Jill Shalvis

Contemporary

Overall:
Sensuality:
Cover Cheese:

My husband was yanking my chain the other day about the predictability of my reviews.

"Full-bodied, multi-dimensional characters," he mimicked.

"Sensuality brimming with emotion," quoth he.

"The kind of book you'll read and read yet again!"

Jerk. Maybe my mother was right.

My struggle with the banal stems from my aversion to descriptions of novels and characters that read as if I cut-and-pasted them from Thesaurus.com.

On the other hand, I can't always turn a phrase well enough to convey exactly why one exceptional romance is any better than the one I told you about the week before.

Because well-written novels are just that for pretty much the same reasons. And great storytelling the same.

It's the individual, subtle quirks and qualities of the author herself that separate the crème from the, well, crème.

And subtlety is hard to describe because it's so gosh-darned nuanced.

For instance, what in God's name do you call a tight, sexy, edgy contemporary whose author's managed to make it realistic yet romantic?

You call it Jill Shalvis' "Her Sexiest Mistake."

Former trailer park princess Mia Appleby is a high-paid, fashion-obsessed marketing exec living like a queen in the swank Los Angeles hills.

Her life is planned, controlled, and predictable. Until she wakes up after a one-nighter with big, sexy, Harley-riding Kevin McKnight, a guy who doesn't take "this was great but I never want to see you and your soft heart again" for an answer.

Kevin's sensitive, but no pushover; he plans to make Mia see how good a long-term thing between them could be.

But between putting out fires for his ne'er do well bro, and cleaning up after Mia's runaway-teen niece, Kevin can't summon the gumption to resist the evil clutches of Mia's perfect body, which she uses to thwart his best intentions at every turn.

Jill Shalvis uses sharp, smart writing to tee up Mia's sexy dilemma from page one. From there, we're carried along on the writer's energy as she tumbles Mia into crises we're not sure the character's prepared for.

But other characters in the novel know Mia can make it through, and Shalvis lets them show us why. She deftly uses secondary players to expose heroine and hero to trial-by-fire opportunities that bring out the primaries' best natures.

If Chick-lit chicks could get over themselves long enough to realize it ain't about the Choos, they just might be as interesting as Shalvis' Mia Appleby.

Then again, Bridget Jones never met Kevin McKnight.

Buy the book.

Learn what's new for RITA nominee Shalvis at www.JillShalvis.com

Next Week's Review and ExtraView: "Lover Eternal," by J.R. Ward