Thoughts: Undeniably Yours

Undeniably Yours

by Heather Webber
Book 5 (final) of Lucy Valentine

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  4.0 Stars

NO GOOD DEED

While still recuperating from injuries sustained in her previous case, the last thing psychic investigator Lucy Valentine wants is to dive into another job.  But when Detective Lieutenant Aiden Holliday comes calling for help in finding a missing woman, saying no is not an option.

TV journalist Kira Fitzpatrick has vanished without a trace.  There’s little for Lucy to go on except picking up Kira’s current investigation where she left off.  The fearless reporter had been close to cracking one of the year’s biggest cases: the disappearance of a two-year-old boy.

GOES UNPUNISHED

Now Lucy must use her abilities to find both of them.  As she follows a twisted trail of lies and deceit, she uncovers a shocking twist to Kira’s exposé that someone is desperate to keep secret.  It’s a race against the clock as Lucy struggles to discover who’s telling the truth…and who’s willing to kill to keep her from solving the case.

While I didn't really care for the fourth book, Perfectly Matched, I think that this fifth and final book in the Lucy Valentine series, Undeniably Yours, turned out to be a nice and well-rounded ending to the series.  And overall, this is a great series for anyone interested in fluffy cozy mysteries with a side dish of romance.

Undeniably Yours seemed to get a little bit chaotic with it's overlapping mystery lines, but it was overall a well-outlined book.  And while the ultimate conclusion wasn't quite as predictable as the previous few books, it didn't come as much of a surprise to me, even if I still feel like everything seemed a little... forced.

This last book, beginning immediately after that strange cliff-hanger off of the previous book, was actually quite fast-paced, making great use of Lucy's psychic skills (both new and old), as well as seemed quite thorough in its' investigative progress.

Of course, there were a lot of things about Undeniably Yours that I had quibbles about, mainly with the investigative process itself and who was actually doing all the investigation of our missing persons.  Because, to be honest, while I'm glad that Lucy gets to spend a lot of her time front and center as the person doing all the work... I found it a little hard to figure out why Lucy was doing all the work in the first place.  I mean, where are all the other detectives in this town and why aren't they all over this case?  You would think that after an explosion and the almost death of a police detective, there'd be more people fighting to work on this missing persons case.

Other little quibbles I had weren't really as bothersome as that first:

• Aiden's avoidance at telling Em about what's been going on with him started getting annoying, because we all just know that that's not the way to go, especially since the two just got engaged.
• Lucy's mother's sudden plans to renovate her little cottage without first consulting her also came off a bit more frustrating than humorously endearing--there's nothing worse than meddling parents, and that just seemed a bit extreme.
• All the dead ends that Lucy kept coming upon felt a bit forced, actually, like we were trying really, really hard to just road block her entire investigation, just to have everything work out miraculously all at the same time.
• The dreaded "Couple Curtain Call," because, while I love myself some romance, "Couple Curtain Call" endings are just a little tacky, no matter how authors try to handle them.
• Again, the ending of this book felt a little rushed and awkward.
• Also, with all the violent incidents that Lucy has been subjected to, I'm actually quite surprised she is even able to get up and move around, no less trek herself all over town investigating Aiden's case like she's actually a cop.
• Which brings me back to:  Why is Lucy the only person investigating this obviously criminal case?

But enough of the quibbles.  Truly, this book was extremely entertaining, and then include into it an adorable eighteen month old (How do you even know a baby is eighteen months old just by looking, because Lucy mentions twice that Ava looks to be about eighteen months, and you know, I probably would have just gone with the very vague "about a year old or two, maybe;" although to be fair, I'm the worst judge of age and will also look at a coworker and guesstimate her age to be late twenties or mid- to late thirties... or something like that), and lots of animals, and we've got an easy to read, easy to like cozy mystery with lots of heart.

I may have had a lot of quibbles, but really, I enjoyed myself and would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in cozy mysteries and romance and psychics and animals.

Though if you're looking for logic, you may have to overlook a lot of things in the last two books, and simply just enjoy.

