Well, let me introduce you to Sue Civil-Brown, better known as Rachel Lee. Rachel Lee is a particular favorite of mine, and has been for several months since I discovered her writing in An Officer And A Gentleman. While I still have four more books from the Conard County Series to read and I’m taking a bit of a break here before I finish that group of books, I thought that I’d see how her writing goes when not dealing with the wherewithal’s of military/computer type stories.

I found Letting Loose to be an upbeat tale.  It involves a divorced girl who falls in love with the local, chief cop in town. It’s a light, breezy read and not a real serious tale, a great break from her writing as Rachel Lee, where she tends to write about much more serious topics.

Meet Jillie McAllistair, orphan, who married the wrong man, Mr. Spoiled Rotten and Rich. He ran around on her and treated her like she was less than human.  But Jillie gave him three chances, and finally divorced him, then left her home in New York to move to small-town Florida to open up a bookstore and live her own life.  But Mr. SRaR has flown down to beg Jillie to come back to him. And, his mother has rather nonchalantly just shown up on Jillie’s doorstep and moved in – after all, you can’t expect a woman of her stature to stay in a hotel when Jillie has a perfectly good house.  Mind you, from her perspective, it does have a few things missing, so she decides to make a few massive changes in Jillie’s home while she’s visiting.

Introducing police chief Blaze Corrigan. I love that name, it suited this story very well, and there’s just something about the name Blaze. Jillie meets Blaze – he’s her next door neighbor – by knocking down his mail box after work one night when she’s trying to avoid a neighborhood dog who has run out in front of her car. Keep that dog in mind; he’s instrumental throughout the book in bringing Jillie and Blaze together. Blaze gets her to do some "standard" testing because he thinks she’s drunk. Not an auspicious beginning to a romance, but it worked really well in bringing these two together.

I liked this story, I hated Jillie’s ex, and her ex-mother-in-law. It doesn’t take any rocket scientist to figure out that they want something out of Jillie, but you don’t really figure out what it is until it’s actually spelled out for you. Kept me on my toes.

There was no great mystery in this tale, there was no angst, there was no true bad guy – well, maybe there was in Jillie’s ex, who was a real pain in the patoot from the time he showed up in the story – he was the ex you love to hate. There were lots of busy-bodies, lots of tension in more ways than one, and lots of silly things to bring a smile to your face, if not an out-and-out guffaw.

I enjoyed Letting Loose; it’s the kind of book you reach for on the way to the beach. You know the kind – a book for when you don’t want to have to get heavily involved. Rachel Lee should do very well as her new alter-ego, Sue Civil-Brown. I’m looking forward to more of her books.