Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Published 2007
400 pages

Back Cover: Chicago quarterback Dean Robillard is the luckiest man in the world. But life in the glory lane has started to pale, and Dean has set off on a cross-country trip to figure out what's gone wrong. When he hits a lonly stretch of Colorado highway, he spies something that will shake up his gilded life in ways he can't imagine. A young woman...dressed in a beaver suit.
Blue Bailey is on a mission. As for the beaver suit she's wearing... Is it her fault that life keeps throwing her curve balls? Witness the expensive black sports car pulling up next to her on the highway and the Greek god stepping out of it.
They're soon heading for his summer home, where their already complicated lives and inconbenient attraction to each other will become entangled with a charismatic but aging rock star; a beautiful, fifty-two -old woman trying to make peace with her rock and roll past; an eleven -year-old who desperately needs a family; and a bitter old woman who hates them all.
Natural Born Charmer... for anyone who's ever thought about leaving their old life in the dust and never looking back. Susan Elizabeth Phillips takes us home again... and shows us where love truly lives.

Review: I have been wanting to read a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book since some of they lady's in a Shelfari group started raving about her. I must say that this must not have been the best one for me to start with. Had I not checked this out on audio I don't know that I would have finished this book. The first two chapters were really rough for me, not only was the story really bad but the the reader was awful. I hated the voices that she put to some of the side characters.
Fortunately the book and the reader did get better! I can at least rate this book at a 3. The relationship between Blue and Dean was just so-so. I hated the nickname "the Beave" that Dean insisted on calling Blue during the beginning of the book. Blue reminded me of a mix of Sandra Bullock characters in Two Week Notice and Miss Congeniality, you know the ones where she is a constant smart ass and not particularly smart or pretty person... the one you kind of feel sorry for but in the end you are certainly rooting for her. There are abandonment issues in both courts, but what Dean demanded of Blue to prove herself was selfish and mean.
It was just OK. Not a book that I recommend running out immediately to read this book. I will eventually read another SEP book, it just won't be anytime soon.