OMG. I can't believe I actually wasted my time finishing this book.
The set-up for this book had potential, and that may explain why I wasted the time to finish it. It opens with Carl Hades, P.I. and former cop, on the phone with his father. Carl is eating gummy worms, and his dad is beating him up for the fact that Carl hasn't dated anyone in a year. Not since Amy . . . The cheerful bawdiness (his dad tells him that going without sex isn't good for the prostate, and "waxing your own candle" doesn't count) was fun, but it quickly devolved into a gross level of detail that I didn't care for. Carl then gets a call from Tabitha, a wedding planner who fears her brides are being murdered . . . but won't give him details over the phone. They set up a meeting later in the day.
When he arrives for the meeting, he finds Tabitha dead. A bride is in the house, hiding from the killer. When Carl goes into the room with the bride, the killer locks the door behind them. (Side note: I understand its importance to the plot, but who has steel interior doors inside the house? Also, why didn't either of them think of breaking through the drywall? Interior walls are not that strong . . .) He and the bride spend 12 hours or so (and 60+ pages!!!) stuck in the room together, and they develop the hots for one another.
When his dad (!) finally arrives to rescue them, the story goes downhill. Katie (the bride) winds up dumping her fiance--but that's OK, because he has a crush on her maid of honor, a woman he just met. And will hook up with.
Katie and Carl spend the rest of the book dancing around each other, with just a few sexual encounters. They're drawn to one another, but she wants a traditional family life, and he wants . . . well, he wants someone to screw. *yawn* By the end of the book, they seem to have met somewhere in the middle, with him taking the time to watch The Brady Bunch on DVD as evidence that he's willing to settle down, and she realizes that she doesn't want more from him than what he's willing to give.
Oh, and there's a serial killer after Katie. He kills brides. (Tabitha was right, btw.) But he's not important to the plot. Except for the occasional boring sequence from his point of view, and the necessity of forcing Katie to live with Carl's dad (she's not safe at home, and she and Carl had a fight), the serial killer is unimportant. No one is all that afraid of him. They're all too hung up fantasizing about having sex. The killer is disposed of in a two page sequence. In a book that spends 60+ pages with a couple stuck in a room together, you'd think that the climactic confrontation at the end would take up a little more time. But you'd be wrong. It seems more like Craig reached her word count and said, "let's wrap this puppy up!"
I wish I could have the day that I spent reading this book returned to me. However, at least I didn't spend money on it. It was a free download for nook owners, and rather than encouraging me to buy more books by Craig, it's scared me away. Thanks for the warning, Barnes & Noble.