Kimani, $6.25, ISBN 978-0-373-86271-9
Contemporary Romance, 2012
For a story with such a title, Waves of Passion is surprisingly passion-free. But since this one takes place mostly on a luxury cruise liner, I guess there are still some waves, for what they are worth.
Oh, don’t worry, this one isn’t yet another one of those Kimani stories where the heroine runs off to some island resort and sleeps with the resort manager. It’s almost the same thing, though, as this one is about two doctors that form the medical crew of the Parisian Paradise set in basically another take of the whole sun and sea thing. Dr Gabrielle Grinage is the new doctor on board, and she soon falls for Dr Cameron Quinn, basically the boss of the medical crew.
And that’s about it for the synopsis. In fact, if I were a more succinct person, I could have summed the whole thing up in a single short sentence. The “conflict”, or what passes for it, is Gabrielle spending the entire book waffling between wanting to get it on with Cameron and getting off instead. Her impersonation of a soggy waffle arises from having been burned in a relationship before, but really now, even when this story is already short, Gabrielle spending almost the entire going “Yes! No! Yes! No!” gets really tedious quickly.
Quinn is hot, gorgeous, rich, amazing, gallant, polite, and.., oh, the list of superlatives one can ascribe to him can fill up several phone books of a country called Boring, so Gabrielle comes off as just plain silly and annoying with her constant vacillation. Even if she doesn’t want to marry, oh for heaven’s sake just shut up and have sex with him already! Anything to break the monotony of her indecisive act.
Also, this story, like so many of the author’s recent efforts, drags interminably with tedious filler scenes comprising the back stories of the main characters and several other secondary characters repeated over and over, our main characters generally walking around talking about nothing interesting, and other typical padding that does nothing to keep the momentum strong. The author gets pretty enthusiastic when it comes to describing the scenery and life on a luxury liner, but I’m here for the romance and the drama. If I want to experience life on a luxury liner, I’d buy the tickets myself instead of experiencing it vicariously through the two utterly dull main characters.
Instead of bringing on the sweeping Waves of Passion, this story is more about being left high and dry.
