Grade: B+

I was reading a paranormal romance novel, whose name escapes me at the moment, when I stopped halfway through a page somewhere in the middle of the book, and dropped it. I couldn’t read it anymore. It wasn’t that it was bad. Well… okay, a little. I think I’m just temporarily burned out on paranormal romances. A girl can only read so much werewolf-vampire shenanigans before she gets sick of it and starts yearning for the basics. All of a sudden, I wanted to read a simple love story that didn’t involve women or men having sex with anything that has fangs, fur, horns, or all of the above. All of a sudden, I wanted to read a simple love story where girl meets boy, girl and boy have sex, boy and girl have fun for a while, girl/boy has nervous breakdown and questions relationship because of inadequacy issues, boy and girl break up, girl and boy get back together after a few pages apart, and the story ends in a sappy epilogue where the girl is pregnant with triplets and happily married to the boy. This sweet little story by Jo Leigh was just what I was looking for; it features a sassy, take-charge heroine who doesn’t get annoying till the last pages of the book and a to-die-for hero that I just wanted to grab and umm… forcibly seduce. What I really enjoyed about this story is how uncomplicated it was. There’s no bullshit plot contrivance that pushes the couple together and the wacky friends don’t matchmake! This is really just about a man and a woman who find each other attractive, have lots of sex together, have a tiny misunderstanding, then get back together after realizing what complete morons they’ve been acting. Come, my friends, let us jump into the simpler world of Harlequin Blaze!

The heroine Margot Janowitz–hooray, a Jewish heroine!–is a fun, outgoing, and intelligent woman who has one of those jobs that only heroines in romance novels seem to have. She is a food stylist, which means she makes the hamburgers and the tacos in those fast food commercials look extra delicious. She has a very social life, a circle of friends who are a lot of fun, and very few neuroses. She has the stereotypical Jewish mother who is forever pestering her about getting married, but Margot is content living the single life, especially after being dumped by a complete jerkhole of a man. What Margot figures she needs is a project and that project comes in the form a bespectacled, strait-laced, ultra-conservative hunk of a man named Daniel Houghton III, who also happens to be her new neighbor. Daniel is a stuffy, prudish architect who comes from old money and moves from Connecticut to Chelsea, New York in search of a change. He feels his life has become stagnant, while his career is slowly sinking into mediocrity. When he meets Margot, he is immediately attracted to her and blindly jumps into an affair with her, even as he is wary of her wacky friends and the way Margot wants to change everything from his hair to his shoes. Margot, on the other hand, is afraid that she is changing everything about Daniel and suspects that she may be transforming him into something that he’s not. Can these two zany kids put aside their differences and get back to what’s really important: the fizznuckin’?

Thankfully, Margot isn’t one of those annoying Dharma-types who never fail to make me want to poke out my own eyes. She’s not one of those stick-figure Barbie bimbos who are forever bemoaning about how ugly they are when all they have to do to become gorgeous is take off their glasses and shake off their ponytails. Margot looks like a real woman (she is rounded and curvy… yay!) and thinks she’s “so damned seductive, she’d go to bed with herself”. And she does. She’s got a vibrator and knows how to use it. How many Harlequin romance novels can claim that? For three-quarters of the book, I was right there with her, cheering her on ’cause I really liked her and dug her earthy, sensual personality. It was only the last quarter of the book that I wanted to yell in her face and snatch the bitch bald. How could this intelligent, sensible woman who could have been my best friend suddenly mutate into the sniveling, wimpy, overly-sensitive freakshows that made me swear off Harlequin romance novels in the first place? All of a sudden, she’s second-guessing herself, breaking up with Daniel because “it’s for the best”, and whining about how Daniel can’t possibly love her back because all he wanted from her was “friendship and sex”. I mean, what happened to the woman whose idea of foreplay is hours of talking? What, she suddenly couldn’t sit down and listen to Daniel explain himself?

As for Daniel… oh, the man is just so delish. At first he is this stuffy, stick-in-the-mud, bumbling Clark Kent type–and Goddess knows how much I lurve me some Clark Kent–but then he slowly comes out of his shell under Margot’s guidance and I just about melted into a puddle, y’all. Oh, I just wanted to take this man and eat him up with a spoon, he’s so adorable. And I really, really like his name, too. Daniel. It’s not Caleb, Cade, Hunter, Dash, Tyler, or any of those foofy, romance novel hero names. It’s just plain Daniel. Heck, maybe some night, while we’re cuddling on the couch, watching Shaun of the Dead on DVD, I can even say, “Dan, baby, do you want to maybe get me some water? Pleeeease?” I mean, uhh… shut up. You don’t understand. I also like how he’s just willing to put up with Margot no matter how crazy she gets and loves her for it. And when he realizes–all by himself!– that it’s Margot who’s been giving and giving and giving and he’s the one who’s been taking and taking and taking and that he’s been such a selfish bastard and will do anything to make it up to her, oh, I just about died. Sure, he’s a little too good to be true… but you guys, he goes to a Jewish wedding and wears a yarmukle! THATISJUSTSOCUTE! I want to eat him! I do! I just want to paint his entire body with chocolate and take humongous bites out of him.

What I enjoyed most about this book–besides the delicious dialogue and the uber-hot sex scenes–is that Margot is the more dominant one in this relationship. She’s the one who pursues the sexual relationship between her and Daniel and it’s not because she’s a frigid little bore who just wants to have that ONE SPECIAL NIGHT with her super-hot next door neighbor but because she genuinely wants to shag his brains out. I also really enjoyed reading about her interactions with her friends because they seemed like… really fun people. I mean, there’s actual layers to this book, you guys. For example: Margot’s career doesn’t end the second she meets Daniel; we learn about what she actually does for a living and how much it means to her. It is not something that the author just sets aside just because the hero and the heroine started fizznuckin’. It’s really too bad that the author performs a lobotomy on Margot at the end of the book. I mean, it was such a personality change that Margot almost seemed… schizophrenic. Luckily, Daniel saves the day and the book becomes a winner for me. You guys, if you’re looking for a quick read with hot sex, rapid-fire dialogue, and likeable characters, do yourself a favor and dig up this little backlist. You won’t be sorry, I swear.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Contempo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.