WASTED PAIN, a novel in e-book assumed to have been published, copyright and written by Ken Ross.
A man in his early fifties with an apparently unfortunate ability to attain any type of meaningful relationship with women hears a whimpering sound emanating from a dark alley while visiting the city where another computer-generated date has proved to be a disaster. Cautiously he proceeds to investigate and finds a very attractive, young female, seemingly probably in her late teens or early twenties huddled against the cold and alive but barely responsive. He picks her up, puts her in his car and takes him to his small suburban home. He really is a nice, moral guy who restores her to health. She is a complete enigma. She will not even tell him her name. Shortly thereafter, he awakens to find her gone. She calls him from the city a little while later. He picks her up and again they return to his home. These episodes continue with him gradually becoming more in love with her. The charade continues with the girl gradually gaining trust in the man who had not made any sexual advances and development of an intensely sexual relationship results that also waxes and wanes. The story continues with the reader constantly wondering if the two actually will be able to reconcile their differences until the very end when all is resolved in an unusual finale.
Discussion: This is an unusual tale that generates interest as to how it is going to terminate and is able to sustain the reader’s interest from this perspective. The author’s narrative is replete with knowledgeable description of how a protagonist such as presented would think and act/react in the situations presented. However, the material is presented mostly in large blocks of this descriptive verbalization with only rather sparse sections of dialogue introduced. This reviewer found much of the book ponderous reading at best, although stimulated to continue to discover how the relationship would end. A caveat must be included for the explicit sexually described sections.
3* 4* Strangely interesting suspense romance(?) 3* ponderous narrative.