Review: Boomerang Love by Melissa Lopez

Boomerang Love by Melissa Lopez
Publisher: Samhain
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Red Hots!
ISBN: 1-59998-857-7
Length: Short story
Price: 2.50
Publication Date: January 8, 2008

Take a walkabout on the wild side.

Book one: The Thorn Brothers

When you toss a boomerang, you know it will come back. But all bets are off when it’s a lover you’ve let go.

Cohen Thorn and Hayleigh Davenport shared one night of wild sex neither of them can forget, then went their separate ways half a world apart. But now Hayleigh’s back in Australia for one more weekend of passion. If she can’t get this Outback rancher out of her system once and for all, she’ll at least have memories to last a lifetime.

They’ve only got three days to steam up Sydney and the Outback, but in the place known as Never-Never, anything can happen. Soon they realize there’s a powerful force drawing them together.

Is it simple lust, or lasting love?

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Jmo: Let me start by saying, I loved the premise for this book. I mean who wouldn't love the idea of waiting a year to see the one person who could be the love of your life after one night of passion.

MorganO: Man, to wait a whole year, that would have killed me. I'm too impatient.

Jmo: Me too, but for the right person, I'd wait a year, or at least max out a credit card to go after them.

MorganO: I've done that, max out the credit card, I mean. Personally, I would have done that on the telephone, especially to Australia. But seriously, I kept waiting for her to introduce the “result” of that first meeting. I was glad it didn't happen, but I really kept waiting for that reference to, “I have something to show you...let me get it from my hotel room.”

J Morgan: I know you kept expecting her to show up with a joey with his eyes.

MorganO: What tipped me off (or tripped me up) to that was Cohen thinking Hayleigh had gained weight and rounded out a little. Easy enough to assume it was from pregnancy, especially since that little bouncing bundle would have only been 3 months at the time. However, it would have changed the entire tone and diminished the story.

J Morgan: Ms. Lopez really got you inside the Cohen's mind. You could really tell he had been thinking about nothing but Hayleigh since that fateful night. And she had obviously had him on hers. You can see they wanted to enjoy every moment of the time they had together. I'm still wiping the sweat off the screen from all the enjoying.

MorganO: The elder brother adds a nice touch of reality cynicism to balance out the hope… who will be right? Adds a nice tension.

J Morgan: But I liked the way Ms. Lopez showed, that in spite of the cynicism, his family wanted nothing more than for him to be happy. Just like her mother wanted Hayleigh to find that thing she'd been missing in her life.

MorganO: Even half a world away.

Jmo: So how would you sum this up?

MorganO: Short, lots of sex, but a sweet story underlying. As with many shorts, I was dissatisfied because I want more. More details, more exploration, more back story, more conflict... just... more. Shorts leave little time for the emotions to be deeply explored, especially when it results in HEA. This isn’t a problem when the short is intended to be just sex. With the HEA, there was so much riding on this visit, I think the author could have really done the story more justice by stretching out the anticipation. However, I'm very glad she didn't go for the unexpected bundle of joy angle.

J Morgan: I'm with you there, I got into the characters but wanted more of them. I know shorts don't leave you much time to develop characters the way they deserve. Ms. Lopez did a good job of showing Cohen and Hayleigh's emotional need to connect with each other on a level other than sex, but I would have liked to have seen a better balance between the heat and the story, which isn't always easy to do with a confined story.

MorganO: Exactly, however, within the constraints of length she did a fine job.

J Morgan: She did. I would gladly take a trip down under with her again.

MorganO: Overall, based on the genre and the intention of a short, I give this one a 4.

J Morgan: You took the number right out of my mouth. 4 stouts it is.