First Lady (Susan Elizabeth Phillips)

Cornelia Case (am I the only one who kept reading this as "Cordelia Chase"?) has been in the public eye for nearly her entire life--first as the daughter of the Vice President, then as the First Lady. And now that her husband has been assassinated, she thinks she'll get some privacy. Think again. Her husband's Vice President, the new President, is single, and everyone (except Cornelia) thinks she'd be the best person to continue to fill that role. So she tries, but finally she can't take it anymore, and she escapes, disguised as an old woman. Mat Jorik is a burned-out tabloid journalist who needs one good real news story to recover his integrity and his career. What he gets are his recently deceased ex-wife's daughters: a teenager named Lucy and a baby known only as Butt. When he discovers they're living alone, he loads them into their mother's ancient Winnebago--they won't fit in his sports car--to take them to their grandmother in Iowa, where they'll stay once he gets the pater... Read more

The author is funny and the plot is captivating as always, but Susan Elizabeth Phillips has a bad habit of creating the same kind of situation in a lot of her books. The plot is always different and the humor is always there and the characters are always intresting and new with flaws like any other human being, and yet she repeats herself to the point where you want to yell at the author and tell her to stop already. It's not any less fun to read. It's always a little different. But When you come right down to it she's just revisited the same thing over again in another book. She's better then this. She can do something different. She can be better. But she's not. While the whole book was pretty much fun for me, even the revisited scenes that having a hauntingly fimiliarity about them, thats not why I gave this book four stars. I highly enjoyed the book despite it's flaws. No the reason that I gave this book four stars is because the end wasn't for me. It was a little to much in my bo... Read more

I've read almost all of SEP's books and this has to be one of my favorites. At first I thought the concept of the story was a little unbelievable, but this author pulls it off. Nealy is a good heroine, but I was extremely impressed with Mat. I liked his big-guy hot temper, but soft heart. All the secondary characters are good. This will definitely go on my re-read list.

I liked this book, it was well written and had some really funny dialogue. I loved the interaction between Mat and the kids. I actually thought that was more interesting than his interaction with Nealy. I just didn't feel the sparks between these two. I liked Mat's character much more than I liked Nealy's character. She just didn't have any ooomph. The epilogue was good. I like when an epilogue goes into the future a ways, this one goes 8 years down the road. I get disappointed when I read a book and the epilogue is like 6 weeks later. I want a lot of time to pass so I can really see how things ended up for the couple. Overall a pretty good read, but a little light on the romance. It's worth it just to read so you can see the banter between Mat and the kids.

This is a charming ,witty, funny, romantic story. So enjoyable, it kept me up past my desired bedtime. She is one of my favorite authors. Story brief: The President dies in office. His wife is asked to continue the job of first lady for the vice president who is single. She doesn't want this job and uses a disguise to escape the White House and travels as an ordinary person. While traveling she joins Matt who is driving for several days to deliver two orphaned girls to a relative. DATA: Sexual language: mild. Number of sex scenes: six. Setting: current day USA. Copyright: 2000. Genre: contemporary romantic comedy. OTHER BOOKS: For a list of my reviews of other Susan Elizabeth Phillips books, see my 5 star review of "Glitter Baby" posted 1/15/09.