Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: Good Girls Do
Author: Cathie Linz
Publisher: Berkley Sensation Romance
ISBN: 0-425-20848-6
Release Date: January 2006
Genre/Sub-genre: Contemporary Romance
Year/Setting: Current/Serenity Falls, PA
Overall rating: 4.8
Sexual content rating: Sexual
Language (profanity) content rating: Mild
Cathie's Website:
www.cathielinz.com
Serenity Falls…doesn’t the name just give you a warm feeling all over? Quaint town with Victorian homes and nice people? This feeling is exactly why Julia Wright moved there three years prior. She was looking for peace and quiet and … well … serenity. Everything about her craves this peace – all the way down to the career she has chosen. What could be more stable than a librarian? Sedate clothing, hair up, cozy little bungalow – the picture was now complete.
Until the Fall Fun Festival that is. Pressure is increasing at work because the mayor is trying desperately to get listed on the Top 10 Small Towns in America, her mother and sister show up in town with llamas in tow (which are put to graze in her perfect backyard), and Luke Maguire, the town bad boy, returns to Serenity Falls on a Harley and boy, oh boy, does he like the looks of her (and to be honest she is drawn to him as well).
The world is now transpiring to ruin her perfect little life with all of these people’s outside forces raining down on her. Just as she makes one note to self to keep things calm one of them shakes her up again. But no one more than Luke. Luke just does not fit the picture especially when his kisses make her totally forget the fact she is standing on Main Street in full view of the nice people she moved here for. This just does not fit the mold for the prim librarian. But is it time for a change?
I loved how Cathie Linz illustrated how we can get caught up with our "putting life in a box". I know I had preconceived ideas when I was younger of how things would be in my life and as I have gotten older those things haven’t transpired (notice I didn’t give my age away 
). Sometimes the best things in life are the least expected things which, make us throw away the entire box we created.
Good Girls Do magnifies being who you are not who you think you should be. I enjoyed how even the secondary characters show this view. Julia’s mother, for example, has always been a free spirit – studying auras, wearing free flowing clothes and taking strange jobs through the years. Now though she sees her daughter struggling and is determined to become the mother she thinks Julia needs. She starts wearing khakis and white shirts and gets a "real" job. However, this slowly kills her spirit. It isn’t until she comes to some realizations with this process that she and Julia move forward in a relationship.
Cathie uses various emotions through the course of the book to carry the reader along with the characters. She interlaces humor with a few tears, superlatives with the serious, and in the midst of all of these emotions is the love each of the characters has for the other.
Maybe the purpose of Serenity Falls isn’t to be serene all of the time but to help each person living there find their own brand of serenity.
Lori
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