Mary Carter

PRAISE FOR
Accidentally Engaged

From Publishers Weekly
Carter's second novel (after She'll Take It) follows a thrice-divorced tarot card reader possessed of questionable psychic prowess who is drawn into the strange dealings of a wealthy family. Despite three failed marriages, 32-year-old Clair Ivars is still "in love with love," so she's not exactly thrilled about her first encounter with Rachel Morgan, a manic bride-to-be who bullies Clair into predicting a miserable married future. Rachel leaves her three-carat diamond engagement ring with Clair, along with instructions to return the pricey piece to the groom-to-be, wine and vodka mogul Jack Heron. Hilarity and mishaps ensue as Clair travels to the Heron Estate and meets Jack and his family. While pretending to be Jack's fiancée (to please Jack's grandmother and a group of investors), Clair finds secrets in every corner of the mansion and meets her dream beau.

The sitcom-caliber humor hits its mark, and the trove of mini-mysteries will keep readers guessing.
-- Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
When psychic Clair does a tarot-card reading for doubting bride-to-be Rachel, it's the beginning of a bizarre adventure. Rachel leaves behind her engagement ring and her fiance Jake's business card, and Clair decides to take a pilgrimage to the Heron family winery to return the ring. Somehow she ends up agreeing to impersonate Rachel at a giant engagement party while simultaneously trying to get to the bottom of the strange circumstances that have driven Rachel away -- and keep at bay her lust for Jake's best man, Mike.

There are plenty of twists, turns, and secrets to be revealed that make Carter's romance stand apart from more predictable fare. Plus Clair, a thrice-divorced fortune-teller, is not exactly the prototypical romance heroine. Carter, the author of She'll Take It (2006), shows she has a knack for creating odd but likable characters, and readers are sure to take notice.
-- Aleksandra Kostovski
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

PRAISE FOR
She'll Take It

From Publishers Weekly
Carter's debut sucks the reader into the hyper-neurotic world of struggling actress cum talented kleptomaniac Melanie Zeitgar, for whom the guilty thrill of a good theft can take the sting out of boyfriend mishaps, job failures and dysfunctional family affairs. But stealing stops being a palliative for this 20-something New Yorker when the habit veers out of control and jeopardizes her shot at a relationship with a man who demands nothing more than honesty.

With incisive, funny writing, Carter reveals a highly troubled but very likeable woman lost in the big city. Though the conclusion disintegrates into pat psychobabble that explains Melanie's need to steal, the novel adds the twist of deep-seeded pathology to the basic chick lit formula, and, in so doing, contains an element of frantic desperation that is as sad as it is amusing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.