Little Miss Straight Lace has a great story to tell, a great cast of characters, and a wonderful brace of villains that you enjoy hating.
Josie Natale is a bio-statistician - she makes her living checking and correlating the data produced by pharmaceutical trials. She's good at her job and has earned a reputation for being by-the-book, never fudging numbers or cutting corners - Little Miss Straight Lace. Nic Remedian is a South American security consultant brought in by Josie's best friend to investigate threatening emails that have been received by various employees and appear to be coming from a religious cult.
The relationship between Josie and Nic is wonderful to see unfold. Josie is a vibrant character and so is Nic. They work well for each other. The supporting cast of friends and family is also well-drawn and fully fleshed out, and the villains are both brilliant and scary.
My only problem with the book was the pacing. At points it would drag on, and on, and on, like the Energizer Bunny. As an example, Nic thinks he sees someone leaving Josie's apartment. He tells her about it and she thinks he's mistaken - and then NOTHING happens for chapters and chapters and chapters. I'd read something like that and would gear myself up for the action / confrontation to start and then it would just wither. It sometimes felt as if I was reading two separate books. One was a contemporary romance, and the other was a romantic suspense. For the first half of the book, it was straight contemporary with a smidge of suspense thrown in here and there, and then at the last half of the book the romantic thriller took over. I feel like the book would have been better if pacing and flow had been a bit faster.
Despite the plodding plot, it was still an enjoyable read. I was really rooting for Josie and Nic, they were a great couple. Miss Romana really nailed the chemistry between them and created something very sweet where you just ached for them to have a Happily Ever After. She delivered on that, too, in a very satisfying way.
Official Review for TheRomanceReviews.com
(reviewed the day of purchase)