Hello, and welcome back! My kitchen is a pretty hoppin' place this week, and that won't stop till about suppertime on Sunday. At least the house smells good, and there's plenty of yummy stuff to nibble on, making all that work worthwhile.

Before I dive back into the cooking, though, I have two new books to share with you, starting with Susan Donovan's latest,
He Loves Lucy, Vol. 4 (St. Martin's). Lucy Cunningham didn't plan on being the guinea pig for her own ad campaign, but now she's roped into losing weight over the next year, and hunky Theo Redmond is the trainer she'll be working with. Lucy does a lot of growing through the course of this story, but Theo, well, not so much. I wasn't sure about the premise of this one, thought it might be cute when I picked it up, but something about this one just didn't work for me. I don't know if it's Lucy's reasoning for going through this, or Theo's weak excuse for ending things, or her boss, or all of it together. I just know I didn't love it, so it's getting two and a half arrows.

The other book is Kat Martin's
Deep Blue (Zebra), with Hope Sinclair finding adventure she didn't expect when she's sent off on a treasure hunt with Conn Reese, who's not very pleased to have her along. At first. Trouble follows her from New York City to the Caribbean, though, and some of the people involved in this search are a tad questionable. I liked this one except for one thing--Hope's rather flimsy excuse for not staying. I kept thinking that by that point in the story, she'd have gotten over any tiny doubts from her past. Oh well. I still liked the rest of it enough for it to earn three and a half arrows.

Until next time, happy reading!