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.