Molly Meets Her Match

Molly Meets Her Match by Val Whisenand
***

In this short novel, the eponymous Molly meets wheelchair-bound Brian Forrester, who is apparently her match. Molly helps provide Brian with a "helper dog" to increase his independence. Brian immediately falls for Molly, who rebuffs him repeatedly because she doesn't want to get married. Brian and his brother agree that there is no point in trying to go out with Molly if she doesn't want to get married, so I guess the author of this novel has never actually met a man before. Then for some reason that's not entirely clear to me, Molly moves in to Brian's living room. Even more baffling is her fear of being rejected by Brian, who has hit on her non-stop throughout the entire book, when she sneaks into his bedroom in a satin teddy (that he bought her). Despite my dislike of these cheesy romance novels, this was actually sort of a sweet story. It deals with most of the important disability issues and doesn't follow the cookie-cutter plot of the above two novels, although all three have in common women in their late 20's who are virgins (who are we kidding now?). It starts out kind of slow, but I liked the message in general. Brian never walks again, but he learns that he is still capable of working as a mechanic and that he can still please Molly in bed. That's worth three stars to me. Although if they mentioned "Brian's rippling muscles" one more time, I probably would have hurled the book across the room.