New Book Review: An Incompatible Match

Title: An Incompatible Match 

Author: Darla Rose 

Date: 2023 

Publisher: Darla Rose 

Quote: "I want to wait till marriage to have sex." 

Laura is from rural central Canada, her parents are "very conservative," and her best friend is a single mother, so she has abundant reasons to make this statement. She's just afraid it will make her a social outcast at the University of Arizona, where she's been assigned a room in a mixed-sex dorm, and the cutest guy on campus is well known for sleeping around. She's sure that telling him her commitment will put him off, and she thinks that's even the right thing to do...but this is a sweet romance, so instead of the predictable "Well, forget about that little cowgirl--or do I mean cow," Matt the Player instantly starts thinking "Do I want to marry Laura?"

Is there just something about that name? Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books presented the author's younger self as a nice child but not a saint, so why does "Laura" just sound like a name for a girl who makes open and notorious sinners want to reform? 

I'm not sure I believe this story. And if I do believe it, I'm sad, because so much has been lost. In my day nobody, female or even male, thought twice about saying "I want to wait till marriage to have sex." Saying it to a really fanatical Catholic might lead to a bit of heavy weather, but the normal response was, "Good for you! We can still have fun." Whereupon we immediately began to play Scrabble. Well, that and whatever else came to our prudent but in no way naive, normal, red-blooded, filthy twenty-year-old minds. 

But it's a sweet, wholesome, teenage fantasy. It's always a mistake to take romance novels too seriously. The genre is all about fantasies, and Darla's and Matt's fundamental niceness is a charming one.