Arabesque, $6.99, ISBN 1-58314-270-3
Contemporary Romance, 2002

My life has become rather hectic lately. I find the pace of my life moving way faster than expected, it is very hard to keep my cool with Rochelle Alers’s latest, No Compromise. It’s so slow, too slow, that nothing happens. In a time when there seems to be a million things demanding my attention, a book better be compelling or I may accidentally leave it in the incinerator.

In fact, there is very little meat in this story. It’s all padded fluff. Jolene Walker, like all heroines by this author, is the princess-type who is perfect, beautiful, and “strong” (obligatory “I don’t need a man!” whine for a million pages just to keep the man away in the name of plot). She is the executive director of a woman’s shelter called The Sanctuary.

He, like all heroes by this author, is perfect, sexy, gorgeous, rich, and have no other personality whatsoever. Captain Michael Kirkland may as well be an Instant Romance Hero (Just Add Water) Yummy Formula I could sure use every morning for breakfast along with the usual boring cornflakes.

But for 379 pages, perfection soon takes on a dull luster, especially when the characters fall in love somewhere around page 120 and consummation is around page 160.

The author tries to keep things going by putting in a battered wife and murder subplot, but those just drown in the endless babble of fluff. For too long, she bores me to the lowest of stultification with endless descriptions of the hero and heroine’s clothes, body language, eye colors, lip shapes, furniture, diet, jewelry, how everyone finds them attractive and beautiful, the music they are listening, the friends they have, the parties they attend, the magazines they read, and other inanities that I don’t care about at all because the main characters are so flat and boring.

In fact, flat and boring is how I will describe No Compromise.

No plot, no meat, no wit, no life, no thanks.