Deb Stover

The heroine is a resigned homicide detective and a recovering alcoholic. Her strong psychic gifts drove her to drink and she's been running from them every since. She now works for an insurance agency investigating life insurance claims. There she meets the hero. He's a single father of 3 children whose wife vanished 7 years ago. On behalf of his children and his own peace of mind, he's hired the heroine to look into the truth of his wife's disappearance. Is she really in France as everyone believes or was she murdered? After a bad storm whips out the bridge, the heroine must stay in their house. There she encounters a ghost in the foyer and her own desire for the hero. I couldn't decide if this was a bad paranormal romance or an even worse suspense romance. If it's just a paranormal romance, the setting is bland and very unfulfilling in the romance department but if it's a suspense novel, it was completely non suspenseful and frankly unimaginative. The whole book is spent with the heroine trying to find out what happened to the wife when she's been the ghost in the foyer the entire time! And the heroine was too fearful to speak to the menacing presence that she missed the opportunity to solve the mystery in the first 3 chapters. Also, why the hell did the wife's ghost smack the heroine unconscious if she wanted her help? You can see the bad guy and the murderer from a mile away so it came as no surprise when the villain is revealed. But the villain wasn't ever actually involved in the story until the point when he's revealed as the killer. This was almost laughable bad.… (mere)

Abandoned in the woods by her asshole boyfriend, the heroine takes shelter in an abandoned saloon only to be sucked into a picture of an old time bar singer. She's immediately mistaken for being this woman, minus the huge breasts. As she tries to tell them she's not this woman, she's kidnapped by a rival saloon by the hero. He's tortured by the decision he makes to take the job as he considers it unmoral and wrong but he needs the money to fulfill a promise to his dead wife to take his son back to Oregon. The heroine, despite the fact that she's terrified and lost in the predicament she finds herself in, is funny, easy going but shut down emotionally. She's been told all her life, by her shitty aunt never to cry or show emotions. However, she has a big heart and when she finds herself in the cabin of her kidnapper with his son, she's easily forgiving of what he did and takes to teaching his boy. She's very much the aggressor in the courtship and I sometimes found myself wincing at her boldness. The hero, who's described as looking like Mel Gibson, is kind and willing to do anything for his child. He's hesitant to get into a physical relationship with the heroine because, a, she's a bar singer and b, because he's just kidnapped her for money. I found the story to be pretty strength forward. No surprises and very predictable with each character playing their part. There were times when facts to the story were mixed up and things were dragged out in order to extend the story but overall it was a decent story.… (mere)