In Must Love Dragons, Stephanie Rowe continues a storyline begun in Date Me Baby, One More Time - specifically, the love affair between Theresa Nichols, the dragon Guardian, and Zeke Siccardi, the infamous ex-dragon-slayer.
Must Love Dragons picks up where Date Me Baby, One More Time left off. Justine and Derek have left for their honeymoon, and Theresa has been appointed the interim Guardian of Mona the goblet. Unfortunately, since a dragon wandering the streets of New York City would likely not go over well, Theresa is forced to survive on pretzels and whatever food Quincy, Derek’s brother, sends over - which rarely happens, since Quincy is as absent-minded as they come. To make matters worse, her cyber-sex partner, Zeke, is threatening to end their relationship if she continues to refuse to meet with him in person. Hungry and horny, Theresa makes a deal with the devil: a human body in return for a favor to be determined at a time most advantageous to Satan. Indebted to the devil, Theresa sets off to find food and Zeke, in that order. After all, she’ll need the nourishment if she’s going to live up to her cyber persona.
Zeke Siccardi is a reformed ex-dragon-slayer who’s gone zen. When he’s not meditating, he runs a private detective service, and he’s been hired to locate one Theresa Nichols. After building up a rapport with the woman he suspects is Nichols, he needs to meet her to be sure. Before he can lay eyes on her, however, he gets a visit from someone from his past looking to cash in on a life debt. What does the visitor want? A promise from Zeke that he will help slay a dragon believed to be living in New York City.
Fans of Date Me Baby, One More Time will mostly likely enjoy this sequel. The zany characters that populating Date Me Baby, One More Time all reappear in Must Love Dragons, and they’re just as much fun to read about the second time. While Dragons is a fast, fun read (depending on how much you liked the first novel), you might not like this one as much. At times, the jokes that seemed fresh and original the first time around fall flat. In general, the uniqueness of the world-building in Date Me Baby, One More Time, the things that made that book so different from everything else in this genre, is not as predominant in Must Love Dragons. All in all, while this is a good book, it just doesn’t quite meet the bar set by Date Me Baby, One More Time.
[The third book in this series, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Hot, will be released in Spring 2007.]