Truly, Madly ~ a review

Lucy Valentine comes from a long line of matchmakers who have been aided in the endeavor by being able to read peoples' auras. Unfortunately, while the Valentine's are uncannily accurate when it comes to pairing others, they seem unable to find true and lasting love themselves. 

Heather Webber's Truly, Madly was a fun, easy-to-read romantic mystery with delightful flashes of humor. I thought it was very well-written in a style that was breezy but not annoyingly so. It was written in the first person, which often puts me off, but Heather Webber managed to pull it off. Lucy is a likeable heroine with a couple of major issues: one is that she feels as if she's not really good for anything & doesn't quite belong, and the second is a giant fear of commitment. Lucy's paranormal talent was zapped when she was 14 years old, and now all she seems able to do is find lost objects, not much help when she's forced by circumstances to take over the family business.

She shares the story with a cast of supporting characters that include Sean ~ a hunky but not particularly well-developed P.I./love-interest, Dovie ~ Lucy's ditzy but hip grandmother who, in her desperation to become a great-grandmother, is both adorable and terrifying by turns, a couple of loyal best friends, a pushy reporter, a really creepily psychotic yet tormented villain, and, my personal favorites, two rescue animals ~ one a three-legged, neurotically needy cat named Grendel and a one-eyed hamster named Odysseus. Along with Sean's puppy Thoreau, the furry threesome promises to provide lots of comic relief as the series continues.

I thought the solutions to the various mysteries were pretty cool, but I wasn't thrilled with what I thought was a rather abrupt ending. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

Truly, Madly is due in stores in February 2010. I won an ARC through LibraryThing.com's Early Review program.