Luring A Lady by Nora Roberts

I don't know how your summer has been, but I seem to have misplaced mine. I had two leisurely weeks--one in North Carolina and one in Florida--and eleventy-seven stressful weeks. In those stressful weeks, I did manage to stage a house, pack up a household, purchase a new house, and master the art of freezer paper stencils. I did not, however, keep up on my habit of stalking the Amazon new releases list.

I usually know, week by week, when my favorite authors' books will be released. This summer, I've been clueless. It actually makes me queasy to consider the books that might have been released when I was looking.

What? It's a freely-admitted addiction.

So what's a girl to do when she's jonesing for books for eleventy-seven uninformed weeks? She re-reads one of her favorite, sigh-inducing Nora Roberts' romance from long, long ago.

I went old school with Sydney Hayward and Mikhail Stanislaski, the main characters from a time when Nora Roberts was still writing for Silhouette--those little skinny romances they used to sell in grocery stores. (Wait. Maybe they still do. I just remember the revolving rack in the Newman Grabbit. The Grabbit is no more, but perhaps the line of books is still around.) Amazon.com claims Luring a Lady was first released in 1991, but I think it's older than that. There's not much mention of computers in Luring a Lady (or any of the subsequent Stanislaski books), and the early '90s were pretty computer-intensive times. Therefore, there may be parts of this book that are a little dated, but I still slid into it like a comfortable pair of shoes.

Sydney and Mikhail have nothing in common. Honestly, Sydney and I have nothing in common. Owning two houses is not the equivalent of running a real estate empire in Manhattan. However, Sydney has a fragility and a goodness about her that makes me root for her every time. Mikhail, on the other hand, may have ruined me for all other fictional men. If I didn't like Sydney so much, I'd be fictionally jealous. Mikhail is a laborer and an artist, an immigrant living in Soho, so he's geographically and economically separated from Sydney. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that despite the differences, true love wins out in the end.

Luring a Lady has all the components of a standard romance. You won't find any surprises or twists. I recommend it based on the strength of the characters and my own nostalgia. I've read so many Nora Roberts' books at this point, I sometimes feels like I can predict the plot lines. When I first read Luring a Lady all the stories seemed fresh and new.

Oh, and Mikhail is hot. If you don't agree, perhaps you'll prefer his brother, Alex, or his brother-in-law, Zach. (The Stanislaskis are a tight family featured in six Nora Roberts' books.) So if you're in the mood for some old school, sigh-inducing romance, I recommend Luring a Lady.