Lost and Found [Tapa blanda]

Allison and Will feel an attraction, even through they meet under challenging situations. Their lust causes them to have steamy, explicit sex just days after meeting, and thoughts continue to steam. Another relative is threatening to take Lizzie, Will's orphaned niece, from him, so Allison proposes they marry to help his situation. After the honeymoon, Allison becomes colder to Will. There was so much slap-stick-like humor and so much sexuality, I found it harder to like either Allison or Will.

There were less important problems,too. Verb tenses were sometimes wrong, like "Will lie on the carpet," or "Will lie at her feet." "Him" was used for "her" at a very inopportune time, "hee" for "he," and "ned" for "need." In addition, why would Allison take a shower right before she went for her walk?

The plot itself wasn't that bad, but the execution was somewhat lacking. The main characters had some redeeming qualities, but I never felt close to them or cared as much as I usually do.

I found the story interesting and liked how the main characters worked to get to know each other. There are severe communications problems between the two main characters, based on assumptions that each makes about the other.

The story does deal with the lost finding a home, whether it is some of the animals in a shelter that is a central part of the show or the characters themselves. The story starts with a lost dog.

I found a few minor pronoun problems that made me re-read the paragraphs a couple of times in a very few instances. That is one reason it received the review it did. But overall I enjoyed the story.

Karen Syed's "Lost and Found" is a thoroughly enjoyable contemporary romance about a pair of characters who are flawed enough to feel real--and endearing. Allison and Will have both suffered some emotional scarring, along with some long-established defensive behaviors that threaten at times to derail the beckoning possibility of a romantic relationship between them. For reasons other than romance [Intrigued? You'll have to read!] they find themselves married before they've worked out all the kinks of one another's personal quirks, and their somewhat bumbling side-by-side journey to deliverance from their respective pasts makes for a compelling read.

Whether or not they realized it about themselves, Allison and Will have been just as lost as the stray animals at Allison's shelter (among whom we meet Stubby the tail-less ferret and Tippy the three-legged raccoon). If they don't get in their own way too much, they could managed to be "rescued"--but Allison's hard-headed tendency to leap to conclusions and make Assumptions, combined with Will's blundering attempts at understanding the mysterious Race of Women (his orphaned young niece, as well as Allison herself), make for a rough ride for the pair of them.

Their rough ride, however, is a remarkably smooth read---Syed's writing has an effortless-feeling flow to it, the characters' dialogue is both witty and natural, and the story twinkles with bright moments of humor. The "adult" scenes in the book flow as naturally as the rest (another mark of a skilled writer, given how many times I've found myself cringing at clumsily-depicted or overblown sex scenes in a romance novel), and I'm pleased all around to have FOUND an author whose other books I'm now looking forward to reading.