Truly, Madly by Heather Webber
Lucy Valentine Series #1
Fiction/Chick-Lit, Published 2010
ARC from LibraryThing Early Reviewers
Read Jan 10
4.5/5
From the Cover:
Lucy hails from a long line of matchmakers known as Valentine, Inc. According to family legend, the Valentines have been blessed by Cupid with the psychic ability to help couples find true love. Trouble is, Lucy’s powers were zapped away by an electrical surge and now all she can do is find lost objects. What good is that in the matchmaking world? You’d be surprised. In a big city like Boston, love is a mystery – and Lucy’s upstairs neighbor, Sean Donahue, is a hot private eye whose job is murder. With a little luck, she can help solve the perfect crime and find her own perfect match – with Sean.
Review:
Very enjoyable debut series by Heather Webber. After some googling, I found that she has another mystery series out called Nina Quinn as well as a few stand-alone romance novels. I love the premise of the Valentines being blessed by Cupid himself with generations of matchmakers in the family. Lucy’s father runs the business and he has the family ability, yet his only daughter does not as it was “zapped” out of her at age 14 during a storm while she was gabbing to her BFF. Lucy knows she has eternally let her father and the line of Valentines down by not being able to match-make couples. Besides being blessed with special abilities, the Valentines have been cursed by Cupid in their own lives.
While her parents go out of town to avoid her father’s latest mishaps in his own love life, he leaves Lucy in charge on the family business. He tells her she should have no problem and it’s only for 2 weeks, how much harm could she really cause?
Lucy can find lost objects by touching people’s hands. But there are strict conditions to her ability. They have to be thinking of that object and they have to be the one who lost it, unless it was a gift. This has led Lucy to avoid shaking people’s hands, but this is usually unavoidable in business. While meeting her first client during her father’s sabbatical, Lucy finds his lost object, but how does she explain to the police how she found it?
When I first picked up this book, I was a little hesitant thinking it was going to be like every other chick-lit and not be too entertaining but wanted to get through it since it was an ARC. Hopefully all the grammatical and spelling errors will be fixed in the official version. By the third chapter, I was hooked and just had to find out how Lucy was going to fully utilize her special abilities. With her sexy private investigator, Sean, in-tow, Lucy unravels a few of her clients’ mysteries as well as a missing child in town all while trying to keep Valentine, Inc. from going under while her father is away.
Truly, Madly is available February 2, 2010 and the sequel, Deeply, Desperately debuts in August 2010. Click here if you just can’t wait for the book to come out! The third Lucy book, Absolutely, Positively comes out Winter 2011. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Ms. Lucy Valentine! Click here for more information about the author.
Update: Love my autographed bookmark and bookplate! I hope I can find the first of her Nina Quinn series used somewhere. The first one is currently out of print, but the next four in the series seem to still be available.
Thank you, Emmegail, for the great review. I’m so glad you enjoyed the book.
Thanks for commenting Heather! I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more from you! I’m hoping I can find the first book in your Nina Quinn series at my local used bookstore. I have a thing about reading a series out of order.
Thanks also for the bookmark and bookplate! Best of luck!
Nice to see others have enjoyed this book as much as I did. I’m happy to say that grammatical errors were fixed in the final print run of the book. That’s one of my biggest peeves, something that really sticks out to me, and only remember seeing one error in the entire book. Thanks for visiting my blog!