Disgraced etiquette expert Ali Spencer has tucked her tail and run back home from Miami's South Beach to Nashville, where she is helping her aunt to save the flagging Spencer School of Etiquette— at least until she can figure out her next career move.

Detective Hunter Coleman is frustrated by his girlfriend Erica's social climbing ways. He remembers earlier days in their relationship, before she inherited a boatload of money and decided she would scale the Nashville social register or be damned trying. When Erica gifts Hunter with etiquette lessons so he won't embarrass her along the social circuit, he encounters Ali and, despite the best of manners on both parts, the sparks begin to fly.

Phyllis Bourne has written a fun and delightful novel about two people who fall in love despite their own misgivings. Ali has no desire to get involved with someone who's already involved with—or rebounding from—someone else. Besides, she has to figure how to salvage the career destroyed by her ex-husband and her ex-best friend, not to mention her trust in men. Similarly, Hunter has no desire to get involved with someone new while he's still in a relationship, even if his relationship has been shot and killed and only the carcass remains, a fact everyone seems to acknowledge except him. Both Ali and Hunter are to be commended for their ethics, and forgiven for the attraction that won't go away.

Equally enjoyable was the subplot about the mysterious bandit. New homeowners in subdivisions still under construction will rethink any laissez-faire attitudes they might have toward home security after reading this story.

Despite there being a few hot love scenes, the tone of OPERATION PRINCE CHARMING is still very sweet. It would be great fun to reconnect with Hunter and Ali by way of Hunter's co-workers in the Nashville police department or perhaps Ali's etiquette students. Even if we never see them again, it's satisfying to go along for the ride as Ali finds her prince in Hunter.