It’s Christmastime of 1999, and Nancy Gallard, our story’s central character, has recently turned fifty and is currently inhabiting a relentless winter of discontent. The career she loved, professional momhood, has been forcibly downsized by the perversity of her three children’s having attained adulthood. So poor Nancy has morphed into a rudderless, quasi-agoraphobic frump. Her lifelong dream of becoming a novelist remains stalled in Fantasyland, awaiting inspiration that maddeningly refuses to arrive.
One serendipitous day, however, Nancy finally hits upon the seedling of an idea for an historical romance she’s pretty certain she can cultivate into a viable novel. And from the first sentence she types, the seedling begins to burst into bloom almost of its own accord--a stroke of luck that, unfortunately, doesn’t fail to exact a price. After watching a TV movie set in the same era she‘s writing about, Nancy’s imagination, involuntarily but irrevocably, casts the film’s gorgeous young leading man in the role of her story’s hero. Which would seem to be no more than an innocuous mental quirk. Ah, but as luck would have it, Nancy’s instant attraction to James Powell, the aforementioned leading man, (whom she re-christens “Jamie”), rapidly escalates into an all-encompassing obsession that traps her entire consciousness in a pit of emotional quicksand..
Not being unintelligent, Nancy realizes that her 24/7 fixation would be far more age-appropriate for a teenager, causing an occasional concern about the certifiable soundness of her mind. There’s also the tiny detail that she’s been happily married for nearly thirty years. However, her obsession features very little of a lascivious nature, so she doesn’t feel it warrants any bothersome guilt.
In her longing for Jamie, she mostly wishes she could, well, just get to know him.
Shortly after her novel is completed, and, to her boundless joy, has been eagerly grabbed up by a prestigious publishing house, Nancy stumbles upon the news that Jamie is soon to relocate to her native New York to star on Broadway. OMG!! Our besotted friend is catapulted over the moon. And ironically, her dreamboy soon takes up residence in the very neighborhood in which she grew up. So she takes to driving into Manhattan from her home in the Jersey ‘burbs on quite a frequent basis, roaming the streets she knows so well, convinced she’s bound to run into Jamie. He, however, remains so elusive that he might possibly be a closet vampire with a distinct aversion to daylight.
Several ensuing chapters recount the sitcom-like absurdities of Operation Jamie Search, which despite her head-banging frustration, Nancy refuses to abandon. And in the midst of it, a veritable miracle occurs: her novel becomes a runaway bestseller. But alas, her running-over cup of euphoria is soon drained dry when it begins to appear that her marriage is traveling down the road leading to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Revealing any further details of the story would, I’m afraid, be spilling too many of its beans. But I will tell you that Nancy and Jamie do finally meet and immediately hit it off, developing a close friendship. In addition, her marriage undergoes a time-traveling rejuvenation, in which both husband and wife happily reprise their long-ago roles of starry-eyed newlyweds. Thus, our altogether predictable happy ending comes to fruition.
If you’re the type of reader who habitually seeks out literary value in every book you pick up, I’m afraid this novel will disappoint you. However, if you’re content with just being entertained, I believe I can promise that it will supply an abundance of chuckles, chortles, and occasional LOL’s from beginning to end. It’s the type of novel that’s an ideal beach read, or a perfect antidote for the housebound dullness of a rainy weekend.
One serendipitous day, however, Nancy finally hits upon the seedling of an idea for an historical romance she’s pretty certain she can cultivate into a viable novel. And from the first sentence she types, the seedling begins to burst into bloom almost of its own accord--a stroke of luck that, unfortunately, doesn’t fail to exact a price. After watching a TV movie set in the same era she‘s writing about, Nancy’s imagination, involuntarily but irrevocably, casts the film’s gorgeous young leading man in the role of her story’s hero. Which would seem to be no more than an innocuous mental quirk. Ah, but as luck would have it, Nancy’s instant attraction to James Powell, the aforementioned leading man, (whom she re-christens “Jamie”), rapidly escalates into an all-encompassing obsession that traps her entire consciousness in a pit of emotional quicksand..
Not being unintelligent, Nancy realizes that her 24/7 fixation would be far more age-appropriate for a teenager, causing an occasional concern about the certifiable soundness of her mind. There’s also the tiny detail that she’s been happily married for nearly thirty years. However, her obsession features very little of a lascivious nature, so she doesn’t feel it warrants any bothersome guilt.
In her longing for Jamie, she mostly wishes she could, well, just get to know him.
Shortly after her novel is completed, and, to her boundless joy, has been eagerly grabbed up by a prestigious publishing house, Nancy stumbles upon the news that Jamie is soon to relocate to her native New York to star on Broadway. OMG!! Our besotted friend is catapulted over the moon. And ironically, her dreamboy soon takes up residence in the very neighborhood in which she grew up. So she takes to driving into Manhattan from her home in the Jersey ‘burbs on quite a frequent basis, roaming the streets she knows so well, convinced she’s bound to run into Jamie. He, however, remains so elusive that he might possibly be a closet vampire with a distinct aversion to daylight.
Several ensuing chapters recount the sitcom-like absurdities of Operation Jamie Search, which despite her head-banging frustration, Nancy refuses to abandon. And in the midst of it, a veritable miracle occurs: her novel becomes a runaway bestseller. But alas, her running-over cup of euphoria is soon drained dry when it begins to appear that her marriage is traveling down the road leading to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Revealing any further details of the story would, I’m afraid, be spilling too many of its beans. But I will tell you that Nancy and Jamie do finally meet and immediately hit it off, developing a close friendship. In addition, her marriage undergoes a time-traveling rejuvenation, in which both husband and wife happily reprise their long-ago roles of starry-eyed newlyweds. Thus, our altogether predictable happy ending comes to fruition.
If you’re the type of reader who habitually seeks out literary value in every book you pick up, I’m afraid this novel will disappoint you. However, if you’re content with just being entertained, I believe I can promise that it will supply an abundance of chuckles, chortles, and occasional LOL’s from beginning to end. It’s the type of novel that’s an ideal beach read, or a perfect antidote for the housebound dullness of a rainy weekend.
