Tag: Buchanan Series

Review: Murder List by Julie Garwood

Posted May 21, 2012 by Rowena in Reviews | 3 Comments


Rowena’s review of Murder List (Buchanan series #4) by Julie Garwood.

Hero: Alec Buchanan
Heroine: Regan Madison

Hotel heiress Regan Hamilton Madison is flirting with danger. She agrees to help a journalist friend expose Dr. Lawrence Shields, a shady self-help guru who may have been responsible for the death of one of his vulnerable devotees. Hoping to find some damning evidence, Regan attends a Shields seminar, where the doctor his guests make a list of people who have hurt or angered them over the years and asks: Would your world be a better place if these people ceased to exist? Treating the exercise as a game, Regan plays along.

The experience is all but forgotten–until the first person on Regan’s list turns up dead. Shock turns to horror when another name from her list surfaces as a corpse. While brutal murders seem to stalk regan’s every m ove, her atteaction to the detective assigned to protect her grows. As the menace intensifies had a serial killer circles, regan must discover who has turned her private revenge fantasies into grisly reality.

I liked this book far more than I thought I was going to like it considering how much I didn’t really care for the previous book which I read years ago, Killjoy. It’s not that I hated Killjoy it was just that compared to Julie Garwood’s historical/highlander books, her contemporaries weren’t as good.

But I really got into this book, Alec was a fantabulous hero. He’s one of my favorite of the brothers Buchanan. Anyway, Regan Madison is in the hotel business. She’s in the business of giving money away. She’s really good at what she does too, everyone loves her.

Everyone but the guy that’s trying to kill her.

Alec Buchanan, who is brother to the hotties, Nick (JG’s Heartbreaker) and Theo (JG’s Mercy) Buchanan is a cop who is being recruited by the FBI, he finally takes the job the FBI gives him and his boss gets so pissed off at him that he tacks him with Bodyguard duty for the hotel heiress.

My favorite part of reading these books is watching the journey the couple go through while they fall a little bit in love with each other…bit by bit. The whole story that revolves around them forming feelings for each other, to me is just about the greatest thing. It’s why I read romance novels, that journey if written well, gets me every time.

Julie Garwood does a great job of setting up Alec and Regan’s story. The way she brought these two together and the way she tells their story really had me so engrossed in the book that I zipped right through it.

I enjoyed this book a whole lot. I enjoyed Alec’s sloppy sexiness. I loved his flirty confidence where Regan was concerned. I loved their first meeting, with him stinking to high heaven and her laughing at him. I loved how protective he was where she was concerned and I loved loved loved…him. He was the bomb, seriously.

Regan was a great heroine too. She was a great match for Alec. Their story and them two as a couple really fit and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the entire book.

I loved how Regan, Sophie and Cordie met. I loved how they became friends and stayed friends. It was really sweet. That’s another thing that Julie Garwood writes really well. The friendships between women. One of my favorite friendships is the friendship between Judith and Frances Catherine from Julie Garwood’s The Secret. The friendship between Regan, Sophie and Cordie reminds me of Judith and Frances Catherine. Solid and strong, that’s the kind of friendship they had and I loved it.

Now, what I didn’t like…I didn’t like how we were left hanging about Aiden and Cordie, do they get together or not? Are we going to get their story ever or no? JG can’t leave me hanging like this…seriously. Another thing I didn’t like was not being able to meet Walker. After all the talk about him throughout the book, I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to meet him at all. I’m still crossing my fingers that JG will write Walker’s book (she hasn’t written his book, has she?)

Aside from those two things, I really liked this book and totally recommend it. It’s better than Killjoy and just as great as Heartbreaker and Mercy. The mystery surrounding the story kept me guessing throughout most of the book and the story fell neatly into place which I loved. The ending was great and Alec is a sexy hero…what more could you want?

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

The series:

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

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

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Review: Slow Burn by Julie Garwood.

Posted May 2, 2012 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Genres: Romantic Suspense


Rowena’s review of Slow Burn by Julie Garwood.

Hero: Dylan Buchanan
Heroine: Kate Mackenna

An unpretentious beauty who rediates kindness, kate MacKenna doesn’t have a bad bone in her body–or an enemy in the world. So why are bombs igniting everywhere she goes? The first explosion brings her face-to-face with a handsome Charleston police detective. The second one sends her into the arms of her best friend’s brother–a Boston cop who’s a little too reckless and way too charming for cmofort. But Dylan Buchanan won’t let emotion prevent from doing his job: Someone is trying to kill Kate, and Dylan is the only one standing between her and the monster who wants her dead.

I finished this book in one sitting. So I guess it was good. LOL.

I’m still kind of unsure how I feel about this book because I read it so fast but I do love some Dylan Buchanan…man that man is frickin’ sexy as all get out but I think his brother, Alec still has him beat as my favorite Buchanan, which surprises me since I love heroes who are big time flirts and trust me when I say, Dylan knows how to flirt.

