Hello, and welcome back! Our weather is leaning to hot and sticky this week, but at least it's not raining again. When we're not carting the boys to baseball games and practices, I can sit outside in the evenings with my book, in the shade of the backyard tree and enjoy my flowers and listen to the boys playing. At last! Now I'm hoping that spring doesn't do a quick vanishing act and bring on summer right away.

This week, I've got two new books to share with you, both contemporary romances. First up is Maggie Shayne's Enemy Mind (Silhouette Intimate Moments), the first in a new miniseries for SIM, and more sci-fi-ish than is normal for Ms. Shayne. Dr. Maisy Dalton can't say no when she gets a call begging her to come and help a family with Zach Ingram, whom they claim they "rescued" from a cult. Except that Zach isn't part of this family, and he sure hasn't been with a cult--he believes that these people are after his brother, though he doesn't know why. Convincing Maisy of this isn't easy, nor is escape. Kind of a scary notion, the idea behind this story and the rest in the series. Coming from Maggie Shayne, I expected this story to be steamy and was disappinted with that aspect, though there's absolutely nothing wrong with the storytelling. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the series unfolds. I'm borrowing three of Cupid's five arrows for this one.

Next up this week is debut author, Anna Jeffrey and The Love of a Cowboy(Onyx). Dahlia Montgomery is a real fish out of water when this story begins, coming to the wilds of Idaho with her friend Piggy to help Piggy's surveyor cousin, staying in a rundown cabin with no heat, and knowing absolutely no one. And when the first person she meets is sexy cowboy Luke McRae, things don't immediately improve. Their romance progresses nicely, until his family enters the picture, and then Luke seems a tad unheroic--wimpy, even?--letting his family dictate to him and pushing Dahlia away. I love a good alpha male, which is what Luke seems to be when the story begins, but that doesn't follow through to the end, or at least, not in a pleasing manner. And Dahlia herself does something then which I found very hard to believe, considering her feelings for the man--and which I won't give away here since it's an integral part of the plot. These two things left a bad taste in my mouth, which didn't go away when the conflicts were resolved--a tad too easily, I thought. With such a promising start, I was disappointed with the end results. I do think, however, that Ms. Jeffrey has the talent to move beyond these things in future books, so I'll be watching for her second book next April. I'm giving this one two and a half arrows.