Love at First Date (Better Date than Never) Paperback – December 5, 2012

Ellen is at her thirties, but still single and wary of guys. After her mom's three divorces, she realizes that to be compatible and in sync with a guy is what she needs to get involved in a relationship. So she joins Detailed Dating, an online dating service that measures the compatibility of searchers and searchees. And she gets two matches and will soon be dating one of them.Rachel, her best friend and office mate gets a date and asks her for a favor - doggie-sitting her dog Chester, who recently chewed on her beautiful black boots. When Chesters seems to have swallowed something, she takes the dog to the nearest vet and meets Henry, the most mysterious man she has ever known. He has recently rescued a dog and names her Kenzie and they're doing an obedience training. He is good-looking, smiles a lot, helps her with training and is fun to be with. What's not to love? Ellen's clearly smitten with the guy, but she doesn't want anything to do with him because he's a complete stranger. She doesn't like asking too many questions about a guy, unless it's all stated in Detailed Dating.Until Ellen finally gets to date her matches. Until all she thinks about is Henry and his mysterious ways. Until she learns from Rachel that he's not going to get in touch with her again. Bummer!I love this short story so much. I wish it was longer, though. I love Ellen and her eccentric ways and her naivety. Sure, she's quite closed-minded sometimes, heck, she even annoys me with her compulsive thinking and over-the-top assumptions about Henry. But there's something about her that I found charming about her. I like how she stands her ground and balances her choices, I like how she acts like an awkward teenager when she's around Henry. She's a doll!I'm liking short stories lately. They satisfy me at some point and makes me think outside the box. I've read some books by Susan Hatler and I always find myself laughing and feeling like a lovestruck idiot in the end, but I don't care. I gotta hand it to Susan, she's the queen of short rom-coms and she deserves it.

I liked this book. The storyline was cute, a bit over the top and yet, I thought it had a hint of realism to it as well. This book focuses on Ellen and Henry. Ellen was an interesting character. In some ways I felt she almost seemed a charicature of a woman fearing the ticking of her biological clock and one tormented by emotional anxieties and a wounded heart caused by her mother, her childhood and from witnessing far too many failed relationships. On the other hand, she seemed real and relatable. I've known women like her. They are so sure that if they combine logic, with a lack of emotion and have total control of the situation, they will find that love they've been searching for and been denied. I liked Henry and found the whole, should she listen to her head or her heart question entertaining.

I read a book with the secondary character, Rachel, in this one as the heroine and based on the hints in the story I just had to come back and read Ellen's story. What a fun enjoyable light romance!Due to watching her mom stumble disastrously through multiple attempts to find true love, Ellen has decided to protect herself from making the same mistakes by formulating a system to find her one true love and a certain on-line dating service provides her with the opportunity to put it into practice.Just when she has her list of candidates narrowed down to a few prospects, she bumps into Henry while dealing with a vet emergency for the puppy she is dogsitting. The moment she lays eyes on Henry, Ellen makes the rash decision to know him better by signing up for dog obedience classes with him using her best friend Rachel's puppy as an excuse.The attraction to Henry confuses her, but not enough to put her off from checking out the guys from the dating service. Both seem like nice guys and seem compatible- on paper, but she discovers quickly that all she thinks about is Henry who just makes her laugh and open up about herself. It comes to taking a chance or grabbing the sure thing and which one will make her happy.This was just such a sweet story. I loved following along as Ellen had to steadily realize the truth about love even while I was practically bouncing in my seat for her to see what was right in front of her the whole time. And oh, wasn't that a sassy twist to the story near the end.Once again, I found this author's story an absolute gem of a read and recommend it to others who enjoy light contemporary romances.

Ellen is trying online dating so she has better luck than her mother, who married twice and had more boyfriends including her father. As she gets down to two choices, she has a surprise feeling when she meets someone at the vet where she took a friends dog as it was choking. As the two dates backfire, she keeps thinking about Henry.The storyline is fun and heartwarming. The characters are well detailed, with great backstories, banter and sass. Loved the best friend who was so supportive. The Best Auntie In The World item was a great bit. The ending brought more tears to my eyes as the whole story was emotional and had great surprises, especially at the end. Well done.I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

