In the opening scene, our heroine Adelaide Frampton is at her wedding, which quickly turns into a riot between two very violent, rival gangs, one of which is run by her father. EB: So that irregular beat — our desire for that, and the frustrated attempt to find that — I wonder too if that’s related to the refrain I found in every section, almost verbatim — that a person is more than one thing, a person is many things. The lights dim, you exit the chamber you enter a new one, the lights rise, you’re with loyal, murderous Gena. She’s a senator’s daughter whose world has been rocked by news that devastates her and she finds solace in Chase’s arms.

Tom was a big, strapping man with a seventeen-and-a-half-inch neck left over from his glory days, but he was cursed with baby sensitive skin.

I don't want to dwell on it, but I just wanted to let y'all know I'm still alive (if very very distracted). He knew that if he left the confessional early, he'd catch hell from Monsignor, and after the hard day of manual labor he'd put in, he simply wasn't up to a lecture. The secondary characters were more fascinating, and hopefully we will see some of them in the coming books. I loved watching Adelaide and Clayborn fall for each other and seeing the Belles use their vast network of spies, disguises and explosives to help them along the way.

With the exception of some tech details, this book is as wonderful today as it was in 2000 when it was published. She’d already written one letter to the FBI requesting that they send a man to Holy Oaks to investigate, but her first letter must have gotten lost in the mail because a full eight days had passed and she still hadn’t heard a word from anyone.As Billy Jean and Debra Marie both say: “Why can’t a woman be more than one person in a lifetime, why can’t she be two or three? The story that ensues is a race against time to identify the killer and prevent him from killing Laurant. I started it thinking I wasn't going to like it, but I kept reading and found that I couldn't put it down! But despite those things, I enjoyed reading it and I am glad to find more Julie Garwood characters to follow. I’m one of those readers who still laments Garwood’s shift from Historical Romance to Romantic Suspense.

At that moment, she was clenching a glass of water so tightly that it shook and spilled all over the table.Adelaide is determined to rescue Helene before she can wed, but Clayborn wants to see them married because he believes they are in love. There were other infatuations, and when they disappointed me, I had to hurt them, but I didn't kill any of them. They both put their heads in their hands and their elbows on the table ready to learn the lesson of a lifetime. With a combination of Julie Garwood's singular romance writing and intense suspense, Heartbreaker is a very good book.