Silhouette Special Edition, $4.50, ISBN 0-373-24379-0
Contemporary Romance, 2001

I’m still scratching my head over Considering Kate. On one hand it’s nice to read about a romance where nothing happens and both characters take their time to fall in love. At 236 pages, they can afford to slow the pace without me feeling as if I’m doused on sedatives. On the flip side, it isn’t very interesting to read about an overachieving heroine, free from baggage, dancing slow with a hero whose only flaw is a battered self-esteem.

It is also interesting to read, for once, of a hero’s dysfunctional codependency on his father than the usual heroine-mother hate fest.

Kate Stanislaski, a superwoman who has conquered the ballet stage and fashion world by the age of 25, decides to come home and live a simple life. “A life of money and fame is so overrated,” she tells me, and officer, no, I swear it wasn’t me who strangled her silly. Anyway, she decides to start her new life by renovating an old house she bought into a dance school. And that smart woman hires the cutest builder in the area, Brody O’Connell, a widower with the cutest tush this side of Buttsville.

They talk, they flirted, and they marry. It’s a slow waltz to the happily-ever-after, but it can get boring when the only issue is Brody’s relationship with his father. I know blood is thicker than water and all, but that is no excuse for a son or daughter to subjugate his or her own personality to fit the extension of a parent’s ambitions or neuroticism, is it?

All in all, hey, this story has its charms. Having said that, what’s with the choppy writing style? A short paragraph or two, then a one-sentenced paragraph, repeat and repeat this pattern until I scratch my head in wonder. Is this book written in express speed?

It must be nice to be pretty, rich, and in love. What a nice fantasy. I hate these people.