Linden Bay Romance, $6.99, ISBN 978-1-60202-045-0
Contemporary Romance, 2006
It is probably written in stone that a romance hero is not supposed to woo his way back into the heroine’s heart via the more reasonable method of flowers, chocolates, and abject apology. Instead, he’s supposed to growl and moan and ravish the heroine while telling her not to see some other bloke while secondary characters rally to convince the heroine that he’s the one even when he hasn’t shown any remorse for breaking her heart all those years back. I have lost count of how many stories I’ve come across that follows this formula without fail and after reading Born to Run, it looks like I may have to keep counting for some time to come.
Troy McBride once broke Lynn Kelly’s heart when he was most indiscreet in his fratboy outing involving some floozy. Today, she’s a columnist for a magazine devoted to car racing while he’s one of the top racers around. Their worlds collide when her editor asks her to interview him and subsequent events ensure that they will seeing plenty of each other in the foreseeable future. I don’t want to spoil what these events are because they make up the plot of the story. Born to Run is more of an ensemble soap opera with the relationship between Troy and Lynn often curiously relegated to the background in favor of their interactions with various friends and family members. When the story focuses on Troy and Lynn, it’s often about them arguing in a childish manner or having sex. Only late in the story do these characters talk about the issues between them and by that point it’s too late where I am concerned.
I find Born to Run only mildly interesting because the characters in this story are flat. I barely know who Lynn and Troy are by the last page and because the story doesn’t spend adequate moment to flesh out their relationship, I have no emotional investment in seeing them find their happy ending. Some people die, some people argue, some people make up, some people break up… Born to Run feels like a superficially-written soap opera that could have been more interesting if Ms Anderson has spent more time on the main characters.
