Lady Incog­nito (1987) by Court­ney Ryan was apart of a now defunct imprint called Sec­ond Chance At Love where sto­ries focused on well, sec­ond chances.

Linda Mow­ery, one of many review­ers with The Romance Reader was my read­ing twin. Almost every­thing she reviewed, I bought, read and enjoyed. She had rarely steered me wrong.

We cor­re­sponded by email sev­eral times and I for­get what made me ask her for rec­om­men­da­tions but she gave me rec’s for titles that were at that time, dif­fi­cult to find from the SCAL line for author’s Jeanne Grant, a pen name for Jen­nifer Greene who still writes today and Court­ney Ryan.

Lady Incog­nito, SCAL#303 is a title Linda rec­om­mended to me and need­less to say, 21 years after it was first pub­lished, it still reads pretty well. I also like this author’s voice and this is my sec­ond foray into her backlist.

Those read­ers who enjoy sto­ries that fea­ture librar­i­ans — well, here’s one for you. Alex Duffy is a 27 year old woman who has had a inter­est­ing life. She started out as an actress, play­ing a “bitch on wheels” on a soap opera for six years that won her three Emmy Awards. Then she up and threw in the towel. Her char­ac­ter was so con­vinc­ing on screen that peo­ple on the street often mis­take her for the bitch she plays on TV.

The attack in her hotel room one fate­ful night made Alex leave Hol­ly­wood to dis­ap­pear into obscu­rity in a small town in Ari­zona. She’d mar­ried and divorced her agent, decided to put her library sci­ence degree to use and took up the job of being the local librarian.

Attend­ing a best friend’s wed­ding in Las Vegas in dis­guise, she meets up with Chad Delaney, a hand­some, rest­less young bach­e­lor look­ing for adven­ture and love.

Here’s some info on Chad: he comes from a fam­ily of money but runs a mod­estly suc­cess­ful con­struc­tion com­pany. Chad is a guy who gets bored easy. He’s always look­ing for some­thing dif­fer­ent and new. He spots Alex while she is “incog­nito” at a casino where she ends up win­ning $10, 000 from the slot machine. But in order to avoid being noticed, she leaves the money with Chad. They man­age to bump into each other again and by cir­cum­stance, this leads them to a brief road romance.

While the romance is nice, I am not one to enjoy the mushy stuff for long. I skimmed over all the repet­i­tive “she melted, his hands trem­bled, her heart tripped over” sentences/paragraphs.

Over­all, for a straight up con­tem­po­rary romance that is 21 years old, this was a fun read. Chad is the pur­suer in here and I tend to enjoy those types of romances. Oh, there is a bit of a sus­pense thread where a per­son from Alex’s past seems to be stalk­ing her. Then there is usual con­flict in the form of Alex’s want­ing to retain her inde­pen­dence and the even­tual intervention/advice from friends and fam­ily to help her see the light. This was my first romance in quite some­time. It was not a per­fect read but it was an enter­tain­ing one. B-.