cover image The Bride Wore White

The Bride Wore White

Amanda Quick. Berkley, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-593-33786-8

Quick’s seventh Burning Cove romance (after When She Dreams) will please series fans eager to return to the glamorous golden age of Hollywood setting, even if this episode doesn’t feel as fresh as earlier installments. Prudence Ryland has been making a reluctant living as psychic dream consultant Madame Ariadne, a job she inherited from her grandmother, but after a client tries to kill her, she hightails it out of San Francisco to Los Angeles. Content to start anew as a librarian in the newly formed paranormal department of the local college, Prudence is forced on the run again after escaping a kidnapping attempt. Since she’s already acquainted with Luther Pell, who runs the local nightclub in the paranormal hub of Burning Cove, she turns to him for help. Luther connects her to the remarkably intuitive Jack Wingate, who’s intrigued by her close calls and wants to use her experiences to inform the book he’s writing on psychically interpreting crime scenes. Together, they hatch a plan to lure Prudence’s enemy into the open—and, of course, they fall in love. The series formula is familiar by now, but Quick remains a master of sparkling dialogue that builds believable chemistry between her leads. This is good fun. Agent: Steve Axelrod, Axelrod Agency. (May)