Hello, and welcome back! Spring is pretty here right now, and I'm hoping to take one of my days off next week to get to see Longwood's thousands of tulips in bloom, perhaps take a book along to sit either in the conservatory or outside, depending on the weather. This week's days off are already planned, as the first will be chore day, then the second I'll be with friends at Nora Roberts's booksigning. Not much is better than a day spent with good friends, good authors and good books. Except all of the above plus good food and shopping, too. It will be a fabulous day, and well worth the wait.

This time out, I have Juliana Stone's His Darkest Hunger (Avon), which I picked up when it hit the bookstore's shelves, and have since sold out of at work, as I've been handing it to all my regular customers who like a good paranormal romance. Jaxon Castille has been dreaming for three years of the day when he could make Libby Jamieson pay for her betrayal of him and his crew of operatives. Now he's gotten a tip telling him exactly where to find her. Except Libby is a changed woman. She doesn't remember him, or their past relationship, and when he gets to the place where she's working, someone tries to kill him. He grabs Libby and runs after taking care of the threat, taking her back to rendezvous with what's left of his team, to attempt to piece together exactly what's going on. His two closest partners have felt exactly the same way as Jaxon has about Libby, so neither of them is happy to see her alive, even though she's clearly not well, but they are as determined as he is to find out just what is going on. But Jaxon can't seem to resist the pull he's always felt to Libby, even before he knows whether she is the danger to him or not, making for some serious steam. And that's before they get into the jungle. With a hero like Jaxon, this one could have gone either way, into uber-Alpha 'I'm the man, you will do as I say', or the sort of strong hero no woman can resist because he's not just strong and smart but allows his heart to lead when it should. Libby is understandably weak at the beginning of this one, but throughout the story, she begins to shine, though I did take issue with a couple things she did later in the plot, as they weren't necessarily her best choices. I can forgive them as I really, really enjoyed this one, though there are some really awkward phrases throughout; I imagine that's either a new author or a new copyeditor, and hopefully both will get better. I am very much looking forward to the next book in this series later in the summer. I hope its hero lives up to Jaxon. I'm borrowing four of Cupid's five arrows for this one.

Until next time, happy reading!