Thoughts: Perfectly Match

Perfectly Matched

by Heather Webber
Book 4 of Lucy Valentine

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.5 Stars

The heat is on...

When Boston psychic Lucy Valentine finds herself involved in a group of eccentric psychics trying to learn more about their abilities, she is convinced a rare spring heat wave has flushed the crazies out of hiding.

Adding to her theory is her newest client in the Lost Loves division of Valentine, Inc., her family’s lucrative matchmaking firm.  He’s an animal communicator who hires Lucy to find his purrfect mate—because his cat told him so.

But craziest of all is The Beantown Burner, a serial arsonist who is targeting private eye Sam Donahue, the brother of Lucy’s boyfriend, Sean.  With the help of her kooky psychic group, Lucy must tap into abilities she didn’t know she had to catch the firebug before the fires turn deadly.  What she never expected to discover is that the motive behind the flames hits a little too close to home...and her heart.

This is probably my least favorite of the Lucy Valentine series, but not for reasons of the story itself.  The mystery parts were pretty decent, and again, we have at least three different ones going on at the same time.  They were predictable, although I felt like the identity of the arsonist was a little left-field.  Some of the mystery were pleasantly twisty, but the ending of this book indeed felt a bit rushed and awkward.  I can't say I was really surprised by the reveal of the culprit even though I felt a bit iffy about the motive.

The book itself was entertaining and easy to read.

What irked me about this book were the way all the characters were acting.  Or rather, I was irked by the way that a select few of the characters were acting.  It was like, on Lucy's worst week ever, everyone was conspiring against her to either be extremely annoying, unnecessarily frustrating, strangely secretive, or inconsiderately hurtful.  I still loved Marisol, Em, and Dovie, because they were their usual, steadfast support pillars in Lucy's life.  As was Raphael for the brief scene he appeared in.

And then there are the animals.  They DO make everything so much more likable, really.  Grendel is characteristically grumpy and loving at the same time.  Thoreau is just a bundle of cute.  And then there's the addition of Ebbie, who just seems like an adorable fur ball with psychic energy.  The one-eyed hamster, Odysseus doesn't make much of an appearance.

And with the exception of Marisol, neither do a lot of our usual characters.  I found Dovie's passive aggressive hinting at how Lucy and Sean need to have a great grandchild for her kind of cute, even if unnecessarily intrusive--but since she's a grandmotherly age, I forgive her, because that's something you expect of someone like Dovie anyway.

But everyone else from Lucy's father, to her Diviner Whiner group, to Preston Bailey, and even Sean were getting on my nerves.  I never saw enough of Sam Donahue, Sean's brother, to know his personality, but his evasiveness wasn't as annoying, for some reason.

Even though Lucy's father only appears for a brief moment at the beginning of the book, I felt like he was being unnecessarily mean.  While there was some logic behind his reasoning for evicting Sean, I just never remembered him to be a man who was childishly spiteful, just because Lucy wouldn't let him have his way.  And even after Lucy makes him see logic in why they needed to shut down their building for a while.  Then again, maybe I never got enough insight into his personality in previous books.

The Diviner Whiner group--dubbed as such by Preston because they are a bunch of psychics who keep complaining about everything during their sessions--were just frustrating.  They are purposefully mean-spirited to Lucy because they deem her unworthy of being a part of their little psychic class, no matter that Lucy is definitely psychic, even if in her own way.  I appreciated that Orlinda stood up for Lucy by telling them to back off; I wished Lucy had stood up for herself, as well, though.  Lucy seemed to have shrunken in her personality in this book, somehow, and I kept expecting her to snap back at the other three whenever they made personally insulting jibes at her.

But she didn't, and that bugged me.

Sean had been secretive about his past and what's been on his mind since the previous book.  It rolls on over into this fourth book, and while it wasn't a big deal because the two of them overcome that little obstacle eventually, it was still kind of frustrating.  And took up more book space than I thought necessary.

But the most frustrating person of all was Preston.  I had always found her presence annoying throughout the series, yet still tolerable.  She was that irritating younger sibling you had no choice but to endure.  And while I understood how Lucy could have started developing affection for the girl, I couldn't get myself to really like the nosy, busy-body reporter myself.

