Dying To Have Her has lots of elements that I thought would make it a sure fire winner, including a glitzy show-biz setting, many characters, a mystery with some good twists and turns thrown in, and the hero and heroine had lots of past baggage between them. If only I could have believed that they liked each other – never mind loved each other – this would have been the kind of book I could have gotten lost in.

Valentine’s Valley is a very popular soap opera starring Serena McCormick as the Woman You Love to Hate (think Erica from All My Children). Not content to rest on their laurels, the producers have brought in former top star Jane Dunne to further boost the ratings. Jane is a gold-plated witch on a broomstick, and when a falling light fixture kills her, no one mourns her death. But when it looks as though her death is not an accident (she was standing on Serena’s mark), and there are further suspicious incidents, the producers decide to bring in some protection.

The protection is Liam Murphy – former policeman turned private investigator and Serena’s former lover. They shared a deep passion but clashed over her work. Liam didn’t believe acting was at all important and didn’t think Serena valued his police work either. When he comes in, he and Serena face off like wary prizefighters sizing each other up.

There are soon more “accidents” as well as threatening messages on the answering machine, mysterious red roses left in Serena’s room, and the possibility of blackmail. Who could be behind this? It turns out that there are lots of suspects. At one point, the evidence seems to lead to Serena’s brother-in-law who is cleared because he has a hairy back (and that’s all I’m going to tell you – read the book if you want more). Finally the real killer comes forward, and in the manner of killers everywhere, spends lots of time telling Serena why he is trying to kill her and giving Liam enough time to come to the rescue.

Dying To Have Her was very uneven. On one hand, the plot was intriguing and had lots of satisfactory twists and turns. On the other, it was very awkwardly paced. The book started out so slowly I thought it would never catch fire – then it did and began to move so quickly that I thought I was on a roller coaster – only to slow down again.

There are lots of characters and not very well-delineated ones either. I kept losing track of who was who and it did not help that they had a tendency to disappear for long lengths of time and then reappear as soon as I had forgotten all about them.

Liam and Serena are not a likable pair. Separately they are nice enough, although Serena is prone to ignoring good advice and rushing headlong into potential danger, and Liam is quite the arrogant alpha male, but as a couple they are not at all a romantic pair.

The main problem I had with this book, is that not once from their first meeting, to the end where they walked hand-in-hand into the sunset did I ever get the impression that Serena and Liam liked each other. Lust? Yes. Love? Well, they said so. But did they like each other as just plain Serena and Liam, a couple who could be strong and true to each other in good times and bad? Not at all. I got the feeling that as they walked down the street when the book came to an end, as soon as I closed it and they went round the corner, they’d be fighting.

Fans of suspense novels will probably like this book quite a bit, and if it wasn’t supposed to be romantic suspense I would have enjoyed it much more myself. But I want some romance in romantic suspense and when it came to Liam and Serena’s relationship – they didn’t have what I was looking for.