Category Archives: book review

The Dressmakers Series: Dukes Prefer Blondes by Loretta Chase

book review March 15, 2016 Comments: 3

Short Version: I adored the hero and heroine and can’t remember another time I liked both protagonists so much. The plot was very good, but not quite great, so read it for Clara and Oliver, their every moment together is a delight.

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Long Version: Looking forward to Clara’s book in Loretta Chase’s Dressmaker’s Series, I was not disappointed. You have to love it when it feels like a book was written with you in mind. Dukes Prefer Blondes featured a Nick and Nora Charles style courtship but, as it is a historical romance, in the Regency. Chase uses the narrative structure incredibly effectively to both maintain the brittle, consciously closed-off outward appearances of the main characters while still sharing their true feelings and the effect they have on one another. All books with an omniscient narrator can do this, but this genre really lends itself to it, and few novels have done it quite so well as Dukes Prefer Blondes.

Clara is beautiful and rich which is hard to feel sorry for, but she is also considered the top marital prize of her season and her time as a trophy is wearing on her. Men pursue and propose to her, but only for the potential notoriety of being the man who gains her acquiescence. They don’t really see her; they talk at Clara, not to her. She is “wrapped in cotton wool” and stifled in every attempt to assert, not even her independence, but her brainpower and energies in anything other than the most safe and stultifying activities. Her mother is very concerned about social status and any notion of womanhood which maintains it, so Clara is allowed to participate in charity work and her efforts bring her into contact with an impoverished young woman looking for her missing brother. When Clara needs someone to help her locate the boy, she is brought to barrister Oliver “Raven” Radford.

Having embraced a nickname originally intended as an insult, Raven is the cousin of a duke and the son of a younger son who made good practicing law. He’s not touched by scandal, but his family is, though they don’t care – at least not until he falls for Lady Clara. A man of searing intellect and deficient in tact, he is startled and fascinated by the goddess who has appeared before him and appears to have wits on par with her beauty, not that he will admit that out loud, although occasionally his powerful reaction to his magnificent equal overwhelms him long enough for some imprudent physical contact. Raven helps Clara out and she plagues him until he marries her. He knows they are a bad match on paper, as deeply as he may want her, but he cannot resist and she does not play fair. In the end, they find a surprising way forward and Clara gets the freedom she hoped for, but not in the form she expected.

The sub-plots about Raven’s contentious relationship with London’s underworld did not work as well for me as the love story, but as long as Raven and Clara were in the same room, I didn’t need anything else. Dukes Prefer Blondes had all the smart banter I love and managed to convey true depth of emotion without any flowery speeches and dramatic declarations which would make people trained not to express emotion uncomfortable.You want to read this book, you’ll want to re-read it, too. I have added Dukes Prefer Blondes to my streamlined recommendations list to make sure as many people know that as possible.

Also by Loretta Chase – I’ve read twelve of her books, but only reviewed two:
Lord of Scoundrels – CLASSIC!
Silk Is for Seduction

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Things That Occur to Me While Reading Contemporary Romance Novels

book review March 3, 2016 Comments: 8
  • I am so sick of billionaires. Can’t he just be really financially secure?
  • I am even more sick of autocratic, dom billionaires.
  • The nickname “Cherry” always sounds prurient.
  • “Babe” and “Baby” are worse. Have they no imagination?
  • I’ve worked in the C-suite of a major corporation. This is not how that works.
  • Aren’t they freezing?
  • Let’s be clear: He’s a tattooed biker billionaire military vet?
  • PTSD isn’t just for historical romances anymore.
  • I hate reunion plots. You broke up the first time for a reason.
  • Can’t anyone just work in a regular office at a normal job?
  • Why are all female fans called (buckle/puck etc.) bunnies?
  • Isn’t it sexist to judge other female characters for having casual sex?
  • This is the part where I consciously ignore all of my pro athlete stereotypes.
  • Where do they get all this disposable income?
  • Freakin’ dudebro sexism! “You’re such a girl, dude. Are you on your period?”
  • Does everyone have a dead parent? Is this a Disney movie?
  • I wish I could sardonically raise my eyebrow like people in these books always can.
  • Not every guy has to have a tattoo.
  • Falling in love with someone new doesn’t mean your other loves weren’t real.
  • Do young women really use those words to refer to their body parts? Ew. Am I old?
  • Landing a dream job in a competitive industry is so easy.
  • Being good at math is the only requirement for becoming a zillionaire.
  • Where are these men who want to lavish me with expensive presents?
  • I’m glad I don’t need to understand football to read about its players.
  • Clearly, the author said, “I’m going to show them 50 Shades done right!”
  • I need to ignore the fact that they are the same age as my nieces and nephews.
  • Just once, I’d love an awkward or indifferent step-parent nominee hero or heroine.

