New Book Review: The Woman in the Diner

Title: The Woman in the Diner 

Author: Nina Atwood

Date: 2022

Publisher: Nina Atwood

ISBN: 978-1-7363470-3-4

Quote: "But you sure do look like you could use a friend."

That's what a cameo character, Harley, observes when he offers a lift to a pedestrian moving away from the site of a nasty accident. The pedestrian gets out at a diner run by a woman called Miranda. Miranda is not noticeably related to Jill Rhodes, the heroine of Nina Atwood's thriller series, but they tap into a similar archetype, the Ideal Selves of women readers.

Miranda doesn't know why she keeps feeling that the man who gives the name Trevor could use a friend, or that she should be his friend, but...she's running a diner because her career in psychology became a little too adventurous, and maybe she's ready for a new adventure. That's what Trevor has to offer. He's lost his memories, because they were so traumatic. He's half-consciously looking for someone to go back into a lot of memories that offer thrills and suspense. 

This is a single stand-alone novel but, although Miranda obviously doesn't find Trevor repulsive, before the subconscious appeal of glances and pheromones can have its effect she must first find out whether he's married, and whether she still wants to be his best friend if he is. I like that in a romantic adventure. 

I smiled at the repeated reminders that if any reader refers any of Nina Atwood's novels to a moviemaker who can make a profitable movie out of it, she'll pay a $10,000 commission...but The Woman in the Diner has movie potential, with Trevor's visual memories and feelings constantly playing off Miranda's verbal-thinker logic. Together his still functional "right brain" and her perhaps overused "left brain" can do anything. Texas landscapes, melodramatic weather...

I did not believe the scene with the laptop adapter. Even a laptop battery doesn't seem solid enough that I'd want to rely on it as a weapon. But the movie version could easily fix that.