Only You

Cynthia Victor. Viking, $19.95 (399p) ISBN 0-670-84981-2 The lovers in Victor's (Relative Sins) second novel are kept apart by more bad luck than you'd see in a month of soap operas. Carlin Squire and Ben Dameroff are academic rivals until sex brings them together in high school. But when Carlin gets into Harvard and Ben does not, and, moreover, wins the cash award he needs to fund his education, there are tense moments. Then tragedy strikes: Ben's mother and Carlin's father are in a car accident prompted by a malicious telephone call; she is killed; he is paralyzed. The teenagers are not prepared to deal with either the aftermath of the accident or their parents' adultery, which it revealed. They break up and do not see each other for 20 years, during which time Carlin becomes a decorated NYC police officer and Ben becomes an emergency trauma surgeon. When Carlin is shot and Ben is the attending doctor, it seems that their destiny will be fulfilled at last. Not so-more complications eventually put both their love and their lives in danger. Despite the numerous plot twists, the pacing is slow, the narrative lacks passion and the sweethearts are separated for so long that their reunion is anticlimactic. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (Oct.)