Book Review: The Right Wrong Number: A Short Story by Barbara Delinsky
A failure as a marketing ploy, and a failure as a romance short story The Right Wrong Number: A Short Story by Barbara Delinsky
Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: April 2, 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Pages: 30 pages
Source: Free Kindle download
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry
Like many others, I frequently try out authors who offer "FREE!" Kindle books. Delinsky is a well-known romance author, but I had never read her work, and the offering of what I assumed would be a complete novel at no cost seemed to be a terrific opportunity to check her out. Unfortunately, The Right Wrong Number is not a novel. It is a short story, and it is not even a very good one, for several reasons:
The "cute meet" of the hero and heroine results from the heroine presumably entering a wrong number in her cell phone. However, in order for that misdial to occur, we are asked to believe that she would choose to laboriously click in every digit for the number of her closest friends every single time she calls them on a regular basis--rather than simply programming their number into her contact list so that she can do one-click dialing when she calls them. This method of making calls digit-by-digit makes even less sense given that the heroine is a sophisticated enough cell-phone user to know how to program the phone so that all her outgoing calls remain anonymous, which makes it impossible for the romantic interest to track her down when she drops her cell in water and loses all its data.
I might have overlooked that non-motivated, key action of the heroine, given that I enjoyed the conversation that resulted between the heroine and her romantic interest, if only it had led to the two of them spending most of the book on stage together--which is what one expects in a romance short story or novel. Inexplicably, though, Delinsky chose to structure her story such that the two of them are in contact with each other only one other time after that single phone call, for a max of maybe 5-10% of the story. The other 90-95% of the story is dedicated to the heroine mulling over and carrying out what--to me anyway--is a boring business deal.
It's clear that the publisher thought this short story would be a good marketing ploy to introduce Ms. Delinsky to new readers. Sadly, it has failed in its intended purpose. It is impossible to tell after reading this short story if Ms. Delinsky is capable of writing an excellent romance novel. It is only possible to determine that she has been ineffective in writing this particular romance short story.
