The Kept Woman

Author: Susan Donovan

Samantha Monroe is tired of her life. The fiery red-head was once an artist, but she set that all aside to help support her husband and raise their kids. Unfortunately, 10 years down the road, her husband impregnates her, tells her he's discovered that he's gay and wants a divorce, then proceeds to disappear without a trace. She is now the divorced mother of three trying to make it on a hairdresser's salary. She's got two young teens who are always bickering and a precocious toddler who refuses to be potty trained, which causes no end of trouble in the childcare department. If she could just track down her deadbeat ex and collect the over $50,000 he owes her in back child support, things would be looking up, but after three years she's losing hope that she'll ever see a cent. When she muses tipsily to her friends on their monthly night out that being a kept woman might not be such a bad deal, she sparks an idea in Kara DeMarinis, long time client and friend of Samantha's who also happens to be a campaign manager who's congressional candidate, Jack Tolliver, has a serious image issue. Why not pay Samantha to pretend to be his fiance? She'll get to live in his fancy house for the duration, private school and college trust funds for her kids, and enough money to buy a house when the campaign is over. It's sounds insane to Samantha, but can she really afford to pass it up?

Jack Tolliver loves his playboy lifestyle and he's not the least bit ashamed of that. He can't get enough of beautiful women, especially red-heads, and has no intention of settling on just one. Due to an unfortunate moment that was caught on video, however, the whole world knows he's a shameless womanizer. As if that weren't bad enough, Christy Schoen, former lover and anchor for Capitol Update has got it in for him. What they say about a woman scorned definitely applies to Christy. She's made it her mission to expose every one of Jack's indiscretions and destroy his political career. Jack's cavalier attitude towards women does not sit well with female voters and family values groups. When the current senator for his state steps down unexpectedly, Jack realizes that this is likely his last chance to be elected. All he has to do is clean up his image, but when Karen DeMarinis suggests he "rent" a fiance, he's pretty skeptical. When he find out she has kids, he's totally against it, but in the end realizes that he has no choice if he's to have a hope in hell of getting elected. He's pretty sure this will all be a huge disaster, but he might be able to pull it off if he can play the doting family man and keep it in his pants until after the election. Then again, maybe he can talk a certain red-head into making their arrangement a little more ... personal.


The thing that most bugged me out of this whole crazy plot was Samantha's ex. He lives on the run because he doesn't have the money to pay child support. That's totally believable, but what gets me is that in all that time he hasn't tried to keep in any kind of contact with his kids. At first he gives the impression that he never even thinks of them. Then the phone calls, which alerts him that he may have been found, gets him to thinking about them and wanting to see them again. When he's told Sam's engaged, the man starts getting all crazy over the possibility of Jack adopting his kids. Most people don't adopt their step-kids, especially not when they're older, like Sam's were. Seems a bit irrational, but since he seems to be missing his kids and doesn't want them to become some other man's, it makes one think that he's realized that his kids are the most important thing in his life and that he may be sorry for what he's done. Then he turns around and blackmails Sam, takes money that was meant to be fore the kids, and tries to wreck things between Sam and Jack. The man's mind made more swings than a pendulum. The only time he seemed the least bit sympathetic was when he was playing Sam. Hated that character. HATED. The reason for Jack's womanizing was understandable, but really lame.

He Loves Lucy

Author: Susan Donovan


Lucy Cunningham is an ad exec who's just landed the biggest account of her career. Unfortunately the client is a fitness club and the campaign involves trying to lose 100 lbs in one year by working with their star trainer, Theo Redmond. The upside? She earns $1,000 for every pound she loses. With that kind of money she can realize her dream of opening her own ad agency. The downside? Having to get up at 4 AM every day, keeping a food journal, giving up Milk Duds and being tortured by Trainer Ken, or "Theo-dorable" as apparently every woman in town calls him. She's going to give it her best and hopefully not embarrass herself by drooling all over Theo. The guy is smoking hot, looking perfect in every way, but shallow jocks who's greatest concern in life is making sure they don't run out of hair gel just are not her type. Certainly not since that humiliating fiasco with a football player back in college that caused her to put on all the weight in the first place.