From Mallory Ortberg on The Toast:

  • Men should have a TON of money but not care about it for even a SECOND, he should literally forget he even has money, he should whisk you away on a helicopter and then when you try to tip the pilot in cash he’s like “what are those weird little flat green dudes in your wallet?” because he doesn’t care about money at all even though he has so much of it.

From The Other Jane in the comments:

  • I don’t get the “impromptu whisked away by a billionaire to a halfway deserted/private island” storyline. It seems like it would be so disruptive to the other person’s schedule.

I also have a list of things that occur to me while reading historical romance novels.

My reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Heaven in His Arms by Lisa Anne Verge

book review March 2, 2016 Leave a comment

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Bookbub Synopsis: Fiercely independent fur trapper André …

That’s all I needed. As a Canadian, how could I resist that historical romance introduction? The promise (unfulfilled) of beaver viscera and the potential for freezing to death were too tantalizing. I don’t know what your knowledge of the fur trade is, but voyageurs, while badass, aren’t exactly a romantic group, unless you are one of those people who wants to eat rocks for breakfast and live off the grid in an especially harsh climate.

Originally published in 1995, Lisa Ann Verge’s Heaven in His Arms tells the story of the sassiest street urchin that ever sassed and the fur trader she finds herself married to. Desperate to escape the Paris workhouse, Genevieve Lalande trades places with a “King’s Girl” for the chance to travel to the New World in 1670 and make a life as a wife and mother with one of her compatriots. She doesn’t care which one, she just wants out. When she arrives in Quebec, Genevieve falls ill and is married off in a fevered stupor to André. He is seeking the ultimate marriage of convenience: New statutes require him to have a wife to get a trapper’s license, so he chooses the bride he thinks will die the fastest. Imagine his surprise when she shows up at his lodgings and insists he take her into the bush with him. She’s neither going to die and use the burial plans he set for her, nor will she agree to being deposited as a governess with his business partner. And away they go…

Growing up Canadian, we are raised to:

  • respect winter
  • look askance at the United States
  • treasure socialized medicine
  • understand World War I helped define us as a country
  • admire our pioneers

Heaven in his Arms hits a couple of those squarely on the head. The conditions that André lives with and Genevieve has to accustom herself to are rough. They set out in the spring and plan to reach their destination before the snow flies (October) so they can set up camp for a winter’s worth of forays to trade for pelts with local tribes. I hope this map will give some sense of the scale of what they will be undertaking by canoes and portaging to get from Quebec City to the southern shore of Lake Superior. It’s the world’s largest freshwater lake and roughly the size of Austria. Also of note is the fact that the north shore of Lake Superior in the fall is one of the most beautiful things I have ever and will ever see; however, while it may be making me misty and homesick to think about, it doesn’t mean I want to winter there.

Where were we? Ah yes, the map. Does it give a good sense of how far they are going?

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For additional perspective, when you cross the border from Manitoba into Ontario, it is still an 18 hour drive to reach Toronto because Canada is HUGE.

So Genevieve who is hella intrepid, André who is made of steel, and his team head out into the wilds for a seemingly endless slog through rapids, forests, and blackflies to reach Chequawegon Bay. Genny and André fall for each other en route, but decide on an “everything but…” marriage. Since they are in love, young, and healthy, that doesn’t really last. After a happy winter in a poorly insulated cabin in an aboriginal village, they head back to civilization where there is a giant pile of complications poised and ready to hit the fan.

