Truly Madly Manhattan by Nora Roberts

This was a great book that encompasses two wonderful novels: Local Hero & Dual Image. They are true romance novels, which I happen to be a huge sucker for.

Local Hero was about Hester Wallace, a shy single mom who was trying to make it on her own. She moves upstairs from Mitch Dempsey, a comic book writer. Hester has a little boy who is a huge fan of a specific comic book and mostly the main character, Commander Zark and as it turns out, Mitch just happens to be the comics writer. So the first bond is born. Hester isn't interested in a relationship but Mitch has other plans and that's how the story follows.

Dual Image was a very interesting story. It was about an actress, Ariel, who plays in a soap opera and is rather popular in her own right. She has a secret (of course!) and a plan for her future. One of her plans is to try out for a role in a TV movie, screen play written by a very famous screenwriter, Boothe DeWitt. Little is she aware, nor is the very unwilling Mr. DeWitt, aware of what the future truly will hold for them. She befriends Boothe before the auditions for the part. She is so easy to like with her uplifting personality and easy going spirit. Boothe on the other hand is very serious, and not given to moments of fancy. Boothe and Ariel both realize there is something special that they feel between the both of them. She just goes with the flow, and he works quite hard to ignore any pull she may have on him. You see, he's been hurt before, by someone who acts exactly as the woman that Ariel is hoping to earn. Turns out, Boothe wrote the movie based on a portion of his life, with himself & his cold hearted, two faced ex wife. The struggle in this book is within Boothe and whether he can separate Ariel from the role she plays in the movie they are working on together...