So Kate, who doesn’t have any enemies that she knows of can’t seem to go anywhere without someone trying to blow her up, the first one could have been a fluke but not the second one. The second one, she was the only person around so it was more than a little evident that whoever is blowing things up is trying to blow HER up. That’s when her best friend, Jordan Buchanan sends her brother, Dylan who just got shot in the line of duty (he’s a cop) and is recuperating to Charleston to find out what’s going on. Dylan is sweet on Kate so with little persuasion, he goes…even though he’s miffed with her after the way she leaves Boston without a word to him.

I thought as a couple, Kate and Dylan were great. The chemistry between these two leaped right off the pages and I laughed whenever Dylan would back Kate into a corner or a counter and fluster her. I love reading about things like that and Dylan did a great job landing Kate because she was so lost without him. It was great!

This book is pretty fast paced, the flow was on point and Julie Garwood does a great job writing this one. You could tell that there was a great deal of love between the two and while the end was a bit rushed, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.

If you read the rest of the series, I don’t think you’d be disappointed in this book, it wasn’t spectacular but it was still nice. It’s no Killjoy that’s for sure, but on the flipside, it’s no Ransom either.

But still it’s good.

Oh wait, what I loved most about this book is Dylan’s nickname for Kate. How cute was that? And how unique…when he tells her that he loves pickles, Awwwww….I love it and I love him!

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

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

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Review: Shadow Dance by Julie Garwood.

Posted December 15, 2011 by Rowena in Reviews | 0 Comments

Genres: Romantic Suspense


Rowena’s review of Shadow Dance by Julie Garwood.

Hero: Noah Clayborne
Heroine: Jordan Buchanan

Jordan Buchanan is thrilled that her brother and best friend are tying the knot. The wedding is a lavish affair–for the marriage of Dylan Buchanan and Kate MacKenna is no ordinary occasion. It represents the joining of two family dynasties. The ceremony and reception proceed without a hitch–until a crasher appears claiming to be a MacKenna guest. The disheveled and eccentric professor of medieval history warns that there’s “bad blood” between the couple’s clans, stemming from an ancient feud that originated in Scotland, and involving the Buchanan theft of a coveted MacKenna treasure.

Jordan has always led a cautious life and has used her intelligence and reason to become a successful businesswoman. So she is intrigued but skeptical of the professor’s claims that the feud has been kept alive by the grave injustices the Buchanans have perpetrated over the centuries. But when Noah Clayborne, a close family friend and a man who has never let a good time or a pretty girl pass him by, accuses Jordan of being trapped in her comfort zone, she determines to prove him wrong and sets out on a spontaneous adventure to the small, dusty town of Serenity, Texas, to judge the professor’s research for herself.

Maneuvering through a close-knit community in which everyone knows everyone else’s business, Jordan never anticipates the danger and intrigue that lie in her path, nor the threat that will shadow her back to Boston, where even in familiar surroundings, her life is at risk.

A powerful thug who rules by fear, a man who harbors a simmering secret, and an unexpected romance that pierces all defenses–beloved author Julie Garwood weaves these dazzling elements into a brilliant novel of romantic suspense. Shadow Dance is a searing tango of passion and peril.


We have Noah Clayborne’s book, in which he falls madly in love with his best friend and partner’s sister, Jordan Buchanan.

They’re at her best friend’s wedding, where Kate (the best friend) is marrying Jordan’s yummy brother, Dylan. Kate’s younger sister, Isabel gets a visitor, who says he’s a relative of theirs on their MacKenna side. He tells Jordan that it was a disgrace that a MacKenna would willingly marry a Buchanan and because she got annoyed with the weird guy, she tells him that maybe she’ll do her own research to see if there’s any truth to the tales that the nutty professor was spoutin’ at the wedding. While on the dance floor, Noah informs Jordan that she needs to get laid and loosen up because she’s pretty much…boring. So because she doesn’t need money right now after the selling of her computer chip and company which made her stinking rich, she tells him that she’s going on a treasure hunt to find some lost treasure.

And she goes to Texas to find the guy and copy his research for Isabel and start her own research, to try to make sense of the stories that the crackhead professor was talking about. Nothing has been going right since she got to Serenity but that doesn’t deterr her from her mission, well until she found the nutty professor dead in her trunk.

Ewww…

Because it’s aparent that someone is trying to frame her, she calls her brother Nick, who’s an FBI Agent and instead of getting Nick, she gets his partner, Noah Clayborne. The odious man who got her in this mess anyway, if he hadn’t told her that she was boring and needed to be spontaneous, she wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. But she tells him what happens and he tells her to call the cops, report the body and then wait for him and Nick to get there, they’re on their way.

So she hangs up with Noah, calls 911 and while she’s on the phone with 911, she hears sirens which she thinks is the patrol unit sent to check things out, but while she’s on the phone with the 911 peeps, the sheriff’s car comes to a screeching halt and the two Dickey brothers jump out and one of them, hot head JD socks her in the face and stomps on her phone, ruining it.

Guilty much?

A bunch of crap happens, Nick and Noah finally show up and Noah sticks to her side like glue and more bodies show up in her trunk and it makes for a pretty good story but I was still a bit disappointed.

