Maybe Beauty & the Brain works because it is based on two basic elements – beauty and intelligence. Maybe it works because it brings its adult characters back to how they felt in high school, which is such a raw and intense time. Whatever the reason, Beauty & the Brain works.

Rosemary March is beautiful but feels like an utter fool, and has felt stupid since high school. Willis Random, with five degrees and two doctorates, is no longer the pizza-faced geek he was in high school when he and Rosemary were lab partners. He’s back in town to study comet Bobrzynyckolonycki, which passes over small-town Endicott, Indiana every 15 years. Rosemary’s house is the perfect spot for his studies, and Rosemary’s mom, the town’s mayor, has agreed to let him stay at Rosemary’s even though she knows the two of them despised each other in the old days.

If you can get past this improbable setup, and it is rather silly, you’ll be glad you did, because packed in 185 pages is some wonderful stuff.

The myth surrounding Comet Bob is that it’s responsible for odd behavior, and for people falling in love. Both Rosemary and Willis loved each other in high school, but showed it as only teenagers could – with disdain and cruelty. Now that Bob and Willis are back in town, both sets of old feelings have resurfaced; the love and the disdain. So Willis puts down Rosemary at every chance and Rosemary feels stupid. And when he’s not being nasty overtly but feeling those old feelings, he convinces himself that Rosemary is so stupid that she’s bought into the myth of Bob and that’s why she’s attracted to him. Hence, he can’t act on the attraction because it’s only fleeting. After Bob, Rosemary would go back to loathing him. Rosemary’s attraction to the old Willis, however was always based purely on brain power – she got turned on by hearing him talk smart. Now that he’s a hunk, she seems to get turned on twice as fast.

Chemistry gets the better of them more than once, but Willis’ brain keeps getting in the way. His arrogance over his mental superiority makes him behave quite cruelly, and every time he seems ready to apologize or give in to his feelings, his brain rears its ugly head.

What made this book work for me was the convoluted logic of Rosemary and Willis treating each other as they did. Occasionally Willis’ was clumsy, but mostly it worked. However, Willis’ behavior initially was so mean that, mayor or not, Rosemary’s mother should have booted him out of the house after she saw him treat her daughter as he did.

Something else that really worked for me was that both Rosemary and Willis’ secret love affected them for fifteen years. Rosemary never found a man smart enough to love, and Willis felt like a pizza-faced geek the moment he saw Rosemary again. While on the one hand this seemed unrealistic, it was very romantic.

I’m a sucker for books with heroines who feel beaten down and so never develop hidden talents. So I enjoyed Rosemary. And I love characters who torture themselves with their own superiority until someone comes along and points out what’s really important. So I came to love Willis.

This book is the second in author Beverly’s Blame it on Bob trilogy, and I’m going to glom the series. Rosemary and Willis had great chemistry and it hurt so good! While the dialogue was occasionally stilted, the equation worked out to two parts pathos and one part humor (largely in the form of two cats). Mix together and heat over a huge bunsen burner, then watch it explode.