Leigh Michaels, $1.49, ISBN 978-1458181428
Contemporary Romance, 2010

Leigh Michaels’s The Tattooed Lady is an unusual romance in the sense that Beth and Josh are married for three months when the story begins.

Well, all is not well in Beth’s mind because (a) her husband Josh seems pretty eager to go back to his firefighting gig, (b) he doesn’t ask her to join him on his daily runs, and (c) there’s a freaking newbie in the fire station that is all tall and womanly.

Is that tattooed lady the reason why her husband is so eager to spend long hours at the fire station?

I don’t know what to say about this one because while it’s short and easy to digest, I’m not sure what the author is trying to tell me here.

Beth seems to get paranoid very easily and she also gets reassured of her husband’s love for her just as easily. Perhaps the author wants to show me a cute glimpse of what a marriage could be like a few months past the wedding day, but a part of me wonders whether this story is also a prelude to a Lifetime woman-versus-psycho movie.

How do I know, hmm, that the husband isn’t actually a secret psycho, and he may just be biding his time to charm and later harm the heroine?

Sure, this story is alright, plus it’s only $1.49—although a part of me feels that it’s a little too short to be worth that much money—so I guess it’s an okay way to burn that amount of money on.

Then again, I’m pretty sure that there are longer and far more complete-feeling stories out there that one can get for, say, $0.99!