You've Got Male

OPUS #1

by Elizabeth Bevarly

Can you really find the perfect man online?

Avery Nesbitt thought she might have struck online-dating gold--Adrian was perfect onscreen. But as the adage goes, if something seems too good to be true.... Before Avery knows it, a flesh-and-blood man calling himself Dixon breaks in to her home. Apparently she's been under surveillance by his agency for some time, and now she's in deep, deep trouble.

Dixon has worked for OPUS for years, and he's wanted to get his hands on Adrian Padgett for most of them. He assumes that Avery is part of Adrian's criminal pursuits. But could she possibly be as innocent as she's claiming?

One thing's for sure--if Avery agrees to go undercover for OPUS, she and Dixon will be working in very close quarters....

Genres: Romance, Contemporary Romance, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Fiction, Romantic Suspense, Suspense

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2005

About the author

Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.

She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.

Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.

Reviews

[Melanie♥ · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF....I stopped at 25%
I felt nothing for either one of the main characters. The secret agency Dixon worked for sounded like something a ten year old would have made up. Sorry, no recs for this one.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. There are a lot of really bad reviews of this book. I rated it a 4 here, but if I had half stars, it would have gotten a 4.5. And, yes, as I have said before, my rating system is based completely on its readability and how much I've enjoyed something. So I'm not saying that this is on par with War and Peace or anything (although the fact that I have no interest whatsoever in reading Tolstoy definitely gives you a sense of my reading priorities), but I'm also not sure why it has so many bad reviews and very few good ones.

However, I have almost nothing bad to say about this book (provided you're interested in the romance category, of course; and if you're not, then I'm not sure why you'd be reading it in the first place). I liked Dixon and Avery a lot; and I liked Tanner and Carly almost as much. I liked the family dynamics and I was even sold on Avery's whole backstory. The only thing I didn't like was Dixon's partner (not Tanner, but the one Tanner's filling in for) who has her own book (#3 in OPUS) that I didn't enjoy nearly as much as this one. But that's a whole other story. (Literally.)

My only other issue (other than the title; not my favorite) was that the resolution just kind of didn't happen. And no one seemed overly concerned about that. I think that it may have been carried through to book three, which I may need to read again just to have it all make sense. Now that I know these characters, however, I'm o.k. with that.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heroine is a computer geek who once went to prison for a destructive virus she wrote and released to get revenge on a boyfriend who hurt her. Now she lives online--and in a fancy NYC apartment--and has just discovered her virtual lover is a cheat and wants revenge on him too. Not Revenge, revenge--just the virtual kind. But this cheating cyberguy happens to be an evil mastermind who's after something big, there's a government agency tracking him, and when she turns up on the radar, the hero (who works for the agency) is the one who tracks her down. Bevarly's voice is unique, and perfect for this lighthearted story, which I believe has recently been re-released. It's well worth reading--lots of fun and a good love story too.

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this book after only a few chapters. It seemed pointless. There was little flow to the story and the main character was just pathetic. I get that she was some cyber computer genius who didn't leave her house, but this makes for a very boring characterization. It felt like this book was going nowhere, so I didn't even bother skipping to read the end.

[Stacy Charlesbois · Rating 2 out of 5]

there comes a point when a literary genre doesn't evolve; for me this book is the point. Contrived plots, stilted dialogue, and control issues that all the characters have, made this book unbearable after a while. I finished it because I liked the author's earlier works, but I wouldn't recommend this title.

[Taki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT!!! I remember when I read it about 3 years ago it was so much fun, it was cute and funny and a little sexy and yeah :)

[Carly Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to agree with another reviewer's review - don't go by the blurb to decide whether or not to read this book, it really makes it sound dumb - and the story is anything but dumb. It's a pretty fast paced romance/suspense... though the sex scenes were along the lines of buildup then fade to black, which is not my preferred type of sex scene - give me a little more to enjoy.

Besides that there was one thing that made no sense to me in the story line:

The main character, Avery, has been estranged from her filthy rich family for 10 years, but because she's in danger she and the agents involved in the sting have to return to her family home to keep her safe while they try to lure out the bad guy. All well and good, except that her father then insists that she and the agents attend a huge party there. It just seems to me that if you're trying to hide her whereabouts you wouldn't then allow her to be seen by 100-plus people who just might mention that she was there. Especially since she's a bit of a black sheep and went to jail in a very public manner all those years ago and hey, it might be news that she's now back in her family's good graces - since anything to do with the filthy rich is usually news and this would be kinda juicy...

All in all this was a good read - characters you like and root for and a pretty decent story, though I don't think I'll be checking out the rest of the series.

[Veronica · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this less stars I would. Lets forget that the writing is confusing, jumping from one characters POV to another without distinction, or that the heroine is unbelievably ignorant to general internet safety. What not just bothered me but upset me to a point if almost tears is the way thay panic and anxiety disorder and agoraphobia are grossly misinterperted. The author obviously did not do proper reasearch on the topic, down to the definition and description of agoraphobia by both the heroine and hero. The way the disorder and phobia were depicted within the first part of the book are offensive. I am 37 years old and have lived literally my entire life with panic and anxiety and agoraphobia.
I really can not stress how angry this book made me. The stigmas accociated with mental are bad enough without ignorant people spreading crap for others to read and believe.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this book, and didn't want it to end. This is a contemporary romance but with a nice story line. I loved the characters and how the author told the story. I will be looking for more books in this series and for this author. Loved it!

