Jane Heller, Some Nerve

Some Nerve

Jane Heller

Morrow, September 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 0060599278

Celebrity gossip columnist, make that writer; Ann Roth takes pride that her work is above the typical fluff of her peers. Her current assignment is to obtain an interview with reclusive but hot actor Malcolm Goddard. He offers her one chance of flying in his Cessna; but scared of flying, Ann refuses, which infuriates her boss, who fires her.

Stunned, she goes home depressed to Missouri to regain her equilibrium. Not long afterward, Malcolm checks into a Midwest hospital with a dangerous heart condition. Ann sees this as an opportunity to regain her position, so she becomes a volunteer at the hospital. She begins seeing Malcolm every day, but he does not recognize her as the cowardly reporter. As Anne finds herself reaching out to the patients, who some are on a lonely death row; she begins to fall in love with Malcolm. She knows she must reveal her vocation to him, but that means the story or the love.

Though interesting to follow the antics of a defrocked gossip columnist, neither the deceitful reporter or the supercilious actor come across initially as sympathetic characters; that begins to change when the patients open their eyes. Fans of Jane Heller will enjoy watching the cynical journalist and the arrogant actor metamorphose into nicer people while falling in love. The key being that the ambitious Ann would have chosen the article over the man, but as she changes readers will wonder whether she will select the story or the hunk.