Love, Inc.

Love, Inc.

by Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout

Zahra's life has always been a little different than everyone else's.  Her father is Scottish and her mother is Pakistani, which makes Zahra a red-headed, curry-hating, pastry-cooking, half-Pakistani with a love of baking and a penchant for making cursed cookies that doom her relationships at the first taste.

Now that her grandparents have moved in and taken over her room and her parents have separated leaving Zahra with two half-homes and a pair of parents who never talk, Zahra wants to make things right.

Her first attempt at improving her life leads to accidentally setting the kitchen on fire, and that leads her to group therapy, which then leads her to Syd and Kali.  In normal times, these three girls would probably never become friends, but things are definitely not normal, especially when they discover that they haven't just been two-timed; they've been three-timed.  Eric/Rick/Rico has conned them all and now it's payback time.

But what started out as a simple case of revenge turns into a business opportunity for the girls.  They create Love, Inc. to help mediate hook-ups and break-ups, make matches, find cheaters, save relationships, and plot revenge.

While they fix everyone else's love life, can they fix their own?

Final thoughts:  This is a basic book with a basic plot.  It's not particularly engaging.  I often put the book down and forgot about it, which is never a good sign in my opinion.  I struggled with the concept that Eric would be cheating with three girls who just happen to be forced into the exact same group therapy session, meeting at the same place, at the same time, in a large city.  It strained the bounds of logic.  Once past that, the rest of the story has promise and Zahra's voice is nice.  Not a book to strongly recommend, but definitely something to hand to girls of mixed heritage who struggle to figure out where they fit.

Rating: 3/5