Jove, $5.99, ISBN 0-515-11839-7
Paranormal Romance, 1996

Genevieve Buchanan is your typical neurotic heroine. She has no social or sex life, no boyfriend, nothing but her business, a home refurbishment and renovation company. Typical. One day she gets a call from a lawyer, telling her that she has inherited a castle and enough money to last her three lifetimes.

I don’t know about you, but if I get such an inheritance, I’d definitely hop on the plane and grab the money. But that woman decides, no, she’d rather tend to her business, thank you very much. And yes, that retching sound you hear is me.

Then her business go belly up, she cries and cries and cries and cries before deciding tearfully that, sob, she will have to take up the inheritance after all. Poor Gen. I feel your pain. Really.

Turns out ghostly Kendrick de Piaget, a ghost out to seek revenge on all of the Buchanan line (a nasty Buchanan ancestor machinated his death by foul play), is the one who masterminds her business downfall and wants her in his castle so that he can scare her off and have her sign off her inheritance to him (don’t ask). Of course, Gen is smart – if lachrymose – woman who stands up to him and earns his love.

Now, if I’m visiting England for the first time, I’d go visiting and paint the country scarlet. I’d go pinch Prince Charles’s tush, give Queen Elizabeth some fashion tips, pose for photographs in WB Yeats’s tomb, and maybe attend a Blur concert and start an impromptu karaoke My Heart Will Go On in Cockney accent. Gen holes up in the castle and talks to no one but ghosts and the quiet butler.

There are some ghostly intrigues and other thingies, but really, I don’t care for the two lead characters to really get involved in the story. Kendrick may want revenge, but what for, really? He’s dead, he’s a ghost who is surrounded by his ghostly buddies. These ghosts watch TV and joust and have fun all day long. Kendrick has so much money – so what if he’s dead, at least he’s having fun. But he’s a much better character than Gen.

I’m not surprised that Gen is terrified of sex. Don’t know why, but I guess it comes along with her neurotic character. She’s also a nice pure good little girl who can forgive Kendrick for ruining her business when me, I’d have Kendrick delivered as a specimen for the demonstration of fine cucumber peeling in the Former Mrs Bobbitt’s School of Culinary Arts. But hey, that’s just me.

I guess I don’t really like Gen. Hence, I don’t like Stardust of Yesterday.