Turn Left at Sanity

Can Emmylou Sargent, heiress and young proprietress of the Shady Lady B&B, save smalltown Beaverton, Idaho, from the evil clutches of outoftown corporate honcho, Joe Montcrief, who wants to buildof all thingsa cat litter factory? Warren (Bad Boys Down Under) sets her formula romance amidst an array of secondary characters whose exaggerated quirks and eccentricitiesa kleptomaniac who returns all she steals, a deluded fireman who waters plants in response to shouts of ""Fire!"", a selfstyled Napoleon on horsebackquickly lose their humorous fizz. Despite the predictable execution, however, Warren's premise is admirable: that the slow pace of life in a backwater town, where everyone puts up with each other's idiosyncrasies, has its benefits; that there is value to a place where human contact is an integral part of life and where work is not the end all and be all of existence. A fascinating side plot about a sexual pioneer who came to the town in the early 1900s to build a sanitarium, and whose theories about healthy sexual release echo the orgasm theories of Wilhelm Reich, unfortunately gets short shrift. Warren's heavyhanded jokes about the Shady Lady's past as the town brothel and its use by socalled ""intimate healers"" when the sanitarium was functioning don't add much nuance to the plot. The author is at her best writing steamy sex scenesand the novel has plenty of thesebut, outside the bedroom, Joe and Emmylou, with their stereotypical interests (him: cell phones, laptops and 24/7 work; her: cooking, flowers and ""oh, so cute"" town folk) come off as a flat, uninspired couple.