Rumor Has It

Rumor Has It is one of Jessica Lemmon’s contemporary romance novels, working in the small town and connected community territory she has built her career around. Lemmon writes the kind of contemporary romance her readers can pick up on a Friday and finish before the weekend is over. Her catalogue runs to more than thirty books across her connected series and standalones, and the consistency of her output keeps her audience coming back.

The rumor has it premise hints at the gossip driven small town setup that Lemmon handles well. A rumor circulates about either the heroine or the hero, the rumor either is true and the characters have to figure out how to deal with what the community now thinks it knows, or the rumor is false and the characters have to deal with the gap between what is being said and what actually happened. Lemmon uses these kinds of setups to drive the early plot momentum and then lets the actual relationship develop as the rumor situation works itself out across the page count.

Lemmon’s heroines tend to be capable women dealing with one specific situation that has knocked them off balance, and her heroes are usually competent men with one specific blind spot the heroine is going to expose. The slow recognition that the rumor has either been right about something neither of them was admitting, or has been wrong about something they need to address, drives the central romance forward.

The prose is light and quick. Her chapters end with hooks. The dialogue carries most of the romantic chemistry. The heat level stays warm without going extreme. For readers who enjoy Lauren Layne, Christina Lauren, Helena Hunting, or Tessa Bailey, Lemmon is squarely in the same neighborhood. Her standalones can be read in any order and her connected series allow new readers to pick up at most points without losing too much context. Rumor Has It is a comfortable, well crafted entry into her catalogue and a fair sample of what she does best.