Perfect Timing by Olga Bicos

Your prob­a­bly ask­ing your­self why is this reader review­ing books writ­ten back in the 1990’s? Well, this big project I set for myself — to trim down my TBR moun­tain, stack, hill, closet, what­ever. As I was doing that, I came across some favorites and this is one of them. Per­fect Tim­ing by Olga Bicos earned an A when I first read it. I did a quick skim and found it still enjoy­able read.

Book descrip­tion:

Dear­est Cher­ish,
Some­one tried to kill me today.  Watch your back.
Con­tact Conor, he’ll know what to do.
P.S.  You should have picked me, lit­tle girl.…

They sur­vived a deadly air­plane crash.  Conor took the blame, Alec dis­ap­peared and Cherish’s life changed forever.

A year later, another crash and a mys­te­ri­ous mes­sage reunite Cher­ish with the two men from her past:  Alec, the man who loved her, and Conor, the lover she couldn’t for­get.  Together, they must stop a ter­ror­ist from killing again.  But as the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds, Cherish’s faith is put to the test… as she tries to decide if one of the men she trusts could be the real killer.…

Well, this author knows how to enter­tain, I’ll give her that much. I’ll admit the plot is some­what con­vo­luted but the romance is nice, the action is nice. The author has a great ear for dia­logue and the story is nicely writ­ten. This book won me over in large part because of the hero, Conor. Make of that what you will. This was yet another tightly writ­ten roman­tic sus­pense novel that is rarely found today. Ok, I’m cur­rently read­ing Karen Robard’s new one, Van­ished and so far, so good.

The prob­lem with roman­tic sus­pense today (as I see it) is that there rarely is a bal­ance between the romance and the sus­pense. Some­times the sus­pense is more inter­est­ing than the romance and vice versa. It’s a hybrid genre that is hard to write and exe­cute well. I admit to being very picky when it comes to enjoy­ing any­thing con­tem­po­rary as there is the plau­si­bil­ity fac­tor that likes to rear it’s ugly head once or twice. I wish I was that type of reader that can go along with just about every­thing but I can’t.

Any­way, Per­fect Tim­ing did have a sequel that I couldn’t even fin­ish. I think it was loosely con­nected but I’m not  sure and don’t even care at this point. I think I did donate it to my favorite used book­store. As Maili men­tioned in the com­ments, Bicos seemed to have been at her best in the early/late 90’s but now, it’s kinda become more misses than hits.