Well, gee, here we go with another average book, made slightly less so by a cartoonish villain, a really precious cute-meet, and a truly Unfortunate Puppy Faux Paws that had me berating the hero for his idiocy.

As far as cute-meets go, this is one of the cutest – and that is not a compliment. Celebrating her birthday at a club featuring male strippers, heroine Jody Dupree is pulled on stage to dance with a stripper who just happens to be newspaper columnist Logan Hart. Logan, you see, is moonlighting on a variety of jobs and writing about his experiences in his column. The two have instant sex without, of course, telling the other who they are and, since Jody leaves before Logan awakens, it seems as if the two are destined never to meet again.

But, lo and behold, Logan’s next gig is to ride along with a cop who – wouldn’t you know it? – just happens to be Jody. Of course, Jody hates Logan and thinks the ride-along is ridiculous, so we are forced to endure far too many pages of Jody being pissy. Logan, however, has a bag of tricks up his sleeve which happens to include a cute little puppy he delivers to Jody’s apartment which, she, of course, calls “you mutt” until her heart is melted by the adorable ball of fur.

Soon enough Jody stops being pissy and starts doing the deed with Logan again. Logan notices that Jody has “visions” and that she’s really tortured by something in her past. Being the reporter that he is, he soon learns that Jody’s father was murdered by her uncle when she was just seven years old and she has no idea what happened to her older sister.

Well, we readers know more than Jody because said sister just happens to be a DEA agent and the heroine of Southern Comfort, the author’s previous book. Turns out that Big Sis busted the e-e-e-v-i-l uncle in that book and is about to reveal herself to Jody. But – again, wouldn’t you know it? – bad old uncle has plans of his own and they don’t involve spending the rest of his life in jail.

Okay, the author’s prose is fine and, with the exception of some clumsy exposition – a whole lot of exposition, to be honest, for a 262-page novel – the story moves along nicely. Still, there is that unnecessarily pissy and, frankly, two-dimensional heroine and a hero who also never even remotely leapt off the page for me. Add in that puppy idiocy ­ what kind of idiot would give a puppy to someone without knowing whether or not she wants one. What about her living situation, possible allergies, or other pets who just might take exception to the residency of a new adorable ball of fur? Let’s just say that with this gift, my evaluation of Logan’s IQ dropped more than a few points.

Frankly, 262 pages is awfully short for a book with this much plot (I didn’t even mention the really cute secondary romance) and it showed. Ms. Kelley is clearly not without talent, but I think her gifts would shine more brightly if she relied less on hokey plot elements (cute-meets, crusty heroines, and adorable balls of fur, for example) in the future. However, since Brava seems to be doing so well these days, I have to assume that there must be a market for this kind of short, sexy, don’t-examine-it-too-closely story. I guess I’m just not it.