Review: Three Little Words by Susan Mallery
Susan Mallery drops us back into Fool’s Gold with Three Little Words, this time pairing Ford Hendrix, returning Navy SEAL, with Isabel Beebe, a small-town girl who never thought she’d be running her family’s bridal shop. Ford and Isabel had a teenage pen-pal thing that ended awkwardly, and now he’s home and she’s planning to leave town. You can probably guess where this goes.
Look, I keep showing up for these. There’s a reason I have an entire shelf devoted to Fool’s Gold and it’s not because Mallery is reinventing the genre. She’s not. What she does is dependable: a small town that feels lived-in, side characters who pop in like familiar neighbors, and a hero who isn’t a jerk for jerk’s sake. Ford is genuinely likable, which sounds like a low bar but isn’t always cleared in romance these days. Isabel I had a harder time warming up to. Her “I’m leaving for New York” plotline felt half-hearted, like Mallery knew the conflict needed to exist but couldn’t quite commit to it.
The pacing in the middle sags. There’s a chunk where Ford and Isabel are doing the fake-dating thing (mild spoiler, it’s on the back cover) and the banter gets repetitive. I also wish we’d gotten more of Ford dealing with his SEAL background instead of having it sort of waved at and moved past. For a guy who allegedly has Things to work through, he sure works through them tidily.
That said, when Mallery sticks the landing, she sticks it. The grand gesture here actually made me grin, and the epilogue is exactly the dose of sugar you signed up for.
Who’s it for? Existing Fool’s Gold fans will eat this up. If you’re new to the series, it works as a standalone but you’ll get more out of it knowing the side characters. If you want angst or heat, look elsewhere.
A solid Tuesday-night read. Not Mallery’s best, but not a misstep either.