Truly, Madly

Author: Heather Webber
Type: e-book (read on my iPhone)
Genre: Supernatural, mystery
Series: 1st book in the Lucy Valentine series
Series Order:

1. Truly, Madly (2010)
2. Deeply, Desperately (2010)
3. Absolutely, Positively (2011)

First Line: "There comes a time in every girl's life when she realizes her father isn't perfect."

Synopsis: Lucy Valentine's family is famous for their knack of match-making (think e-harmony) and have a very successful business, Valentine Inc. When Lucy's parents have to leave suddenly she's grudgingly put in charge of the business. Unfortunately Lucy doesn't have her parents' ability to match up couples. Legend has it that her family was blessed by Cupid himself and given the ability to read the colour of people's auras in order to match people with their true love. Sadly, Lucy lost her ability to read auras years ago and was left only with the psychic ability to find lost things. Lucy doesn't see much of a benefit to her power and hides it from all but a few people in her life.

When Lucy shakes hands with a new client she has a vision of a lost engagement ring on the hand of a corpse. The client tells Lucy that the ring belonged to his long-lost love, Jennifer, who disappeared years before. Lucy is determined to help the client find his lost love. She asks for help from Sean, a handsome private eye to track down Jennifer as well as find the murderer of the corpse.

My Thoughts: I bought this e-book a few weeks ago on amazon.com. I was lounging around and bored so I went book shopping on my phone. It's really dangerous to make shopping a mere click and I'm surprised that I haven't bought more books for my phone ... but I digress.

When I shop on amazon I love using the 'what other people bought' feature. It's a great way to find new authors with similar writing styles. Anyway, that's how I found this book. I didn't have huge expectations for the book but figured that since it had received good reviews from readers I'd at least have a light and hopefully enjoyable read.

I was nicely surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I had recently read another book by the same author ("A Hoe Lot of Trouble") and liked but didn't love it. This book captured my attention right from the beginning. It has a good mystery, good supernatural element and a nice, slow-paced romance (and I'm predicting possible future love triangle). The characters were all well-rounded and even the secondary characters kept my interest and weren't superfluous. I'd actually love to see more from Lucy's odd-ball parents and her overbearing and sneaky grandmother, Dovie.

The only negative that I can think of for this book (as well as the other books in the series) would be the titles. The title wouldn't catch my eye nor does it really describe what the book's about ... at all. I had a hard time remembering the title of the book because the three books in the series are similarly named. Just a little beef ... a wee moo, if you will.

I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the series (which I have in my 'to read' pile) to see where the author goes with Lucy and how she deals with the fact that now people know about her once secret power to find lost things. This is not a hard core deep mystery. But if you're in the mood for a light, easy, escapist-type book this is a good one to try.


My Rating: 4/5 stars