Free Spirit

Back story up the wazoo. It made my eyes cross. If there were a scene where someone knocks on the door, there'd be pages & pages of descriptions of the door, other doors the heroine has seen, other people who've knocked at the door, their histories and how the heroine felt about them, speculations about who might possibly be at the door now, a side trip to what the heroine ate for breakfast three days ago, what she's wearing, the other occasions on which she wore this outfit, and what she thinks about the political ramifications of this type of outfit, and a discussion of how she doesn't want anything to get in the way of her being a career woman before she opens the door. Between the knock and opening the door will be possibly 3 or 4 show more chapters. If you got rid of all the extraneous stuff, this book might be 10 pages long. And on those 10 pages, 4 would be devoted to the heroine jumping to conclusions, 5 would be devoted to reminding us of her absolute dedication to her career, and 1 would be the romance. This was written in 1989, so some of that might be the prevailing style at the time (and why I didn't like romance when I tried it then). But in 1989, I was 28 years old--older than the heroine is. And the idea of an employer who gave the "girls" in the office and extra half hour off a week so they could get their hair done... maybe 1969, not 1989. show less