Out Of The Blue by JoAnn Ross

Lark Stewart is on the run from a singing career that skyrocketed out of control...and from someone who's bent on murder. When one of her band members is killed in New Orleans, Lucas McCloud--her first love and a former FBI agent--takes Lark home. But the remote Stewart family resort offers no protection from the madman who's working his way across the mountains.

A Desert Storm hero and FBI sniper, Lucas is haunted by a tragic mission in his past. But with the mysterious killer talking Lark, Lucas is forced back into the life he left behind. For Lark is the only woman he's ever loved, and the only person who can save his soul...provided he saves her first.


Here's my attempt at trying out previously unread authors on my part. My streak wasn't looking too good with my historicals that I found at the UBS. So why not try some contemp? I braved this one out even if it has become exceedingly difficult to look for contemps with heroes other than cops, FBI agents or former something-along-that-line.

The love story between Lark Stewart and Lucas McCloud was all about second chances and forgiveness--something I could really learn from. Years after Lucas left his childhood sweetheart, he came back to her rescue as a terror from her past haunted her once again. They found out that time had changed them both--Lark because of a bad marriage and Lucas because of a tragic point in his life as a sniper. But in spite of everything they had both gone through away from each other, they struggled to put things right in a present cast in the shadows of the past.

The main character, even the secondary ones, were well written. (I'm forever intrigued by Lark's Aunt Melanie.) The chemistry between the hero and the heroine was intense and at the same time, fun to read. But this was one of the books that was never obvious (in my view, at least) because the twist was really a twist and not something I'd guessed from the fourth chapter.

Although to each her own since I wasn't quite blown away by Miss Ross' style. But I liked it enough to be disappointed that this is part of a series (second in the Stewart Sisters trilogy) because now it made me wanna look for the other books--just so I'd know what the stories of Lark's sisters are. I guess it's the OC in me.

Final verdict: 6.5/10. Give this book a try and you just might like it.