Arabesque, $5.99, ISBN 1-58314-372-6
Contemporary Romance, 2002

Cindy Larson pops down to her doctor hubby’s office one day and finds him playing doctor with the nurse. She files for divorce, gets the house, gets the money, and moves on with her life. She is too good for him, she tells me. I like her.

Dr Marcus Thornton comes home early one day, the phone rings, he picks up the phone the same time as his wife does in another room, and overhears his wife planning a rendezvous of the wrong kind with his best friend. Bye bye wife.

When they meet while she is trying to retrieve her keys she accidentally tosses into a dumpster, it’s rebound love time. Or is it? The same old complications ensue.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I like this idea of a woman moving on with her life after divorcing her husband and after taking him to the cleaners. Cindy is not poverty-stricken, she is not homeless, and she gets alimony from her husband. But at the same time, the author cripples Cindy’s brainpower by making her tar not just men, but all doctors with the same brush. I understand not wanting anything to do with men after a painful divorce, but assuming all doctors are whacked and evil and lying scums is really stretching it.

There is really no reason why these two can’t get together and go on a few dates to know each other better and move past the rebound phase into something more substantial and intimate. Instead, the author chooses to shove the usual matchmaking old ladies thing and contrived little misunderstandings.

There’s a pointless separation that spans a few chapters towards the end, and I think the author wants these chapters to be Cindy’s soul searching moments. But it’s hard for me to empathize when the very reasons that catalyze the soul searching are juvenile misunderstandings that could have been solved if these two would just grow up a little.

To Love Again starts out with a strong heroine, but the heroine and the hero have mutated into childish twits with lousy communication techniques by the last page. I believe it’s not a matter of Alice Wootson’s lousy storytelling style as much as her reliance on standard clichés to carry the story. Or ruin the story, as such in this case. Oh well.