Everything here – everything – is completely over the top. Tall, gorgeous billionaire hero with a flamboyant occupation. A plot involving the theft and smuggling of art and jewelry valued in the millions. And a heroine, nice though she may be, who keeps secrets from the hero w-a-a-a-y too long and – yes, it has to be admitted – occasionally dabbles in TSTL behavior. Yep, it’s all true. But, what the heck, since along with all these baggages (as Mrs. Giggles might say) the author also delivers a rip-roaring read and gobs of fun for anyone able to get past (or revel in) the exaggerated plot and characters.

Rachel Foster’s emotional baggage is extraordinarily painful: three years earlier her father shot and killed his wife and her lover, ultimately turning the gun on himself. Since the young architect was closely allied professionally with her late father, she’s spent the intervening years working in the library of her small coastal Maine town and healing in the comfort and friendship of her sister and friends.

But when her father’s attorney delivers a letter lost in the turmoil surrounding the tragedy and only now surfacing, Rachel’s life takes a dramatic turn. In this letter to be delivered only to Rachel herself, her father confesses his involvement in international art and jewel thievery and, even worse, identifies stolen objects in Rachel’s own house worth millions. At virtually the same moment, Keenan Oaks, the heir to the man her father murdered, is suddenly located, leaving Rachel unable to hide any longer from her painful memories. Sub Rosa, the house in which the new owner will live, was designed by Rachel and her father for the man he murdered and only Rachel has the knowledge necessary to get the house’s complex engineering systems working again.

With regards to the stolen items, Rachel is determined to do two things: First, to keep her sister, an assistant state attorney general, innocent of the knowledge of their father’s perfidy and protected from any potential political fallout should it be discovered and, second, to place the stolen items in the secret vault at Sub Rosa without Kee’s knowledge. To do this, she must navigate – in the dead of night, no less – the equally secret complex of tunnels leading to the mansion.

See what I mean about the exaggerated plot? Add in the fact that Kee’s profession is some kind of freelance secret-agent, kidnap-rescue operative, treasure salvaging kind of thing at which he’s earned big bucks and he comes equipped with a posse of hulking colleagues (can you say sequels?) and an adorable little daughter. He’s also possessed of one of the most Neanderthal-like “Protect My Woman” complexes that I’ve ever come across in a contemporary romance novel.

But considering Rachel’s propensity for acting impulsively and not always intelligently, maybe Kee’s strict protectionist streak is warranted. Many of the choices she makes never made a lot of sense to me, even more so due to the fact that at the beginning of the book she’s recovering from a serious knee injury that doesn’t stop her from undertaking those spelunking expeditions in the middle of the night. But even with her borderline TSTL behavior, I still liked Rachel. And I liked over the top Kee even more.

As someone who never cares for Victimhood in heroines, I was slightly put off by the fact that Rachel is severely injured for a good part of the book, requiring her to be carried about by Kee and his men and forced by said men to actually take care of herself enough to recover. It all seemed a bit Romance Novel Retro and more than a little bit creepy.

But there are real pleasures to be had in an over-the-top, don’t-analyze-anything-too-closely, escape-from-reality kind of novel, and for me, The Seductive Imposter fit the bill perfectly. And, gee, do you think that the instant only-in-romance-novels hatred Rachel’s sister develops for one of Kee’s hot henchmen is a foreshadowing of things to come? Okay, so it’s obvious and not even remotely unexpected, but when it comes to terrific escapist reading, sometimes obvious – and, to be sure, exaggerated – isn’t all that bad.