The Right Woman offers a good argument against romance novel sequels. Everything about it feels tacked-on and unnecessary.

The book evidently continues a story begun in the author’s previous book, The Wrong Woman. I haven’t read it, and nothing this story tells me about it makes me want to go back and do so. Apparently, five years ago, Sarah Welch was dating a police detective. Sarah’s thesis was on strippers, so when she learned that her boyfriend was going undercover in a strip club, she decided to get a job as a waitress in the club. That way, she could both do research for her thesis and hang out with her boyfriend. This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, so when the author tries to make the reader feel bad for everything that happened to Sarah afterward, I had a hard time generating all that much sympathy for her. Gee, horning in on your cop boyfriend’s undercover assignment. Who could have predicted that would go wrong?

Long story short, the evil club owner/drug dealer/all around bad guy found out about Sarah and her undercover boyfriend. The cop got a bullet to the head right in front of Sarah, who was then forced to become a stripper in the club herself and be degraded in the way she previously found so fascinating. Sarah was finally saved by the long-lost twin sister she never knew. She later testified against the bad guy, who was shipped off to death row.

Maybe it’s not fair to criticize this book for the overly-complicated backstory, because that all that happened in the previous book. But it’s also the foundation for this one, and the first hundred pages are all spent rehashing this stuff. Just about nothing happens in the first third of this book. We learn that Sarah has now become a counselor dealing with rape victims. The case of a teenager who is the third victim of a serial rapist reunites Sarah with Daniel Garrett, the narcotics detective who was her dead boyfriend’s superior. Daniel was with her during the long trial, and his presence brings back bad memories for her. They meet again, and that’s about all that happens. The author spends numerous pages recapping the previous book. We get long explanations of Sarah’s complicated family history. We meet Daniel’s screwed up family. Much moping ensues for all involved.

Finally, some semblance of a story kicks in. Sarah’s life is suddenly in jeopardy, and Daniel has himself assigned to protect her. As suspense, it’s only moderately diverting, mainly because the motives and villains are all related to the earlier book. It feels like walking into the last half hour of a movie, just in time to see the loose ends tied up from a story you didn’t see. It doesn’t help that the guilty party is practically waving from the sidelines, “Hi! It’s me!” In addition, the romance reads like an afterthought. Daniel and Sarah spend a lot of this time apart, as Daniel runs around investigating. There are some effective moments, but the love story feels motivated by emotions that were already in place before this book began, and therefore don’t need to be developed in this one. The same goes for the characters, who have complicated back stories, but are kind of boring in their own right.

Not helping matters is that resolution to the suspense comes far too early, so that the final third of the book slips back into tedium. In most romances, the events of the last third would take place in a chapter or two. Instead, the author doesn’t have enough story to fill out her 300 pages, so she pads the extra pages by dragging out the conclusion as long as possible. When she does get around to wrapping things up, pat endings are the order of the day. The solution to Daniel’s parents’ marital difficulties in particular is ridiculously easy.

Warren is a capable author and this is not a poorly written book – even though its plotting is a mess. It feels less like a stand-alone book than an unnecessary epilogue to an earlier one. Readers who enjoyed The Wrong Woman might enjoy finding out what happened to the characters after that story ended. Readers who didn’t are unlikely to find much satisfaction here. There’s only about 125 pages of actual story. Basically, the first third is exposition, the second is the story, and the final third is padding. It’s a shame too because there are some good secondary characters and reasonable ideas here. Too bad they’re stuck in the wrong book.