Good Girls Don't

June 13, 2011
Dahl's superheated contemporary puts ponytailed Colorado heiress Tessa Donovan smack in the middle of a family-vs.-lover brouhaha. Tessa owns a brewery with her serious older brother, Eric, and their playboy sibling, Jamie. Both disapprove of smoking-hot bad-boy detective Luke Asher, who's almost immediately smitten by oversexed Tessa and her nice-girl facade after he investigates a break-in at the brewery. Dahl's slim plot relies on Tessa's tightrope balancing between family and business ties and sudden gushes of lust, and plunges through intrusively awkward subplots like Luke's ambivalent relationships with his pregnant detective partner (no, it's not his) and his ex-wife, Eve, as well as Tessa's unconvincing attempts to engineer a big-business deal. Dedicated romance fans will likely skim these clumsy interludes to focus on the obligatory feverish intimate encounters.

September 15, 2011
Around her brothers, Tess Donovan is sweet, but underneath her wholesome exterior is a woman who wants to explore. Her parents' death when she was 14 left her and her two older brothers responsible for running the family brewery in Boulder, Colorado. Her oldest brother, Eric, wants to expand the business, while her other brother, Jamie, may have compromised the deal as Tess tries to run interference between the two. When the brewery is robbed, Tess takes notice of the tasty detective, Luke Asher, a college friend of Jamie's. Tess' good-girl image plays havoc with her designs on Luke until she proves that she is not what everyone thinks. Luke, on the other hand, has a bad-boy reputation, and rumors are flying that he is the unnamed father of his police partner's baby. As Tess and Luke cope with gossip and their personal demons, Dahl gives her readers a steamy romp with a microbrew flavor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)