer my heroes to be man-powery.

The characterisation is stilted, as is the dialogue. I didn’t believe any of these characters could be real people. And after all of the imagining sexual situations, the vague and brief love scenes were over before they even began. The pacing was so off. I never felt anything for any of the characters. We were told what was happening but there wasn’t any emotional connection.

And clearly the author has something against blondes! Everyone else was referred to either by name or at least by gender, but once there was a blonde woman in a scene, she was always ‘the blonde’. Weird, and a bit offensive.

I was very surprised to see this was the author’s fiftieth book for Harlequin, and her eighty-sixth altogether. Surprised because it was so full of what appeared to be beginner’s mistakes with pacing, characterisation, plot and dialogue that I was quite shocked an experienced author could write a book like this. Or maybe it’s because the author has been around a while that the book had a very old fashioned feel to it.

Sometimes I read a book like this just for fun - hey it was a Saturday night and I had a bottle of wine to finish. Every so often I find a great author this way. This time? Nope. I can’t say I enjoyed this book. I also can’t say I’ll be tracking down anything else from this writer. ( )