Arabesque, $5.99, ISBN 1-58314-369-6
Contemporary Romance, 2002

This is Karen White-Owens’s debut effort. She’s, oh, twenty years too late. As Long as There Is Love will make a splash in 1980, but I don’t think this tale of silly misunderstandings and secret babies will be heating up anything but the panties of the most die-hard of Silhouette and Harlequin readers. Even then, it’s still a tough sell thanks to clunky characterization and plot contrivances that are stretched so far apart that it will snap any moment soon if Ms White-Owens isn’t too careful.

A few years ago Cameron Butler – that’s the heroine – and Marek Redding had a very mad affair. He was an MD in training, a future pediatrician to be exact, and she was a college gal. I guess in the 1970s condoms and birth control pills haven’t been invented yet, because these educated people shagged so much that she got pregnant. Then she discovered her man in bed with her so-called best friend (it was a set-up by this slutty ho, naturally), and that was it. She walked out, left him, and cheerfully became a single mother, leaving Marek in the dark about his impending fatherhood. Bye bye college dreams, bye bye ambitions, hello baby.

Today, she teaches at a kiddie daycare Little Darlings, and her problem begins when a kid, Justin, is injured while under her care. At the hospital, guess who’s the doctor in charge? That’s right, Marek. When he realizes that he has a daughter named Jayla, he wants to be back in Cammy’s life again. But can Cammy forgive?

I mean, if you think she is in the position to forgive, that is, because I certainly don’t. This woman is a mess. First, she says that she still loves him even after all these years while she is nursing intense anger over his supposed infidelity. You figure that out, I don’t want the headache. A nice and kind lawyer wants them to do the thang, but she doesn’t want to, because she’s in love with Marek. Eh? Then she says that she can never trust Marek again. What? But it’s okay, she’ll let him see Jayla and all, because Jayla is three and she is definitely old enough to ask questions about the birds and the bees. Personally, I think a three-year old kid can easily be fibbed off with something sweet and harmless like “Your daddy? Oh, three years ago he crossed the street, got run down by a truck, and the dogs ate his body before Mommy could get to him and bury that bastard in a ditch. Now eat your cornflakes dear.”

And here’s my favorite: she decides that Marek can only have minimal participation in Jayla’s life, but Marek must report to her whenever he leaves town so that he won’t disappear and make Jayla sad all over again. If this doesn’t show how whacked Cammy is in the head, I don’t know what will.

Then again, Marek is no prize either. For goodness sake, I’d think a man who wants to woo his way back to his woman’s heart will pop down to the nearest florist and get a nice bouquet of blooms, or at least reserve a table at a romantic restaurant first. He’s a doctor, it’s not as if he can’t afford a romantic courtship. Of course, you can say that as a doctor, he may have no time, but in this book, Marek seems to spend only two hours a day tending his patients. But no, Marek must charge in and highhandedly tells Cammy that he’s the daddy, he’s coming in, so watch out, gal, or he’ll smack a lawsuit at her face. Nice way to win back the girl, dude.

And of course, this whole book will be only fifty pages long if these people talk and listen. That won’t do, will it, only fifty pages? So everybody takes turn not listening to the other. In the meantime, Super Grandmother plays the Mary Sue matchmaker. This is big misunderstanding at its most painfully contrived, because the characters act in painfully transparent ways just to keep the misunderstanding going and going until the book is close to the end.

There’s a subplot about a woman suing Cammy, but it doesn’t matter. See, every woman who’s a potential sexual rival ends up being written like crap. In the end, every beautiful, gorgeous woman here is a slut and bitch who is just jealous of Cameron. This book feels as if it was written by a fifteen-year old gal who sees every other gal around her as an unworthy rival for the football captain and who still treats romance as some sort of game where it’s cute that the people just bicker, snog, bicker again, and snog.

As Long as There Is Love doesn’t cut it anymore, I’m afraid.