[Brooke Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to get through this one, I think because the beginning of the book dragged a bit for me. The romance part of the story was a little predictable, but there was one pretty steamy scene.
Glad I stuck it out to the end.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is your basic cheesy romance. It was entertaining fluff mostly read while on vacation.

[Jernay Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not because it was bad but because it lacked substance in my opinion. I felt like we added the background environment and “characteristics” of the characters as a set-up to see them all have sex???

[Olwami Simelane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much smut✋🏽

[Louisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so much fun to read, I just love this set up and these characters and their romances!

[Naomi Gorzen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible book makes no sense and boring

[Kate Dirty Girls' Good Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avery is an agoraphobic computer whiz. She lives alone with her cat and does her best to never leave. She has, however, met Andrew on line. He is the perfect man. Or so Avery thinks.

In truth, Andrew is Adrian (aka the Sorcerer), an OPUS agent gone rogue. And he's only after Avery's mind (there's something you don't hear too often in a romance). When Avery was barely an adult, she accidentally released a computer virus that caused tons of issues (revenge plot against a bad boyfriend gone wrong). She ended up in prison for 2 years.

While Avery is unaware of Andrew's true identity, Dixon knows exactly who the Sorcerer is and what he's capable of. An OPUS agent himself, Dixon has been trying to figure out who Avery is and what the Sorcerer wants with her.

OPUS uses Avery to draw the Sorcerer out. Dixon remains as her side, and obviously the two grow closer. Avery is sure she's too messed up for anyone to love. Dixon can't figure out why he's so attracted to her.

I have to admit this is the first time I've run across a heroine who dresses in pajama pants and raggy sweatshirts through most of the book. While refreshing, it took a pat-down search for weapons for Dixon to become attracted to her. The single sex scene weirded me out a little. It started with an online conversation between the Sorcerer and Avery, but ended up with Dixon and Avery going at it. Throw in a relationship between Dixon's partner and Avery's sister and it was just too much.

Honestly, I struggled through the first quarter of the book. By page 100 it started to get a bit better (page 100 is the point I give myself permission to quit reading a bad book). By halfway through there was just too much extra stuff going on. I'm not saying it was terrible. I just wasn't for me. I almost wish I had quit at page 100.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a cute story.
I have to say Avery was pretty neurotic, no wonder she was socially anxious.
Dixion came off to me as a very serious bookish kind of guy, and the big secrecy about his 'Code Name' was a little funny, and the whole name thing with him and Guillespie was kind of weird. I found myself over thinking the plot, and I was wondering how both Avery and her sister were going to wind up with these two agents from OPUS.
Over all I did like this story, and I may just look up the next story~to which they gave us a sneak peek of, in the back of this book.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review will seem familiar because the same review will go for every book in this series, and that's not a bad thing. It was a fun and fast read. I would recommend to anyone who was looking for something that didn't require a lot of thought. It was cute and worth a beach read or a rainy day read to fill your time. I am giving it a two star even thought I would like to give it a two and half star because even though the book wasn't very deep it was still greatly entertaining.

[SoAmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked it up on a whim at Borders. The characters are over-the-top, the plot is corny, the sex is more explicit than I'd remembered from other straight-edged romance books, and I found the secondary characters (and their romance) more likable than the main characters. Still, it was reasonably entertaining -- and probably just what I needed on a lazy Sunday by the pool.

[Jaypee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Generally, I never hate romance books with chick-lit theme. How I adore reading the Shopaholic series and from time to time, I have immersed myself from the likes of Helen Fielding, Meg Cabot, etc. Now, I made an absolute exception. WHAT A WASTE OF TIME I HAD!!The book is full of plot holes, characterization as feverish as it could be, and oh... I will never say a thing..never..

[Shelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to give this one a 3.5. It is a fun, sweet romance but the thing that stopped me from giving it a 4 star rating is that it left me hanging on the big suspense of the story. I guess that, unlike many romance series, the stories in this series are all going to be connected by the hunt for Sorcerer.

[Izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny & quirky. Featured two pairings, which I wasn't keen on: I wanted the book to focus and explore on Avery and Dixon's relationship.

I was disappointed that the plot wasn't resolved. I suspected midway through the book that the villain would serve as a long running plot point, enabling the author to write a series.

[Kristen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty cheesy and very steamy at times. The writing leaves a bit to be desired. At times I wondered if anyone proofed it. Once I got into it though, I did want to see how it ended. Good book for a lazy day I guess.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book for free as part of a promotion and figured I'd give it a read since it was time to pick up something new. The plot was mildly interesting at times but the overall language and editing of the book was lacking; not that I was expecting much from the title.

[Toni N · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moved a little slowly. I started to get upset with the ending, until I realized this is the first book in a series. Nothing had given me that impression before reading it. I'll definitely read the next one to see where this story goes.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok. This one was a lot better then the first one. Still the two love story plots, but these people were actually truly connected. The use of 'gee' and 'gosh' and 'fanny' still a little off putting. Sarcasm kept at better levels.

[Maria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yeah, I wasted time on this one weekend... can't get back those three hours. Ever.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

2nd in the series after "Just Like A Man." cute book, but I just can't seem to get into the Bevarly's books as easily as other authors. This was probably the best of the series.

[Loralee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a cute fun read. The story was good, if a tad bit over the top at times, but I enjoyed the story. I'll be on the lookout for others in this series.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this book!! Quick read. Fast moving...