Judith’s review of Smooth Sailing by Lori Wilde
Desperate to win back his ex, billionaire playboy Jeb Whitcomb spent a year in self-discipline and (mostly) celibacy. He’s a new man. But when she decides to marry someone else, Jeb immediately sets sail. He has only four days to stop the wedding and, worse still, he has a stowaway…the only woman who can make a newly good man behave very, very badly!
R.N. Haley French is furious. For one night, she lets go of her usual boring routine, and the next she knows she’s accidentally off to Florida with Mr. Sexy Superficiality, and desperately trying to forget the steamy encounter they almost shared.
And in the boat, there’s no escape from each other…or the unfurling lust that threatens to send their self-control overboard!
This is one of those stories that is rooted in a situation that is pretty serious yet manages to have so many opportunities for comedy. It’s always a good thing when a man with too much money and too much time on his hands and too many willing women at his disposal decides to live responsibly and turn his life around, all for the love of a good woman. However, in this case, the woman in question is marrying another man. As an old time radio personality was known to comment: “What a revoltin’ development this is!”
This story embraces a series of mishaps that puts the two main characters on a sailing vessel bound for Florida in the hopes that hero Jed can stop the wedding of the woman who precipitated his attitude and life changes. But there is one really difficult issue playing out here: the woman in question has consistently made it clear that she is not really interested in Jed. Her final ploy at getting him out of her sphere was to give him big-time hell over his playboy lifestyle and her absolute refusal to get involved with any man who treated women as he did. The other big issue in this story is his relentless and growing attraction to the other passenger on his sailing ship–a nurse with whom he has collided romantically, who gets his motor going seriously, and a woman whose sense of right and wrong keeps challenging him in ways he has resisted in the past.
I loved this story–the seeming impossibility of the relationship Jed was chasing with that sense of panic throughout the story, the intrepid Haley who kept reminding him of so much about himself that he wanted to ignore, reminding him of so much about this relationship he was chasing he didn’t want to hear, and the sense of both of them hurtling toward a future that may or may not keep them together or be the source of deep emotional hurt. It’s a fun read in the truest sense of the word by an author who keeps on giving us stories we enjoy in that way that deeply satisfying and likable stories do. I think you’ll want to read and enjoy this one!
I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.
This book is available from Harlequin Blaze. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Judith’s review of Smooth Sailing by Lori Wilde
Thanks for this review! I have read a couple of Lori Wilde’s cowboy books & liked her writing style. I will pick this one up.