Review: It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson.

Posted March 7, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson.Reviewer: Rowena
It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: March 20th 2012
Pages: 384
Add It: Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Ripped Bodice | Google Play Books
four-stars

Undercover cop Joe Shanahan's bad luck hit bottom the morning he stared up into the face of sexy suspect Gabrielle Breedlove. She'd blown his cover—brought him down with a can of hairspray—and now his new assignment was to pose as her boyfriend. But spending as much time as possible with the utterly irresistible New Age beauty caused unexpected complications. To make matters worse, his matchmaking sisters are picking out china patterns.

Joe's brooding good looks and T-shirt-straining muscles might be easy on the eyes, but how could Gabrielle be attracted to a straight-laced detective who's determined to find evidence to arrest her? Still, he invades her dreams and when they share a transcendent lovemaking experience, Gabrielle knows it must be love.

Undercover cop Joe Shanahan's bad luck hit bottom the morning he stared up into the face of sexy suspect Gabrielle Breedlove. She'd blown his cover—brought him down with a can of hairspray—and now his new assignment was to pose as her boyfriend. But spending as much time as possible with the utterly irresistible New Age beauty caused unexpected complications. To make matters worse, his matchmaking sisters are picking out china patterns.

Joe's brooding good looks and T-shirt-straining muscles might be easy on the eyes, but how could Gabrielle be attracted to a straight-laced detective who's determined to find evidence to arrest her? Still, he invades her dreams and when they share a transcendent lovemaking experience, Gabrielle knows it must be love.

In my attempt to read as many Rachel Gibson books that I can, this book came up and I read it pretty fast. That’s what I like about Rachel Gibson’s books, they’re not these long, drawn out dramatic books that I have to invest all of this time in to enjoy…with Rachel Gibson, I get a great storyline with funny characters and hot studly heroes. That is a total win win for me and this story was no different.

This book starts off with Joe trailing Gabrielle because he thinks that following her will lead her to the Hillard painting. You see, Joe is an undercover cop that has some making up to do before he gets demoted…again. His last undercover informant turned on him and when Joe went to grab him, he tried to shoot Joe and Joe ended up killing him and the story hit the media and everyone around town started thinking that maybe the cops in Boise were trigger happy.

Joe’s gotta find the Hillard painting so that he can get his rep under control again. His #1 suspect is Kevin Carter and he knew that by tailing Kevin’s business partner, Gabrielle Breedlove, he would get closer to finding the Hillard painting, which is an expensive painting that was stolen from the Hillards. He knew that he was on to something when Gabrielle changed her routine one morning and went running in the park. Joe followed her over to the park and prepared to run behind her and keep an eye on her and see where she was leading him.

She led him right into a can of hairspray and an antique pistol.

This part of the story, where Joe and Gabrielle finally met had me cracking the heck up. There Joe was, thinking he was just tailing some girl who he thought had a great backside when BAM! She hits him with hairspray and his cover is blown and he’s got to bring her in to the station where everyone will know that his cover was blown and that he was taken down by a can of hairspray and a very old pistol that wasn’t even loaded.

HA!

Gabrielle Breedlove is part owner of a curio shop where her specialty is oils and aromatherapy. She comes from a family of psychics and people with “the sight” and though she’s got her own beliefs, she’s not your normal 9-5 all american woman, she’s actually a woman who marches to her own tune but she’s beautiful and she’s a pacifist…or so she thought until she met Joe Shannahan.

She swears she’s innocent and she’s willing to cooperate with the police in order to prove that she’s innocent so she signs an undercover informant agreement where Joe will pose as her new boyfriend who will be working at the shop, doing maintenance over there so that he can have free reign over the shop in order to try to snoop on Kevin Carter and to find the missing painting.

Gabrielle is nothing that Joe would ever date himself and Joe is the exact opposite of what Gabrielle likes and yet, she can’t stop thinking about him and he can’t stop thinking about her.

Her psychic mother told her that he was her destiny and that she couldn’t stand in the way of fate but just because he was her fate didn’t mean that she had to go after him. Fight all she wanted, she couldn’t change the fact that he was the ying to her yang and no matter how much she fought it or he fought it, in the end, they were going to end up together.

This is one of those light and fluffy books that you read in one sitting and after you’ve finished it, you’re left with that sappy smile on your face that you can’t erase for a few hours. It’s one of those feel good books that leaves you sighing while you’re reading this and even though there’s a scene in this book that is reminiscent of the scene in Marriage Most Scandalous by Johanna Lindsey where Sebastian left Maggie hanging, I was far more forgiving of Joe than I was of Sebastian.

You see, in this book Gabrielle professed her undying love for Joe and what does he do? He tells her that she’s confused and he leaves her hanging…and then doesn’t contact her for a month. A WHOLE MONTH, but RG did a fantastic job of making me believe that he regretted his actions from that night and she made me feel bad for Joe and she made me forgive him right from the jump because I felt that he was truly sorry for what he did and that he really wanted to spend the rest of his life making it up to Gabrielle.

There were times when I wanted to smack the ever living crap out of Joe…like every time he went to see Ann over at the deli…I kept asking myself, what the heck are you doing over there? Why are you even trying to get with her when you know good and well that Gabrielle is your lobster? I swear, there were times when I wondered about Joe’s sanity.

Joe got on my hot damn nerves more than Gabrielle did but I didn’t not like Joe. I still thought he was a sexy stud muffin who I wanted a piece of. For me, Joe can best be described as a man. He wasn’t your typical hero in the fact that he was so far from being perfect but he still worked and I still loved the hell out of him. He messed up and he learned from his mistakes and he went after what he wanted at the end and he ended up with the girl which is as it should be in romance novels and in this book, I was just so hot damn happy for Joe to finally get it right.

This book was great, the plot and the pacing were great, the characters meshed well and the bad guys got what they deserved and the good guys came out on top, just the way I like it and I would like to thank Rachel Gibson for entertaining the socks off of me with this story for the few hours that it took me to read this book.

It’s a great read, I definitely recommend it.

four-stars


Tagged: , , , , ,

One response to “Review: It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson.

Leave a Reply to Stacy~ Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.