Lead Me On, Victoria Dahl

Lead Me On (Har­le­quin 2010) by Vic­to­ria Dahl is a con­tem­po­rary romance at 352 pages with a list price of $7.99 for paper­back. Lead Me On is the third book in the Tum­ble Creek series. The other two titles are Talk Me Down and Start Me Up.

I’ve been finally intro­duced to a Vic­to­ria Dahl con­tem­po­rary romance. The title is apro­pos. Sorry to say that the expe­ri­ence doesn’t leave me with want­ing to read more right away (but I will). While Lead Me On was an enjoy­able read for the most part, my over­all reac­tion to the story was less than enthu­si­as­tic. When I reached the end, I felt relieved.

The basic premise of this story is about a young woman who’s made some mis­takes in her youth and wants to bury it for­ever. She rein­vents her­self with a new name and a new life and is adamant that no one ever dis­cov­ers her past. She prefers that her fam­ily stay hid­den as well. But then the fam­ily needs her help. We watch as this care­fully built image and life she’s cre­ated for her­self begin to unravel and fall apart.

Jane Mor­gan used to be an out of con­trol teen. She grew up in a trailer park with a mother who cor­re­sponded with felons. Her mem­o­ries (albeit selec­tive) are com­posed of her mov­ing around a lot and vis­it­ing con­victs in prison. But she reached her bot­tom at age 16 and decided to straighten her­self out. So she changed her name, got a good job and moved into a condo.

She’s now an office man­ager work­ing for a suc­cess­ful archi­tect. Her per­sonal life is under­whelm­ing since she has very few friends and only allows her­self to date only the pro­fes­sional men that she finds safe and accept­able. But these men bore her. When the story starts she’s just bro­ken up with Greg Nunn, a dis­trict attor­ney who unfor­tu­nately, plays another role in the story along­side that of ex-boyfriend.

The con­flict in this story revolves around Jane insist­ing on hid­ing her past and her fam­ily. Both embar­rass her. She doesn’t want any­one to know that she was a skank. Or know­ing that most of her fam­ily mem­bers are jail birds. But her fam­ily comes call­ing when her lit­tle brother Jessie is arrested for steal­ing and is look­ing at six months in jail. So Jane sneaks home to help out.

Into her trou­bled life steps Billy Chase who only goes by Chase. He blows stuff up for a liv­ing. With his big body and tat­toos snaking up his neck, he asks Jane out for din­ner and she refuses because he’s not her type. Chase reminds her too much of the losers she went out with dur­ing the wild days of her youth.

Even though she files Chase into the “inap­pro­pri­ate” cat­e­gory, that doesn’t stop her from using him for mean­ing­less sex and throw­ing it in his face. She insults him fur­ther by assum­ing he’s not edu­cated or finan­cially sta­ble. Why Chase is will­ing to attach him­self to some­one this nar­row minded is anybody’s guess.

Both Chase and Jane have parental issues but Chase comes off more the adult than she. Jane is sim­ply too stuck up and judg­men­tal of her own damn fam­ily. And no, I didn’t believe the turn around she had at the end, where she real­izes that gee, I actu­ally had a real family.

Lead Me On was just okay to me. Admit­tedly, I was excited at first but that didn’t last long. What I got tired of was Jane’s end­less need to resist Chase because he now knows her secrets! Some con­flicts such as this one is not sus­tain­able to me. I thought it was rich that she got mad at him for keep­ing one minor secret com­pared to her block­busters ones.

Major­ity of the book has her recy­cling the please god don’t let them find out I was trailer trash, a skank, a slut mono­logue that had me frown­ing. It con­tin­ued with please don’t let any­body know my step-dad was an ex-con (even though he’s the only real father she had) or that my brother was in jail or that my mom dated con­victs and losers. Jane’s thoughts just annoyed the hell out of me.

Jane really didn’t deserve Chase. No, seri­ously, she didn’t. He was too patient while she fig­ured it all out. Bot­tom line is that Jane annoyed me roy­ally hence the C grade. Mov­ing past the char­ac­ters, the author’s voice/style of writ­ing is very engag­ing. She cer­tainly is an author who is tal­ented but if the heroine’s con­tinue to be any­thing like this one, I’m kinda hes­i­tant to continue.

Must men­tion that I ran across a cou­ple of bloop­ers (wrong name for one). The story did start off great but it lost a lot of steam for me when Jane kept act­ing like a snob and emo­tion­ally bar­ri­cad­ing her­self from Chase because of her past. C. I had a lot of adjec­tives for Jane when I fin­ished read­ing this story but I will refrain from using them here.

There were a few good scenes (hot sex) in here between Chase and Jane but it was under­mined by Jane’s low opin­ion of the hero. The pac­ing was okay until it got bogged down with Jane’s provoca­tive mus­ings. The story had a lit­tle sub­stance to it but still it’s a C. Yep, this was just AVERAGE.

For Fur­ther Reading

• The Plague, Joanne Dahme
• The Next Best Thing, Kris­tan Hig­gins [Guest Review]
• The Girl With the Dragon Tat­too, Stieg Lars­son [Mil­len­nium Trilogy]
• 2010 Reis­sues From Author, Jen­nifer Crusie
• Man­hunt­ing, Jen­nifer Crusie
• REVIEW: Play­boy Boss, Preg­nancy of Pas­sion by Kate Hardy (Senetra’s Review)
• Smooth Talk­ing Stranger, Lisa Kleypas
• REVIEW: ‘Lady Incog­nito’ by Court­ney Ryan (Series)
• Sarah’s Child by Linda Howard

Tagged as: 2010 Reads, C review, contemporary romance, secret past, self-identity issues, Victoria Dahl