Compromising Positions, by Beverly Bird

I'd bought Compromising Positions, by Beverly Bird as soon as I'd read the very good review at All About Romance, but it wasn't until I saw it mentioned again in the latest ATBF column, that I was inspired to pick it up.

Beverly Bird delivers her own knockout punch in COMPROMISING POSITIONS (4.5), a suspenseful tale of a lady medical examiner whose controversial past puts both her and a dynamic district attorney in grave peril. Ms. Bird shows a wonderful dramatic flair as she mixes blazing excitement, hot passion and tender emotion into a love story you'll not soon forget.

Wow, I see what the reviewer at AAR meant when she said this one didn't really feel like a series book. It doesn't, it feels like a single title romantic suspense, albeit one focusing mostly on the character interactions, precisely the type I like best. My grade: a B+.

The book's strength lay exactly there, with the characters and their romance. Bird managed to perfectly flesh out both Josh and Angela, and they came alive to me. I liked both of them very much, Josh for his honor for not losing all his idealism in spite of being a pragmatic politician, and Angela for her courage in standing up to her fears.

If the characters were the best thing about the book, the negative part was the actual suspense subplot. It wasn't overly intrusive and I liked how it affected the characters and how they reacted to the situations it caused, but the villain's motivations were pretty weak, I'm afraid. It simply didn't really ring true to me that he'd do what he did. His actions felt like overkill.

Still, this was a pretty small niggle, and I enjoyed the book quite a bit.