Drop Dead Gorgeous by Linda Howard

Blair Mallory has already survived one murder attempt. Now, while planning her wedding and dealing with holiday-season madness, Blair once again dodges a bullet. Or more precisely, a Buick. And though the driver’s identity remains a mystery, his or her murderous intentions are all too clear.

Or are they? After all, Blair’s homicidal ex-husband and his partner in crime/wife are safely behind bars. And even Wyatt Bloodsworth, her police detective groom-to-be, isn’t inclined to believe she’s being targeted again. All of which makes Blair wonder if her close call was simply a mishap. But the wondering stops when she narrowly cheats death again in another seemingly innocent accident. Two strikes is all it takes to convince Blair that she’s back in someone’s crosshairs. And the only thing more frightening is that Wyatt still doubts her. That means this time, no one will be watching Blair’s back when she sets out to get the drop on her would-be killer–before whoever it is finally drops her.

To echo the sentiments of my reading girlfriends, this one disappointed. I won’t say it all out sucked because I was drawn into the dynamic that is Blair and Wyatt AND I finished it without effort. Overall though, it didn’t pack near the punch To Die For did.

Its first person POV didn’t bother me. Nor did Blair’s hyper-stereotyped cheerleader persona. I liked that ditz with depth angle in the first book as well. Unfortunately, Howard takes her dangerously close to the edge of stupidity—again and again. Not in action, but in thought. The mental tangents this broad goes on were distracting and frankly, not altogether flattering. Without them, I’m convinced that Drop Dead Gorgeous could have been a decent follow up to the first book in this series.

As for Wyatt, he edged close to a stereotype of his own. I love an alpha male as much as the next romance reader. But, like most readers, I like a quiet intelligence behind the brooding. He had that in To Die For. Here, we saw him more as a working man, a bit short on patience and with less page real estate on which to show his smarts.

So yeah, disappointing. But I’m not sorry I read it. And I did get a few laughs and more than one Wyatt-induced shiver. Will there be another in this series? If memory serves, it was expected to be a trilogy. No author website—that I can find—so the answer eludes me.