I suggest you read Heaven in His Arms if a grand adventure in the wilderness is your cup of tea. The challenges and lifestyle are presented as matter of fact in keeping with how the characters would have responded to them. Genevieve takes to her new situation like a duck to water and embraces every moment of the experience. As a city person reading about another city person, I wondered if she was too accepting and cheerful about her lot, but since her background is 17th century France and mine is 20th century Toronto, she might be a little more comfortable with hardship than I. As a partner to André in his endless quest for the unexplored and life outside of civilization, they make an excellent pair. If they can overlook how incredibly tough their lives will be and the likelihood of dying young, I guess this reader can, too.

Fun aside:  The original 1995 cover is a Gouda wheel of cheesy magnificence.

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Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Tuscan’s Revenge Wedding by Jennifer Blake

book review March 1, 2016 Leave a comment

You know, if I am going to keep reviewing free books, I should stick to the ones my friend Malin gives me. Someday, I will learn. I feel like the woman on the cover –

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The Tuscan’s Revenge Wedding by Jennifer Blake is a trite contemporary romance.  As the first book in the Italian Billionaires series, it sets a tone for the subsequent novels that I will not be reading. I am heartily sick of the number of billionaires thick on the ground in the genre and the fact that they tend to be autocratic alpha males does not help.

Nico de Frenza appears suddenly in Amanda Something’s life when her brother is in a car accident. Nico’s sister was in the car, too, and he has appeared in Atlanta to bring her to Tuscany and her brother’s bedside. To say Nico is highhanded is an understatement. Shortly after meeting, when he senses Amanda’s tension, “Her fingers turned as white as the Carrera marble of his home region as she gripped them together….Nico reached to the brandy snifter and put it into her hands…When she made no move to drink, he lifted the glass to her lips …tipping it with slow insistence.” Be still my heart.

The Italian billionaire has already spoken to Amanda’s employer to arrange for time off. “A leave of absence has been approved for you. An agency that monitors apartments while tenants are away has been contacted, and will send someone to water your plants and retrieve your mail. If you like, I can have your clothing packed and sent after us, though it would be more practical to buy a few things after you arrive.” In WHAT WORLD would her employer let some stranger speak on her behalf and what services would contract work in someone’s house with anyone other than the owner? Amanda’s reaction is, and I QUOTE, “It would be ungrateful of her to fling all of his careful planning in his face.” Thus Amanda is not technically kidnapped, but it is an incredibly well-organized absconding.

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Thank you, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

She packs a small bag and he whisks her off on a private jet which is under a strict schedule despite, you know, the fact that they are the only passengers. He does actually send someone out to buy her clothing once in Italy. The choices are, of course, perfect.

When they get to Tuscany, both worried over their respective siblings, they visit the hospital and are beset by paparazzi. Nico is a billionaire count with an olive oil fortune after all and Amanda’s brother is a Formula One race car driver. So other than the victim of circumstance who has been dragged into the lap of luxury, these are not exactly humble folk. Amanda has to stay at Nico’s estate for privacy, naturally, and meets the whole family who, how could they not?, take to her immediately. Events proceed predictably and imperiously from there.

It should come as no surprise at this point in my review that I did not like this book. The old school romance tropes that ran through it got my back up from the beginning and I didn’t change my mind as I kept reading. Jennifer Blake is a prolific author with a well-established career. I am sure she will have no trouble persevering in spite of this one disappointed reader.

Note: The Tuscan’s Revenge Wedding contains neither revenge, nor a wedding.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

His Road Home by Anna Richland

book review February 29, 2016 Leave a comment

There are a lot of wounded heroes in romance novels, but His Road Home must be the first one I’ve read in which we meet the hero straight from the battlefield. Often, the men are well away from their traumatizing experience, left with a dramatic facial scar or bad dreams that can be eased by the love of the right woman and heal them. This contemporary romance novella is not that book.

