Lucky's Lady, by Tami Hoag

Lucky's Lady, by Tami Hoag used to be one of my favourite romance novels years ago. I hadn't reread it in some time, though.

As wild and mysterious as the Louisiana swamp he called home, Lucky Doucet was a dangerously attractive Cajun no woman could handle. His solitary life left no room for the likes of elegant Serena Sheridan, but Lucky couldn't deny her desperate need to find her missing grandfather. He would help her, but nothing
more--yet once he felt the lure of the flaxen-haired beauty, an adventurer like Lucky couldn't help playing with fire.

Serena felt unnerved, aroused, and excited by the ruggedly sensual renegade whose gaze burned her with its heat, but she did not dare tangle with a rebel whose intensity was overwhelming, who claimed his heart was off limits? Deeper and deeper they traveled into the steamy bayou, until with one electrifying kiss her resistance melted into liquid desire. And the devilish rogue found he'd do anything to make Serena Lucky's Lady.

Unfortunately, while it was good, it was nowhere near as wonderful as I remembered it. My grade now would be a B.

On the plus column: the hero, the romance and the ambience.

Lucky was yummy, a bad boy who had actually wanted to be a scientist before a tragedy in his past made him drop everything and join the military. He was also one tortured guy who didn't make everyone around him miserable because of it. He did irritate me at first with his immediate assumption that Serena was the same as her bitch of a sister, Shelby, but he was willing to keep his eyes open and accept he had been wrong.

He and Serena had some explosive chemistry together, and I thought the romance was nicely developed, with each of them attracted to the other in spite of themselves, and unable to resist. The love scenes were beyond steamy, and of the kind which are definitely not gratuitous and actually serve to show us more about the characters and their development.

The ambience of the swamp was really well done, too. Hoag succeeded in showing the beauty of it as well as the danger, and while I don't think I'd like to visit in real life, I enjoyed doing so in the book.

And now for the negatives. Serena was one of them. I wasn't too crazy about her, basically because she was a bit too willing to be manipulated by her relatives. I mean, it's fine to want your sister to love you, but she allowed her wishful thinking ("She's my sister, I'm sure she isn't that bad and that she actually does love me") to ignore facts. After what Shelby had done to her leaving her for days in the swamp, and the way she made fun of Serena's phobia about it, a smart person would have at least been a bit more careful about trusting her. I also didn't like Serena's grandfather's manipulations and the way she gave in to them.

And this brings me to my biggest problem with the book: the suspense subplot and the villains. Much too over-the-top, especially Shelby. She was eeeevil, tremendously immoral and selfish and stupid with it. I also thought the thingie about the chemical company was too unrealistic. It simply didn't ring true to me that a mere employee would be so fanatical about what amounted to buying a site for a new plant.

All in all, an entertaining read, but one which didn't completely satisfy.