I wanted to like this book, I really did. It’s been a while since I’ve read a fun, sexy romance and enjoyed it. Plus, the authors seem like very nice people. Unfortunately, what at first seemed like a boring book at best seems downright silly upon reflection.

Ripley Logan is a brand new private investigator. She left her job as a secretary to follow her dream. Her first case leads her out of town to chase the suspect and ends up with her naked in a stranger’s bed. Joe Pruitt, that stranger, ends up trying to help Ripley solve her case. Along the way they have hot sex and fall in love.

Sigh. I’ve not been impressed at all with the Temptation line lately, especially the Blazes and Heats. Too much sex, not enough plot. This one has a better balance than some of the offerings, but the plot has major holes in it. I know I need to suspend belief sometimes, but there are some things you just can’t overlook. For example, the story opens with Ripley in the bathtub when she hears someone breaking into her hotel room. What does she do? She grabs her gun and goes under the bathwater to hide while they check the bathroom. Now, unless this is a super luxury hotel and she’s extremely vertically challenged, it seems highly implausible that a tub full of bubbles could cover her. She’d also been in the tub for a little while, and I wouldn’t imagine that the bubbles would last that long. On top of that, she forgot she was naked when she decided to jump to the balcony of the room next to hers. Um, how do you forget that? It would have been the first thing on my mind. And then there’s her lucky break of landing in a hot guy’s bed, conveniently allowing her to pretend she’s making love to him. And this is in just the first 15 pages!

Ripley herself could have been interesting. She’s appealingly straightforward, eats like a horse and has a gusto for what she’s doing. Unfortunately, she’s none too observant – not a good quality in a PI. She does things like not calling the police to find the people following her because she’s a PI with a gun and can handle it.

Joe Pruitt can’t believe his luck that such a hot woman crawled randomly into his bed (neither can I). He doesn’t seem to take Ripley terribly seriously as a PI at first (join the club), but he goes along with her to help her. He seems like a good guy – nice looking, nice personality. I really could have lived without the constant mental lusting though. That’s one of my pet peeves, although since Tori Carrington is a husband and wife team, I’m going to assume that this is an authentic guy frame of mind. Naked, wet, hot woman in my bed = erection.

The bumbling FBI agents following Ripley and her client don’t round out the cast very well. And the mess of a plot drags in the middle as Ripley and Joe sit around a lot of have sex. And speaking of sex, this book is getting a hot rating because it’s part of the Heat line, but personally I didn’t actually find the sex all that hot.

I can’t give this a failing grade because at some point I was slightly interested in it. I wanted to see if Ripley lived up to the potential she had, and at the end, the action picked up. And strangely enough, I really want to read Carrington’s next book with the thief as one of the leads. Now that was an intriguing character…sigh.