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While serving in Afghanistan, Rey Cruz invented a fiancee to simplify a negotiation. To bolster his story, he used a photo of a real woman from his home town that he he knew only vaguely. When he was wounded helping a child, his story gained traction in social media and suddenly his photoshopped engagement picture went viral. No one will listen to Grace Kim when she says she doesn’t even know Rey and she finds herself with a free plane ticket from Seattle to his bedside at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Rey has lost both his legs, one below and one above the knee, and his ability to speak. His cognitive functions are fine, but he has great difficulty communicating both in writing and with his voice. He manages single words mostly. Grace is overwhelmed, but decides to take the week she has been given to stay with Rey and help him at the hospital. It’s an absolutely lovely use of a marriage of convenience.

As this is a great book, sensibly Rey and Grace do not fall in love during that week. They establish a bond that continues to grow after she returns home. Discovering he can type his thoughts without trouble, they build a sufficiently close and intimate relationship through daily texts that when Rey is ready to go home to Washington state months later, Grace agrees to drive his car cross-country with him. This is when they truly come together in a partnership.

Over the course of the road trip, Grace finds that being outside her comfort zone with Rey is exactly what she needs and he confirms that she is a strong and wonderful woman. His Road Home neither shies away from nor wallows in the details and ramifications of Rey’s injuries.  He is not magically cured, he manages his physical challenges. His speaking, while it improves, remains limited. Heartfelt and down-to-earth, I loved the story. Rey is a whole man who has found a woman who can see past any supposed limitations to the great guy who is still there.

His Road Home won Romance Writers of America’s 2015 RITA® Award for Best Romance Novella and I can certainly see why. In fact, I am going to keep this list of finalists in all categories handy as a resource for finding new authors.

Later Review Addition: Because it is part of why I picked up the book and diversity is something I and my fellow readers have sought out in the genre, I want to mention that both Grace and Rey are children of immigrants and first generation Americans.

Other Novels with Wounded Men Done Well:

Let me know if I’ve missed any.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

 

Knitting in the City Series: Ninja at First Sight and Happily Ever Ninja by Penny Reid

book review February 23, 2016 1 Comment

My reaction to Happily Ever Ninja is why Penny Reid continues to be on double-secret probation with me, a situation that started with The Hooker and the Hermit, deepened with Elements of Chemistry and was cemented by Truth or Beard. I wasn’t going to buy Happily Ever Ninja. I WASN’T. No matter what joo-joo a couple of earlier books in the Knitting in the City series possessed or how much I liked Beauty and the Mustache. Penny Reid’s status as an autobuy was over. Then I read Ninja at First Sight and it intrigued me. I followed with a sample of Happily Ever Ninja and enjoyed the set up. Giving in, I bought the full length novel. Boy, was I disappointed. The strong beginning devolved into a Truly Silly and Pseudo Serious Adventure acting as a metaphor for marriage. Thinking again, I’m placing Reid on triple secret probation. I don’t really know what that means, but I won’t be paying for any more of her books.

Happily Ever Ninja

From Amazon: There are three things you need to know about Fiona Archer… I would tell you what they are, but then I’d have to kill you.  But I can tell you that Fiona’s husband—the always irrepressible and often cantankerous Greg Archer—is desperately in love with his wife. He aches for her when they are apart, and is insatiable when they are together. Yet as the years pass, Greg has begun to suspect that Fiona is a ninja. A ninja mom. A ninja wife. A ninja friend. After fourteen years of marriage, Greg is trying not to panic. Because Fiona’s talent for blending in is starting to resemble fading away.  However, when unexpected events mean Fiona must take center stage to keep her family safe, her response stuns everyone—Greg most of all. It seems like Greg’s wish has come true.

Greg and Fiona have spent the entirety of their marriage, and most of their relationship before that, living far apart. Years of long distance life have taken their toll and on Greg’s latest, brief visit home he realises Fiona is slipping away from him. When his professional life takes a Very Dramatic turn, she works to set everything to rights.

