So I’ve been in a very bad mood for most of this week. It’s been one thing after another. Kids sick, having to find an opening for my middle kiddo in a local Montessori, general annoyances with writing, reviews, people, toddlers working my already way gone last nerve. I will not be sad to see the end of this week, I tell you. Yesterday’s Dictionary.com word of the day was appropriate – Tetchy: Peevish; testy; irritable. Yep, that’s me. But I’m seriously hoping this weekend will break the cycle. I have a lot of work to do so I just need to do it and hopefully the mood will turn in a new direction.

Because of said craptastic mood, I read last night instead of working. I finished up Christina Dodd’s Trouble in High Heels and Linda Howard’s Cover of Night.

A brief review of each and also one of Lori Foster’s Jude’s Law to follow.

Cover of Night – As I said earlier, I’m an LH fangirl. I love her books and I love her writing. She makes it look so damned effortless (her and Nora both). That said, I loved the book. I know there have been reviews where people felt there wasn’t enough romance in the book.

The strength of Cover of Night is that you get a strong sense of who Cait is before the romance begins in earnest. I like that she’s a real heroine. She doesn’t wait for the guy to swoop in to save her but she’s a thinking woman. I did get annoyed by the use of the soft R sound with the twins. But I appreciated Cait being written as a real mother with real responsibilities.

The action scenes are all very well done (my only complaint is that several things were repeated too much for instance how bullets would be stopped by a refrigerator). I liked Cal a lot as a hero, I believed his character. I did like how Howard transformed him for the reader at the same time she transformed him for Cait although I did find it a bit abrupt, I still found it believable.

As for the ratio of romance to suspense – it’s not 50/50. It’s probably 70/30 but I thought it was extremely well done and unlike some of my other favorite authors who went the way of just suspense and no romance, I thought Howard did a good job with the balance. I don’t think so much in terms of percentage but how it fits overall and when I shut the book I thought it was a romance.

Trouble In High Heels – Christina Dodd

I’m always suspicious when historical authors move to contemporaries but I love Dodd’s contemps as much as I do her historicals.

Anyway, I was quite entertained by High Heels. As a lawyer, I always cringe to see characters as lawyers in books and I have to say, this one stretched my tolerance in several places. I wasn’t muttering the entire time about pigs flying but um, suffice it to say I personally could not find any of the law firm stuff or stuff with the judge or other attorneys to be believable. At all.

That said – it was still a fun read and I did like it. I love how the opening sets up the character’s struggle and I also appreciated her seeing her mother later on as someone who is strong and worthy. She’s strong and smart and I dug that she understood her beauty as a tool.

Roberto’s character was fabulous. Sexy, funny and romantic. And I loved his nonno (that’s his grampa in case you thought I was being naughty).

The chemistry was really hot and the energy between the H/H was full of sparks. I liked them together.

The baddies were very bad and gave the reader a place to hang her ire.

There are books you just sink into to get rid of your crappy week because they’re fun and fluffy and all about entertainment. Despite some annoying things (which you probably woudln’t even know if you weren’t a lawyer although I’m sure nurses and mechanics have their own peeves, too) – I was very glad that Dodd gave me a few hours of some great reading fun.

Jude’s Law – I love Lori Foster. And I love that Lori Foster gives her heroines so many different lives and makes them three dimensional. I’d have to say that several Foster books would be at the top of my favorite romance novels of all time list.

I ended up liking the book overall. The tension was interesting with the suspense story. The hero with a tragic past is a storyline I like and one Foster excels at (or the heroine like in Bruce and Cyn). I LOVED that the heroine was a big girl who didn’t hate her body but still had some insecurities about it. That was so refreshing in its normalcy. Her weight was not an “issue” in a large sense. But she’s beautiful, that’s something as a reader that I never doubted. It’s a testament to Foster’s skill that she walked that line so well.

Jude? well at first, I really liked Jude. I loved that he was so frustrated by this woman’s ducking his attentions. It was sweet and amusing but once she game to him for help in his study I began to seriously develop a strong dislike for him. I absolutely hated the way he spoke to May, almost as much as I hated how she took it. I understand that they both had issues which made them overreact the way they did to things but to me, I thought it was way too much.

May – as I said above, I love that Foster gave us a heroine who isn’t a size 10 and considered plus size and I loved that her weight wasn’t an issue outside of the normal way women see themselves. She’s a woman who is the default caregiver for people in her life. That’s a reality for many women and I appreciated that Foster gave her a book. I loved when she stood up to her parents for being abusive. I did not love that she went back to letting them abuse her and that Jude went along with it. I did not love the way Jude talked to her when he had other issues and I did not love how May took it. I don’t want to give spoilers but there were two points in the book, in his study and in his guest room where he acted in a totally unforgivable manner and she was too accepting of it.

I LOVED Denny. What a marvelous character! I hope he gets a book, silver tooth and head tattoos included. The parents were bad, got it. The brother was a weakling idiot who also did something utterly unforgivable that I couldn’t get past at all.

Despite the negatives, I still enjoyed Jude’s Law and I’m going to look for Murphy’s Law to catch up on the secondary characters we met in Jude’s Law because I enjoyed May’s best friend and the chemistry between her and Quentin Murphy.