Amazon.com: Sweet Talk (9780525952862): Julie Garwood: Books

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$7.99

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$10.89

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Book Description

Release date: August 7, 2012

In the new contemporary romance from #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood, a detective and a lawyer are falling in love— and making a federal case out of it.

When FBI agent Grayson Kincaid first encounters Olivia MacKenzie, she makes quite an impression.

The beautiful, tough, young attorney has stumbled into the middle of an FBI sting operation and has reduced it to chaos. Months of surveillance and careful planning down the drain, Kincaid’s partner is furious and lets Olivia know that she’s ticked off the wrong guy. After all, he’s FBI.

Olivia isn’t intimidated by his partner’s bullying because she’s something even scarier . . . she’s IRS.

And working for the IRS isn’t for the faint of heart. She’s on the trail of an elaborate Ponzi scheme, one that threatens to ruin the lives of naive and unsuspecting victims, and one she has personal reasons to be angry about. But after she asks questions of the wrong people, her life is suddenly endangered. She’s accustomed to fighting for the underdog but being vulnerable herself is a very different story. Smart enough to know when to call for reinforcements, she contacts Grayson Kincaid.

Together they make an excellent team to fight corruption but Olivia is also fighting the immediate and intense attraction she feels for Agent Kincaid, and that may be a battle she is bound to lose.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“When it comes to striking the perfect balance between sexy romance and spine-tingling suspense, the consistently best-selling Garwood is unrivaled.”
—Booklist

“[An] intrigue-laden, passion-filled romantic thriller…A great plot with strong characters and red-hot romance.”
—Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Julie Garwood is the author of numerous bestsellers, including The Ideal Man, Sizzle, Fire and Ice, Shadow Music, Shadow Dance, and Slow Burn. She lives near Kansas City.

Product Details

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Dutton Adult; First edition (August 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0525952861
ISBN-13: 978-0525952862
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (276 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,823 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

Julie Garwood is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including Fire and Ice, Shadow Music, Shadow Dance, Murder List, Killjoy, Mercy, Heartbreaker, Ransom, and Come the Spring. There are more than thirty-six million copies of her books in print.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 104 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Just okay... August 8, 2012

By RomanceWriter

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Sweet Talk is a passably good romance with mediocre suspense. Like her previous book "The Ideal Man", there's just too much going on, and it's hard to pay attention to the main characters, much less the main story line. There are too many secondary characters that are not necessary to move the story along (Grayson's nephew, his father - who apparently had a massive heart attack at some point during the story, but was only given about a sentence - Olivia's friends, her boss, her doctor, etc) and these additional characters end up being distracting.

The dialogue between Olivia and Grayson was GREAT, and I thoroughly enjoyed it when these two were alone on the page. I even liked the interaction with Grayson and his partner, Roland, and the conversations with Olivia and her friends were very realistic. There was just too much of it.

I haven't read JG's historicals, but I really miss the Buchanan series. It seems JG's entire writing style changed somewhere along the line, starting with "Sizzle". Where her stories used to be fresh and entertaining, now they're formulaic and predictable. She'll throw some witty dialogue in to change things up, but the end result is the same. And where a JG release was a definite pre-order for me a few years ago, these days I tend to wait and see what the reviews are.

Sorry, but I miss the old Julie Garwood.

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122 of 134 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Up To Garwood's Standards August 7, 2012

By Melissa McHugh

Format:Hardcover

So I think this is my last Julie Garwood for a while. At least, until she writes another historical. Since she branched into the contemporary market, I've found myself increasingly dissatisfied, to the point that I've struggled to finish books. If I hadn't been reviewing this book as an ARC, I would have stopped reading this book after about eleven pages. The same problems keep cropping up, and there are just better books I could be spending my time on. I'll always remember her earlier books fondly, but I know Garwood can do better.

The prologue stops me dead. It's almost 15 pages of little girls running around, creating havoc. It's boring, and does nothing to to move the story along. It's nothing that couldn't have been introduced into the main text of the story. I hate prologues that are useless. It took me a day to get past the prologue.

And then you meet Olivia MacKenzie, all grown up. And perfect. And Grayson Kincaid. Who's also perfect. This is the problem I have with the leads in Julie Garwood's books. They're perfect physical specimens. So impossible sexy and gorgeous, other characters are bowled over by their looks. It's annoying and I'm tired of reading about it. The attraction between the two is also superficial. Garwood spends a lot of time telling us that these two are crazy about each other, but all I can see is lust and sex.

