Nerd Gone Wild
Vicki Lewis Thompson
St. Martin's Feb 2005, $6.99, 4164 pp.
ISBN: 031299866X

Following the death of her beloved grandmother who raised her, Ally Jarrett decides to live her dream. She leaves the relative warmth of Southern California to become a wildlife photographer in wintry Porcupine, Alaska. Not long afterward, her grandmother's nerdy personal assistant Mitchell Carruthers arrives with the pretext he needs her to sign estate documents.

Mitch is actually a private investigator bodyguard hired by Ally's grandmother to keep her safe from her Uncle Kurt. Because she knew Ally would reject a bodyguard, grandma got Mitch to pretend to be a nerd and obtained a deathbed pledge from him that he would keep her beloved safe. As Mitch and Ally fall in love, Kurt arrives with dominatrix girlfriend Vivian pretending to be a famous wildlife photographer for they have plans for the wealth that his stepmother left totally to his niece.

The nerd series has not gone much wilder than this tale that seems to take two Los Angeles citizens and voluntarily places them amongst a rowdy crowd that must have escaped from Northern exposure. The storyline is fun to follow as Mitch tries to ignore his desire and love for Ally who thinks he is pathetic until the first kiss. Vivian is an intriguing character though some readers will be turned off by the S&M relationship between her and Kurt. Vicki Lewis Thompson takes nerds where they never gone before with this amusing North to Alaska tale.

Harriet Klausner