Isabel Murray

Workmen renovating Ray Underwood's bedroom find a dead body buried under the floorboards. Meanwhile Ray has two possible romantic interests, but one is the detective assigned to the case and the other is the guy his ex cheated on him with.

The premise of this mix of romcom and mystery sounded good but the execution really didn't live up to it. The com was limited to a couple of quite funny scenes around the half way mark, the rom was just rather boring smut, and the mystery was barely there, just shrugs all round and an I guess we'll never know.… (meer)

3.5 stars

Joe is a not-very-good-fisherman living in Cornwall. He lives by himself, but is friends with fishermen who have been doing it for generations. He is out walking with one of those friends when they come across a body on the beach. It very quickly turns out that the body is not dead...and not human. After escaping from the being, Joe and his friend resolve to never talk about it again. But they do, and when the being shows up again, and then again, and yet again, they name him Dave and come to realize that Dave is courting Joe. They can't really communicate, since Joe doesn't speak creature of the deep (they aren't sure what Dave is), and Dave can't speak human. However, Joe and Dave develop a relationship and feelings for each other in spite of the obstacles.
I know that Joe didn't really like Dave's sense of humour, but I did. Every time Dave did something that he thought was funny, I was right there, snickering along with him. I really appreciated that the author didn't have some magical fix for Dave and Joe speaking each other's languages. They basically had to learn to read each other to know what the other was thinking. And the ending, while not completely satisfying, was as true to life as it could be. I felt as though they would appreciate the time that they had with each other more and love more fiercely in their time together. And it was truly a compromise, with no one coming out as having a better deal.… (meer)