Liquid Silver Books, $4.25, ISBN 1-59578-222-2
Fantasy Romance, 2006

Tempting Fate is the first book of three revolving around the Moirae sisters finding love. The Moirae sisters are the three Fates in Greek mythology – they spin all these threads that determine the destiny of everyone on earth and all. One day, Clotho “Chloe” Moirae decides that it’s time she takes a vacation. She can afford to – she and her sisters haven’t actually worked on that thread-spinning thing for 1,500 years ever since Chloe set up the Destiny Machine that automates everything. She wants to visit Earth for the first time and she intends to spend a week or so sight-seeing.

And before you know it, she’s the only guest shacking up in Oceanside Inn, that inn run by our hero Tanner Danner (I know, I know). Tanner is a more benign version of Norman Bates – he is still recovering from his mother’s murder and he hears her voice in his head. A recluse since his mother’s death, he screams “Mother fucker!” when you accidentally open the door to his face. I bet he screams like a little girl, heh. Poor Tanner doesn’t like people very much at the moment and he at first glance isn’t the most ideal person for Chloe to conduct some spring break fling with. Then again, I don’t blame him. With a name like that, his life probably hasn’t been easy since his birth and his poor mother’s murder must be the final straw.

I am looking forward to, oh, I don’t know, a story of love healing broken souls and all. But from the moment these two have sex just like that, with a snap of my fingers, barely a quarter into the story, Tempting Fate dwells on sex and Chloe having the time of her life, so much to the point that it does seem as if all it takes to get Tanner out of his slammer is by giving him a hummer. And when the plot turns into a “My girlfriend killed my mother!” thing (you know, with Chloe being one of three Fates and all), I wonder whether an alien mothership has somehow kidnapped me when I am not looking and I’m now in some kind of weird place called Planet Give Me a Break which I’m not sure I like too much.

I finish this book thinking, “So… this is it? This is the story? This? THIS?”

It’s probably a good thing that I am a well-behaved and civilized person. That and taking a hammer to my reader just won’t do. Because otherwise, Tempting Fate is really tempting fate here, if you know what I mean.