The Love Scam

Davidson sets her rollicking but unbelievable follow-up to Danger, Sweetheart in Venice, Italy, where handsome, filthy rich bachelor Rake Tarbell awakens near-terminally hungover having lost his cell phone, wallet, and all memory of how he got there. He soon encounters Claire Delaney, who claims to have met him the night before, accompanied by Lillith, a precocious young girl who may or may not be the daughter Rake didn’t know he could have sired years before. Rake gradually warms to the odd duo, but Davidson frustratingly keeps both Rake and the reader in the dark as to Delaney’s true motives for ingratiating herself into Rake’s life for a large swath of the book, even as the pair start to fall in love. Though the characters are charming and their unlikely Venetian misadventures are fun, Davidson’s excessively tangled plot, interspersed with libidinous streams-of-consciousness from both Rake and Delaney, is often too confusing to hold the reader’s attention. Fans of lighthearted romance may find this one stretches a cute premise too far. (Aug.)