Review: A Strangers on a Train Short Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2013
Allie has been working too hard at building her new marketing company to have much of a social life but if she can make a success of the charity calendar she is working on then her business will be secure. She just has one more name to sign up for the calendar but baseball star Matt Kearns won't even listen to her pitch. When her friend drags her out for a Napa Valley wine tour the last person she expects to bump into is Matt but now she's found him how can she resist the opportunity to make her pitch? Yet as she gets to know him she starts to realise why he doesn't want to draw more public attention to himself and as her attraction towards him grows she starts to regret the lies she told him when they first met. Is it possible to build a lasting relationship on such a rocky start?Back on Track is one of the five stories in the Strangers on a Train series published by Samhain, each of the stories has been written by a different author (the authors involved in the collaboration are Ruthie Knox, Meg Maguire, Serena Bell, Donna Cummings & Samantha Hunter) and is currently available as an ebook but I believe there will be a print bind up containing the whole series published sometime next year. These stories can be read in any order, they are linked only by the common theme that each couple start out as strangers who meet each other on a train, so there is no cross over of characters or story lines.This was such a fun novella to read and I was amused by Allie's approach to Matt - she tells him three things about herself and he has to guess which one of them is a lie. They both have so much fun making up half truths and lies to tell each other but they end up getting themselves into a real mess as they try to figure out what is fact and what is fiction. As this is a fairly short story (around 60 pages) you have to be prepared for their relationship to develop quite quickly but if you're looking for a story that you can read in less than an hour that includes some fun flirtation, great chemistry and a satisfying ending then I'm sure you won't be disappointed with Back on Track. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more from Donna Cummings in the future.