Sunday, July 20, 2003

Once Upon a Dream, by Jennifer Archer

I thought I was trading for a book titled Once a Dreamer, but what I received was Once Upon a Dream (excerpt), by Jennifer Archer. What the hell, it sounded interesting too!

Visiting British professor Alex Simon feels "miserably inadequate" when it comes to women. Even his ex-fiancée gave up on the pathetic Alex. He has written off the fair sex so why is he spending so much time observing his beautiful neighbor Robin Wise exercise and asking radio host Dr. Dave for advice over the air waves?

Robin Wise also calls Dr. Dave telling him about her greatest fear that she will die just before her thirtieth birthday. Robin explains the "accidents" that happened to the four previous generations of her female ancestors including her mother. She turns thirty in two weeks.

Then Robin and Alex begin to share identical dreams....
This was a nice, cute story. Nice, likeable hero and heroine, nice paranormal subplot, nice supporting cast... everything nice and sweet, not particularly exciting, but enjoyable enough. A B-.

The high points were the sweet beta hero (though his English accent sounded a bit off to me), the way Alex and Robin were truly fond of each other, and the very imaginative and original paranormal subplot. I loved the dreams, especially those anachronistic touches, very funny! Low points... well, the heroine, probably. There just wasn't much to her. This was pretty weird, because she was the one with Issues here. A curse that would kill her before she turned 30 and agoraphobia could make for an interesting heroine, but Robin just wasn't it.