And in this particular book, she was just extremely, stubbornly, childish for so many reasons that I just wanted to jump into the book myself, slap some sense into her, and then drag her off to the hospital myself, or shove food down her throat.  I couldn't fathom why she was letting herself waste away like that even though so many people were worried about her.  And I also couldn't figure out why everyone was tip-toeing around her when it came to her physical health.

The secret reveal about why Preston was looking so sickly though... I didn't feel like it explained very well why she was also being stubborn and childish about her health.  She also continues to refuse telling anyone why she's acting the way she is, and keeps insisting that she's just fine.  It was like watching a teenager pull dramatic stunts using her own health as leverage just to gain attention.

I thought that, surely, there was something going on between her and Cutter; it was hinted at so many times.  Or I thought that there was some big, twisty reason why she was acting so stubborn.  But then the ending came around and I was honestly sorely disappointed that she had no other reasons for being childishly stubborn and almost killing herself of starvation, than that she was simply being childishly stubborn.  There was no real reason or explanation as to why she was acting the way she was.

Anyway...

Despite all the ranting above, I have to include a disclaimer here that I actually DID enjoy this book.  I mean, I rolled right through it.  The mysteries were serviceable.  The story itself is easy to get into.  The book could use a bit of editing as I found a lot of either typos or grammatical errors that couldn't be ignored.  (I noted that there's a mention that this book was self-published by Webber at a later date.)

But for the most part, Perfectly Matched was an entertaining, easy, and short novel to read.

Very Brief Short Story Thoughts: Definitely, Maybe

Definitely, Maybe

by Heather Webber
Lucy Valentine short story (#3.5)

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.0 Stars

It's a dark and stormy night when psychic Lucy Valentine shares with her best friends exactly how she acquired her supernatural abilities.

The content is exactly what the summary says.  Definitely, Maybe is a very short piece of work wherein Lucy tells a brief story about the night she lost her ability to see auras, then following, learned of her new supernatural skill.

To be honest, the girls are great together, and I just love that Lucy has two best friends who are supportive and wonderful.  Yay for positive female relationships in a book!!

Of course, this short story really felt like a teaser of sorts, or that maybe it could have been inserted somewhere within one of the other novels.  It was abrupt and gave us only a little bit more detail about what happened when Lucy was struck by lightning, thus changing her life and the nature of her psychic abilities.  I had already surmised as much since this particular piece of back story is mentioned in every installment.

And then, before you realize it, it's over and you're feeling a little lost.

So I had to dive into the next book immediately to fix that little hole.

Still, it was cute and enjoyable.

Brief Thoughts: Absolutely, Positively

Absolutely, Positively

by Heather Webber
Book 3 of Lucy Valentine

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  4.0 Stars

"Exposed" by a Boston Herald reporter, Lucy Valentine is suddenly the talk of the town.  Long back-story short: Even though the rest of her Valentine ancestors were blessed by Cupid with psychic abilities, Lucy's only special power lies in her ability to find things.  This skill has proven quite a blessing for those who come to her matchmaking agency in search of finding their long-lost loves.  Now that Lucy's secret is out, she has more new clients than she knows what to do with.  But soon a certain man of mystery steals Lucy's spotlight…

No, it's not Sean Donahue, the sexy fireman-turned-private-eye who's stolen Lucy's heart.  It's a masked man in a cowboy hat, dubbed "The Lone Ranger," who's been throwing handfuls of cash across the Common.  Now all of Beantown's abuzz.  Can Lucy unmask the mysterious money man, track down all her clients' old flames, and turn up the heat on her love life?  Absolutely, positively…

Absolutely, Positively is another great installment of the Lucy Valentine series by Heather Webber.  I continue to grow fond of these characters, and really appreciate the subtle development in the romance department as well.

Truth be told, I really don't know what to say about this book that I haven't already said about the previous two books.

Lucy is a great character, steady and lovable.  Sean's developments are a great new touch to the story--though I can't remember if his background was mentioned much in previous books.

