Rowena’s review of Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Hero: Teddy Beaudine
Heroine: Meg Koranda

Lucy Jorik is the daughter of a former president of the United States.

Meg Koranda is the offspring of legends.

One of them is about to marry Mr. Irresistible—Ted Beaudine—the favorite son of Wynette, Texas. The other is not happy about it and is determined to save her friend from a mess of heartache.

But even though Meg knows that breaking up her best friend’s wedding is the right thing to do, no one else seems to agree. Faster than Lucy can say “I don’t,” Meg becomes the most hated woman in town—a town she’s stuck in with a dead car, an empty wallet, and a very angry bridegroom. Broke, stranded, and without her famous parents at her back, Meg is sure she can survive on her own wits. What’s the worst that can happen? Lose her heart to the one and only Mr. Irresistible? Not likely. Not likely at all.

The long awaited story for Teddy Beaudine is finally upon us, dear readers. I was one of the fans of Lucy Jorik for Teddy’s heroine but that’s not what SEP had in mind for Teddy and after reading the entire book, I can’t say that I’m disappointed in her choice. It’s funny how before I started the book, I wasn’t a fan of Meg’s at all but over the course of this book, she totally won me over.

So the book starts off with Meg finally meeting her best friend Lucy’s fiance and not liking what she’s seeing. He’s too perfect and when she sees the two of them together, she’s not seeing passion and she wants to make sure that her best friend is happy when she finally takes the plunge and gets married but she doesn’t see how that’s possible when she can’t for the life of her see any passion between Teddy “Mr. Irresistible” and Lucy. So she does what any best friend would do, she tells Lucy how she feels.

And Lucy bolts. Runs out on her wedding and Teddy and just like that, disappears.

Leaving Meg behind to face the wrath of everyone in town and everyone in Lucy’s life. Now to be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of everyone blaming Meg for Lucy bailing on her wedding (and Teddy) because even though Meg was to blame for telling Lucy about her doubts, she wasn’t responsible for Lucy actually leaving. I hated that everyone was pissed to high heaven at Meg but nobody was really mad at Lucy. Even Nealy and Mat.

SEP does a bang up job of writing those embarrassing, close my eyes cause I can’t look scenes where something hugely embarrassing happens to the heroine and she did so again in this book with Meg. There was a crowd to watch her humiliation and it totally dimmed Teddy’s hotness in my eyes because well, he was part of her humiliation….good thing that didn’t last because I would have been bummed.

The issue in this book is that Teddy is too damn perfect and Meg hates it. Teddy hates Meg because he’s blamed her for Lucy taking off on him and well, he has to blame someone so she gets the brunt of his madness. There’s a whole heck of a lot of chemistry leaping off the pages where these two are concerned and I ate it all up.

Teddy was a great, stand up hero and he definitely lived up to the hype that I was surrounding his character. Having loved Teddy for years and years, it was so good to finally get his story and though it wasn’t the story that I was expecting, I still really enjoyed it and was happy with his happy ending.

The main thing that surprised me with this book was Meg Koranda. When we first meet Meg a few books back, she’s this aimless young woman who doesn’t have a life’s plan and just kind of runs around the world. She didn’t make much of a splash on my radar because I didn’t think she was interesting enough, which was mostly why I was not a Teddy/Meg fan to begin with (as you can see by this post) but over the course of this book, SEP totally won me over into the Meg camp. I thought that Meg totally came into her own and SEP made an honest woman out of her and I really enjoyed getting to know her. Meg was strong and she totally fit in with the chaos that surrounding the people of Wynette.

More than anything, the main draw for me was being able to see the other characters from the other books. Kenny and Emma (LOVE them), Torie and Dexter (LOVE THEM), Meg’s parents and Teddy’s parents. They all mixed together to bring the usual SEP laughs and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them all again.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Teddy and Meg made sense and it took no time at all for SEP to make me happy with her choice. What did piss me of though was the way that everyone in Wynette made Meg’s life a living hell while she was there and I wanted to bang Fancy’s head with a pan more times than I can count because she was always such a busy body and in this book, it was no different. Watching Teddy and Meg fall for each other in such a short amount of time should have been unbelievable but SEP does a fine job of making even that make sense.

Overall, this book was a good one. It wasn’t my favorite book by SEP but she delivered with the laughs and she delivered with the steamy romance. Teddy was a great hero and Meg was an even better heroine. My one gripe was that even though Teddy was all over this book, I didn’t feel like we got inside his head as much and I was left feeling a bit cheated with that. It’s a huge reason why I liked Meg more because we knew what was going on with her (feelings wise) at every turn but it was different with Teddy. While I still loved the hell out of Teddy, I wanted more from him but that didn’t take away too much of my enjoyment with this book.

Would I recommend this book? You betcha, fans of SEP will love this book and lovers of contemporary should give it a shot as well because SEP sure knows how to pen humorous contemporary romance novels so I’m sure she won’t disappoint.

This book has definitely left me wanting something a whole lot and that is….LUCY’S BOOK!

Grade: 4.25 out of 5

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here.

