One Way Ticket: A Tropical Romance Novel
NY Times & USA Today bestselling author, Tricia O’Malley’s latest romance is a funny and heart-pounding story where booking a one-way ticket to paradise means starting over, letting go, and taking a chance on love…one more time.
When Paige Lowry discovers her boyfriend and boss, owner of Yoga Soulone studio, has decided her chakras need realignment in the form of inviting several bendy yoga instructors into their bed – she realizes it’s time to smack him with her yoga mat and namaste away. When she calls to cancel the studio’s upcoming Caribbean retreat, the last thing Paige expects is to be offered a job. What better way to give the middle finger to her old life than to hightail it to a tropical island to work at a fancy resort?
But all signs point to an impulsive mistake when she arrives at the dusty airport on Poco Poco Island and nobody is there to pick her up. The alcoholic owners don’t remember hiring her, the skeleton-staff barely holds the hotel together, and the moody yet gorgeous manager, Jack Byron, seems irritated with her very existence. Things go from bad to worse when Paige learns that her ex and his flexible mistresses are arriving in three days for the retreat she thought she had canceled.
Caught in the eye of the storm and her growing attraction to her new boss (been there, done that, didn’t turn out well), Paige must scramble to prove she can run this upcoming retreat with no disasters. But even she can’t be blamed for the hurricane that swerves left and suddenly has the tiny island in its sights. As tensions explode at Tranquila Inn, Paige learns that taking it poco poco might be the only way she’ll survive.
Semi Finalist
Plot/Idea: 10 out of 10
Originality: 10 out of 10
Prose: 10 out of 10
Character/Execution: 10 out of 10
Overall: 10.00 out of 10
Assessment:
Plot: Tricia O’Malley, a renowned and prolific author of romance fiction, has fashioned a heroine in Paige who is not only able, but eager to take responsibility for the mess her life has become and forge ahead with the tools at her disposal. One of whom is the acerbic, prickly, no-nonsense, competent Jack Byron who predictably eventually becomes Paige’s love interest, which leads to its own complications given his history with one woman in particular.
Prose/Style: The prose flows naturally in this beach read, in fairly short sentences, with a vocabulary that moves the story along at a good pace. Most of the story is told through dialogue and Paige’s thoughts, which makes the action easy to follow.
Originality: The plot stays within the bounds one expects in a romance, but the novel is unique in the degree to which Paige encounters and analyzes the challenges inherent in being a strong independent woman who also needs intimacy in her life.
Character Development/Execution: O’Malley creates a cast of distinctive characters with distinctive voices to support her protagonist’s journey. CeCe Alderidge, alcoholic owner of Poco Poco Island’s Tranquila Inn, for example, uses words like “churlish,” “tizzy,” and “serendipitous.” Paige lets us know what she is thinking and how she arrives at the conclusions she does. Her concerns make her an extremely relatable character—after all, who worries about how much the sheets that your lover cheated on cost? Well, actually, a lot of us.
Date Submitted: August 16, 2021
