Review: "Burn" by Linda Howard

I picked Linda Howard's new hardback Burn to read this weekend. It's about a lottery winner who is on a charity cruise and is coerced into cooperating with a mysterious (and, of course, gorgeous) man doing surveillance on a man in the stateroom next to her room. I liked the book except for the slow and choppy beginning. It starts out in present time, moves back 7 years to when the main character, Jenner, wins the lottery, and then moves forward to the time leading up to the cruise. Starting the book felt like coming into a movie half-way in. You're sort of lost and trying to figure out if you're even in the right place. Then, the chapters leading up to when Jenner wins the lottery seem sort of extraneous. I think it could all have been explained in a few pages and in a different manner that didn't slow down the pace.

However, once the cruise begins the pace picks up and remains pretty steady through the rest of the book. It was a little bit disconcerting at times to read about what was happening off the ship (I had to re-read character names to realize they were talking about characters on shore), but I guess there's no help for that since it's necessary to let the reader know what was happening with other characters. Overrall, though I enjoyed Howard's new book. It had the some of the same humor she used in To Die For and Mr. Perfect. And of course her heroine isn't anyone's door mat even if she's being held hostage. My take: