She Reads Everything

This book is two novellas by Jill Shalvis, one of my favorite authors, published in 2002, eight years before her amazing Lucky Harbor series. She's come a LONG way. The stories were trite, the characters undeveloped and two-dimensional, and the endings unbelievable to me even for romance. The first story, A Royal Mess, isn't too bad and I enjoyed the pluckiness of the heroine even if it did come across as recklessness and stupidity at least 1/3 of the time. The second story, Her Knight to Remember, was downright offensive in that the hero is a complete alpha-jerk and I really wanted the heroine to deliver a fatal kick to his head the whole time. So yeah, Jill Shalvis vastly improved in the 8 years between this book and Simply Irresistible. One thing that did give glimpses of her talent: the scene writing. There are a few scenes in these stories that are amazingly well done and carry the reader into the emotions and reactions of the characters who a page before were too flat.