7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reminded me somewhat of Lara Croft, March 10, 2006
This review is from: You Only Love Twice (Warner Forever) (Mass Market Paperback)
Marlie Montague is a comic book illustrator, and she spends her days and nights drawing. She doesn't have much of a social life, let alone a love life. The closest she's come has been her friend Cosmo, who at one point thought he loved her, but moved away to take on a new job.
Marlie's alter ego is Angelina Avenger, her popular comic book character. In fact, Marlie has an on-going relationship with this heroine, and often times Angelina "takes over" Marlie's body, making it seem like Marlie is the fearless brave Angelina instead of the mousy paranoid Marlie.
Marlie has a new neighbor next door, a sexy good-looking man named Joel, and after ogling him from afar, she finally gets to meet him when she finds herself being attacked by of all people, her UPS man, and in order to save herself, she crashes through Joel's window. Talk about an entrance! What Marlie doesn't know is that Joel was sent there to spy on her. She also doesn't realize he is the boy she used to have a crush on when she was five years old. J.J. Hunter moved out of her life years ago, after his father, Gus Hunter, was responsible for Marlie's father's death. Daniel Montague was accused of treason, but Marlie and her mother Penelope never believed the accusations.
Now, Marlie finds herself in the middle of some conspiracy theory-inspired adventure. It is obvious her life is in danger, but she does not know why. All she knows is that Joel is there to protect her, and she thinks she can trust him. Joel, guilt ridden because of the reason why he was there to begin with, is falling in love with her, and is afraid of what will happen when she finally finds out who he really is and why he became her next door neighbor.
YOU ONLY LOVE TWICE is full of adventure, romance and some steamy sex scenes. Lori Wilde's main characters are fun and believable, albeit written in a somewhat dramatic manner to lend an almost comedic tone to the book. Readers may cheer to find that a slightly over-weight mousy woman such as Marlie gets the hunk in the end, and he finds her attractive and sexy. He helps her gain the confidence she's been lacking, giving the character some growth and three-dimensional aspects that often are lacking in characters in books such as this.
As in her previous novel MISSION: IRRESISTIBLE, YOU ONLY LOVE TWICE is full of action and adventure and a lot of light hearted banter between the two main characters. The secondary plot, that of Penelope Montague and her love for her deceased husband Daniel, felt a little bit out of place at first, but it did fill in the gaps to explain the entire story of what happened to Daniel and why his friend Gus Hunter was responsible for his death. The reader may not quite buy, however, the relationship between the geeky Cosmo and his new love, Joel's ex-wife Treeni, who was described as a knock out of a woman. And one also may not quite buy what really happened to Daniel (a spoiler which will not be revealed here), but for the sake of dramatics, it was a good plot device. YOU ONLY LOVE TWICE is recommended for those who enjoy lightweight romances that are filled with over the top adventure (think, almost, "Lara Croft" but in a Navy setting).
-- Courtesy of LoveRomances.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A little unrealistic, December 2, 2006
This review is from: You Only Love Twice (Warner Forever) (Mass Market Paperback)
I picked this up on a whim, mostly because of the cute front cover. However, I ended up disappointed because the character's behavior is so completely unbeleivable. I'm all for fun and whimsy, but there has to be a backbone of reality. None of these characters acted like people do in real life. After a couple of chapters, their antics became annoying to read. Also, I found the dialogue rather cheesy.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
super fun romantic suspense, March 4, 2006
This review is from: You Only Love Twice (Warner Forever) (Mass Market Paperback)
Marlie Montague was a Navy brat until her father was branded a traitor and killed. In her gut, she felt he was the victim of a government-industrial conspiracy. To that end, though she cannot restore her dad's reputation, Marlie created an underground comic that starred a kick butt heroine Angelina Avenger, who challenged the abuse and excess of the powerful when they did wrong.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Joel Hunter moves next door to Marlie as an undercover agent because his superiors think she is a subversive using her comic book to perform seditious acts. He believes she is agoraphobic, not a traitor and this babysitting job a waste of time and money, but his former father-in-law Admiral Delaney wants him away from DC and his daughter. He revises that opinion when Marlie flees her house to his insisting that a UPS delivery person tried to assassinate her; she hides from Joel that she "channeled" Angelina's personality to escape. Now they team up in a dangerous mission that will most likely leave both dead with gravestones "marked" traitor.
The key to why this is a super fun romantic suspense is the cast especially Marlie, who employs an alterego the Amazonian animated Angelina to help her in situations that she cannot cope with and not just enemy fire as Joel is as dangerous to her as the assassin. The quirky story line contains plenty of woman in peril scenarios, but never loses sight of the crafty amusing satirical look at conspiracies and superheroine females. On top of this, fans receive a fabulous romantic subplot making YOU ONLY LOVE TWICE a fine humorous contemporary thriller worth reading.
Harriet Klausner
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