Deeply, Desperately: A Lucy Valentine Novel, by Heather Webber

Lucy Juliet Valentine.  With a name like that, you know love must be what she is all about!  Lucy works for Valentine Inc, her family's matchmaking company.  The secret to the company's success is that all the Valentines can see people's auras, and match people up with others whose aura is the same color.  However, as a teenager, Lucy received an electrical jolt that sapped her of her ability to see auras, but gave her psychic ability to find lost objects.  She has since converted this into the ability to find Lost Loves.  She also used her talent to help with missing persons cases.  The biggest downfall to being a Valentine is Cupid's Curse, which prevents all the Valentines from ever being able to find their true love, as they can not see the auras of any Valentine family members.  Despite this, Lucy feels herself attracted to Sean,a  fellow Lost Love investigator, and struggles with how to handle it.  As Lucy follows up on a lost love, a missing person, and a family secret, she must decide whether or not to tempt fate, or Cupid.

This is the second book starring Lucy Valentine.  I had not read the first book, and was worried I would be missing some of the back story, but not to fear.  This is a fantastic little stand alone romance book.  With a name like Lucy Valentine, a psychic Lost Love locator, I wanted to dislike this book for being too cute, but I just could not, because it was more than just cute.  The book includes lots of sweetly cute elements, but the plot is actually pretty complex, with a lot of surprise twists.  The book was not difficult to read, I did it in a few hours, but I also did not want to put it down, which is unsual for a romance novel.

Some romance novels tend to be trite regurgitations of the same stale story lines.  Heather Webber does an outstanding job of creating fresh, new characters, as well as unusual plot, while maintaining the allure of romance for traditional romance lovers.  This is obviously a great book for dyed in the wool romance readers, but also a wonderful book for readers who, like me, tend to steer clear of the romance genre.  Let me assure you, this is no grocery store checkout dime romance novel.  This is a well written novel with good balance of romance, mystery, and humor.  The language is really quite clean, and the sex scenes are written to be sweet, not graphic (no throbbing love rods here) so this would be a safe summer read for mature teens as well.

The book is being released in August, and I strongly recommend that anyone looking for a little romance, or just a fun summer read, check it out.  This may be your last chance for a summer fling!

An Advanced Readers Copy of this book was provided for review courtesy of Romance Book Tours.  Follow the tour to see what other readers thought!