Love Overboard

Love Overboard is one of Janet Evanovich’s pre-Stephanie Plum contemporary romances, originally published in 1989 as Ivy Books mass-market. Stephanie Lowe, a Vermont woodworker and serial fiancée (three broken engagements, all amicable), wins a windjammer cruise on the schooner Savage. The captain, Ivan Rasmussen, is gruff, broad-shouldered, and exactly the wrong kind of attractive. The plot from there is genre catnip: forced proximity, working-vacation banter, and one small mystery involving Ivan’s late wife.

Evanovich’s Plum-era voice is already mostly here. The comic timing is sharp. The first-person interiority lands. The sea-air sensory detail (sun on weather decks, varnish-and-salt in the captain’s cabin) is more attentive than her later cozy-leaning books usually bother with. What it lacks is plot. The mystery beat resolves quickly and the romance arc is fairly straightforward, so you are mostly here for character and the schooner. If that is what you want from a 250-page romance, it works.

Best for readers exploring Evanovich’s pre-Plum backlist, or anyone who wants a tightly comedic boat romance in the Susan Elizabeth Phillips / Jennifer Crusie tradition. Books like Love Overboard sometimes get unfairly tagged as light reads. This one earns its three stars: charming, brief, period-locked, and a useful look at Evanovich learning how to land a punchline.