Crazy About Love 💕's Reviews > After the Night

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ five stars -

* new rating as of 8/2022

New upgraded rating because I just can’t stop thinking about this book! I think I loved it enough to add this to my “all time faves” shelf. I just read it for the first time about a month ago, and I’ve already reread it about twice now lol.

This book hits all my top scoring points:

. Childhood connection ✔️
. Enemies to lovers ✔️
. A Hero that’s manly, yet still sensitive in private - *swoon ✔️
. Storyline that spans over a long period of time - in this case, from our heroine’s childhood ✔️
. Enough action to keep me vested in our h’s best interests ✔️
. Intelligent fmc that has a successful career ✔️

This is one of the better books I’ve read in quite some time. I enjoyed myself, I loved the romance, and I loved the fact that it’s romantic suspense without it being graphically descriptive of the murder that’s happened as part of the plot line.

In short, this book has snuck up on me as a favorite. It’s quietly wormed its way into my little book-loving heart ♥️, and has taken up residence there in pride of place on my favorites shelf.

Highly recommend to anyone looking for an adult romantic read that enjoys a touch of suspense.

Five stars - the kind that shine brightly through the clouds ⛅️.

* original review to follow……….

Whew! I finally found a great read this month 😂 “finally!”, is all I can say 💁‍♀️.

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back in time, and nearly wholeheartedly enjoyed this book! The romance here was very sweet - childhood crush grows into love - I just eat that trope right up!

What a wonderful time capsule this book is! I really enjoyed that part of the story, which is humorous as it’s not meant to be that, as it was published as a modern romance. Given the fact that this was originally published back in 1995, there were so many actions that made me reminisce about life before smartphones. I just adored these parts of the story and jumped in my favorite chair with glee each time our heroine utilized items that are nearly extinct. For example: microfiche! Yes, microfiche. What a fun word we don’t get to use in everyday conversation anymore 🥲 makes me sniffle for the good old days.

I particularly enjoyed it when our heroine had to get directions to someone’s house and: went to a brick and mortar library, consulted a living, breathing human - aka the “librarian”, pulled out a map of the town - most likely a platt survey! Yes, an actual platt survey!, folded said map/platt survey back up to return, then had to drive by HER MEMORY to the destination! Yes, this is truly the actions that excited me. Millennials may fail to comprehend my glee with these actions taken by our heroine to suss out her destination, but I JUST LOVED IT!

Given the fact that this story was not meant to be taken as a time period romance 😂 and was written as a modern contemporary “thriller” romance, these aspects of the story were told merely to showcase our heroine’s sleuthing capabilities. This story by Howard is meant to be an action romance, after all, and most of the actions do stand up to the test of time, and did make my heart pound. I did fear for our heroine’s safety in moments of written suspenseful action! I did feel angst due to a perilous situation our Hero and heroine find ourselves in! I booed the villain!

Given the fact that Howard is an older, longtime writer who first began publishing in the 1980’s, I’m going to assume that I’ve most likely previously read novels by her at some point in my life, and am sure I’ll come across one at some point as I’ve decided that her writing style (romance suspenseful thrillers) are just what I need right now to get me out of my book slump.

Howard has a new fan and a new follow. Highly recommend to anyone who’s of a certain age that would love to be able to pull the word, “microfiche”, out of their hat again lol.

Four shining stars. I just loved this nostalgic, romantic stroll…