All Blair Mallory, survivor of multiple murder attempts, wants is to plan a perfect wedding with cop Wyatt Bloodsworth. Not a big, white wedding because she's already had that version, just a small one with friends and family on the perfect day and date, with the perfect dress, perfect shoes and the perfect cake. Wyatt, tired of her waffling, issues an ultimatum. Organize the wedding in a month or it's off to Vegas to get married. Which in Blair's world is just plain tacky. As she gets into high gear running around to get her shopping done, a near hit and run in a mall alongwith some good old-fashioned stalking cue Blair that she might conceivably have pissed someone else off and things are about to get ugly- dead ugly. And this time Wyatt's not buying it.

First things first, it took me all this time to get around to this book, because I knew it was written in first person and I'm not big on that whole POV. But, what can I say. Ms. Howard's (I should say Blair's) voice had me giggling within minutes of cracking the cover.

Blair is pretty high-maintenace, extremely manipulative and comes across as very shallow. But, she has a great relationship with friends and family and is smart as a businesswoman. And she does need to be a relatively strong personality to deal with Wyatt, an ex-pro-football-player- turned-cop who puts the alpha in alpha male. Her ongoing power struggle in her relationship with Wyatt had me in splits, both fight dirty and fight to win.

If you're lost with the alphaness, here's a scene. Blair is fighting with Wyatt to keep her last name. Obviously he's not backing down. But, a topic that would generally have me spitting mad is defused by Ms. Howard's fabulous brand of crazy; all I did was laugh and keep on laughing.

Not to be towered over, I got to my feet, too, scowling right back at him. Okay, so there's still the ten-inch difference in our heights, but I went on tiptoe and pushed my chin up so we were nose to nose. "Expecting me to change my name while you keep yours is archaic-"

His eyes were narrow, his jaw set, his lips a thin hard line that barely moved as he spit out words as if they were bullets. "In the animal kingdom, the male marks his territory by pissing on it. All I'm asking you to do is change your last name to mine. Take.Your.Pick."

The thing about Ms. Howard's romances are that I've yet to meet one of her cop heroes I didn't like, she writes them all as control freaks, extremely observant, slightly obnoxious, with oodles of sex appeal. Mould meet Wyatt. Cant say much about the good old brain cells though, since it should have been fairly obvious to the highly trained cop that Blair couldn't be lying. Ah well, who cares, I need my share of yumminess in my light reading and Wyatt hit all the required notes.

After the hit and run, the book goes through a slightly dull patch (a couple of pages) where we get to hear every single detail of Blair's day, I wouldnt have been surprised to see her pull out nail clippers at a certain point. But, once the stalker-type is completely established the action picks up pace and remains entertaining ... especially a scene with Blair, a patrol car, overbearing men and handful of notes.

So, finally, the perfect light read and all I can say is that when Ms. Howard is at the top of her game, she's great.

However, the biggest gripe I have is when publishers fail to advertise on their covers that the book is a sequel. I don't think I lost much but to an OC reader like myself, all my enjoyment for this book went out of the window because of the twitch I developed over reading Book 2 first. I overcame it (with difficulty) and do think it's a delightful book but if you are anything like me just get To Die For first.

Updated: Well, I read To Die For and it isnt as good as the sequel. I think Ms. Howard was able to more completely develop Blair's voice and character the second time around making for a funnier, better paced read. It might be a personal preferance too since I like reading about what happens to the characters after much more than I like reading about the courtship leading to the HEA. I'd give TDF 3 points, and I'm pretty sure if I had picked it up first I would never have read DDG.

Drea Rousseau is a gangster's moll. She's lived for 2 years with Rafael Salinas, a drug smuggling crime-lord, convincing him of her stupidity and her absolute devotion to him, all the while ensuring that she puts by enough money for a secure future when she wont have her looks to trade on. She thinks she has Salinas where she wants him, until Salinas makes a little deal with an assassin he hires. As a reward for a job well done, he agrees to give Drea to him for a couple of hours. Drea, humiliated and in a furious rage swears to make Salinas pay and runs away. With 2 million dollars of his money. Salinas hires the same assassin to kill her, but as the hitman hunts her down neither he nor Drea have an inkling of how radically their lives are going to change.

It's pretty difficult reviewing this novel, without giving a lot of the story away. The rest of the book follows Drea's footsteps as she chases after the money with little side trips into Salinas, the assassin's, some FBI detectives' heads and all the dull details about banking and finance you never knew and could care less about. And a miracle in the middle of the novel which sets up both characters for their ultimate redemption.

I consider Linda Howard to be a hit-or-miss author, when she's good she's unputdownable, but unfortunately has a lot of turkeys too. Considering what it is about her novels I like, I think along with the decent writing and humor I like that she creates strong characters. In fact, one of her books Cover of the Night, has a thoroughly implausible storyline - a handful of goons besiege an entire American town - I still liked it immensely because I liked the lead pair and all the sundry characters of the town.

So, where this book fails is in the premise, creating believable characters whose moral rescue and redemption the reader understands, is involved in and is rooting for. And it's even more dissociative for the reader when the hero is nameless for almost a third of the story. Drea started off as a good character, pretending to be a blond bimbette but actually a shrewd, smart woman who looks out only for herself. But I found it hard to believe that such a street-smart character fell in love, with an assassin no less, over a few hours of sex. And the hero's motivations were even less apparent to this reader. To get the two together Howard employs a spiritual/ psychic plot device which brought the book to a grinding halt for me, and I could only skim thereafter.

I guess that's about all I can discuss without going into major spoilers. The rating is so low because Howard does have some truly good romances out there.

If you are a new reader some of her better titles are Dying to Please, Cover of the Night ... hmm, I'll add more when I think of them. Dont pick up Shades of Twilight, Open Season or this one :)