Rowena’s review of Truly Madly
Hero: Sean
Heroine: Lucy Valentine
Lucy Valentine is as smart as can be, as single as you can get, and so not qualified to run a matchmaking service. But when her parents temporarily step down from the family business, Valentine, Inc., it’s Lucy’s turn to step up and help out—in the name of love.Plus, her rent is due.Here’s the problem: Lucy doesn’t have the knack for matchmaking. According to family legend, every Valentine has been blessed by Cupid with the ability to read “auras” and pair up perfect couples. But not Lucy. Her skills were zapped away years ago in an electrical surge, and now all she can do is find lost objects. What good is that in the matchmaking world? You’d be surprised. In a city like Boston, everyone’s looking for something. So when Lucy locates a missing wedding ring—on a dead body—she asks the sexy private eye who lives upstairs to help her solve the perfect crime. And who knows? Maybe she’ll find the perfect love while she’s at it…
I’m not sure what to think about this book. It took me no time at all to read this book and I did enjoy it but it’s not exactly a book that I’d highly recommend. The story as a whole was just okay. The characters were just okay for me and while I did end up liking it, I didn’t exactly love it. I mean, I kept reading because I kept wondering if the book was going to get better and then once it finished, it was really easy for me to put this book down and then pick something else up, forgetting this book entirely.
Lucy Valentine comes from a family with paranormal gifts. Her father runs a matchmaking company because he can read auras and he matches couples up by the color of their aura. Her whole family has been gifted with this gift…except her. She’s the only one that can’t match couples to save her life. She can’t see aura’s because she’s got her own special power…she can locate things. She can locate physical things. Like if you lost your wedding ring, Lucy can find it for you or if you’ve lost your favorite sweater, Lucy is your girl. She feels like her power is a curse because she can’t work at the family business because she’s so bad at matching people up.
Outside of that, her family is extremely wealthy and dysfunctional. Her parents have an open marriage because a divorce would be bad for the family business considering that they’re in the business of matching up couples and all. Now, when Lucy’s father has a heart attack while on vacation, she has to step up to the plate and take over the company while he takes a doctor prescribed vacation. Another one, where he doesn’t get caught having sex on the beach with one of his bimbo mistresses. He takes a vacation with Lucy’s Mom and they disappear, leaving Lucy alone at the helm of the family business.
Lucy doesn’t want to do it because she knows that she sucks at putting people together but she does it anyway because she’s a good daughter. After meeting with one of her first clients, she comes across a missing wedding ring that her client gave to his long lost fiancé and thought was lost forever. Lucy sees the wedding ring on a skeleton finger and that is where the story takes off. She’s on this quest to find the missing wedding ring (well she knows where it is but she has to figure out how to get there, dig up the grave and then do whatever comes next) and help comes in the form of Sean, the sexy ex-firefighter who is sitting in for his brother, running his PI business.
Watching these two get together was cute. I really enjoyed getting to know Sean, I wanted to know more about him but because this was told in first person from Lucy’s point of view, we didn’t get much of that. I don’t often want more from the other characters in these kinds of stories but I did want more from this one. I was mighty intrigued by Sean’s character and I wanted to know what he was thinking during some of the antics that Lucy found herself (and dragged him) into.
The story as a whole was a great introduction to I guess what is to become the Lucy Valentine series and I’m curious enough to want to read more to see if I’d end up liking the series more and more but my one main gripe with this was Lucy’s desire to be independent and make her own way in life. Maybe that’s a noble endeavor but your family is beyond rich, you have a trust fund that you refuse to touch and you’re two months behind rent…what are you thinking not touching that money? I’m struggling my damn self and if my parents had a trust fund for me just sitting in the bank, waiting for emergencies to be spent…you best believe I’d be touching that mess.
But other than that, not a bad way to spend a few hours but not the best either.
Grade: 3.5 out of 5
This book is available from St. Martin’s Press. You can buy it here
I liked it and look forward to the second book. Had to laugh about your gripe, that always bugs me a bit too 😀
I thought it was a cute quick read. I think I gave it a B.