Hello, and welcome back! It looks like spring might be making a reappearance here this week, warming things up in the next few days. That'll make evening baseball games and practices a lot more tolerable. I'm getting a lot of late April arrivals this week, so I may not get to dig into the May books quite yet. This time out, I have three new April books to share with you.

Hot Stuff (St. Martin's) by Janet Evanovich and Leanne Banks. Cate Madigan's family wants to see her settled, and evidently, they're far more desperate than she is, dragging home hairy little men from tire shops for her. To dissuade him, she lets the hunk who's been hanging out at the bar pretend to be her boyfriend. Kellen McBride seems too good to be true, but he is a far better option than Pugg, and even her two best friends are excited about him. Except Kellen isn't exactly what he says. Then again, neither was her roommate, who's gone missing. I was pretty worried when I read that an author I love was teaming up with Janet Evanovich, whose work I don't love. This one is cute, almost too cute in many places. I'm going to hope that Ms. Banks goes solo for her next romance.

Close Encounters of the Sexy Kind (Brava) by Karen Kelley is next. Mala is dying to go to Earth and meet one of those sexy Sheriffs her grandmother told her about. But traveling to Earth is forbidden, so, of course, she goes anyway. And meets Sheriff Mason McKinley, who has no idea the beautiful woman he's just found is an alien. He just believes she's got amnesia from whatever or whoever gave her that bump on her head. If you're looking for slapstick with some sex tossed in for interest, this might be right up your alley. I just couldn't buy into this one at all, from Mason's willful blindness where Mala is concerned to the pat trio looking for aliens in this little Texas town. Not a keeper.

Smart and Sexy (Brava) by Jill Shalvis is next. Pilot Noah Fisher's never been hijacked before, and now that he's just getting his life back together, he's not too thrilled to have this first right now. But his hijacker just wants to go where he's already heading, and it turns out he knows her. Bailey Sinclair is desperate. Her late husband left her a huge monetary mess, and thugs who're very unhappy that their own money is gone. She's got to find it or die trying. She didn't mean to get Noah more involved, though. She just wanted to get to where he was going and disappear. But someone is after her, and Noah isn't going to let them get her. I'm a little surprised by how much I liked this one. It's been quite a while since I read a Shalvis that I enjoyed as much as her older books, and I'm very happy that this one was so good. I hope this is just the beginning of a trend. Bailey and Noah have serious chemistry, and the focus is always on them, without too many secondary characters to distract a reader from the romance. This one was a very good read. It's earned three and a half of Cupid's five arrows.

Until next time, happy reading!