Not in the story so much but in the fact that I didn’t get to know Noah like I thought I would have. There wasn’t much character development where he was concerned and I was looking forward to that. At the end of the story, I still felt like Noah was a secondary character, sort of how I felt for Noah Maitland in Judith McNaught’s Night Whispers.

Also, the love match between Noah and Jordan felt kind of rushed and forced. It was like, one minute they were just friends and then the sleep together and BAM, they’re in love. It happened too quick for me which rendered it a bit unbelievable, but that’s just me. I didn’t see it coming and because of that I didn’t really care for it.

Aside from all of that, the book was just okay. It wasn’t her best, it wasn’t my favorite, I was disappointed that this was how Noah’s book turned out…I was just hoping for more and it fell short of that mark.

Grade: 3 out of 5.

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

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Review: Tempting by Susan Mallery

Posted July 10, 2007 by Holly in Reviews | 8 Comments

Review: Tempting by Susan MalleryReviewer: Holly
Tempting by Susan Mallery
Series: Buchanans #4
Publisher: Harlequin
Publication Date: June 15th 2012
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 384
Add It: Goodreads
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four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

After three romantic flame-outs in a year and a restaurant career going nowhere, Dani Buchanan needs a fresh start. She goes looking for her biological father, but never expects to find a senator running for president. As his long-lost "love child," Dani could seriously derail the election—something his handsome campaign manager Alex Canfield isn't going to let happen.

Dani isn't about to let Alex run her life, no matter how tempting she finds him—and Alex isn't going to allow Dani to melt his cynicism, no matter how close he has to get. The last thing either of them wants is love, especially with scandals brewing and family trouble on the way. But Dani and Alex are forced to trust each other, and when trust turns to passion, the potential for disaster is only a tabloid scandal away.

This is the fourth book in the Buchanan Series and Dani Buchanan’s much awaited story. For a recap of Dani’s previous escapades and the rest of the Buchanan clan, go check out Mollie’s review at Biblioharlot’s Bookshelf.

Dani is the youngest of the Buchanan siblings and the only girl. She’s had a pretty bad run of luck throughout the series, but the most devastating blow -even worse than her husband divorcing her after she nursed him back to health, or her first lover after the divorce turning out to be married – was the fact that she wasn’t truly a Buchanan. Her spiteful grandmother informed her that Dani’s mother had had an affair and Dani was the result.

Dani learns her biological father is a State Senator, Mark Canfield, who’s thinking of running for president. To get to him she must go through his eldest adopted son, Alex. If finding her real father isn’t bad enough, dealing with an attraction to Alex is just the icing on the cake.

Alex is skeptical of Dani’s claim that she’s Mark’s daughter and takes it upon himself to watch her like a hawk. He has her investigated and insists on a DNA test, even though Mark is convinced Dani is his daughter.

I really liked this book. Dani was a good heroine, even if she did start to annoy me toward the end of the book with her obsession to commit the “ultimate sacrifice” for the “greater good”.

You see, The Senator and his wife, Katherine, have adopted 8 special needs children over the years. Alex is the oldest and a beautiful little girl with HIV is the youngest at 5. As Dani gets to know Katherine and her children, she falls completely in love with them. She adores Bailey, the 15-yr-old with Down Syndrome and finds herself falling in a different kind of love with Alex. But more than anyone else, she wants the approval of Katherine. Having lost her mother at a very young age, she sees Katherine as a sort of surrogate mother. Naturally Katherine is upset by Dani’s appearance, because it makes her question her husbands feelings for her and it reminds her of her own inability to conceive children. She doesn’t put any of the blame on Dani, and she’s always gracious, but Dani realizes she’s struggling and wants to do the right thing.

In this case, according to Dani, the right thing is walking away from all of them. The Buchanans and the Canfields. I seriously hate the “ultimate sacrifice” storyline. These characters are all adults (for the most part) and are more than able to make their own decisions. For one person to decide she knows what’s best for EVERY DAMN BODY pisses me off. She almost, almost, crossed the line into Too Stupid To Live-ville. Luckily she stopped running and realized what a stupid ass she was being -with the help of her brothers and her father’s family – so she was partially redeemed. Still, that kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

I also had a slight issue with her grandmother’s transformation. I didn’t read the first two books in this series, but from what I understand Gloria was a complete and total waste of a human being. We saw her transformation in Sizzling -Reid’s book- with the help of Lori, Gloria’s nurse. But from some of the things Gloria said and did to Dani, I was surprised at how easily Dani let her back into her life. I’m on the fence with that whole element.

Overall the story was good, though. Despite the issues I had, I was drawn to the characters and really enjoyed the storyline.

I’m going to give this one a 4 out of 5.

The series:

Delicious (February 2006) – Cal’s book
Irresistible (July 2006) – Walker’s book
Sizzling (January 2007) – Reid’s book
Tempting (July 2007) – Dani’s book

PS. I’m being a rebel. I wrote most of this review about 5 days ago and haven’t re-read it since. Forgive any grammatical errors, please. And if the review doesn’t make sense, well…

four-stars

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