A Date You Can't Refuse [Paperback]

Harley Jane Kozak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2009

Serial dater and greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley goes undercover in a media-training company suspected of video piracy, but when a dead body appears on the company’s property, she’s caught up in a conspiracy that goes way beyond some stolen DVDs.

Wollie Shelley isn’t happy about taking the job as a “social coach” at MediaRex, but the FBI makes her an offer she can’t refuse. If she agrees to infiltrate the company, they’ll guarantee that her schizophrenic brother will have a home at the federally subsidized halfway house he’s come to love. So Wollie launches into teaching three foreign celebrities how to cope with the customs of Beverly Hills, improve their English, and become Oprah-ready. And when a coyote-chewed corpse appears in the MediaRex compound, Wollie realizes that her colleagues are concealing some serious secrets of their own.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for A Date You Can't Refuse:
Kozak has a gift for creating characters that you care about and placing them in interesting situations. Her books might not exactly be realistic -- OK, they're pretty outlandish -- but they sure are a lot of fun to read. - Chicago Sun Times
Kozak engages the emotions–one minute she sends fissions of fear up your spine, and the next, she tickles your funny bone.- Library Journal
“Sharp and witty, but heartfelt.” — Kirkus Review
“Kozak keeps the laughs and chills in bewitching balance.” — Publisher’s Weekly


Praise for Dead Ex:
“A page-turner of a mystery. A lovable sleuth. A real winner!” —Janet Evanovich
“A Greek mythology twist and crackling insider insight into the fascinating soap opera world enhance this clever whodunit.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“For drama, wit and just plain fun, every life (and death) needs a little Wollie.” –Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

HARLEY JANE KOZAK is an actor whose screen credits include Parenthood, The Favor, and Arachnophobia. She is the author of Dating Dead Men, Dating Is Murder, and Dead Ex. She lives in Agoura Hills, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1ST edition (March 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767924223
• ISBN-13: 978-0767924221
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #867,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fast paced thriller, April 11, 2009

By 

grumpydan (Andover, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Date You Can't Refuse (Paperback)

"A Date You Can't Refuse" is the latest in the misadventures of Wollie Shelley, the greeting card artist. This time she accepts a job at MediasRex, a media training company, not by choice but by the persistence of the FBI. But also pays well, and she needs the cash. Harley Jane Kozak creates such amusing characters and the story makes you wonder what is going to happen next. Will Wollie survive these foreign clients that she is paid to teach and also keep in line? Will she ever hook up with her boyfriend? And what is up with the owner of MediasRex? The book is a fast paced thriller that makes me yearn for the next book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wollie in top form, May 3, 2010

By 

Patto (Vermont) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Date You Can't Refuse (Paperback)

This is the fourth of Harley Jane Kozak's books featuring Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Wollie for short, a six-foot-tall buxom blonde remarkable for honesty, loyalty, a warm heart and a kind of zany intelligence. Both Kozak and Wollie are in top form in this book.

A greeting card artist by profession, Wollie has also earned a certain minor celebrity by dating men on cheesy reality TV shows. She meets her next employer in court. As a member of the jury, she has just acquitted Yuri Milos in a slip-and-fall case.

Yuri runs a company that trains celebrities from Eastern Europe to deal successfully with the American media. Wollie will date the male celebrities, teaching them proper behavior according to American dating rituals.

While Yuri is recruiting Wollie, so is the FBI. They want her help as a civilian to figure out what Yuri is really up to inside his gated community.

Wollie's boyfriend Simon is an FBI agent on a totally different undercover assignment that makes it almost impossible for them to meet. Their stolen moments frantically coupling in parking lots are high points in a plot full of high points.

Wollie gets persuaded into her dubious double employment because of her concern for her paranoid schizophrenic brother P.B. As his sole support, she needs the money for his treatment.

With no flair at all for spying, Wollie snoops, plants bugs and steals evidence in a perpetual state of terror mixed with bravado. She's also congenitally indiscrete. Her two best friends Joey and Fredreeq very quickly wheedle out of her all the things she's supposed to be keeping secret.

I recommend reading the Wollie Shelley mysteries from the beginning and in order, so you'll have the back story on all the wonderful characters. The first book is Dating Dead Men.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars zany investigative thriller, March 20, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Date You Can't Refuse (Paperback)

The FBI assigns greeting card graphic artist and tyro espionage agent Wollie Shelley undercover work at MediasRex, a California media training company. MediasRex owner Yuri Milos hires Wollie to teach etiquette to their socially-impaired clients and as needed fill in at dates at public functions.

Wollie's boyfriend FBI agent Simon Alexander is upset with her assignment although the pay is great; not that he wants to be the social trainee to miscreants even for $50,000 for three months of training. However, he knows Yuri has deadly connections to Eastern European politicians and mobsters. Inside the firm's Calabasas, California headquarters, Wollie finds out her predecessor died in a car accident that the late predecessor's boyfriend claims was a homicide.

The latest Wollie's woes (see DEADLY EX, DATING IS MURDER and DATING DEAD MEN) is an amusing zany investigative thriller as the heroine gets in trouble in her personal and professional lives. The story line has a humorous undertone but Simon is simply right with the amount of danger engulfing Wollie as Yuri's secrets re his East Europe community connections could prove fatal. Once again Harley Jane Kozak provides a lighthearted romp inside a potential deadly scenario starring a former serial dater on her first knockout date arguing over who drives.

Harriet Klausner