Had I Waxed My Legs for This? ended at the halfway mark, the grade would have been higher. It got off to an absolutely delightful start, rattled along nicely for a while, and then from out of nowhere took a sucker-punch to the plotline that sent it reeling, never to fully recover.

The set-up, like the title, is adorable. Carrie Delaney calls her best friend Jack Templeton to get her out of a fix. She coated her legs with waxing strips, but after the first yank she can’t bring herself to do the rest. The story is an often-charming example of that elusive beast, the Best Friends romance. Carrie and Jack have been friends forever; Carrie has repressed her crush on Jack for fear of scaring him off and Jack thinks of Carrie as a kooky little sister.

As a rule, Carrie gets into trouble and allows Jack to rescue her, but right now it’s Jack who needs rescuing. Jack’s been slow to recover from a breakup and has buried himself in work. Carrie cons him into escorting her to a couples-only resort for a little R&R. Beaches and karaoke bars work their seductive magic, and Jack and Carrie move their relationship to a new level.

So far so good, and if the book had ended there it would have been a solid B. But instead, there’s many pages yet to go, drawn out by the most obnoxious Big Misunderstanding I’ve come across in a long time. It’s a wretched twist that pretty much tanks the book. How can you possibly believe in a twelve-year friendship between two people when one of them will throw away years of trust over a split-second wrong impression? An issue that could be cleared up in seconds goes on for chapters, and is teeth-grindingly irritating the entire time. It’s a terrible waste of an opportunity – the path of true love between lifelong friends is mined with so many believable pitfalls that could have been much better explored, and the crying shame of it is that the first half of the book deserved so much better than it got.

There are also a surfeit of secondary characters whose only purpose is to coo over what a perfect couple Carrie and Jack make – five in all, which is at least three too many. Throwaway characters like these always bother me; I like it better when authors acknowledge that everyone is starring in the movie of their own lives, not just supporting the hero and heroine.

The story’s flaws wouldn’t be so frustrating if the better moments weren’t so endearing. Until that fateful Big Mis, Carrie and Jack really do feel like best friends – Carrie has a little Carole Lombard in her and Jack is steady but not stodgy. The author has a knack for kooky situations and the book has its share of chuckles. There’s a lot of potential here, suggesting better things to come, but if you take this book for a spin, be prepared for a bumpy ride.