Naked in Death

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3 stars for the first book of a series is pretty good. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this, since I’m not really a fan of romantic suspense. I like a good romance, and I don’t mind sex scenes in general. This book had two explicit scenes, and I could forgive them for telling us something about the emotional state of the characters. I can hope the author has toned it down in later books in the series, but it wasn’t enough to put me off reading more of them. Eve Dallas and Roarke are great characters, and I can see where some of the side characters like Feeney and Dr. Mira might be developed. I thought more of a mystery about whether Roarke was a good guy or a bad guy could have been made. The “who done it” was pretty clear rather early in the book. All in all, I liked the character building and the future setting was nicely done. I could see this being a successful TV series.

Book description: Eve Dallas is a police lieutenant in 2058 New York City hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she’s seen it all—and knows her survival depends on her instincts. And she’s going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire—and a suspect in Eve’s murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it’s up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about—except the addictive hunger of needing his touch.

Black Hills

Black Hills by Nora Roberts

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A pretty good suspense story, but just an okay love story. Lil comes across as sort of an immature brat. She has built up a huge grudge because she thinks Coop abandoned her years ago. Well, he’s back now, but she keeps pushing him away, and comes across as pretty unreasonable. So there’s tension between them, but that doesn’t add up to romantic chemistry. I liked Lil’s parents and Coop’s grandparents and actually thought those relationships were the best part of the book. I also liked the little love story between Tansy and Farley, although it wasn’t quite believable. All in all, I enjoyed it as a diversion, but I’m not completely sold on Nora Roberts or the romantic suspense genre. Listened to on CD, and the narrator did a very good job with the various voices.

Description:
A summer at his grandparents’ South Dakota ranch is not eleven-year-old Cooper Sullivan’s idea of a good time. But things are a bit more bearable now that he’s discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Each year, with Coop’s annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker’s body.

Twelve years after they last walked together hand in hand, fate has brought them back to the Black Hills when the people and things they hold most dear need them most. An investigator in New York, Coop recently left his fastpaced life to care for his aging grandparents and the ranch he has come to call home. Though the memory of his touch still haunts her, Lil has let nothing stop her dream of opening the Chance Wildlife Refuge, but something . . . or someone . . . has been keeping a close watch. When small pranks and acts of destruction escalate into the heartless killing of Lil’s beloved cougar, recollections of an unsolved murder in these very hills have Coop springing to action to keep Lil safe. Lil and Coop both know the natural dangers that lurk in the wild landscape of the Black Hills. But now they must work together to unearth a killer of twisted and unnatural instincts who has singled them out as prey.