Opening Sentence: "...Penelope Porter pulled her car up in front of her ex-husbands house..."

I really struggled to get through this book I found the heroine to be so utterly stupid I just wanted to smack her. Penelope Porter decides to woo her despicable ex-husband - she has decided he is not too bad after all, and besides she is ready to have a baby now. It is this yearning for a little bundle which propels her to buy a puppy. A puppy she calls Mr Darcy and her sexy neighbour calls Bonsai. Dylan Mersey is an ex-con - obviously a dangerous man - but a man that Penelope is very attracted to. Soon she has to decide between the two exs - and ex con or an ex husband. Maybe the puppy has made up his own mind.

None of that characters came alive for me, I didn't find any humor, in fact I found it to be dull, dull, dull. ( )

Reviewed for queuemyreview.com; book release Dec08

The prim society girl and the ex-con. Talk about the ultimate in bad boy fantasies. “Bedtime for Bonsai” by Elaine Fox gives a different take on the ‘unsuited lovers’ theme in her latest from Avon romance. This book furthers her series of stories about dog owners and how their dogs help them find that special someone.

Penelope still wants a child. This longing for motherhood was a major player in her divorce from her husband. She’s always been the society-type, even though her other dog owner friends aren’t exactly cut from the same mold. Until her divorce, she was content to be taken care of, stay at home, look nice, and support ‘her man’. Now, however, she’s met someone totally different…an ex-con. Her attraction to him is very strong even when his treatment of her leaves her feeling dazed and confused.

Dylan went to prison to save his mother. Oh, he was also guilty of other petty crimes, but when the bust came…it wasn’t for his crimes, it was due to his mother’s drugs. The only good thing to come of it was that his mother got ‘clean’ afterward. Now, with a grant, he is making a fresh start in a new town and opening his pottery business. When the classy lady across the street appears interested, he figures she’s just ‘slumming’. But it quickly becomes clear that she thinks she’s interested in him. However, some old ‘friends’ are trying to blow his fresh start and Dylan is sure the best thing he can do for Penelope is to keep her out of his life.

Fox’s story appealed to me from the moment I read the back cover blurb. It sounded like a funny, light-hearted, and cute story involving an adorable puppy. There were funny, light-hearted, and cute moments in this tale, and the dog, Mr. Darcy or Bonsai depending on who you ask, was indeed adorable and did have a minor part to play in the plot of the book. My beef with the overall story is basically the heroine. I haven’t read any of her other books about Penelope’s dog-owner friends, but I definitely picked up fairly early on that the other books existed. Maybe not having read them was why I felt Penelope was a fairly shallow individual. I kept hoping that my feelings would change and Penelope would ‘grow’ a bit, but that didn’t happen until the last few pages of the book and it was almost an overnight thing. That was just a bit too contrived for me.

Maybe I was expecting too much as I’ve read some of Elaine Fox’s earlier stories and enjoyed them very much. Humor and romance are a great combination, but it is hard to find authors who do them well all the time. I also felt that maybe I was ‘missing’ some information which might have been a result of not reading the earlier books in the series, but was still irritating. Where the story shined, it shone very brightly. But for me, “Bedtime for Bonsai” just didn’t shine quite often enough. ( )