Risky Games (Zebra Contemporary Romance)I’ve enjoyed two of Ms. Bicos’s roman­tic sus­pense nov­els and Risky Games is one of them. Just in case your curi­ous, Per­fect Tim­ing is the other. Review to come later.

I’d always been curi­ous about Ms. Bicos’ other books like Wrapped in Wishes, a para­nor­mal romance that has received good feed­back from other read­ers. How­ever, I struck gold with her roman­tic sus­pense nov­els, one of which I am going to intro­duce to you now. Here is the back blurb: 

With her career destroyed, McCall became an ace black­jack player.  Casino man­ager Jake Dono­van is attracted and finds him­self involved in love and dan­ger as some­one tries to stop McCall from dis­cov­er­ing why her career was ruined. 

Jake Dono­van is a casino man­ager in New Orleans. He has the unfor­tu­nate rep­u­ta­tion for sav­ing “damsel’s in dis­tress” or as he labels it: the Dono­van curse. McCall first gets his atten­tion when she is play­ing black­jack in his casino and is win­ning every hand. Jake watches her on the secu­rity cam­era and is intrigued and attracted to her despite the fact that he knows he has to throw her out of his casino. He does offer her a ride home to ease the blow. Thus, this starts their dance around each other.

McCall Sayer is a bril­liant sci­en­tist: she has cracked the for­mula for sex­ual attrac­tion that has the poten­tial to earn her big money.  How­ever, she has a ongo­ing feud going on with her father and sis­ter. She hasn’t spo­ken with either of them for quite some­time because of a third party that has under­mined McCall’s work which was later discredited.  Her father believed her work to be fraud­u­lent despite McCall’s pleas of inno­cence and want’s noth­ing to do with her. Thus, her career is ruined with no one to help her. Meanwhile,  McCall and Jake get to know each other. Their attrac­tion and chem­istry is very nice. The con­flicts that evolve  come nat­u­rally within the story and are resolved in a rea­son­able man­ner. Jake takes a more involved inter­est in McCall’s past and this unearthes all types of prob­lems  for them that puts them both in the line of danger.

This is one of the bet­ter roman­tic sus­pense nov­els out there, writ­ten in 1997. This book is what I would term “smart and sexy.”  It’s not too tax­ing or too com­plex. Just smart. I loved Jake and his vul­ner­a­bil­ity. He’s a sweet­heart. He’s twice divorced with one child that he shares cus­tody with his, ex-wife #2. Ex-wife #2 isn’t vil­lian­ized too badly. She left Jake think­ing the pas­ture was greener on the other side and finds her­self want­ing to con­ceive another child and can’t. There’s a scene between the two of them that I’ve book­marked and reread often. It’s a heated exchange in a park. Curious? Read the book. Anyway, there are actually, quite a few scenes in the book that I’ve book­marked. Yes, this is a really good book. Alas, there is no uni­ver­sal appeal in every­thing. Some read­ers might find this book bor­ing or lack­ing some­thing. So, if this book doesn’t sound like your taste then it prob­a­bly won’t be to your liking.

Risky Games is a buried trea­sure read. A book that would sat­isfy on many lev­els for read­ers who want a smart and sexy read. The author has a great ear for dia­logue. The chem­istry between the leads was hot. Char­ac­ters were well fleshed out. I’ve reread this book many times over and still highly rec­om­mend it. Ms. Bicos still writes roman­tic sus­pense nov­els for Mira but I’ve yet to have any luck with any of those. I hope she con­tin­ues to write and I’ll keep a look out for her new releases. Any­way, next time your in the used book­store, look up Risky Games. You won’t be dis­ap­pointed. And if you are dis­ap­pointed, uh, keep it to your­self. My grade, A.