Looking for Trouble: Invitations to Seduction (Harlequin Blaze, 92)

Rating:
Summary: However make up your own mind...
Review: Julie sets up the good girl/bad girl flip of the coin in a brilliant study of twins - women who are the same outside, but are polar opposites in life styles. A genius turn of the screw examination of women's inner desires. She is not afraid to rollerblade along that envelope and does so with the grace and deftness of a magician.

When I picture Julie Elizabeth Leto in my mind (having seen her picture and been a big fan for a couple years of her steamy, sizzling books for Harlequin's Blaze series), I see her in a t-shirt with the words "Good Girl's Do" emblazoned across her chest and Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" blaring in the background!! I don't think there is a writer anywhere that touches the cord of women long told that good girls don't, but knows secretly in their hearts and fantasy THEY DO!! She gives the reader an empowering okay to indulge in being the aggressor - not that the males she creates are wimps, quite the contrary - but Julie's newly liberated females push the envelope. Maureen O'Hara said in THE QUITE MAN she was not a woman to be honked at and to come a running. Well, Julie picks up that banner and lets her characters wave it proudly! As you might've experienced, often the envelope gives paper-cuts, but what the heck...they heal quickly! It's the challenge and the risk, that skating on the razor's edge, which makes her books so sexy and distances her from the pack of other Harlequin writers. She creates very down-to-earth females, flesh & blood women that jump off the pages and introduce themselves. Whether the bad girl who is sooooo GOOD or the nice girl cutting loose, Julie believes in GIRL POWER TO THE MAX!

In her current book, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, June 2003 Blaze #92 (and its sequel UP TO NO GOOD, August 2003 #100), Julie has the chance to use both the Bad Girl and Good Girl as the focus of both stories. Twins, they are raised by their grandmother, an overly repressive woman determined to see Rory and Micki not follow in their mother's footsteps. Mama was the "bad girl" of the small Southern town; hurt by this shame, strong-willed Nanna is determined to make sure her granddaughters remain "nice" girls. As often happens, the harder you try to prevent something, the more you drive that person to rebel, and that is what happens to Rory Carmichael's twin sister, Micki. She ran away from home when they were fifteen, leaving Rory to be the "good girl". Rory loves her grandmother, and willingly stepped into the "good girl" mold to please her, but she is twenty-five now and she wants to have so fun in life. Rory knows cutting-loose from the nice girl image in the small town would be impossible, so she takes a stand and moves to the big city where she can be a little wild without poor Nanna having a heart attack. Rory might be out of sight, but not out of mind as Nanna is still trying to control her life. She arranges for Rory to get a new apartment with the son of her doctor, thinking this will keep her in a safe spot. Only, Nanna had not locked eyes with Dr. Alec Manning!

Never been one to stand back from the invitation in a woman's eye, Alec is a to-die-for hunk. However, having lost his job because of an indiscretion with his Dean's wife, he has taken a vow of celibacy to prove to himself there is more to life than one woman after another. However, he did not count on Rory turning up to live under his roof. To kick off her new life, Rory tore two pages from a book called Sexcapades: Secret Games for Wild Adventures for Uninhibited Lovers. The book is housed where she gets her new job and it is 1001 exciting ideas to jazz up a steamy romance. Created so you cannot tell what the fantasies are beforehand, they are sealed in plastic and you're instructed to open them only when you are ready to put them to use. Rory's were called STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT and SLIPPERY WHEN WET. Determined to kick loose from that nice girl image, she cannot imagine a better target on which to hone her feminine wiles than her new sexy landlord. Alec's vow is suddenly having a hard time standing up to the breathy sighs, tight jeans and come-hither looks of sexy Rory.

Rating:
Summary: Leto sparkles in the first of two books on twins!
Review: Julie sets up the good girl/bad girl flip of the coin in a brilliant study of twins - women who are the same outside, but are polar opposites in life styles. A genius turn of the screw examination of women's inner desires. She is not afraid to rollerblade along that envelope and does so with the grace and deftness of a magician.

When I picture Julie Elizabeth Leto in my mind (having seen her picture and been a big fan for a couple years of her steamy, sizzling books for Harlequin's Blaze series), I see her in a t-shirt with the words "Good Girl's Do" emblazoned across her chest and Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" blaring in the background!! I don't think there is a writer anywhere that touches the cord of women long told that good girls don't, but knows secretly in their hearts and fantasy THEY DO!! She gives the reader an empowering okay to indulge in being the aggressor - not that the males she creates are wimps, quite the contrary - but Julie's newly liberated females push the envelope. Maureen O'Hara said in THE QUITE MAN she was not a woman to be honked at and to come a running. Well, Julie picks up that banner and lets her characters wave it proudly! As you might've experienced, often the envelope gives paper-cuts, but what the heck...they heal quickly! It's the challenge and the risk, that skating on the razor's edge, which makes her books so sexy and distances her from the pack of other Harlequin writers. She creates very down-to-earth females, flesh & blood women that jump off the pages and introduce themselves. Whether the bad girl who is sooooo GOOD or the nice girl cutting loose, Julie believes in GIRL POWER TO THE MAX!

