I borrowed this one from the library, hadn't got round to it yet, planning to renew it, and then the library messaged me saying I had to return it because it was in high demand and people were requesting it! So, despite being part way through another book, I had to read this one in one go before returning it!
Upon finishing, I have no idea why it would be in such high demand. It's terribly written. Really, terribly written! The story has Julia Ford washing up on a beach with no memory of how she got there. We know it's because she and her husband Joe were attacked on their boat, which resulted in Joe winding up dead, and the boat burning. Now, Joe's brother Sam Ford is in town, determined to know who killed his brother, despite evidence suggesting it was suicide. AND, Sam just happens to be Jules' first love, but she married his older brother when he abandoned her to take up with another woman when Jules' was busy caring for her dying mother.
Quite the stand-up guy, isn't he?
A LOT of time is taken up with pointless flashbacks to when Jules and Sam were teenagers, which I just skimmed. The brief info-dump told me all I needed to know about their past, and these flashbacks didn't do anything to diminish the fact that Sam was a selfish prick. And, by all accounts, still is! I just didn't like him at all. Even though he barely even SPOKE to Joe, he runs around town as if he's the only person with any personal investment in Joe's death. He was definitely a ME, ME, ME, ME, ME sort of person. As for Jules, she's about as bland as a romantic suspense heroine can get. She spends a majority of the book with amnesia and in a frustrated sook about it. It's fairly obvious the amnesia is only around to pad out the thin plot.
So why did someone want Joe dead? Something to do with bad investments. Bush doesn't go into enough detail for it to make any sense. She tries to spice things up with a pair of thrill-killers who have been hired to kill those involved with the bad investments...or something. To be honest, I got bored a lot of the time, and might have missed a couple of things. The bad grammar on display was definitely distracting, that was for sure! Did this thing have an editor? Thrown in a petulant pre-teen and lots of repetitiveness, and you have a fairly standard romantic suspense thriller! Certainly not as bad as anything Linda Howard or Sandra Brown might toss out, but largely average and uninteresting.