The actual bare bones plot is mildly interesting, but the supporting characters are one dimensional and do nothing to prop up the leads, or even give the leads complexity. The villains have no depth. The family of the MCs are just there for wallpaper. The other FBI agent, Ronan, is mildly interesting, but disappears for pages at a time, and then does nothing interesting when he is around.... Read more ›

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58 of 65 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Meh August 8, 2012

By RW

Format:Kindle Edition

I believe I have read every book that JG has written. Some of her books I keep in my collection of awesomeness. This book definately doesn't belong there.
My problems with the book are as follows:
Too much focus on the characters attractiveness. It is bogged down with "oh he/she is so hot i need to have sex now". So they do alot. I personally feel this is laziness from the author or pandering to those who like the fifty shades type book.
I miss her old romances where the characters were fleshed out and my heart would ache when they went through trouble. The characters lack substance and the book is about how in lust they are not love.
I did like the plot and so I finished the book. Leaves it a little open for more books about the "pips" I will wait to see what other people say about those books before I buy.

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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Talk: Not very Sweet with LOTS of Talk August 11, 2012

By Meerkat

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I usually enjoy Julie Garwood's books, but the last few (I wasn't a fan of Sizzle or The Ideal Man) have been clunkers. "Sweet Talk" has moved beyond clunker status however, and while I usually roll my eyes when reviewers insist a title is not actually written by the author, I have to wonder if they are correct on this one. I have read all of Julie Garwood's books (the great, the good, and the not so good), and this one really does not sound like her at all.

1. The writing is stilted and has a great deal of filler that does absolutely nothing to further the storyline. Things like, "Olivia walked into her apartment. She put her purse down on the table. She placed her keys next to her purse. She walked to her room to change her clothes. Then the doorbell rang."

2. The dialogue rings false. The conversations between the Pips as children are especially bad. They don't sound like children. Ten year old Olivia says, "My mother has caller ID. As soon as she sees it's the hospital calling, she won't pick up. My disease is too stressful for her....Mom has trouble coping." She describes her parents marriage, "Mom adores him [her father]. She's dramatic about it. I don't know how to explain it. She doesn't have room for anything else in her life." As this conversation progressed, I found it sounded more like a bad self-help book than a group of 10 - 11 year olds.

3. Olivia doesn't seem too incredibly bright. For a person who has gone through everything she has, she doesn't have a great deal of common sense. She flies off the handle a lot and sounds incredibly naive. Having her yell things, does not make her tough in my book - it makes her seem irrational and loud.... Instead of being a tough woman, she comes across as a woman acting tough (there's a big difference).

4. Grayson ricochets back and forth from Type A He-man to someone who sounds like he just stepped out of a dessert coffee commercial. Apparently, he and Olivia are both so incredibly perfect that they have to put up with all the rest of us mere mortals who sit back and gaze at them adoringly (or lecherously as is the case with many of the characters in the book).

5. None of the characters are developed to the point that they seem like real people. The "villains" are such paper thin caricatures, that portions of the book felt like I had just stepped into the middle of a melodrama where mustache twisting villains abounded. Having one irrational person would have been tolerable, but apparently everyone Olivia comes into contact with (except Grayson) is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs: her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law, her father, Jane's brother, Jorguson, his bodyguard, her father's attorney, and the list goes on and on and on.

6. The lives of the characters sound very superficial and plastic. Sam likes to fly. All the comments about her sound like someone trying to describe a pilot when they don't really know the particulars of what they do.

7. The author's stress of technology is awkward. There are several mentions of characters using their iPhones and iPads as if to say, "Look at how cutting edge my characters are. They're hip and in the know because they use Apple products.". After the umpteenth mention of an iPad or iPhone, I was starting to wonder if there was a fee being paid for product placement. The Buchanans solved many a crime without the mention of the brand name of their electronic toys. As a reader, I don't need to know the brand name of the items they're using. We didn't have to hear about characters of past novels booting up a Commodore 64 to solve their crimes. Instead of adding to the story, the sprinkling of iProducts just seemed completely unnecessary (does it help anyone reading this to know I'm writing this on an iPad right now? Of course not). If anything, the products will date the story. Five years from now any younger people reading this story will think "iPhones and iPads? That's old school.". I thought authors avoided mentioning specific products, songs, and movies so as not to date their work.

8. The ending? Don't get me started on the ending. It was so saccharine, I think I threw up a little in my mouth when I read it. Come on Julie! You wrote The Bride, not to mention the Buchanan series - you can do SO much better than this!

I could go on, but I've already written a novel here. My point is that even the books of Garwood's that I didn't care for too much are much better than Sweet Talk. This truly does not sound as though it came from the same person who wrote Garwood's previous titles. It comes across as someone who was trying to copy her style and doing a VERY poor job of it. I'm assuming we're going to be hearing more from the Pips. I'm guessing next up will be Collins and Ronan (at least I hope so because they are the only characters that I found to be even mildly interesting). I'm hoping for the "real" Julie Garwood's return. I'm hoping "Sweet Talk" was an aberration. Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story!

I'm never disappointed by Julie Garwood. She always writes a good story that keeps you involved! Can't wait for her new book.

Published 3 days ago by tabor

5.0 out of 5 stars That is the Julie I missed!!

This was the funny, romantic, carefree novel I needed from my favorite author. Her last couple of books have been missing that special something. Read more

Published 5 days ago by APM