Category romance veteran Banks (The Playboy & Plain Jane, etc.) debuts in the single title arena with a cute but strained romantic comedy. Wealthy Ivan Rassmussen offers his assistant, Katie Collins, $100,000 to find a blueblood husband for his unattractive daughter, Wilhemina. Katie accepts—a decision that pairs her with grim but gorgeous Michael Wingate, a security expert similarly roped into the project. The matchmaking has barely begun when Wilhemina runs away to Texas to catch herself a cowboy. As Michael and Katie pursue her, Katie reveals the beauty and sexuality under her plain-Jane image, while Michael shows his caring side. They're halfway in love by the time they find Wilhemina, but so is she. Now, all the three have to do is explain to Ivan the Terrible how his well-guarded daughter managed to get pregnant by a hog farmer. Banks's prose sparkles with energy and heart, but the book's sexy veneer fails to mask its oddly dated premise. In addition, a plot chock-full of clichés (from the tyrannical tycoon to an unlikely inheritance) makes it difficult to bond with the characters. Only when the story lets itself relax into a gentler realism—during interludes between Wilhemina and her goodhearted farmer, for example—does it strike a true vein of gold. (May)
Forecast:
Some Girls Do will likely be an impulse buy for romance and chick-lit aficionados. With its low cover price and bright, stylish cover—featuring a tube of red lipstick and a blurb from Janet Evanovich—this book is easy on the pocket as well as the eyes.
