Arabesque, $6.99, ISBN 1-58314-354-8
Contemporary Romance, 2003

Kayla Perrin’s Fool for Love is a very familiar reunion story, only this time the author attempts to stretch a flimsy story into a 280-paged book and the result is not pretty.

Ten years ago, Kelly Robbins and Ashton Hunter had one night of love before he hightailed it out of town the day after. Why? Why else? He thought he was not good for her, et cetera – the usual reasons. Today, Kelly gets a surprise phone call from Ashton. It turns out that he has finally tracked her down and he wants her to come down and throw a party for their mutual friend. Kelly flies down determined to break his heart, and you can probably guess where the story goes from here.

The problem here is the author abusing every miscommunication issue and petty mind game she can think of to prolong the agony. Ashton wants to apologize to Kelly over his actions but she won’t listen. They misconstrue every other word that comes out from the other person’s mouth. Soon these two are going round and round over the same issues again and again, just because the author has a word count to meet and so these two have to keep acting like children until then.

There’s nothing much to say about this book because there’s nothing much in the story in the first place. Just two people that could have talked but for many contrived reasons, just don’t get there until long after my patience has worn thin. If the author has slashed the length of this book into the size of a novella and remove the filler arguments and childish behaviors, Fool for Love may be better off.

As it is, it feels like an overly padded book cranked out solely for deadline and contractual purposes. I can’t help thinking that the fool here is me for paying good money for such half-baked book in the first place.