This book came to me on an author recommendation from a friend; as we browsed the romance section in Barnes and Noble, she started gushing to me about Quick’s characters and plotting. As we wandered from the romance over to the discount books, I picked up ‘Til Death Do Us Part, read the blurb, and waggled it at my friend, not even noting the author name.

“This sounds good.”

“That’s who I was talking about!” exclaimed she. “Amanda Quick!”

Oh. Maybe it was time for me to give this author a go.

And you know what, even though this may be the first romantic suspense I have ever read, I really enjoyed it! I’m quickly learning that I enjoy romance with a dominant subplot, which this book certainly has. The MC, Calista, finds herself terrified by a morbid stalker, who keeps leaving her memento mori trinkets—a tear-catcher, a jet-and-crystal ring, etc. She enlists the help of a writer of serialized detective fiction to help her identify her stalker… And, of course, they end up falling in love.

The plotting keeps you guessing, and the characters are well fleshed-out. I won’t say the prose is gorgeous, but it serves its purpose admirably, getting out of the way of the plot. As a writer, that’s a quality I truly appreciate, since I’m constantly reading books where sentence structure and word choice snag my inner editor, pulling me out of the narrative.

And the romance itself was very sweet, more about the falling-in-love aspect than the sexual aspect. I’m coming to recognize that my personal taste in romance is for less sex and more inter-character relationship building, and this book was perfect for me in that regard. As the book ended, I didn’t exactly long for it to go on, but rather wished for more of a similar thing… Which means that I will surely be picking up more of Quick’s other books!