A brif summary of each of the stories offered (why Amazon doesn't provide one, I don't know):
Summer Lightning by Saski Walker: Sally Richards does sculptures and owns a business, buying and selling imports in Great Britain. While on a vacation at a secluded cove, she spies a local man, Julian, on the beach outside her cottage, getting, shall we say, closer to nature? Picture clothes coming off and he's not aware there's a peeper nearby. Later, Julian realizes someone is staying in what he thinks of as his cove and decides to check her out. What happens after leads into what I thought of as the second mildly decent story in the whole book. Not great by a long shot, but worth a read.
Aphrodite's Passion by Jess Michael's: Selena Kelsey lives in Victorian London, but flees to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus when her evil stepchildren want to have her institutionalized. Said children hire Gavin Fletcher to bring her back. Once he meets her though, can he fulfill his duties to them or will his need for Selena get in the way? You guess. Unfortunately, a boring storyline that did not pan out to be much good at all.
White Heat by Leigh Wyndfield: This story turned out to be half-way good. A bit more length, a bit more HEAT, more chance to expand on the story, and it could have been very good. Raine is hiding out on a remote ice planet from a serial killer that had killed her entire team. She's gotten revenge on him, but now he wants her blood too. At a nearby prison, a fire breaks out and soon Raine has an escaped convict, by the name of Walker, to contend with. On top of trying to stay alive, how will she be able to resist this handsome alluring stranger? The description of this story on the back cover is misleading. It says she is hiding out from Walker, but that's not true when you read the story. Walker is the hero of the story, not the bad guy.
Good Girl Gone Bad by Dominique Sinclair: This by far was the worst of the bunch. Reagan is the typical "good girl" stereotype: still a virgin (no, I'm not saying that's bad), she dresses too conservatively and she's too timid about trying to advance in her career, let alone advance into any kind of love affair (has anyone seen that ABC Family movie, Celeste in the City? She's kind of like that). While doing research for an article, she runs into an old love interest at the bookstore. When he sees the naughty reading she's picked up, he immidiately seduces her (so maybe a little of that timidness dissolves) - right there in public! You may be thinking, oh, my, what's wrong with that? It's in public, in open view! Ridiculous! If it had to be in public, why not at least in a semi-private closet with the danger of someone discovering them or some deliciously wicked dark corner? The first sexual experience (even though they didn't go all the way) should be more romantic than a dusty bookshelf in public as the setup. She just kind of falls in line with whatever he wants after that and never develops much of a backbone. Disappointing to say the least.
I wanted this volume of the Secrets Anthologies to be so much better than it actually was! I hear from so many people and read so may reviews that discredit a romance book for different reasons, ones I think are usually pretty harsh, but I have to face it: This book was awful. Only one of the stories in it interested me, a tiny bit. None of them inspired me to want to reread them. I have read all the other Secrets volumes, 1-11, and have been pretty happy with all of them. I was eagerly anticipating the release of volume 12. I should have saved my money. If you want to read a great Secrets anthology, try volumes 2, 7, 9 and 11. I'm not saying all the stories in these volumes are rock-solid good, but for the most part they are by far the better of the Secrets Anthologies.
