***eARC provided
by publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest and unscripted review.
Blurb for PERFECT TOUCH:
Sara Medina is a designer and art dealer from
San Francisco. She matches her clients’ desires with fine and folk art from the
world over—living up to her thriving business named Perfect Touch. She still
remembers her rural childhood of hard work and poverty on the family dairy
farm, but she keeps it firmly in the past as she searches out new artwork and
artists that are on the breaking edge of acclaim. After she experienced the
cultural riches San Francisco had to offer, she decided her life would be that
of an urban career woman rather than a working mom commuting from the suburbs.
With the intensive hours and travel required to grow her business to the next
level, she has no time or energy left for romantic or family entanglements.
Jay Vermillion recently inherited Vermillion
Sky, a ranch that nestles up to Wyoming’s Grand Teton Mountains—and the estates
of the rich and restless. As a returned veteran of numerous deployments over
the course of two wars, he finds himself wrestling with the demands of a ranch
that has been left to run down during his father’s long illness. Between the
urgent need to modernize and revitalize the Vermillion Sky, as well as an
unexpected and vicious fight with his former stepmother over the custody of
now-valuable paintings that were part of his father’s estate, Jay has no time
for finding a wife and creating a sixth generation of Vermillions to ensure the
family legacy continues.
When Jay hires Sara to appraise and market his
father’s cache of paintings by Harris ‘Custer’ Armstrong, neither one expects
the explosive results of their eventual meeting in Jackson, Wyoming. In
addition to a mutually inconvenient attraction, they discover a double murder
at the edge of the ranch lands and a potential betrayal even closer to home.
All trails lead to Custer’s artworks as valuable enough to kill for, especially
an unknown painted rumored to be called The Muse.
As Sara and Jay unravel the motive for the
killings, they both discover that love, like murder, doesn’t wait for a
convenient time. On the heels of that soul-shattering realization, Sara is
targeted for murder. Suddenly, the war-weary soldier finds something he is once
again willing to die for…
My Review:
Usually I
recap a little but between the blurb and the excerpt, you’ll get the gist…and
want to read this amazing story.
I love how Elizabeth Lowell always creates characters that capture our attention right from the start. Sara and Jay are two of a cast of characters that attract our attention from the first pages and keep our attention straight through to an action-packed, nail biting, edge of the seat finale that surprised me because I thought I knew who was the ‘bad guy’ and yet, I was caught off guard. Sign of a good suspense writer in my book.
I love how Elizabeth Lowell always creates characters that capture our attention right from the start. Sara and Jay are two of a cast of characters that attract our attention from the first pages and keep our attention straight through to an action-packed, nail biting, edge of the seat finale that surprised me because I thought I knew who was the ‘bad guy’ and yet, I was caught off guard. Sign of a good suspense writer in my book.
PERFECT
TOUCH is a romantic suspense, which could have been written at any place in
contemporary times. Other than some mentions of technology and Jay’s being
stationed in Afghanistan, the feel of this story could have been set at any
time in the 20th Century as well as in the past fifteen years. I
think it was one of the reasons I was so fascinated by it. A modern story, yet
with a feel of the old west with on the trail action. With murder, mayhem,
theft, helicopter attacks, a bit of PTSD, some steamy sex action, and a heroine
who can ride as well as any man and isn’t afraid to use a weapon, PERFECT TOUCH
by Elizabeth Lowell gave me everything I want in a romantic suspense and
more. I didn’t want it to end.
I highly
recommend PERFECT TOUCH by Elizabeth Lowell, just as I always recommend her
stories…it’s romance at its best with a thrill ride included.
Happy Reading Everyone!
Happy Reading Everyone!
Excerpt:
Even
as that irritated thought crossed her mind, she hesitated. The call could be
from Jay Vermilion, the man who had dozens of fine art paintings that could
kick her career up to the next level. Paintings with the potential to be so
valuable that they’d been the part of a hotly contested divorce settlement for
more than a decade.
Maybe, just maybe, she thought, one of those paintings is the fabled Muse,
the only portrait painted by Custer.
That
would explain why the legal battle had even outlived the original owner of the
paintings, JD Vermilion. JD had passed away several months ago, and his
much-younger ex-wife, Liza, was suing JD’s estate to gain access to the art her
former husband had begun collecting before she’d even been a teenager in
braces. With the passing of her ex, Liza had simply turned her lawyers loose on
the primary heir to JD Vermilion’s estate—his son, Jay.
Sara’s
mouth curved slightly as she continued walking. I’ve never met the infamous Liza Neumann, once Vermilion. But with
possession being nine-tenths of the law, I’d put money on Captain Jay Vermilion
keeping his ex-stepmother’s grasping hands off the undiscovered Armstrong
“Custer” Harris paintings in the future, as well.
The
retired army veteran who had recently inherited the family ranch—the fruit of
generations of his Vermilion ancestors—had a grit and determination to him that
came right through the phone line.
You haven’t even met the
man, Sara
reminded herself. She fished the cellular out of her tight front pocket at
last, glanced at it, and saw the call had gone to voicemail. She palmed the
phone and gave a mental shrug. It wasn’t a Wyoming number calling, which meant
it wasn’t the Sheriff.
Or Jay, damn it.
Think of the good
Captain like any other potential client who calls you during business hours to
get advice on Western art, she told herself firmly.
Impossible.
Jay
Vermilion might be a potential client, but he was also the man she had been
talking to half the nights for the past few months. At first, it had been all
business, but somehow the conversations had quickly evolved into … more.
I don’t know how I could
talk about myself and my work and my dreams like that with someone I’ve never
met. And he talked to me, too, about the ranch and weather and the Western
woman he hoped to find and marry and beget the seventh generation of
Vermilions.
We have such different
lives and goals, it’s surprising we had so much to talk about in the first
place.
About the Author:
Elizabeth
Lowell’s exciting novels of romantic suspense include New York Times
Bestsellers: DANGEROUS REFUGE, BEAUTIFUL SACRIFICE, DEATH ECHO, THE WRONG HOSTAGE, AMBER BEACH, JADE ISLAND, PEARL COVE, and MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU. She
has also written NY Times best-selling historical series set in the American West
and Medieval Britain. She has more than 80 titles published to date, with over
24 million copies of her books in print. She lives in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains with her husband, with whom she writes novels under a pseudonym. Her
favorite activity is exploring the Western United States to find the landscapes
that speak to her soul and inspire her writing.
Author
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