Love in Pasadena

Rating:
Summary: A romance novel for people who don't like romance novels.
Review:

Even if you don't normally read romance fiction (I don't), you'll enjoy LOVE IN PASADENA, an engrossing novel with a unique setting and extremely well-drawn characters. It's the story of Nick Alexander, journalist and failed novelist, who enrolls in the Dinison School for Nannies in order to write an article about his experiences. Instead, his experiences change his life forever.

(A school for nannies! How's THAT for a unique setting for a romance novel -- or any novel? I don't know if such a place actually exists, but author Hoe makes you believe that it does.)

Along the way, Nick encounters a number of interesting characters, including two fellow nannies-in-training, the beautiful but foul-mouthed Angela Monique de Finistere and Letha Collins, a leggy African-American; Oliver Smithson, the ramrod-straight ex-British Army officer who runs Dinison with military precision; and Harold Jentzen, one of the slimiest villains you'll ever encounter between the pages of a book.

But every character whom Hoe describes -- from the leads to the "supporting cast" to the "bit players" -- is believable and well delineated. And I especially liked the way he developed his theme of love throughout the novel, pairing couples and demonstrating how love, its loss or lack, and the inability to give it affects every person in the LOVE IN PASADENA universe