Fiona was consistently, wonderfully competent which was her blessing and curse. While a riot, Greg was dismissively autocratic when dealing with her. Not in a rude or high-handed way, he was just won’t listen to her. She is more capable than him, he really should clue in and when he continues not to it is very frustrating. I know that was the point, but it was overplayed. The two end up on a whirlwind adventure and how Fiona makes it through without slapping him is beyond me, even if I understood why there were together.

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Ninja at First Sight

I liked this prequel to Greg and Fiona’s novel and wish it had been longer, although some gaps from it were filled in during the full length book. Having recently read a bunch of new adult romances, this story of two university students filled that bill nicely. Fiona has chosen to go to college far away from her parents. It’s her only hope for independence from their pressure and ongoing concern as a result of a serious health crisis she suffered as  a teenager. Incredibly shy and a bit awkward, she is dragged around her residence by a well-intentioned roomie and meets Greg. He’s older, British, and attached. He also knows a good thing when he sees it and is gone on Fiona from day one. Their courtship was sweet and involving. I blame it for getting me to overlook my Penny Reid book-buying embargo and buy Fiona and Greg’s full length story.

Penny Reid’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works , some of which I recommend and some of which I dislike intensely.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Christina Lauren’s Catalogue

book review February 22, 2016 1 Comment

Themes: In Christina’s Lauren’s world, the person who lets you be your true self and calls you on your bullshit is your best match.

The Wild Seasons Series:
Sweet Filthy Boy – liked it
Dirty Rowdy Thing – really liked it, the sex was distracting
Dark Wild Night – good
Wicked Sexy Liar – fantastic, my favourite of the group and their books
A Not-Joe Not-So-Short Short – for completists only

The Beautiful Series:
Beautiful Bastard – lots of ihateyou sex
Beautiful Bitch – more ihateyou sex
Beautiful Stranger – surprisingly romantic exhibitionists
Beautiful Bombshell – ihateyou sex bachelor and bachelorette parties
Beautiful Player – A Rake Is Reformed by a Girl with No Filter – GUILTY PLEASURE
Beautiful Beginning -ihate you sex, we’re getting married
Beautiful Beloved – exhibitionists getting back on track after having a baby
Beautiful Secret – quiet guys need love, too
Beautiful Boss – Meh.
Beautiful – only makes sense if read as a series finale

Dating You/Hating You – very good
Roomies – It’s $8 and the story doesn’t appeal to me.
Autoboyography – two dudes, will likely buy it

The Wild Seasons Series: Wicked Sexy Liar and A Not-Joe Not-So-Short Short by Christina Lauren

book review February 22, 2016 Leave a comment

Finally, a Christina Lauren couple that doesn’t scream the house down in the throes of passion. Quiet people need love, too.

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In the first three books of the new adult romance Wild Seasons series, each of a trio of close friends made impulsive marriages on a graduation trip to Las Vegas. The aftermath of each of these choices was the basis for Mia, Harlow, and Lola’s novels. Book four brings Lola’s surfer roommate, London, to the fore and pairs her with Mia’s ex-boyfriend, Luke. I have enjoyed the Wild Seasons series and I think Wicked Sexy Liar may be my favourite. It struck the right balance of romance, sex – which is important given that Christina Lauren writes novels billed erotic – and character development.

Luke Sutter is a protector-type in rake’s clothing. He has been playing the field, sowing his oats, and tapping everything in sight for the past few years. A legal intern about to undertake law school, he’s 23 years old and out for fun. In Mia’s book, Sweet Filthy Boy, he was portrayed as a total player who had broken her heart. Of course, his heart was broken, too, and while he has created the impression that he handled it well by seeing a succession of women, he hasn’t been in a relationship since the “Great Breakup of 2010”. As the one with Mia lasted about 7 years, the reader quickly realises he has good boyfriend potential once he decides to grow up.

London has completed university with a degree in graphic design. Rather than toil for peanuts and build a clientele, she is taking some time to figure out what she wants to do as she surfs by day and tends bar by night. When Luke approaches her and they have a one night stand, he is smitten, but she is wary of the delicious man in front of her.

