I liked this for what is was. It was a light hearted romantic suspense. It succeeded best where the heroine, Jaclyn, was trying to deal with her frustration with the hero Eric. I kept picturing this as a romantic comedy. The scene where she pitched a hissy fit at a wedding rehearsal was laugh out loud priceless. I would totally go see this at the movies.

The book was fast paced and quick to read. LH is good at writing clear coherent scenes which are easy to visualize. There was a lot going on, a lot more action than introspection. The dialog was good. The men seemed like men and not just what women wished men were like.

The romance element was not intense and torid. The book took place over a week so this was the opening of a relationship. Which is more realistic than falling in love and being totally committed after only a week. They knew they were attracted to each other and were going to give a relationship a try after the book was over. There were two nice love scenes. They were short, as descriptive as necessary without being pages of graphic stuff that bogged down the story. (I have no obection to graphic stuff in its place which is not a light hearted romantic suspense like this.)

The suspense element was okay. You knew pretty early who done it. I would have expected more red herrings concerning the others involved in planning the wedding, the caterer, the seamstress etc. The blurb on the book made it seem as if since everyone hated her, there would be many suspects. The police were shown solving the murder and a lot of the scenes revolved around their work, but it wasn't to the level of a police procedural novel written by people who specialize in that sort of fiction.

The ending was a bit unclear. You had to guess a bit at motivations based on one scene that took place earlier in the book in the victim's POV.

All in all a nice way to spend the evening. Not the best that LH has written but not the worst and far better than most other less talented authors. ( )

Preferred other Linda Howard books. The killers were obvious and I thought a better ending twist would have been to have the wife be the killer.... "saving" her son and setting up her husband and his mistress for the murder ( )

I had stopped reading Linda Howard's novels because her alphas seemed too alpha for me and also because sometimes her political views seeped in and annoyed me. Some of her old books (especially the one with female doctor in the Old West) were favorites but after awhile I just quit. I saw this in the library and thought I'd give it a shot and I did enjoy. The heroine was just fine. The hero was a little too stereotyped alpha male but overall OK. The mystery was good and the romance was nice. I could skip the overly sexy parts without missing much of the book -- not too many of them and not too long. ( )

DESCRIPTION, NOT REVIEW: Jaclyn Wilde is a wedding planner who loves her job—usually. But helping Carrie Edwards with her Big Day has been an unrelenting nightmare. Carrie is a bridezilla of mythic nastiness, yet the unpleasant task at hand turns seriously criminal when Carrie is brutally murdered and everyone involved with the ceremony is accusing one another of doing the deed. Assigned to the case, Detective Eric Wilder finds that there’s too much evidence pointing toward too many suspects. Compounding his problems is Jaclyn, now a prime suspect, with whom he shared one deeply passionate night before Carrie’s death. As the heat intensifies between Eric and Jaclyn, a cold-blooded murderer moves dangerously close. And this time the target is not a bride but one particularly irresistible wedding planner, unaware of a killer’s vow. ( )

Eric Wilder and Jaclyn Wilde meet when she is at the police station to pay a speeding ticket. She literally runs right into him. They are attracted but go on about their day. Eric is a police detective and Jaclyn is an event planner. They meet again later that evening when she happens to stop into a cop bar to get a drink to unwind from a tough day. Sparks fly, the conversation flows, and, ultimately, they wind up having a one-night stand. He leaves in the morning promising to call her in a week of so when her stretch of six weddings in five days is over.

Jaclyn has a meeting with one of the worst bridezillas ever the next day. Carrie Edwards is marrying the son of a state senator and is determined to have a perfect wedding. Unfortunately she is just mean and seems to delight in throwing everyone else into chaos. She wants new bridesmaid dresses custom made with only a month to go. She doesn't like the flowers. She won't make a decisions about the food. Jaclyn has to try to soothe the venders and pacify the bride. Carrie has a tantrum, slaps Jaclyn across the face and fires her company. Jaclyn is angry and upset. Not about being fired, because she has hated working for Carrie and knows that they will still be collecting most of their contracted fess, but because she so badly wanted to hit Carrie back.

Next thing she knows, someone has killed Carrie by stabbing her with multiple kebob skewers and she is the number one suspect. Eric is assigned to the case and has to act professionally to clear her name which makes her very angry and hurt. Eric doesn't want the investigation to put a stop to their new romance and thinks that the quickest way to get back to the romance is to clear her name as convincingly as possible.

It turns out the Jaclyn saw the probable murderer as she was leaving the meeting with Carrie. She was so upset and angry that she didn't really notice him other than that he was a grey-haired man driving some kind of silver car. Eric investigates Carrie's murder by interviewing her family and friends and discovers that quite a number of people want her dead. His fears that the murder will come after Jaclyn for fear that she recognized him are realized when Jaclyn becomes a near victim of a drive-by shooting.

Besides the intense action, there are some really nice moments of humor in this one. Eric has had the recent bad luck of stopping for coffee two mornings in a row and foiling attempted robberies at each location. In neither case did he take down the criminal with his gun. More humor comes when Jaclyn is doing wedding planning for a hillbilly wedding and trying to help the mother of the groom keep it from being a complete fiasco.

This was a fun and intense romantic suspense novel. I enjoyed it very much. ( )