Time After Time
Sue Haasler
St. Martin's, Mar 2004, $13.95, 263 pp.
ISBN: 0312306431

In the London vicinity, Cass Thomson is struggling to come up with a fiscal plan that will save historic Coltsfoot Hall, a former family manor converted into a museum before realtors kill history again by turning the place into the latest sprawling development. If she fails not only will the former manor house be gone and she out of a job, she will need a place to live as she resides inside the museum.

Already feeling stress, her anxiety goes off the scale when she receives the invitation to her high school's fifteenth anniversary reunion because it brings back memories of the early 1980s and poster bad boy, her boyfriend, Gideon Harker. Though she is seeing a soccer crazed sportswriter the thought of an adult version of Gideon makes her heart pound. Gideon is a hunk who happens to dabble with high finance (will wonders ever seize!). However, he has troubles as the law believes he has committed fraud and a detective plans to prove so even while Cass and Gideon renew their teen relationship.

TIME AFTER TIME is an entertaining contemporary romance with loads of references and tidbits especially to the early 1980s (each chapter begins with a song title- felt like a decade top 100). The story line is amusing and nostalgic when Cass reflects Dickensian like back to the worst and best of times of her life and readers meet Gideon and a fine supporting cast of reunion attendees. The fraud subplot with its Clouseau -Girard hybrid detective seems unnecessary and takes away from a fun lighthearted second chance romance filled with tidbits from the first time around.

Harriet Klausner