Harper, $7.50, ISBN 0-06-059884-0
Contemporary Romance, 2005 (Reissue)

Love Overboard is first published in 1989 under the title Ivan Takes A Wife. It is a series romance in the Loveswept line with a cover price of $2.50. It’s up to you whether you should make use of your UBS or pay $7.50 for this reissue of a series novel.

Ivan Rasmussen is the handsome, dashing pirate-like captain of the schooner Josiah T Savage, who unfortunately sold Stephanie Lowe a haunted house. When things start breaking and Stephanie has to comb her hair using the toaster instead of a mirror, she finally decides that it is time she find the money she needs to fix the stupid bathroom.

Hence when her cousin Lucy decides to marry the town plumber in a last moment dash, Kate decides to fill in for Lucy as the cook aboard Ivan’s ship. After all, how hard is heating canned food in microwave ovens be right?

She tells Ivan so, and he thinks it’s cute to see a woman with such great sense of humor.

Steph’s horror when she realizes that on board the ship, the kitchen is, well, traditional, tells Ivan that she isn’t joking. Not at all.

Since this schooner is boarded by senior citizens looking for a nice break, she can get away with floating fish eyeballs in the stew. But Ivan is on to her, oh yes indeed. And Steph is finding it hard to tell that man no in anything, damn him.

Love Overboard has better character development than some of the other category romances by this author. Steph and Ivan are great together, and there’s an adorable rascal named Ace who tries too hard to be Tom Cruise. This one is definitely a hee-hee-hee sort of sunny romance.

But the really “Huh?” ending, which has a conspiracy thing that rivals even Chris Carter at his most low, spoils everything really.