Talk About My Favorite Authors: Lip Service

Well I have been reading a lot of books since I joined up to be a reviewer for the website Manic Readers and this is one of my many reviews for them. Today I'm going to be posting my review of Lip Service which is an advance readers copy of the second book in Susan Mallery's new series Lone Star Sisters which I wrote for Manic Readers. I'll also be reviewing the next two books in the series for Manic Readers soon and will be posting them here as well so keep an eye out for them.

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Skye Titan’s wealthy father, Jed Titan, thinks he can still control his daughter’s choice in men since he arranged her first marriage to a wealthy older man who she gave up her true love for. Now Skye is a widowed and single mother, who isn’t the gullible yes-girl she was before, especially since, Mitch, the love of her life is back in Texas after joining the Navy SEALs eight years ago when she broke his heart. Former Navy SEAL Mitch Cassidy comes home to find nearly everything different and his wounds from battle have changed the way people treat him and he finds out that his once cattle ranch is suddenly organic. This is a change that he is having a very hard time adjusting to besides his physical injury of losing part of his leg. But even after so many years apart it hasn’t touched his desire for his first and one true love Skye—or the sting of her betrayal and forget the lip service. Mitch won’t like the answers to the questions he’s asking about why she left him at the altar and about her eight-year-old daughter who he thinks might be his. He wants the truth from Skye’s own lips but is he going to be able to put the past aside to help Skye get out from under her father’s thumb and in the process help both Skye and himself recover from their past broken hearts?

Susan Mallery’s novels are wonderful to read because she always seems to come up with similar yet totally different novels with such compelling characters with intriguing issues. I like her series more than her stand alone novels but they are both very good reads in their own way. Under Her Skin is the first book in her Lone Star Sisters series, which will be officially be released in May 2009 with the second, Lip Service, and the third, Straight from the Hip, novels releasing in June and July 2009. After reading and reviewing her first book in the series I was so looking forward to reading about the next two sisters’ love stories. Reading the oldest Lexi Titan amazing love adventure with Cruz Rodrigues made me so excited about finally getting to read Sky’s love story. Skye Titan is the middle child of the three Titan sisters and in the first book seemed like the daughter who wanted nothing from her father but the love she thinks will keep her from becoming her mother. Jed is a man who was never there for Skye or her sisters like a real father should have been while they were growing up. I like Skye though at times I thought that she should finally see that she can’t always let her controlling father make her do everything he wants because it helped him with his career. Her relationship with her sisters is not as ideal as she would have liked but they seem very close to each other though the youngest, Izzy, who is the wild child, seems to be a bit of a flake. Skye and Izzy have the same mother and since she is the older of the two she controls the money that was left to them by their mother. Now reading about Skye’s past relationship with the love of her life was so much fun because it was only hinted about in the first book.

Mitch Cassidy is such a strong male character even though at the beginning he seemed like a bitter man who wanted to hurt everyone even those that loved him. I thought that though Skye and Mitch have a lot of baggage in their past with one another they can somehow find a way to make it work so they can finally be happy together. Mitch and Skye are wonderful characters that really kept me on my toes throughout the entire novel because they always did something I didn’t see coming. I also really loved the interaction between Mitch and Skye’s eight-year-old daughter Erin because I love to read about children in my romance novels since they add that bit of child fun to the novel. Reading about all the struggling that Skye and Mitch were going through just to get their happily ever after was great fun and I know that they will get there in the end. Susan Mallery has delivered an exciting and pleasurable continuation to what I believe is going to be one great new series that everyone should be watching out for this year.