Here Today, Gone to Maui-Carol Snow

Here Today, Gone to Maui
Carol Snow
Berkley, Jan 2009, $14.00
ISBN: 9780425225639

In Southern California, thirtyish Jane Shea looks forward to her week long vacation with her boyfriend, Michael "Jimmy" James although the weeks just before she considers what could go wriong like the flu, food poisoning or shingles. However her fears seem for naught as Jimmy arrives at Jane’s home an hour early to take them to the Orange County Airport to fly to Atlanta to catch their connecting first class flight to Maui.

In Maui, Jimmy takes forever to get the car rental and then the Hyatt insists they never made reservations; Jimmy tells her no other hotel on Kannapolis has a room so he arranged for them to stay at a studio condo. Soon after that Jimmy goes diving, but never returns. A distraught Jane fears her boyfriend drowned, but soon finds herself in trouble she does not understand as the real Michael James stands up as someone she never knew.

Jane is an intriguing lead character as she learns that all her obsessive anxiety disorder musings pale next to the reality of the problems she suddenly faces due to the activities of her missing boyfriend. Jimmy is an enigmatic person who the heroine (and readers) begins unpeels the mystery one petal at a time. Fans will enjoy this lighthearted romantic suspense romp everything that she anticipated happening on her vacation did not occur, instead much worse did as Jane learns the hard way between worrying over possible trouble and real trouble.

Harriet Klausner