I have railed against the plot I call “The Pig Becomes a Person“, but that is not the case here. Instead of being some louche douchecanoe waiting for a magical transformative female to attach himself to, Luke has proven that he is capable of a steady and healthy relationship, he just needs to climb out of the hole he has dug himself into. Often, those heroes who have been chasing any and all willing females, but have never met The One and don’t change until they do. Luke had and lost his One and Lauren does a really good job of his slow recognition that he has turned into a skeevy guy who needs to do some rearranging with his life. Convincing London of this takes a while. She sees him as a potential boff buddy, but nothing more and, after a distasteful public encounter, not even that. She also struggles with her obligation to her circle of friends. It felt realistic within the heightened reality of a new adult romance. Liking both of them, and the sister who gives Luke endless sh*t about his life, Wicked Sexy Liar made for a relaxing, romantic read.

A Not-Joe Not-So-Short Short after the jump

Continue reading →

The Doctor Wears a Stetson by Anna Marie Novark

book review February 19, 2016 Leave a comment

The heroine actually says, “Take me now.”

My original plan for this review was to lay my head down on the keyboard as though I’d fallen asleep and let the random characters speak for me, like this: vgftbzxdfh dskjfsuir eso9=-fsdklasejl;.

The Doctor Wears A Stetson hit all of my romance novel reading choice shame buttons. It was tedious and humdrum, but I still read it and was disappointed in myself for doing so. Technically, I read most of it, but not all, as I was not hopeful for improvement and if I am going to wallow in escapist genre fiction it should at least be good.

Looking on Amazon for a plot summary to decrease any effort associated with my review, I found the only interesting thing about this book – Novark wrote both “sweet” and “steamy” versions. “AUTHOR’S WARNING: This is the hotter and sexier version of The Doctor Wears A Stetson. The love scenes are steamier and more graphic. For a sweeter read, check out The Doctor Wears A Stetson in The Diamondback Ranch Sweeter Series.” For the record, I never want the sweeter read. 

Thinking it might be a fun departure for me, I bought The Doctor Wears A Stetson because it was free and had good ratings:

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Either people are idiots or like different things, likely both.

From Amazon:  Jessie Kincaid was fifteen and innocent when Cameron asked her to the prom. She lost her heart that night, but his plans didn’t change. He left their small town to pursue his dreams. Seventeen years later, a trip home leads Cameron McCade back to Salt Fork, Texas and the newly widowed Jessie Devine. Since his return, the fire between them burns as hot as ever. Can they take up where they left off? Can Jessie risk her heart again?

The reunion plot is familiar set up, all romance plots are, but this one felt particularly plodding. Jessie and Cameron went on exactly one date in high school, granted it was the epicocity of a small town prom, but that was the extent of their relationship. It was their only interaction. I fail to see how someone you spent six hours with more than half a lifetime ago  can be the one that got away. The reader is meant to take to on faith that this was a love for the ages despite lacking evidence other than the characters claiming it to be so as the hero and heroine take turns having declarative thoughts and making statements of intent. Obvious and on-the-nose, Novark’s writing provided a boring, paint-by-numbers romance of quiet longing and sexual tension, although neither of those things was conveyed in a fresh or compelling way.

Trite and facile, the best I would allow The Doctor Wears A Stetson is that it was competent. Schlumping through in a state of ennui punctuated by desultory sighs, I was insufficiently motivated to go so far as rolling my eyes. Not even so bad it looped back around to fun, it had the banality not of evil, but of mediocrity. I couldn’t finish it, not even to be a review purist. I skipped ahead to the end to confirm that, of course, the heroine’s fertility challenge was of the bait and switch variety common to unimaginative romance and counted myself lucky to have missed the middle pages of Cameron and Jessie’s so-called relationship obstacles and got right to the specific happy ending that a reader could see coming a big sky country mile away.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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Off Campus Series: The Score by Elle Kennedy

book review February 18, 2016 1 Comment

This romance novel takes the historical niche’s Reformation of the Rake plot full boar/boor with its contemporary counterpart, in this case in a new adult story, The Pig Becomes a Person.