In her current book, LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, June 2003 Blaze #92 (and its sequel UP TO NO GOOD, August 2003 #100), Julie has the chance to use both the Bad Girl and Good Girl as the focus of both stories. Twins, they are raised by their grandmother, an overly repressive woman determined to see Rory and Micki not follow in their mother's footsteps. Mama was the "bad girl" of the small Southern town; hurt by this shame, strong-willed Nanna is determined to make sure her granddaughters remain "nice" girls. As often happens, the harder you try to prevent something, the more you drive that person to rebel, and that is what happens to Rory Carmichael's twin sister, Micki. She ran away from home when they were fifteen, leaving Rory to be the "good girl". Rory loves her grandmother, and willingly stepped into the "good girl" mold to please her, but she is twenty-five now and she wants to have so fun in life. Rory knows cutting-loose from the nice girl image in the small town would be impossible, so she takes a stand and moves to the big city where she can be a little wild without poor Nanna having a heart attack. Rory might be out of sight, but not out of mind as Nanna is still trying to control her life. She arranges for Rory to get a new apartment with the son of her doctor, thinking this will keep her in a safe spot. Only, Nanna had not locked eyes with Dr. Alec Manning!

Never been one to stand back from the invitation in a woman's eye, Alec is a to-die-for hunk. However, having lost his job because of an indiscretion with his Dean's wife, he has taken a vow of celibacy to prove to himself there is more to life than one woman after another. However, he did not count on Rory turning up to live under his roof. To kick off her new life, Rory tore two pages from a book called Sexcapades: Secret Games for Wild Adventures for Uninhibited Lovers. The book is housed where she gets her new job and it is 1001 exciting ideas to jazz up a steamy romance. Created so you cannot tell what the fantasies are beforehand, they are sealed in plastic and you're instructed to open them only when you are ready to put them to use. Rory's were called STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT and SLIPPERY WHEN WET. Determined to kick loose from that nice girl image, she cannot imagine a better target on which to hone her feminine wiles than her new sexy landlord. Alec's vow is suddenly having a hard time standing up to the breathy sighs, tight jeans and come-hither looks of sexy Rory.

Rating:
Summary: However make up your own mind...
Review: Personally I thought that this book was totally unbelievable. Whilst I am aware that it is FICTION I just could not get into it.

The main character Rory is 25 years old and has never, well lets say "explored" herself. Give me a break! Then suddenly she is some sexual minx so sure of herself and what she is doing - I don't think this has ever happened to anyone!!!

Rating:
Summary: Miss Innocent meets Bad Boy
Review: Rory Carmichael has spent her whole life living the life of a good girl to please her grandmother who raised her and her twin sister after their mother abandoned them. But her twin ran away as a teenager and now Rory has a lead on where she is and is determined to find her and to finally live her life the way she wants to. When she finds Sexcapades, a book of sexual fantasies meant to be shared with your lover, in the lobby of her employer she knows that she has found the perfect tool to help her bring out the bad girl in herself.

Alec Manning, lost his credibility as a Sociology professor after having a very indiscreet affair with the department heads wife. He is in the middle of a research project that he hopes will gain his re-entrance into the academic world but in order to do that he feels that he has to loose his bad boy image permanently. He has no problems until Rory rents the upstairs of his home that he has turned into an apartment.

This was a fantastic book with a near perfect combination of seriousness and fun. Alec is determined to resist Rory and maintain his new image and Rory is just as determined to get what she wants - Alec. Fun, sexy, and the perfect lead in to Invitation to Seduction.

Rating:
Summary: Miss Innocent meets Bad Boy
Review: Rory Carmichael has spent her whole life living the life of a good girl to please her grandmother who raised her and her twin sister after their mother abandoned them. But her twin ran away as a teenager and now Rory has a lead on where she is and is determined to find her and to finally live her life the way she wants to. When she finds Sexcapades, a book of sexual fantasies meant to be shared with your lover, in the lobby of her employer she knows that she has found the perfect tool to help her bring out the bad girl in herself.

Alec Manning, lost his credibility as a Sociology professor after having a very indiscreet affair with the department heads wife. He is in the middle of a research project that he hopes will gain his re-entrance into the academic world but in order to do that he feels that he has to loose his bad boy image permanently. He has no problems until Rory rents the upstairs of his home that he has turned into an apartment.

This was a fantastic book with a near perfect combination of seriousness and fun. Alec is determined to resist Rory and maintain his new image and Rory is just as determined to get what she wants - Alec. Fun, sexy, and the perfect lead in to Invitation to Seduction.