Book Review: Wild Sight by Loucinda McGary

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I managed to sneak another romance novel in time for Halloween that has a spooky overtone. Wild Sight by Loucinda McGary takes place in a fictional town in Ireland with a lot of real cities and sights thrown in for good measure. This little mystery romance has a paranormal edge with the hero having what the Irish call, “The Sight.” So we get the spectral ghosties in Wild Sight to complement the passing of the Samhain, which actually falls within the books timeframe.

Samhain, if you don’t know, is an Irish holiday or at least a word derived from the ancient Celtic month bearing a similar name. On this day the veil between the spirit world and the human world is thinned and can be breached – kind of like the witching hour superstitions but allocated to a date instead of a time. The corresponding days to our calendar is Halloween or All Saints Day, October 31st and November 1st. It also marks the end of summer.

The Sight, which Donovan O’Shea possesses, manifests itself in different ways for everyone. For Donovan he comes near or in contact with an object or place of an event and he receives a vision. These visions leave him with buzzing, headaches and take place with a swirl and bright flash of colors. His mother possessed it too, but it’s not elaborated how the Sight is different from her to him. We do get to see a little bit of another version of the Sight by a character in Donovan’s past.

Donovan at age seventeen left Ireland behind as fast as he could. He’s now a naturalized American citizen, a CPA to be exact on the east coast. The start of the novel has us meet him a month or so after he’s arrived back in Ireland. He’s here to visit his ailing father, who has suffered a massive stroke, that’s left him partially immobilized and without the ability to properly speak. Donovan is hurriedly trying to sell off the old family land, has started the process to sell the pub his father owned to a third partner, all in his attempts to get the hell out of Ireland before the Sight takes him.

Too bad for Donovan, he’s a little too late.

Rylie Powell is in Ireland trying to track down her MIA father; the very same father she has never met, the one who abandoned her and her mother a very long time ago. She had once promised her mother never to track him down as sometimes the reasons people leave are reasons you don’t want to know. But now that her mother is dead, Rylie doesn’t feel obliged to keep that secret. She feels guilty about her step-dad’s acceptance of her need to come face to face with her real father, but not guilty enough to not go. She takes the directions her hired PI gave her and tracks down her father’s pub. When asking to meet with Dermot O’Shea a tall hunky guy unfurls himself from a corner booth.

She never imagined step-brothers… Older, seriously gorgeous half-brothers.

For Rylie and Donovan it’s instant lust that they fight as they search out the truth of her parentage. Donovan is dead certain his father is not her father (he’s right of course or there wouldn’t be a novel). Rylie wants to believe him, because she doesn’t want to feel sexual desire toward a half-brother. But she fears he’s wrong as she has a history of being attracted to the wrong men and who could be more wrong than Donovan?

As Rylie unravels the mystery of her parentage, a murder twenty years old is exposed on Donovan’s land as archeologists try to uncover ancient Celtic history. Dermot is implicated and Donovan must find out the truth – even if it means evoking the Sight on purpose. He really must be crazy.

Rating: 3.5 Stars if you don't like mysteries with your romance and 4 Stars if you do.

Originally posted 2008-10-29 10:40:33. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Review: Too Good to be True by Kristan Higgins

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If you’re in the mood for a cute, light, sweet, and fun read, Too Good to be True is for you. It’s a very chaste contemporary. There’s no sex. In fact the hero and heroine don’t begin to even get together until two thirds the way through the book. The book is full of witty dialogue and funny scenes.

Grace is in a no-win situation. Her ex-fiancé, Andrew, dumped her twenty days before their wedding. He’s now dating her youngest sister, Natalie. Ever the martyr, Grace puts up a good front. She is not over Andrew and she’s not going to get in the way of her sister’s happiness. It’s not like you can help when the big klabammy strikes. Still, it doesn’t mean she wouldn’t like to kick Andrew in the groin. He doesn’t deserve a gem like Natalie.

In the meantime to get everyone off her back and stop staring at her with pitying looks, Grace invents the perfect boyfriend. She’s done it in the past, but never was a situation more called for than right now. Enter Wyatt Dunn, feral cat rescuing pediatric surgeon.

A new neighbor arrives next door and his name is Callahan O’Shea. Of course their first meeting goes a little awry when she smacks him on the head with her hockey stick—what? He looked like a burglar! Turns out Callahan, sexy though he may be, is an ex-con. Definitely, not acceptable boyfriend material!

Higgins writes in a similar manner as Janet Evanovich with her Stephanie Plum novels. There are obviously some key differences besides series versus one-shot. Instead of a shockingly funny grandma, we get an appalling awful one. Instead of a long suffering mother dealing with her crazy daughter, we get a long suffering father who deals with his wife and her embarrassing nude art, etc.

There’s some weird drama at the end of the novel, which I feel was just thrown in to extend the book a few pages. Callahan gets all funny about Grace’s harmless little pastime of creating imaginary boyfriends. It was an over the top reaction to say the least.

Additionally, I got a little irritated by the dog, but dog lovers should be okay with Angus McFangus.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Buy: Too Good To Be True

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