Maybe This Time

What could be better than reading two of my favorite authors back-to-back?  Janet Evanovich followed by Jennifer Crusie's latest Maybe This Time (#40) make for a great doubleheader.  Crusie could have worked her usual magic in a true love gone wrong theme with her usual quirky characters and snappy dialogue, but she's embellished this one with a creepy English castle complete with a history of tragic deaths transported to southern Ohio.  It's inhabited by an uncaring housekeeper who doesn't cook or clean, and two orphaned relatives.  The kids on first glance aren't so adorable; they've already scared away three nannies sent to take care of them. 

Andy Miller has been divorced from her attorney husband for ten years.  She's ready to remarry but wants to return her uncashed alimony checks to her ex-husband North so she can start her new life with a clean slate.  North sees a solution to his problem of what to do about the kids if he can just persuade her to stay with them for a month before he moves them to his home in Columbus.  Of course, once they see each other again, the sparks fly and it's evident it isn't really over between them, but Andy agrees to go despite her misgivings.  She's a teacher and she can get the kids up to par to enter public school.  But people keep arriving at the house: a TV reporter with a career to rebuild, an ex-brother in-law, her mother, her ex-mother-in-law, her fiance, her ex.  You get the picture.  It's not as isolated there as Andy might like.  Oh, and did I mention the ghosts?  They won't let the children leave, and they'll stop at nothing to keep Carter and Alice in the castle.  Seances and possesion - the stuff of any good Gothic novel - keep the action moving.

I was really glad that I couldn't renew this book, since that gave me the excuse to move it up my reading list.  It's a romance, so you know how it's going to end, but the pleasure is on the pot-holed and spooky road that takes you there.  Can't wait for her next entry.