Morning After [Hardcover]

Next comes the plot. Although I could never see this happening, I liked the way Ms. Forster brings in current science and twists her plot to fit that mold. Tom Clancey meets "Outbreak". What I can't understand is how the people in the story could have done what they did and how Temple accepts this. I'd be a little more than annoyed or hurt to learn I was pregnant, without my consent (my body violated, maybe not rape, but violated nonetheless) and my whole life played by someone else like an instrument. Temple seems like an intelligent lead female and the events are taking place outside her ken (which does not make her seems stupid, just naïve and uniformed). I also have to assume that artificial insemination is at work here (since this was never really explained, Temple just woke up after 36 hours, married and pregnant). I was also very uncomfortable throughout the story, until the very end, because I kept asking myself "why". OK,OK, I'm an intelligent reader, and I understand exactly what is going on in the plot at all times, but it was extremely frustrating reading Temple's story with that big "why" flashing through my brain. It is not until the end, when everything is explained that I say "aaahhh, now I get it". We were not given any clues as to why what was happening to Temple happened. No hints dropped or characters slipping lines. Just the knowledge that all this is happening because she is immune to this deadly virus.

Unlike other readers, I did not find this book boring or hard to understand. I just found it choppy and frustrating because I wanted to know WHY what was happening to Temple was happening. I also expected a romance (since Ms. Forster's other books have been) and was disappointed at the lack in this story.

Temple Banning wakes up in a wedding suite, alone and with music playing in her head. She later finds out that she is pregnant and carries not just a baby, but the antidote to a virus. She turns to Mark Challis, aka the Cobra, for help, only to find out he may be the one who set her up to begin with.

The background was ridiculous. Yes, yes, I'm sure the American Embassy in Zaire was going to let Temple enter an epidemic zone. I'm sure the American government would have even let citizens enter the country until the virus was contained. Of course Temple had to go and rescue her parents. Especially when she found out they were already dead, *of course* she had to go to the hospital where they died. Uh huh. Right. It would have made to much sense to wait at the American Embassy for word, and then after finding out they'd died, waited there for the remains to be turned over to her.

Once infected, but a survivor (of course, or there'd be no story), yes, yes, I can just see that the Centers for Disease Control would just let Temple run off her merry way, without making sure to stay in contact with her for yearly physicals, and just in case the virus broke out again. Why would they want to keep in contact with the woman who carried the antidote to a deadly virus in her body, anyway?

I could go on, but there's no need. With such senseless plotting as this, I couldn't bring myself to do more than skim the rest of the book. That's when I found out that the romance was an attempt at the "hero behind the scenes, directing the heroine's life without her knowing it" that Brenda Joyce did much better in her historical romance, THE GAME.

Read THE GAME. Forget THE MORNING AFTER.