Judi McCoy Wanted: One Perfect Man

Wanted: One Perfect Man

Judi McCoy

Avon, Feb 2004, $5.99, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0060560797

In Button Creek, Texas, PhD astronomer Daniel Murphy shares looking at the stars with his eight year old son Will. The former Columbia University professor Daniel runs the local grocery/gas station as he hides from his deceased wife's parents who want to raise Will as their own. While on the rooftop with Will studying the heavens together, they notice strange lights in the sky with one splitting away from the others. In spite of his former credentials, Daniel cannot explain to Will what they saw.

Daniel meets Zara, the new waitress at Coombs Luncheonette. Like every other male including his son, Daniel cannot resist her lure. Zara feels the same way but it is also especially nice to his son. However, her desires are irrelevant as she comes from another planet in which the men are ill and assigned earthly breeding has occurred. She has been designated to mate with Robert Lotello, whom she has not been able to locate because her stud Robert Lotello is in hiding under the alias Daniel Murphy.

This is a whimsical science fiction romance that sounds like Starman, but has a heavier emphasis on the star crossed relationships than on the suspense. The lead couple is a delightful pair while his son is too precocious for this world. The Button Creek crowd adds warmth and emphasizes the differences between the two planetary species in a positive uplifting way so that readers enjoy a fine tale that should lead to the telling of the romances of several other Female ET lights too.

Harriet Klausner