While he was always the "Perfect Boyfriend" material since book one, I must admit, there's a bit of a new twist in his character that came across a little frustrating, specifically having to do with the romantic relationship between him and Lucy.  But I'm glad that, with each book in this series, the couple manages to work out their conflicts to continue moving towards a stronger relationship.

The rest of the characters are as wonderful as ever from Marisol to Em, to the parents, and Raphael.  Even the newest addition from the previous book, Cutter, is kind of cool even if he doesn't make much of an appearance.  I still find Preston a bit annoying, but I can kind of almost see how she's growing on Lucy.

Finally, there were, I think, three separate mysteries in this book that were actually quite pleasantly twisty-turny.  Two of the mysteries I kind of figured out as they came out pretty predictable, but were still planned really well.  The last little mystery--which, when you think about it, isn't much of a mystery--really didn't turn out the way I had thought it would; though to be honest, I liked how everything concluded.

The ending of this book felt a little awkward, though, so I don't know how to feel about that; almost rushed, like we were in a hurry to wrap things up.  But I blasted through the entire book in no time, so obviously I was entertained.

Thoughts: Deeply Desperately

Deeply, Desperately

by Heather Webber
Book 2 of Lucy Valentine

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  3.5 Stars

The irrepressible star of Truly, Madly is back in business.  This time, Lucy Valentine will go to the ends of the earth to find true love for her clients... and maybe even herself.

Lucy wants to breathe new life into her family's Boston-based matchmaking company.  But how?  Even though she comes from a long line of ancestors blessed by Cupid with psychic abilities, a freak accident left Lucy with only one special skill: finding things.  Car keys, socks in the dryer, needles in haystacks... and now, in a stroke of professional genius, lost loves!

It's not long before Lucy's on a winning streak, helping old flames reunite and create new sparks.  Business is booming.  But when Lucy finds herself involved in a possible case of murder, she realizes she's in too deep.  Enter Sean Donahue.  Lucy's handsome fire-fighter-turned private eye neighbor, Sean is just the man she needs to help her on the job.  Could he also be the man she's been looking for all along?  When it comes to Valentine, Inc., falling in love is always serious business...

This second installment of the Lucy Valentine series wasn't as great as the first book, but still extremely enjoyable.

A lot of things happen, and I think the book carries four different mysteries/story tangents.  Between that and the rushed ending, I think my enjoyment of the book in comparison with the first might have been influenced.  I'm not saying it was a bad book, because it wasn't--far from that.

The characters are great, the love line is sweet, and the separate mysteries were actually quite twisty and well-thought out.  There was a slight modicum of predictability, but overall, I think all the story lines were handled quite well.

I only had a few frustrated quibbles, which include Detective Aiden Holliday and the police force's incompetence in dealing with the case of the missing woman.  I get that the final case-breaking point was truly thanks to Lucy's psychic radar.  What I don't understand was how Lucy was the only person who saw the single, most biggest time discrepancy of evidence used against the missing woman's husband, which could have gone a long way to help prove that he wasn't abusive towards his wife or children.  It's something that could have been either proved or disproved easily if someone had bothered to do the investigation properly.

Instead, Lucy figures it out from a sheet of paper that manages to float out of the case file folder.

I was also a little taken aback by the appearance of a potential K-drama trope: that of the "my ex-girlfriend is sick and therefore I need to be by her side" persuasion.  This situation is one I'm familiar with, having seen it in many various Hong Kong dramas and Korean dramas.  It's so widely used to create romantic angst that if not done properly could potentially become a little comical or frustrating--done correctly, it DOES create the desired effect.  At this point, I'm still a little bit conflicted as to how I feel about seeing this plot device used, yet at the same time, I can see the reason behind it's use and how the desired effect on a few different levels was achieved.

Still...

My next complaint is about the reporter, Preston Bailey.  I kind of get the whole "annoying like a sibling" relationship she's developing with Lucy, but at the same time, I'm sorry to say that Preston had more than enough moments where she was just plain annoying, rather than endearingly sibling-like annoying.  I have siblings--I know the difference.

