There are some covers that just thoroughly baffle me sometimes. Like this one. I don’t know what the artist is going for here (or what the heck the author asked for on the cover requisition form or something), but… this looks an awful lot like… a porny X-Files fan art mixed with… Will & Grace?!? How weird is that? It’s too bad ’cause dude looks like a better-looking, smoldering Eric McCormack, with shades of David Duchovny. Oddly enough, there’s something… umm… magician-like about him. Like his specialty is being able to get out of a padlocked box or something. As for the woman (?), she looks like… Wynonna Judd by way of a semi-attractive drag queen. Good Science, just look at that hair. Is she going for… Heart’s Nancy Wilson circa Alone or something? Science, I think a family of swallows could be living… in that thing on top of her head. Why the huge hair? Why the hooker outfit? Why are their heads so huge in comparison to their bodies? Why am I not running to the kitchen and stabbing out my eyes with a kitchen knife?

You kids may thank Marumae for sending us this cover.

Dear God, I didn’t even notice Reader Nikki pointed it out to me, but… check out the my sidebar over to the right there. HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THE MAN-TITTY PARADE? Am I going blind? Have I been taking the man-titty for granted and no longer see it for all that it’s worth? Man, no wonder my mom won’t even visit my site. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, a man-titty collage!

(And yes, Nikki, they will all be reviewed. Every single one of them.)

And if you’re wondering which one is my favorite, it’ll have to be The Object of Love guy. I love the smirk. It makes my girly parts tingle. Which one flips your button?

Grade: B-
I’m not quite sure how to review this book. While it does end happily and the two main characters have a lot of hot sex, reading it just made me uncomfortable. Every time I thought a sex scene was hot, I thought to myself, “Okay… gross. You’re an old perv.” Why is that, you ask? The hero is only seventeen years old. That’s probably enough to send some of you screaming and running for the hills. Oddly enough, if I were reading a historical romance novel, I wouldn’t even blink if the heroine were the same age and the hero was… say, more than ten years older than she is. The age difference between the heroine and the hero is not even that great. He’s 17, but she’s only 23. What skeeved me out about it is the fact that the hero is very, very damaged (and probably needs a lot of therapy), while the heroine comes from a cookie-cutter upper middle class white family where the parents are still very happy together. Sure, the authors attempt to show that the family is not happy since the heroine’s little brother is gay and the older sister a shrew, but… how does that even compare to the hero having a crackhead for a mother and sucking dick for food money in dark alleys? When it all came down to it, I just couldn’t believe that these two kids would stay together any longer than a couple of years at most.
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This is a job for… whoops, well, damn. Pasty Half-Nekkid White guy! Clark forgot to pick up the suit from the drycleaners. Again.
Poor Clark. Sometimes you just gotta go back to bed. With me.

[Warning: a tiny rant ahead]

Grade: A-
Here’s an anthology that I enjoyed immensely. Usually I would like one or two stories, then wish I could tear out the rest in a fit of frenzy and set the pages on fire, but this one… well, I just happened to like them all. My favorite story is the one by Kimberly Dean… it’s original, hot as hell, and honestly, I’ve never read of a thermometer being used in that manner. There’s also a very hot scene involving being naked in the snow at three o’clock in the morning. Good stuff. Very inventive. Summer Devon’s contribution to this anthology is also a lot of fun, mostly because it seems very sincere and involves… well, regular people. A waitress and a construction worker, for God’s sake. I really, really liked the characters. My least favorite story in this anthology is Michelle Pillow’s. While it’s still pretty readable and sexy, I didn’t really get a sense of the connection between the two leads like I did with Devon’s and Dean’s stories. Plus there was that seemingly obligatory group sex scene in the end that’s almost a requirement for erotic romances nowadays and it’s really starting to cheese me off. I wish Sister Jane would write a rant about it already!
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