Man of My Dreams By Kenyon et al

Grade: C-

I was hard pressed to think of anything to say about this anthology because I couldn’t even remember what the stories were about. Hell, I had to actually pick up the book again and skim through it a second time because I couldn’t recall one single character name. I had a vague recollection of two of the stories, but the other two? Not so much. Either I’m going through an early onset of Alzheimer’s or none of these stories were that memorable. Since my great-grandmother lived to be a hundred and some change without ever losing her faculties, I’d like to believe that it’s the latter. The Kenyon one wasn’t horrible, but it does utilize the dreadful “must lose virginity or die” contrivance and the Virginia Kantra one was interesting, if not a little weird. Forster’s contribution was on par with a really bad Blaze book and the Maggie Shayne one was just a huge snorefest. All and all, a pretty blah anthology.

Fire and Ice by Sherrilyn Kenyon features a princess in some galaxy far far away whose father has arranged for her to marry a nasty old man known for his cruelty. In her culture, women are pretty much property and punished severely for their “transgressions” by their own male relatives, so the princess has absolutely no say in her future. Because honor and virginity are tied closely together, the princess Livia figures that if she were no longer a virgin, the nasty old man would refuse to marry her, so she escapes to the bad part of town, and ends up in the diviest of dive bars while trying to avoid the guards her father has sent after her. Naturally, in this bar, she finds the ONE SPECIAL MAN, sulking in the darkest of dark corners, trying his best to look all snarly and mean. This man is Adron, a former badass assassin who once fudged a mission and is now crippled and bitter for it. He can’t walk without a cane, yells at everyone who comes near him, and is an all around dickhead, so naturally, Livia wants to shed her panties for him. They have glorious sex–virgins are great lovers, you know–and Adron begins to fall for Livia because she’s innocent and pure and has a magical va-jay-jay. Much like everything Kenyon has ever written, it ends with a near death that is prevented by a “miracle” and Adron is made whole by Livia’s magic (vagina). An okay, but hokey read.

Daydream Believer by Maggie Shayne is nothing we haven’t read about in Dream Man by Linda Howard or Kay Hooper‘s Evil Trilogy. Megan is a bakery owner and a psychic whose “gift” has given her nothing but grief. Instead of “seeing” trivial things like who’s calling her on the phone or if she’s going to get a traffic ticket on her way home, she would like, for once, to “see” something that would actually help the people in her hometown. Her wish is finally granted when she dreams of a girl being raped and thrown into a river. She calls the police station, but naturally, the police chief doesn’t believe her, and sends in one of his detectives to dig up some dirt on her. The detective, a commitment phobe nicknamed One Night Sam, is of course immediately drawn to her, and starts wooin’ her to get her to tell him the truth. Maggie soon proves to Sam that she is a real psychic and the two of them team up to find the serial rapist. You guys, I’m getting bored just typing this. These psychic stories are all the same: she’s dreamed about him all her life, he thinks she’s a kook, she’s full of life, he’s a cynical cop, they investigate a murder together, she almost gets killed by the killer… snorefest, man. This story is so by the numbers that I was practically calling the scenes before I read them. Maybe I’m psychic.

When Suzanne Forster came up with the premise for Shocking Lucy, she probably patted herself on the back for being so bloody clever. Shocking Lucy. Noah Hightower, the hero is… an electrician. Shocking. Lucy. Sigh. Anyway, our heroine Lucy owns a mediating company with her mother and is about to marry a man who she thinks is absolutely perfect for her. You see, when Lucy was a child, her father deserted her and her mother, so Lucy decided that she will never marry a man like her father, so she came up with a list of requirements for a perfect man, and her fiance is just about perfect… except he doesn’t make her tingle. Long story short, Noah makes her tingle, but Lucy doesn’t want anything to do with him because he doesn’t fulfill the requirements on her list, but her dull, boring fiance does… Noah pursues Lucy to the point creepy stalkerdom, but Lucy doesn’t call the cops on him or anything. Instead she has sex with him. There’s a ridiculous twist that leads to a BIG MISUNDERSTANDING, but it was so ludicrous and completely outside the realm of logic that I was tempted to jam a pen into my eyesocket and swish my brain around so that I could forget that I ever read it. Did Forster reach into the bin of rejected storylines in the Harlequin basement for this little gem? I hate you for foisting this story on your readers, Forster. I really hate you.

Midsummer Night’s Magic by Virginia Kantra is… uh… weird. Remember that boyfriend you had in college who was bad for you and everyone told you he was bad for you, but you loved him anyway? But one day he just disappeared and you never heard from him ever again? Well, what if it turned out that on his way over to your house to apologize after the huge fight you just had, he was abducted by fairies to be their love slave? Yeah. Anyway, umm… Janet, a thirty six year old librarian, is celibate, doesn’t date, and is pretty much alone. She doesn’t date because she once had her heart badly broken when she was in college by a guy who just disappeared and never called her again. On her way home from work one night–in a deserted highway in whatever bumfuck town she lives–her car stalls, so she abandons it to search for help. She think she sees a campfire, so she heads for it, and finds what she thinks are carny folk. One of the carny folk is a guy who looks just like the boyfriend who dumped her fifteen years ago… except he has never aged. You see where I’m going with this? The sex scenes are pretty hot, I guess, and I liked that it was based on some old legend or something. I’m too lazy to look it up. If you know what I’m talking about, email me and educate my ignorant ass.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I like reading anthologies because I like having a back-up story to ease my anger at having spent $7.99 on a book and getting shit for it. In any anthology, there’s always one story that sucks way less than others and maybe if it were by itself, it would have sucked more, but because it was lumped with other sucky stories, it smells like a frickin’ rose in comparison. That story in this anthology was was… umm… I want to say Kenyon’s, but the “must lose virginity or die” contrivance made my stomach turn… and Kantra’s story was just too weird for me. Forster’s made me want to kill myself. I guess this means the winner is Maggie Shayne. But only ’cause her story was just… there. And didn’t make me want to jump off a bridge. Technically, Kantra’s was the best written one, but the whole thing with the fairies abducting some guy and inadvertently inventing an excuse for him to leave his girlfriend… huh. I guess that’s kind of funny.

Excuse me, I need to shower.

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