Fin­ished Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kley­pas. This is the sec­ond book in her con­tem­po­rary romance series about the lives and loves of the Travis family.

Sugar Daddy, the first book in this series, was my favorite read in 2008, so I had high, high hopes for BED — and I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed.

This book is about Haven Travis, the sis­ter in the super-rich Travis fam­ily. Haven meets the rough, rugged, wealthy oil­man Hardy Cates at her brother Gage’s wed­ding to Hardy’s child­hood love, Lib­erty. Haven and Hardy share a steamy kiss at the wed­ding but go their seper­ate ways. Haven even­tu­ally mar­ries her col­lege boyfriend Nick, despite her family’s disapproval.

Things are fine for a while, but Nick shows his true col­ors and becomes more and more abu­sive toward Haven – beat­ing and rap­ing her before she finally sum­mons up the courage to leave him. With the help of her fam­ily, Haven divorces Nick and starts a new life. And who does she run into at a bar one night but Hardy, who still sparks some­thing deep inside Haven that she thought she’d lost after Nick’s abuse …

This book is clas­si­fied as con­tem­po­rary romance, but it has heavy themes of domes­tic abuse and is basi­cally about Haven’s jour­ney to become strong and inde­pen­dent. Nor­mally, I don’t like books where women are vic­tim­ized, but I thought Kley­pas han­dled the sub­ject with dig­nity and grace. Noth­ing was gra­tu­itous, and Haven didn’t mirac­u­lously recover overnight from what Nick did to her. Every­thing was real­is­tic (if painful).

I also thought the romance between Haven and Hardy was at turns sweet, poignant, and hot. Hardy helped Haven heal, and she did the same for him and his issues. They were both inde­pen­dent peo­ple who found some­thing more together, which is what I think a romance should be.

My only real quib­ble was the end­ing with Vanessa, Haven’s bitchy boss. Vanessa basi­cally gives Nick the keys to Haven’s apart­ment and almost gets her killed when Nick holds Haven at gun­point. I would have liked Vanessa to do some jail time right along with Nick for that stunt.

Also, I would have liked to know a lit­tle bit more about Hardy’s fam­ily, since they’re the root of his issues and prob­lems. But this was Haven’s story, and she really shined in it.

Blue-Eyed Devil wasn’t quite as good as Sugar Daddy, but it’s eas­ily the best book I’ve read so far this year. I loved it and hope the next book in the series, Smooth-Talking Stranger, is just as good. Big thumbs up.

Up next: Gracel­ing by Kristin Cashore.

Books in my TBR pile: About 25.