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Romance novels have a limited number of tropes, to which I have no objection, but there is one, The Reformation of the Rake, which has to be handled particularly carefully. The hero, who generally has been shagging anything that moves finds a magical woman who, often in their first encounter, so rocks his libidinous world that he immediately becomes a one woman man. Generally, before encountering the heroine’s transformative physiology, the hero has been a scoundrel, a rogue, a louche and insensitive, self-indulgent rake. When done well (cast your eyes towards the entire Lisa Kleypas oeuvre and Tessa Dare’s best books) the connection between the two leads makes the hero’s change believable. In the emphatically patriarchal world of historical romances, the reformation of the rake can be more acceptable, but what becomes of it in a contemporary romance? I call it “The Pig Becomes a Person” and I have gotten tired of it.

Dean Heyward-DeLaurentis was a background character in the first two books in this series and he was presented as a complete player:

  1. ridiculously vain
  2. arrogant
  3. exhibitionist
  4. self-involved
  5. entitled
  6. hard partying
  7. sexually indiscriminate

Nothing has changed and The Score opens with Dean and two eager young women getting ready to indulge in a three-way in the living room of the house he shares with three fellow hockey players. This brings me to Conundrum 1:

I have trouble with the way some of the women are portrayed in these books as willing, vacuous partners. It’s underlaid with some pseudo-empowerment of being in control of their own bodies and desires and entitled to the same thing the heroes want, namely to bang, but even with this feminist gloss, they are still presented as fame hungry almost-objects. Even if I am being judgmental about it as a fellow woman, the view seems to vacillate between “women are people responsible for their own conduct” and “look at these spurious bitches over here”.

Dean’s coitus is interruptused by the arrival of Allie, a friend-in-law of Dean’s roommate. She has just had the final in a series of dramatic breakups with her long-term boyfriend and wants a place to hideout. Dean has been asked to keep his dick in his pants, but he’s only human and Allie makes the first move. They have a really great night and embark on a relationship by assignation until their feelings force a move to the next level. Fortunately, and because Kennedy is a writer with a modicum of sense, Allie is extremely reluctant to be seen with Dean in public given his skankerrific reputation. Events force their hand and things go well until Dean has a life event which forces him to take responsibility for himself and grow the hell up, and they truly move forward. This brings me to Conundrum 2:

Dean has everything going for him. Every gift and bit of luck that life can bestow is his. He is entitled as hell. I didn’t buy his transformation to loyal boyfriend from someone who was after anything in a skirt. I didn’t buy his proposed life plan. I did buy how easily everything came to him, such is the power of wealth and influence, but that also means to me that he would end up in a place more in keeping with his social status.

And now a screed: The element of The Score that truly rankled, largely because Kennedy is an otherwise entertaining author, involves a ten-year-old girl*/redemptive plot moppet** that Dean has been teaching to skate. After messing up, he apologises and then this happens:

“She giggles again. Then, proving that kids really are more resilient, she reaches over and pats my arm. “Stop being such a girl, Dean. I like you again.”

Are you kidding me? A ten-year-old girl teases someone by mockingly calling him a girl? Not only would this never happen, does Kennedy realise this represents an appalling level of dudebro sexism? How offensive is it to have a female child belittling the hero by saying his emotions make him similar to her? Screw that!

Contrary to my issues above, I didn’t dislike The Score as intensely as it seems I did. Kennedy has an easy way with friendships and relationships in spite of the creeping sexism. I really enjoyed the first book in this series and recommend it instead.

Off Campus Books 1 and 2:
The Deal – very good
The Mistake – good

More New Adult:
Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen: Him – smoking hot

Adult Contemporary:
One Night of Sin – meh
One Night of Scandal – meh
Elle Kennedy and Vivien Arend: All Fired Up – skip it

Other New Adult romance recommendations can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

*Sidebar: As is the way with all children in romance novels, she acts five.
**Hat tip to my friend emmalita