Rating: WARTY!
Time to take a quick look at volume 2 of this trilogy of sample chapters of a bunch of "romance" novels - of the kind I never read for good reason. Each sample has only an opening chapter or two. Most of them seem to be first person and kinky. There is no romance here, only lust. No relationship that's greater than skin-depth.
As in the first volume, I review these based solely on these sample chapters, which believe me are more than enough to judge this trash. None of these books would remotely pass the Bechdel-Wallace test because they can't even pass it within one female character's own mind! It's all about studly guys and frustrated women, and unsafe-sex. Some might argue that this is okay because that's the whole purpose of the book, but I'd argue that people who say that sort of thing are missing the point big time.
I skipped the prologue on this one. Chapter one begins "Just a short year later..." - that ellipsis doesn't end the sentence, which is therefore missing a period. If it's intended to be a sort of a cliffhanger sentence, then three dots is fine, but there ought to be spaces between the dots. But moving along, I skimmed chapter one which was about two people meeting at an airport after being in touch online for some time. They can't keep their hands off each other.
At first I had assumed that they had leapt into bed asap. I assumed in this case we're meant to understand they're already exchanged information about their sexual histories, so I granted the safe sex part here, but after, there was this weird issue of taking a shower, and there's quite some debate about who goes first and which shower. I'd thought, they want to jump each other's bones but now they won't shower together? It just felt unrealistic given the premises for the story, but when I back-tracked to see if it really happened as I thought, I realized the wording was a bit ambiguous and it looked like all they'd done was kiss, but he phrase "wrapped in each other like a pair of randy teenagers" had been used, so I was confused.
Do randy teenagers not start physically touching each other apart from locking lips? I guess not. Do randy teenagers not jump into the shower together? I guess not, because it got weird when the guy realizes he has no clothes to put on after his shower and she's showering in his room for reasons unknown. He goes in without knocking, and she's topless of course. Inexplicably, she freaks, and covers up her breasts. Even if they didn't just have sex - and I think they didn't, this felt way too coy to be realistic given their animal passion - and in public at the airport as well as in the kitchen at home.
Is it sad that this story was the best of the ones I'd read to this point, and it almost made a positive impression on me? It was far too coy for its own good though, making it sound unrealistic which is bad for a writer who claims she strives for realism. This lack of authenticity didn't work for me. Can't commend it, but at least I'd consider reading something else by this author.
