Tangled up in You by Rachel Gibson

After a little digging, I found that this story revisits one of Gibson’s earlier novels’ settings: Truly, Idaho. So it’s sort of a sequel times two, since it is part of Gibson’s series, the last of which was I’m In No Mood For Love.

Maddie Dupree (or Jones, Dupree is her pen name) is a true crime writer in Truly, Idaho to write about the town’s most sordid event from 30 years ago. Though the town has moved on, Maddie hasn’t and feels she needs to exorcise some demons, since one of the victims of the infamous night was her mother.

Doing research Maddie runs into Mick Hennessy, the owner of the two watering holes in Truly, Mort’s and Hennessy’s. Hennessy’s also happens to be the scene of the crime, and Mick doesn’t want Maddie poking her nose where it doesn’t belong: his past. His parents were also involved in the sordid event that killed Maddie’s mother.

Mick and Maddie can’t deny their attraction, though neither is wanting any sort of commitment. Both feel because of their past (though for awhile Mick doesn’t know they share the same event that changed their lives) that marriage and commitment aren’t for them. Things change, however, when the lust turns to love and both begin to want more than they set out to have.

As a single girl, it was a little hard for me to sympathize with Maddie. But then I’m also younger and most likely less jaded than she is. Maddie has sworn off men, carbs, and sugar. The only way that she expresses her passions is her writing and her assortment of scented bath soaps and lotions. Which is fine enough, I suppose, but it was repeated several times in Maddie’s inner dialogue that she doesn’t understand men and she doesn’t like losing control of her life to a man.

It was good to see this type of woman fall hard for a man just like her. And Mick is definitely a winner in the hero category. Though a womanizer like his father (and apparently all his male predecessors) he doesn’t want to mess up his life by marrying the wrong woman, so he shuts off that part of his life and just has flings. But he cares about, and cares for, his nephew and his sister, who also live in town.

Maddie and Mick do have a good chemistry, but when Mick finds out who Maddie really is and her connection to his past, he has an overly male reaction that kind of pissed me off. Maddie does wait a bit too long to let the truth come out, but it just killed the chemistry between them when Mick kinda goes off the deep end. The reconciliation is alright, but not satisfying in the end.

There are some quirky secondary characters, including older townspeople who witnessed the tragic crime. Mick’s manager at Hennessy’s is an old army buddy who starts to go after his sister, Meg. Meg is a contradiction, because Mick is afraid that she’ll turn out like their mother (who seemed bi-polar to me), but she’s painted as overly emotional.

The fact that Maddie felt she had to keep who she was a secret was a little off, and Mick’s reaction when he found out took away from the story. The concentration on the past and what it did to these people was true to life, but not something I’d like to read in a romance novel all the time.

Grade: C