Romance...and other NOVEL concepts

Now, let me preface this by stating that Julie Garwood is one of those amazing authors who has the ability and range to write anything romance: western, regency, medieval, contemporary suspense, etc., and the words just shine. She is one of my most favorite authors ever, and I buy her books without even reading the back covers.

That said, however, I have to say that I was pretty disappointed in Sizzle. There was nothing inherently wrong with it--Sam and Lyra appeared to be super people. But whereas I am used to laughing out loud and tearing up during Garwood's previous books, this one never really grabbed me. The premiss is that Lyra is a film student who stumbles on some trouble and Sam is an FBI agent called in to protect her. Familiar territory for the readers of the rest of the Buchanan series. As I was reading, I kept expecting some magical something to happen to make this into a real JG story. Sadly, there was very little suspense (I realized the bad guy pretty quickly), very little humor (I normally crack up reading this author!), and only a small bit of chemistry between the two main characters.

I still rated this book with three stars because it was still that good--the sad part is Julie Garwood usually writes five star books. I can only hope that her next book is back to her old standards. In my admittedly humble opinion, Sizzle fizzled out.