Red Red Rose (Shades)

by Stephanie Hoffman McManus

[Eve1972]

Red Red Rose is Stephanie Hoffman McManus’ debut romantic-suspense novel and wow was I sucked into this one. I'm usually pretty good at sussing out who the baddie is, but man this one lead me on a merry chase. The plot flowed nicely and the characters were well written.

Although this is "romantic" there isn't any sexy times in it, which was a bit of a bummer. I also wish the epilogue (one week in the future) would have gave a few details on how one of the characters reacted to who the "baddie" was. It seemed like a loose end, but maybe we will hear more in subsequent books. I also wasn't overly crazy about the James situation. It rode the love triangle line a little too closely, and I didn't see the need for that angle to be part of the story at all.

Overall though I was really impressed with this one and look forward to reading more books in this series.