A Cyber Affair

The latest from Cook (When Love Evolves) is a confusing and repetitive contemporary romance about looking for love online. Tiffany Wilkes is ready to find her soul mate, but she keeps meeting jerks who care only about getting laid. When she’s not prowling one of San Francisco’s night spots, she’s curled up on her couch perusing online dating websites. When Manuel Perez, a Navy retiree in Miami, responds to her profile, she’s intrigued enough by his offer of friendship to reply to his emails. Manny is also looking for a second chance at love and is disillusioned with meaningless connections. Instead of emails and online chats showing how Manny and Tiffany fall in love, Cook supplies generic notes summarizing their daily lives. The switch from being “just friends” to having cyber-sex happens without warning and is never clearly depicted, making the relationship transition jarring and hard to follow. This meandering work is monotonous as it traces the daily minutiae of Tiffany and Manny’s lives without showing how or why they fall in love. (June)