Book Review: No Cure For Love by Sandy Curtis

• ASIN: B00W674Y70

He’s back in her life.

But she can’t let him back in her heart.

It’s taken eleven years for Lani Campbell to build a new life and find peace. Peace that is shattered when Luke Tarrant walks back into her life.

Once he’d loved her. Once he’d vowed vengeance on her family. With time had come understanding and acceptance. But when Luke sees Lani again, eleven long years are stripped away and his heart tells him his love has never died, only been denied.

Bewildered by Lani’s reaction to him, Luke searches for answers to the pain and fear he appears to have brought into her life.

When they are forced to share an isolated hut in the rugged Queensland bush, passion re-ignites a flame that has never been extinguished, but will love give Lani the strength to conquer the traumas of her past?

It amazed me how quick, but yet slow, the pace of the book is.  When the story starts, Lani has obviously fainted from seeing Luke, whom she hasn’t heard from in 11 years.  The opening was enough to hold interest, however, it didn’t play out well.  For her to have had such a strong reaction to him, I expected more of a conversation than for them to just sit quietly while he took her home.  The readers are given a background of the couple, but I had no emotional ties to it.  It wasn’t enough for me to become invested in seeing how they would work out their problems.  They were 17 years old when they met and only dated a few months before her father interfered and Luke never saw her again.  Readers learn that something happened that Luke isn’t aware of, but the prose is bland, and the dialogue too long in many instances.

I’m all for someone holding on to a past love, especially their first love, but readers aren’t given enough prior to Luke realizing he MUST have her because he still loves her and no other woman can take her place.  Once again they were 17.  There is no mentioning of what’s been going on during the missing years, at least not by chapter 5 which was the last chapter I read.

The story is rushed, for example, Luke decides he’ll behave professionally to win her back, and then maybe four or five pages later, he decides professional behavior is not working and he must try different means.  This makes the character, as well as the writing, seem extremely impatient, which is a definite turn-off in this case. I never understood the motivation behind his obsession with her.  Falling in love at 17 only to be split up because of disapproving parents is not unusual, therefore I really need more to understood why he MUST have her.  During their time together, it seems like they were just two horny teenagers.  There were no tough times they helped each other get through, no true dedication to the relationship, other than being dedicated to sneaking around to have sex.

Although there is some mention about some big secret, it’s not presented in a way to create any anxiety in me to find out what it is.

Rating system: Cups of coffee – the less the better

0: You won’t need any coffee to stay up for this one. It’s intriguing enough all on its own.
1: You’ll stay up late, but not all night. Brew one cup.
2: You’ll read as long as you’re not tired. If you are, two cups should do the trick.
3: I hope you got plenty of rest; you’ll need it, or at least 3 cups.
4: If the cable goes out, read the book. It’s better than nothing, I guess. Oh, don’t forget your brew!
5: Find anything else to do- it doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t waste your coffee. Too much caffeine is bad for you.

My rating: 5 cups of coffee