Street Smart

Street Smart is the eighth stand-alone novel by American author, Tara Taylor Quinn. After fleeing Italy and the cot-death of her newborn baby, Francesca Witting returns to Sacramento to find her widowed mother distraught at the absence of her teenaged sister, Autumn. One recent phone call has been traced to a callbox in Las Vegas, so Francesca decides to stake it out in the hope of finding her sister. She makes the acquaintance of Carl, owner of a bar that becomes a safe place for young women, and Luke, a security consultant for one of the big Casinos who has issues to deal with surrounding his mother, and his desire for fatherhood.

The subplots are several and intertwined. After a long, drawn-out lead-up, the climax is somewhat rushed and all the threads are neatly tied up. While some of the issues addressed are topical, the scheme in which the teens are involved becomes obvious fairly quickly, but the execution is extremely tedious. The story progresses so slowly that at times that reading it is like wading through molasses. While Francesca and Luke are more than cardboard, many of the characters are stereotypes lacking any depth. The romance aspect seems to be secondary to the main plot and is also very slow moving. This needs some ruthless editing before it could rate more than 2 stars.