Review: Amuse-Bouche!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2013
I love Delaney Diamond. Have I said this before? Certain writers have a way of expressing themselves that just speaks to something in you that you can't identify, and for me, she is one of them. Her stories always have just that perfect balance of sweet and sour -- love and loss, pain and euphoria, that I love in romance. Not cloyingly sweet or overly sentimental, but also not in-your-face gritty realism either. Just right.In The Blind Date, she gives us characters that are somewhat unlike her usual fare. They are younger than her usual H and h, and are building something rather than at the pinnacle of a hard-fought career or the beneficiaries of family wealth, and when we first meet them Ryan and Shawna are meeting again after a six-year separation. To help us understand Shawna's rather explosive reaction when Shawna and Ryan meet on a blind date, the writer goes back in time so we can get the history. The old flashback routine can be tedious sometimes, but not here. In fact, the love story of their past is as engaging as the one in the present, which might explain why you feel like you get twice as much story in one fairly short read.Ryan is a bad-ass who wants to claim his woman right away, and Shawna is the perfect reticent heroine who wants to keep her head about her while her heart has other ideas. The conflicts--Ryan's past deception and Shawna's current would-be suitor--are just enough to keep you turning the page. Well, that and the super-sexy love scenes, of course.I've read some reviews where readers wish there was more of this, that or the other, but y'know, I didn't experience that and never do with this writer. Her work is like a perfect amuse-bouche. Just enough to make you want more, never so much that you wish you hadn't eaten the meal. This book left me entirely satisfied.