HOW NANCY DREW SAVED MY LIFE
LAUREN BARATZ-LOGSTED
ISBN: (13)-978-0-373-89591-5-2
September 2006
Harlequin
Red Dress Ink, Editorial Office
225 Duncan Mills Rd., Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9
Trade Paperback
$13.95
295 pages
Chick Lit
Rating: 5 Cups

Broken, smashed, and stomped in the mud... that is how Charlotte Bell’s heart felt after falling in love with a married man. Taking a job as a nanny and falling in love with the children’s father was a big, big mistake, but her life has been fairly sheltered and certainly not exciting. Unless you count her earlier years as the Gubber foods poster child. At twenty-three, it is embarrassing when people still remember her and insist she say, “It’s Gubberlicious.” Saying it at six-years-old was much more natural.

Perusing a newspaper for a new job, Charlotte finds one, and an interesting article. Both will change her life. It was the story, the one with a tie-in to Nancy Drew, that sends Charlotte to the neighborhood book store to purchase all fifty-six original works about the amateur sleuth. “What would Nancy Drew do,” becomes Charlotte’s favorite phrase. Upon accepting her new position, she discovers Nancy probably would not move thousands of miles away to a land of fair-haired giants if she were a short, dark Jewish girl. And for sure, she would check out the weather before packing her suitcase. Summers in Reykjavik are not exactly like summers in New York. What was Charlotte thinking, taking another nanny position, this one in Iceland?

She is shocked when she meets her new employer—the same man who scolded her in the park for not being a seasoned rider, and then left her on the ground with her foot stuck in the stirrup. Ambassador Edgar Rawlings is polished, but extremely rude, and not someone Charlotte would ever find attractive. Or so she thinks. She quickly becomes attached to his daughter, and when Edgar brings home a pretentious snip as a possible mother, something about the woman niggles at Charlotte, almost as much as the strange “laughing” noise she hears only in the dead of night. There has never been a mention of a wife. Does Edgar have a deranged one hidden away? Charlotte is destined to find out.

Oh my gosh, what can I say except you have to read this book? It is not your typical romance or mystery, although it has elements of both, and is written with hysterically funny, yet subtle humor. I am so pleased that I was offered the opportunity to chortle my way through this wonderful story. If you start a book at night, turn off the light, but cannot sleep until you read the rest of it, you have to give it a FIVE! Kudos to Ms. Baratz-Logsted for How Nancy Drew Saved My Life. Ms. Baratz-Logsted is going on my list of favored authors.

Brett Scott
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance
Reviewer for Karen Find Out About New Books