Slow Burn marks Brenda Jackson’s 50^th novel, which is an incredible achievement, and a tribute to how many people love her novels. Unfortunately, it appears that I’m not one of them.

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Skye Barclay is an accountant (not an attorney, as is stated on the back blurb) from an old-moneyed family in Maine. She has a good job, a trust fund, and a fiancé, Wayne, she’s not sure she loves. One fateful day she overhears her aunt and her parents talking about her adoption, and everything changes. She goes on a hunt for her biological mother only to discover that she passed away ten years before, but left behind a son – Skye’s brother. Skye manages to track him down in Texas. Vincent had been adopted into the Madaris family.

Skye makes the decision to fly to Texas to meet Vincent, against both her parents’ and Wayne’s wishes. In fact, Wayne issues an ultimatum: If Skye goes ahead with her plans, the wedding is off. Skye flies to Texas where she is easily accepted into Vincent’s life and the Madaris clan – especially by Slade Madaris, Vincent’s uncle.

There’s a brief suspense subplot, but it’s not really worth going into. The bulk of the story involves Skye developing a relationship with her brother and trying to avoid a relationship with Slade because she’s afraid of what his family will think.

The basis of the story had a lot going for it, but trying for internal conflict to keep the plot moving just didn’t work in this case. Both Skye and Slade were such nice, easy-going people, that there was just no reason why they couldn’t be together. I felt like hitting Skye over the head through most of the middle of the book because, for a 26-year-old woman, she was being really, really dumb.

In addition to the problem Jackson created by trying to force unnecessary internal conflict on the reader, there are several other reasons I found Slow Burn difficult to get through: the unnatural dialogue, the clunky exposition, the head-hopping, the unnecessary and poorly explained suspense plot, the fact that every single other character that Jackson has ever written about had to make a cameo to show how blissfully happy they were…

I finished this book as quickly as I could because there was no way I wanted to take it with me on my holiday. It still took me four days to get through. I know Jackson has her fans, and they might really enjoy getting a peek at previous favorite characters, but forget the burn. This book was just slow for me.