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.