Rowena‘s review of First Lady by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Hero: Mat Jorik
Heroine: Nealy Case
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

The beautiful young widow of the President of the United States thought she was free of the White House, but circumstances have forced her back into the role of the First Lady. Not for long, however, because she’s made up her mind to escape—if only for a few days—so she can live the life of an ordinary person. All she needs is the perfect disguise…and she’s just found it. As an entire nation searches for her, the First Lady teams up with an infuriatingly secretive, quietly seductive stranger and two adorable little orphaned girls in need of a family. And all together they head out across the heartland chasing their own American Dream—on a wild journey, adventure, and glorious rebirth.

I adored this book!

I thought it was too cute for words and I’m totally stoked that I finally got to read it. It’s an oldie but definitely a goodie because reading this book was like taking a enjoyable road trip. I was right there with Mat, Nealy (or Nell), Lucy and Button. I was right in the thick of all of the drama, the laughs and the good times.

SEP certainly delivered a good time with this story. I thought it was such an entertaining story and it reminded me of the stories that started my romance novel addiction. The kind of stories that I would spend the next many YEARS discussing with my friends. You know, those kinds of stories. SEP has a way with words that never fails to draw me deep into the worlds that she’s created for her characters. I love her writing and this story was a great showcase of that.

First Lady Cornelia “Nealy” Case just lost her husband who used to be the President of the United States and she finally thinks she’s going to be turned loose to live the kind of life she’s always wanted to live…a normal one. She doesn’t want to live the life of a First Lady anymore even though she was raised to have political ambitions. Her father was way into politics and she was raised to do her duty and to always do as she was told. She lived her life in the public spotlight so she never really had time to take her hair down and just ..live. So she concocts a plan to escape the White House for as long as she can and have a little fun.

As soon as she escapes from the White House she starts doing the things and eating the things that she’s always wanted to try. She shops at Wal Mart and it’s an adventure for her. Having grown up wearing the finest threads and eating the finest foods, Nealy eats up living the way that normal, everyday Americans live. She eats at little diners off the highway and she is having a blast until the car she bought gets stolen with all the cash she had.

She hooks up with Mat Jorik who is having his own set of issues going on. Mat is stuck with two kids that he doesn’t want because his dead ex wife put his name on both of their birth cetificates when she knew good and well that Mat couldn’t have fathered any of the kids. He’s got one bratty 14 year old with a smart mouth and a baby who loves to spend the day screaming at the top of her lungs and Mat is stuck with them. He wants to drop them off at their grandmother’s house in Iowa so that he can get back to his life. When they pull into the same parking lot as a stranded Nealy, he thinks he’s hit it big since he just agreed to take on a temporary nanny. A nanny who would take the kids and keep them out of his hair.

The story follows Mat, Nell and the kids journey to Iowa. It shows them interacting with one another and getting to know each other. Through out the whole book, you learned a little more about each of them and you felt for them. I think SEP does an exceptional job of making the reader understand why each character is the way that they are. Each character had their own set of problems that they were going through and you cheered them on. You wanted the best for each of them because as the story progressed, they became family to you.

I thought Mat was a fantastic hero. He was bullheaded, he was a pain but he was such a man. He reacted the way that I think normal men act and still he was great. I enjoyed getting to know him and I enjoyed lusting after him behind the wheel of that beat up ol’ mobile home. I enjoyed watching his relationship with both Button and Lucy and I really enjoyed the sexual tension between him and Nell. He messed up and he was a jerk sometimes but that is what made him perfect to me, he was so real to me and I just loved him to pieces.

Nell was another good heroine. She was different in the sense that this is the first romance novel that I’ve read that features a First Lady heroine but I enjoyed getting to know Nell. I understood what motivated her and I admired her for going through with her plan to escape for a while. I enjoyed watching her get a dose of what real life is for normal Americans and I enjoyed watching her get to know and fall in love with the little makeshift family she made on the road. Watching her relationship with all of the members of their little family from Lucy to Mat and even to Button was seriously a delight. I loved that she finally stood up to her father and made him accept the new members of her family and the end of the book just totally got me. I loved it.

Lucy and Button were great additions to the story. I have got to say that I’m a big Lucy fan and I hope to high heaven that she is the one that ends up with Teddy because Lucy had such a big heart. She kept it hidden behinds layers of bratty behavior but I couldn’t blame her one bit for reacting the way that she did throughout this book because she was such a young girl to have to be going through what she was going through. She wanted to make sure that someone would take care of her baby sister because she knew that nobody was going to want her. Awww, her bratty behavior masked the hurt and grief that she went through because her Mother. To find out that the man that your mother told you was such a good man didn’t want to take you and your baby sister in had to have hurt and teenagers feel everything so much more than everyone else, that rejection must have stung so I really enjoyed seeing Lucy develop into the young woman she was at the end of the book. I just really loved her character and I really, really look forward to seeing more of her in future books. Woot!

Button was too cute for words and the bond she formed with “Da” (Mat) was just too adorable for words. I love reading about kids in romance books and I’m glad that I got to know Button. I’m really anxious to see what kind of woman she grows up to be.

Overall, this book was highly enjoyable and though it’s not my favorite SEP book, I still enjoyed the heck out of it. I would recommend this to any SEP fan out there who hasn’t tried this book. Give it a go, you’ll enjoy it. I’m sure of it.

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.