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Rachel Gibson is an author I can count on. I have yet to read a book by her that I didn’t like. Her books are very funny and very sexy, and her heroes are very, very alpha. True Confessions fits right into this pattern. It was a fun and fast read.
Hope Spencer is a tabloid writer for one of the more outlandish weeklies. She comes to Gospel, Idaho to get away from some unpleasantness that resulted from one of her pieces. She also hopes to reconnect with her muse, which has been noticeably absent as of late. She wants only to rest, relax and rejuvenate. She has no plans for involvement with the wacky natives.
Dylan Taber is Gospel’s sheriff. He is also the most eligible bachelor for fifty miles. After a wild youth and a long stint as a LA police officer, he has returned to Gospel with his small son determined to be respectable and to call as little attention to himself as possible. Hope intrigues him from their first meeting. He’s attracted to her outlandish California ways, her smart mouth, and her sexy body. Whenever trouble is stirred up in Gospel, she seems to be right in the thick of it. But he knows that getting involved with an outsider, a Californian, and a writer is impossible. Because he has a secret, and it needs to stay secret. So Hope is off-limits, right? Wrong. He just can’t stay away from her.
One of the more charming things about this book is the tabloid angle. Each chapter begins with an appropriate tabloid heading like, “Satan Photographed in Wilderness Town,” or “Man Spontaneously Combusts.” Hope has a fun job, and she’s not embarrassed by it. She decides to write a series of stories about aliens masquerading as people in an Idaho town, and the Gospel locals provide plenty of inspiration for her articles. This was very funny.
Both the main characters and the secondary characters are well developed and fully likable. Hope is a woman with a rather painful recent past, and I found myself really rooting for her. Dylan was also interesting, and his firm-but-tender relationship with his son gave him a nice depth that I enjoyed. Their attraction and involvement were fun to read, and the sex scenes were very steamy. Gibson definitely knows how to write a hot scene. No purple prose here.
The only quibble I have with this book is that I felt that their relationship was a bit more sexual than emotional. They weren’t actually involved with each other for that long, and it seemed like when they were together, they were concentrating mostly on the fantastic sex they were having. One of my biggest pet peeves in romance is when an author has her hero see the heroine and immediately think about how he’d like to lick his way down her neck or sink into her warm wetness. Now, this might really be what a man is thinking when he sees a woman he’s attracted to, but I think it’s overused, and I’m tired of reading scenes that start this way. Unfortunately, there were too many such scenes in True Confessions. I would have much preferred to watch a deeper relationship develop between Dylan, Hope and Dylan’s son, Adam. Even just a little more conversation between the two of them would have gone a long way toward convincing me that these people were right for each other. Gibson has a flair for fun dialogue, and I would have liked to have seen a little more of it.
Still, I can recommend True Confessions because it was, overall, quite enjoyable. It was funny, sexy, and the characters had a kind of authenticity. They seemed very much like people you might actually meet. I do hope Rachel Gibson has a long and lucrative career, because I like her stuff and hope to read much, much more of it.
Grade: B
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 05/07/01
Publication Date: 2001
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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.