French SilkFrench Silk by San­dra Brown is my choice for roman­tic sus­pense read of the month and it was a very good read at that. Brown is one of those authors who is hit or miss for me but in this novel, the sus­pense is just right, the char­ac­ters are well fleshed out and the chem­istry between the two pro­tag­o­nists is smok­ing hot.

Claire Lau­rent runs a suc­cess­ful lin­gerie shop called, French Silk, in New Orleans. Unfor­tu­nately it has earned the com­plete atten­tion of the local evan­ge­list, Jack­son Wilde, who has noth­ing but scathing remarks to make about her lin­gerie shop. This has caused ten­sion and bad pub­lic­ity for Claire’s busi­ness since his cam­paign is aimed at shut­ting her down. Then one day, the preacher is found mur­dered and while Jack Wilde may have had many ene­mies, the list dwin­dles down to Claire being at the top of the list of sus­pects who has a viable motive.

Dis­trict Attor­ney, Robert Cas­sidy takes on the case. The sparks fly when Cas­sidy and Claire meet for the first time in her lin­gerie shop. The chem­istry between them is so thick at times you could cut it with a knife. Claire seems to have an air­tight alibi but Cas­sidy, who wants to believe her because he’s attracted her, keeps find­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. The case even­tu­ally becomes a con­flict of inter­est that is briefly men­tioned because Cas­sidy is attracted to the sus­pect. There­fore objec­tiv­ity becomes a big prob­lem for solv­ing the case. How­ever, the case does get solved and there is a HEA.

The vil­lain of the story turned out to be a com­plete sur­prise and the romance between Cas­sidy and Claire was red hot. This is by far one of my favorite San­dra Brown nov­els next to her sus­pense nov­els that I loved: Cha­rade and Wit­ness. French Silk is a romance but there was one scene that might put read­ers off espe­cially   if your keen on your heroes to just sleep with the hero­ine (Cas­sidy out of frus­tra­tion sleeps with his neigh­bor). I found noth­ing out of place with that. It happens.

There is plenty of H/H inter­ac­tion here that made this novel a page-turner for me.  Also, the author does a great job with chem­istry; I think Brown is excel­lent with chem­istry. One of the best at writ­ing chem­istry. The story had plenty of atmos­phere and plenty of red her­rings lead­ing to the sus­pect that turned out to be a com­plete surprise.

H/H inter­ac­tion is the main draw for me to any novel no mat­ter what it is. How well the author cre­ates chem­istry between his/her two leads, the dia­logue and the story must all come together to cre­ate an unfor­get­table read. This book was a keeper for me as every­thing worked for me: the char­ac­ters, story. My grade: A-. If your new to San­dra Brown I strongly rec­om­mend start­ing with this novel since it rep­re­sents some of her best work.

Note: I have sev­eral more Brown titles sit­ting in my TBR pile like Best Kept Secrets, Another Dawn, Sun­set Embrace and Where There’s Smoke. I think I’ll tackle the lat­ter. Any feed­back on any of those titles are appreciated.

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