This is book one of the Better Date Than Never series and tells the story of Ellen, who signs up for Detailed Dating of Sacramento, which asks a lot more questions about each person on the site and promises to compare prospective couples by their individual answers about themselves and what they are looking for in a match. Instead of the horrors of other dating sites, this allows her to whittle down those she is matched to, from both their answers, and then get to chat online before choosing a final two that she would like to meet up with in person. While she is preparing to arrange a first date with her two candidates, her best friend Rachel asks her a favour. She has a sudden blind date and needs someone to dog sit her little beagle, who she has only had for a short while, and totally pampers. Ellen isn’t too keen as Chester likes to chew on everything and anything, including her brand new boots! The night of dog sitting ends in a near disaster when Chester decides to chew on the contents of her purse and ends up choking on her. She rushes a couple of blocks to the nearest vets and a young man helps her stop Chester from choking on a hairball! He doesn’t look quite like a vet and is actually there with his dog Kenzie, who he rescued off the side of the road. Henry doesn’t reveal what he does for a living, being quite good at avoiding the question.She can’t get him out of her mind when she gets home, even though she believes absolutely in her dating app to find her the man she is best suited to. Her own mother had a bad dating history, divorcing two men and not even marrying her father, noting him as not important, which hurts a lot! Her mother asks her to attend a new art gallery show, that she is going to with her current beau, so she agrees to go with Rachel, as payback for her favour. One of her first face to face date is a bit extreme and blunt, with a man who seems to be marking off points on a notepad, to see if she matches what was on her application. The other may also be exactly what she wants on paper, but why then, is she still thinking of the man she met at the vets and borrowing Chester, to keep seeing him at an obedience class? A case of going with a person who is your ideal match on paper and in person, but with no spark, or going with the one you can’t get out of your mind, even though you really know nothing about them and whether they should be an ideal match to you. A nice read, with a HEA ending and two main characters that are well suited to each other in the end. Dating isn’t something that you can programme or find on demand. Love will find you when you least expect.

Title: Love At First DateSeries: Better Date Than Never (#1)Author: Susan HatlerFrom: AmazonGenre: RomanceRelease Date: 27th September 2014Challenges: N/ALinks: Goodreads - AmazonHaving watched her mother's failed relationships, Ellen thinks she knows what she wants; a man that's compatible with her, never mind all the instant connection and chemistry that people seem to go on about. When her friend needs her to puppy sit, Ellen reluctantly agrees and ends up taking Chester the miniature beagle to the vets when he chocks on a hair ball. There she meets Henry, a man that makes her pulse race and has her signing up for dog training lessons...Susan Hatler really knows how to write a cute book. Love at First Date was short and sweet, and so long as you go into it expecting a quick romance and something a little short of insta-love, then it can be just what you need. For me this kind of book is a "filler" read, one when I don't want to get stuck into something heavy going or long, I just want a little bit of fun. And it serves it's purpose.I liked that Ellen was using online dating, I don't think that that form of dating gets enough coverage in books. At the end of the day, this is a modern world and books should reflect that dating can happen online. I did also like that it didn't necessarily work and she actually found someone in a far more old fashioned way. It was definitely cute!Something else that I liked is that Ellen never pretended to be someone else. She never pretended that Chester was her dog, or that she wasn't using online dating, or that she was worried about finding someone stable. Ellen was Ellen from the beginning of the book to the end, and I liked that.This is definitely a quick light hearted read, but I enjoyed it for that purpose!

Though this is short, it's well done, interesting, funny, sweet, charming, romantic and with really likable characters, including the furry ones.I can't go into too much detail, or else I'd spoil the tale, but take a 30yo female who's determined that she won't go down the same route as her much-romanced and married mum, so who instead joins a dating agency to make a match made based on shared values and compatibility...But, Cupid's around in the form of a cute little dog, as just before her first date, she happens to meet a total stranger, in totally random, dog-induced circumstances, who begins to take over her thoughts...Add in a BFF, mum to said cute dog (Chester, who seems to have the doggy version of Prader-Willi syndrome), funny and witty lines, a couple of contenders for the role of The One, a practically perfect ending (though I would have liked an epilogue) and this is an excellent tale.It's possibly the best short romance that I've read in a long while, and it didn't even have any sex in it! At the end, I was pleased to see that there's at least another tale in this series, featuring the BFF, so maybe we'll get to see more of this couple then. Bye. I'm now off to track that down!

I thoroughly enjoyed this little novella. It was light-hearted, entertaining, fun and very sweet, in both senses of the word.Due to her mother's bad choices with men, Ellen is determined that she needs to find a man with whom she's truly compatible. She's spent weeks researching on her dating website and has narrowed her choices down to two possibilities. Then her friend Rachel asks her to look after her puppy for the evening. Through an amusing turn of events, Ellen finds herself at a dog obedience class and meets Henry. Is it time for all her ideas of how to find the perfect man to go out of the window?I loved Ellen and Henry, and seeing them meet through their dogs (well, Henry’s dog and Ellen’s friend’s dog), was fun and gentle. There's also a great cast of supporting characters - canine as well as human. And, for those who like to know, this is a clean romance. Ms Hatler writes with a light touch and plenty of humour and her characters are easy to relate to.I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to reading more in the series.

She thinks getting the right man is all about being compatibility so she signs up for a dating site which will find the right one for her. She does some dog sitter for her best friend. She ends up with an issue with the dog so she has to go to the vets. She finds herself being smitten by the vet. What will she do? Will she go with the dating site? See who she will go withI received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.