Finally, on the romance front, things are steaming up for Lucy and Sean.  And to be honest, the intimacy level was a bit more detailed than I had expected from a cozy mystery, but not to the point of blushing or fanning myself.  So rest assured if you're not one to prefer more sensually detailed sexy times--everything is still fairly closed-door with some exceptions.

Sexy times aside, the love line is really just plain sweetness and hot chemistry.  Due to reasons, Sean and Lucy had less interaction in this book than the previous, so the relative quick pacing of their romantic progress was only a little surprising.  Despite loving my immediate results, being a romance fan and all, I was actually expecting more of a slow, slow burn over the course of the series as opposed to what we got in Lucy Valentine.  But I'm not really complaining.

Not really.

All-in-all, Deeply Desperately had a whole lot of story going on crammed into a surprisingly short length for all the story it had.  At the same time, however, I still really liked it, continue to like the characters, and am looking forward to the next book.


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2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge

Thoughts: Truly, Madly

Truly, Madly

by Heather Webber
Book 1 of Lucy Valentine

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  4.0 Stars

Lucy Valentine is as smart as can be, as single as you can get, and so not qualified to run a matchmaking service.  But when her parents temporarily step down from the family business, Valentine, Inc., it’s Lucy’s turn to step up and help out—in the name of love.

Plus, her rent is due.

Here’s the problem: Lucy doesn’t have the knack for matchmaking.  According to family legend, every Valentine has been blessed by Cupid with the ability to read “auras” and pair up perfect couples.  But not Lucy.  Her skills were zapped away years ago in an electrical surge, and now all she can do is find lost objects.  What good is that in the matchmaking world?  You’d be surprised.  In a city like Boston, everyone’s looking for something.  So when Lucy locates a missing wedding ring—on a dead body—she asks the sexy private eye who lives upstairs to help her solve the perfect crime.  And who knows?  Maybe she’ll find the perfect love while she’s at it...

Truly, Madly is an extremely enjoyable start to a cute cozy mystery series.  I loved all the characters, and while I typically don't have any good feelings about the male love interests, Sean Donahue actually turned out quite charming.  Lucy Valentine is an interesting character with an interesting psychic ability, and while I thought the way in which her secret was revealed to the world was a little too comical for my liking, I like the direction the entire series is taking.

Lucy is a great main character to follow and I enjoy her resourcefulness and her determination.  I also feel I like her reasons behind why she would readily take over her father's business even without the requisite aura-seeing abilities.  I like seeing the more vulnerable side of her she shows, admitting how she really feels about not having those aura-seeing abilities, and instead has a psychic ability that can only find inanimate objects belonging to people who are actually thinking about said inanimate object.

This shows in those moments when she truly feels her abilities are useless to help find the lost little boy because she cannot find actual living beings.

Anyway...

Lucy's parents were just strange, and I might have some issue with how they kind of just skip town.   The other characters introduced also have a lot of potential for great things in future installments: Lucy's two best friends, Marisol and Emerson; Detective Aiden Holliday; Butch, the not quite butcher who looks like Matt Damon; Dovie, Lucy's paternal grandmother; Raphael, the driver; and many, many more.  I like a good series with a lot of great characters to play off of!

I'd love to see more of all of these characters, because they were quite glossed over.  You get to meet them, but you don't really get to know them yet, and I'd love to get to know all of these characters.

And there were animals!  I love a good story with lots of animals, and there are three: Odysseus, the one eye'd hamster; Grendel, the three-legged cat; and Thoreau, the tiny three-pound Yorkie.  The use of literary figures to name their pets felt a little pretentious, but I'll ignore that, because who am I to question what you name your pets, right?   But Lucy's penchant for doing difficult math problems when she's nervous felt a little awkward, if only because I'd probably only stress myself out trying to figure out long division. Because I don't like math.

The murder mystery was serviceable, if a little predictable. So I'm not complaining.  In fact, I liked the side tangent of Lucy finding the Little Boy Lost more than I liked the murder mystery.

I will definitely be reading more from this series and maybe even more from this author as well.


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2016 Reading Challenges:
• Goodreads Reading Challenge
• BookLikes Reading Challenge
• Bookish Resolutions Challenge
• 2016 Halloween Bingo