TEST
An AAR Top 100 Romance
originally published on August 10, 2000
What does it take to finish a book in one sitting? First, you need the time. Second, you need a book you just cannot put down. Last Saturday, I discovered I had both. Linda Howard’s foray into big-time romantic comedy has paid off, and how. Mr. Perfect is a terrific read, and I’m nearly giddy with delight. You will be too, right from the very first page.
Jaine Bright and her three friends, Luna, T.J., and Marci, go out for dinner one Friday night after work, and get a little tipsy. They discuss men (of course). After dating lots of jerks, they wonder what qualities the perfect man should have (don’t we all?). Getting in to it, they begin making a list. Faithful. Yes. Nice. Absolutely. Dependable. Certainly. Well, the list goes along just fine, until they get to physical attributes. Oh, baby. That’s when the giggles begin, and the ruler comes out.
The next day, through happenstance, Marci leaks the list and before you know it, it’s National, that’s right, National human interest news. Some people (women), love The List. Others (men), hate it. One person in particular, loathes it enough to kill.
In the meantime, Jaine has bought a new house and is having trouble with her perpetually irate next-door-neighbor, a man she assumes is a drunken idiot. Detective Sam Donovan is no drunk, and no idiot. When tempers flare between these new neighbors, so does passion and some of the wittiest, funniest, bawdiest, sexiest dialogue I’ve read in a long time.
Sam and Jaine are hot for each other from the minute they meet (when she knocks over his garbage can on her way out the driveway). The first half of the book is devoted to Jaine and Sam trying to be rational about their mutual attraction, but, thankfully for the reader, it’s impossible. Their first kiss, near-miss love scene is one the sexiest I’ve ever read. It involves a car washing, a spray hose, an angry man, a feisty woman, and when it’s over … everybody’s wet (including the reader).
Things take a serious turn when one of the four ladies of The List is found murdered. Could somebody have been angry enough to be stalking its composers? You bet. The last third of the book deals with finding and stopping the killer before another life is lost. When Jaine’s house is ransacked and ruined, Sam steps in and makes it his business to protect her.
Sam is a wonderful hero. Smart, smart-mouthed, big and rugged and handsome, he has erotic urges for Jaine immediately. He’s also aware enough that she’s special enough to not retreat from when he realizes he has finer feelings for her. Their feelings for one another are so strong and funny that Sam’s proposal of marriage begins with an uttered epithet. Sam is one of Linda Howard’s best heroes ever: confident but not controlling, arrogant but not overpowering. As for Jaine, she just as smart-mouthed as Sam and gives as good as she gets, sometimes before she gets it. The frank sex-talk between them is very funny and enormously entertaining.
Added to the mix is a very fine secondary cast of characters, each of whom has problems of his or her own. Some sweet, geriatric neighbors, a little auto-erotica (Jaine and Sam like classic cars), Jaine’s efforts to curtail her profanity by paying fines each time she makes a slip, a haughty cat named BooBoo, and a snotty older sister named Shelly who knows how to come through when the chips are down, all add to the humor and suspense to make Mr. Perfect a treat of a read that you won’t want to miss.
My only problem with the book was that it was over too soon. Oh, how I wanted more. I want another one just like it. In Mr. Perfect, Linda Howard has created exactly the type of romantic suspense readers are looking for: lots of romance, sensuous love scenes, a hero and heroine you can’t help but like, and a mystery to top it all off. I hope this is a trend Ms. Howard intends to follow for a long, long time. The language is frank, the loves scenes are steamy, and the book comes together, well, dare I say it … perfectly.
LLB: Editor Ellen Micheletti also loved this book; it’s a keeper for her as well. She called it “funny, sexy, suspenseful, and practically perfect.” When Ellen read the scene where the four friends were creating The List, she was “glad she was not reading in a public place. People would have wondered why this crazy woman was laughing and blushing at the same time.” In particular, she adored Jaine – now her favorite Howard heroine. She said, “If you are expecting one of her silky little things who moons around and doesn’t eat – go read An Independent Wife.” Sam is now Ellen’s favorite Howard hero too. Like all her heroes, Ellen said, “he is masculine to the max and so sexy he is almost illegal. Sam is also smart as a whip and the perfect match for Jaine. When she sees him one morning though his window when he is naked, half asleep and standing in profile in front of the refrigerator she falls in lust – big time.” Ellen added, “I can’t remember when I have laughed as hard as I did during the car washing scene in this book. When Sam and Jaine do give in to the tension that has been consuming them – they give off enough heat to melt all the icebergs in the sea.” However, “The second half, is much more serious. The identity of the killer was a big surprise to me – I had not seen it coming at all.”
Grade: A
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 07/12/17
Publication Date: 2001
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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This is a Howard book that was a huge hit at the time (with people absolutely raving about it) but oddly enough I never hear it mentioned much as people’s all time favorite Howard now or even among their top few. I enjoyed it very much at the time but it didn’t have the lasting re-read appeal that her older books did or her subsequent one “Open Season” which is one of my absolute favorites period. It’s been quite a while so I will definitely be pulling my old copy out to read it again. It’s been so long, like Blackjack, I suspect I will be reading it with fresh eyes as I don’t remember many plot points.
Well, I think this time, on an old Linda Howard, I will just say- I liked it then- I liked it now with certain reservations- and you will just have to read it to figure out “what the ruler demanded”…b*@#ch…
I reread Mr. Perfect this past year and was surprised me by how much I enjoyed Howard’s comic touch as a writer. The romance too is sexy and quite funny. I don’t think this book would be as well-received today though largely because of the depiction of a transgender villain, and I’ve read even more recently some pretty scathing critiques of this book. Basically a “bad mother” gives birth to a transgendered man who becomes a monster of a serial killer because of bad mothering. Through the course of the novel, the killer’s depravity blurs oddly into his sexuality to create a conflation. I had difficulty reading this book today without a sense that transgender people are a source of intense discomfort.
Also, the word “bitch” literally abounds through the entire book and felt a bit overwelming by the end of the book. The serial killer, who according to the hero, “hates women” thinks of all women as “bitches” who need to be put in their place. However, Sam also refers to Jaine as a “bitch” too when she gets snarky with him. The “feminists” in the novel too though are referred to as “bitches” because they are haters of all the women out there seeking marriage. The insecure boyfriends in the book refer to their female partners as “bitches” for having stringent expectations of them. The novel still has many funny moments between Sam and Jaine, but I now have to isolate their scenes from all the others as the book on a whole doesn’t work for me.
I have never read this. Now I’m dying to know what the ruler demanded…..