Theo Redmond had to drop out of medical school when his parents died, leaving him with custody of his 16 year old brother, Buddy, who has Downs Syndrome. Now he works as a personal trainer at the Palm Club during the week and as a bouncer on the weekends to make ends meet. This ad campaign that Lucy Cunningham cooked up bight just be his way back in to med school. He'll get $1,000 for every pound he helps her lose. With that kind of money he can pay for school and help for to care for Buddy. It won't be easy, losing 100 lbs in a year with nutrition and exercise is unusual, but if he can keep Lucy focused and motivated they just might make it. Unfortunately, spending so much time working closely with Lucy, whom he's liked from the first, is making it hard for Theo to keep things strictly professional. He's got to though because aside from the no-dating-clients rule, once he starts med school again he won't have time for a relationship, and the last thing he wants is to hurt Lucy or make her hate him because he's never around.


I really like that Theo liked Lucy and thought she was pretty before she started losing the weight and that he found himself attracted to her well before she all that weight. I thought Lucy was great, when she wasn't making making assumptions and obsessing over the slump buster thing. I loved Buddy! He was so positive and well adjusted. I liked the way things worked out between Lucy's sister, Mary Fran, and her husband. I thought it sucked that Lucy's brother, Dan, and her supermodel friend, Gia, didn't too long. I guess it was kind of a far fetched pairing. I liked that Dan took it so well. Normally I try no to put many spoilers in my little chatty bit, but as far as the lead characters were concerned, I didn't have much to complain about. I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Here was a story about an overweight heroine who wanted to lose the weight, put in the hard work, and did it. I don't think that you have to be thin to be healthy, happy, or beautiful, but if being overweight is making you feel unhappy or effecting your health, then something should be done about it. I think reading a book where the heroine sets out to do just that and gets it done, is inspiring.

Take Chance on Me

Author: Susan Donovan

Thomas Tobin is a lawyer who works as part of a murder-for-hire task force. He's proud of the work he does, but seeing the bad side of humanity day in and day out is starting to wear him out. He too often finds himself looking for the dark side to every person he meets. It doesn't help that his fiance dumped him when a rugby accident left him unlikely to ever father children. Now his team's best informant,Scott Slick , is dead and Thomas is feeling guilty over coercing him to continue as an informant. After all, if Slick had quit when he wanted to he might not be dead. It's that guilt which leads Thomas to take home Slick's dog Hairy, a Chinese Crested. After only two weeks Thomas is at wits end with Hairy's behavioral problems and seeks help from a veterinary psychologist. If only he didn't find her so attractive he'd be a whole lot happier.

Emma Jenkins is an animal behaviorist and all around good person. Ever since she divorced her husband, a fellow animal behaviorist and partner in her practice, she's had her hands full keeping her clinic afloat and raising her best friend's daughter. Then there's her ex-husband coming around trying to get money from her and acting so strangely. She doesn't have time to date and she certainly doesn't have time to be distracted by someone who blows hot and cold like Thomas Tobin. He wears expensive suits, but his face and body scream bad boy and one minute he's drawing her closer and the next he's pushing her away. She wants nothing to do with him, not even as a client, but when Thomas suspects that Hairy's behavior might lead to catching a murderer how can she say no?

I was with Emma on her opinion of Thomas and his two-step. I liked that she wasn't afraid to confront Thomas about it too. She didn't take crap from him and I love that in a heroine. Thomas was a bit of a wanker at times. When he started looking for Emma's "dark side"I could kind of understand it. In his line of work it would be easy to expect the worse out of people, but he was letting it turn him in to a misogynist. This is evidenced later when he starts riffing on how women mess a man up and how often the men he sees in his line of work are there because some woman has them all twisted up. I get that his fiance dumped him at the worse possible moment, but that wasn't what hit him so hard, It was the news about his malfunctioning equipment and the end of his plans for the wife, kids and white picket fence thing. He was letting it make him bitter. I hated that because of those issues he gave Emma such a hard time. The things he said to her towards the end of the book were horrible. I get why he said them, what with always expecting the worse of people and his damaged equipment, but had I been Emma, I don't think I could have forgiven him quite so easily. He wasn't a bad guy. There were spots where I liked him a lot and felt sympathetic towards him. It was just during his bonehead moments that he bugged me. I really loved Hairy and that he had his own occasional POV in the story.