Book review: Naomi's Wish by Rachael Herron

Naomi Fontaine is a buttoned-up emotionally repressed and shy doctor who leaves her small town practice to go to a medical conference. While there she hooks up with a hot doctor for a night of incredible sex. On returning to work, she finds out that her absentee partner has hired a new doctor for her practice and it is ... (surprise surprise) her one-night stand! Et cetera et cetera et cetera.

I read a lot of romance fiction in my teens and twenties. I was studying hard and working in customer service - both occupations that can leave a person completely brain-dead by the end of the day. So, I read romance novels because they were easy to read, didn't contain any surprises and the good ones had a bit of humour in them as well. Then I started analysing romances from a feminist perspective and between the permitted rape stories ("He pushed her up against a wall and pressed his mouth to hers. Her protests died on her lips as she melted into his arms") and the stalking-by-any-other-name stories (hero fights against heroine's resistance until she releases he is really the one for her) and I had to stop reading them.  I do still occasionally dip my foot into the romance novel pool but my relaxation fiction of choice is now murder mysteries - equally predictable but less likely to induce feminist book-throwing rage. However, when I heard there were knitting-themed romance novels out, I couldn't resist (God knows I love a knitting-themed novel) and I've since read all of Rachael Herron's work.

This is clearly the best book out of the three published so far in this series. It doesn't stray too far from the accepted parameters of the romance novel and it contains talk of KNITTING, my favourite thing ever. It is certainly not perfect - there is a lot of heavily implausible plot crammed into the last 20 pages and the odd fact that whenever Naomi consults a knitting book the phrase she reads always relates exactly to her life (really? every single time?). But, other than that, thumbs up, Ms Herron. This book gets the job done and I really enjoyed the ride.