Wendy Markham, Slightly Settled

Slightly Settled

Wendy Markham

Red Dress Ink, Feb2004, $12.95, 320 pp.

ISBN 037325047

Tracey Spadolini left her family in a small upstate town in New York to be with Will in the Red Apple. They were together for three years and she was hoping he would ask her to marry him but instead he dumps her for another woman. She gets so depressed that she starts seeing a psychiatrist who prescribes anti-depressants for her, causing her to lose close to fifty pounds. Now she is slender with an eye-catching figure with no one to share it with.

At the office Christmas party she meets Jack and the two of them hit it off immediately. After the party, they go to her apartment where they make love all night long. Her friends don't think she should get in a deep relationship with Jack because she's still on the rebound from Will. As time passes, Will turns into a bad memory and Jack is still waiting for her to get over her insecurities.

Aside from the opening chapter where the protagonist has a one night stand with a man she met while very drunk, Tracey is very easy to like with her bundle of insecurities and her doubts that she is attractive. This is a delightful chick lit story about a woman looking for Mr. Right and when she finds him she fears he will turn into a toad like her previous boyfriend. Wendy Markham delivers a lighthearted romp that turns up the body heat on a cold winter's day.

Harriet Klausner