Zebra, $5.99, ISBN 0-8217-6990-1
Paranormal Romance, 2001

To Charm a Knight is a medieval time-travel romance with an unusual twist of a plot. Therefore, I still don’t know how the whole story ends up being so predictable and familiar.

Anyway, there is a magic time-travel shop that will take you places if you have at least a million bucks to cough up. H Walter Harrington has bought a castle, but the castle comes with a curse that causes the castle to crumble no matter how much repairs are done on it. Finally, Walter decides to go back in time to break the curse.

But what happens is that he has wrong information from unreliable ancient texts, and as a result, he gets kidnapped by some knight. Here is where Victoria Desmond, Walter’s assistant who is dragged into this mess against her knowledge or wishes, steps up. To save Walter, she needs to find a magic amulet. To find the amulet, she needs a champion knight. So here comes Sir Perceval, who has his own secret agenda, to help Victoria. Oh, they will fall in love, of course, and learn that love is the key to existence or some grand mumbo-jumbo of that sort.

But the characters are rather blah. Gareth is the usual stubborn beta knight who just can’t admit that he loves Victoria until it is almost too late. Victoria has spent her life caring for everybody, and oh, her father abandoned her and her mother, so she doesn’t trust men, blah blah blah. Walter is the dotty character type who has the cheek to tell Victoria not to judge all men by one single bastard even as he arrogantly drags Victoria into this mess. The secondary characters are all the same too – that kid, that mother hen, et cetera.

All these familiar elements make a pleasant, enjoyable read, I admit. I finish this story in one sitting and well, it’s nice. It’s nothing special or extraordinary, despite its plot, but hey, I can do worse than this one.