Tuesday, November 6, 2018

A Sweet Fortune

by Amy Andrews from the October 29, 2018 issue

Tagline: When a fortune cookie foretold that Callie would meet the man of her dreams on Halloween, she spent years secretly hoping the prediction would come true. But just when she'd given up on ever finding love, she meets a handsome stranger...on All Hallow's Eve. Could he finally be the one?

Observations: Wow. LONGEST TAGLINE EVER. LOL It was like a full paragraph. They're really taking advantage of the double page spread. :)

I actually got a chill at the end of this story, something I wasn't expecting. It was a little eerie, but what to you expect from a Halloween story, right?

Again, for a Harlequin Woman's World story, I think this is indistinguishable from the norm we're used to seeing. Maybe the editorial staff and Harlequin had a meeting or are communicating more. Whatever they're doing, it's making the "5-minute romance" experience more consistent for the reader.

Regarding this story in particular, I liked the "coincidence" of the hero dressing as the thing that the heroine is afraid of. I also liked that he was Itsy Bitsy, instead of a scary spider. Again, talking about characterization, the fact that this man isn't afraid to channel his inner child or about being "manly," shows that he's real life romance material--at least the type of romance material Woman's World story readers are looking for. No tortured, alphas here. No sirree.

Photo credit: Andrew Malone via Flickr CC license

3 comments:

Pat said...

Kate, I laughed at your tagline comment. Honestly, I never read the tagline which is why I found your comment so funny and so true.

Another great story with an original premise. I loved the use of the fortune cookie in this story. Nice touch. Also the use of so few words for a story that covered such a long period of time jumped out at me.

I agree about the spider, as someone who suffers from arachnophobia, I was so glad his was a kids' spider and not a scary one.

bettye griffin said...

I thought the end had just the right amount of Twilight Zone creepiness for Halloween!

Jill Weatherholt said...

I enjoyed this story, especially since I love fortune cookies!