[Reviews by Annie Dean]

Dear John

Grade: C-

Dane Harley was poor white trash wrapped in Goth girl giftwrap. John Stratton lived in a big Victorian house on the hill. In their misspent youth, they ran wild together. Ten years ago, she left him in the lurch because of some crazy shit John’s daddy said about her ruining John’s future. Okay, so maybe I can buy she would be that simpleminded as a teenager. At 17, I bought into some pretty dramatic shit. So she takes off and cuts ties to her hometown of Chatham Village.

Now she’s back for the high school reunion and she hasn’t seen her best friend Roxy in all those years. They haven’t spoken either. Instead of calling her a thoughtless bitch and slamming the door on her, Roxy invites Dane in for some heavy drinking and girl bonding. They relive old times and go through the yearbook together. Read an old love letter John sent Dane. Of course they decide Dane should look John up and make amends for…yep, you guessed it. Writing him a ‘dear John’ letter.

Ms. Kent’s writing style in this story doesn’t rock my world, but it doesn’t annoy me either, although it occasionally veers toward the purple. On page 23, the heroine “practically screamed at him” and then at the bottom “she screamed at him, trembling with self-hatred”. That’s a little florid for my tastes.

Her use of language strikes me as odd in places. In one passage where she’s describing a house, she calls it an “auspicious figure”. I think that word does not mean what you think it means. Auspicious? A good omen? I don’t get it. Maybe she meant imposing or impressive. Also, check this part: “A dose of friendly white paint, cocoa trim and a column of bay windows on the eastern exposure underscored the austere nature of the house’s steeply-pitched roof and and three stories of pointed arch windows. Everything about it said family, home and love.” Again, I don’t get it. Homegirl got a little crazy with sentence structure and wrote something that doesn’t quite make sense. How is white paint friendly? I get she’s trying to describe the house in a unique way, but that sentence owned her. Plus the two thoughts contradict. If the paint and the roof and windows underscore the house’s austere nature, how can it be all about home, love and family? She’s describing some Victorian monstrosity, not a cozy little cottage with stuffed ducks in the window.

It all fell apart from me, writing idiosyncracies aside, when I realized all the conflict of the story revolved around a Big Mis. It also didn’t make sense that her best friend Roxy, who had lived down the street from John for the last ten years, wouldn’t know the truth and set her straight. Anyway, she may get there one day but this story isn’t it.

You may buy Dear John here.

Raleigh in Rio

Grade: D

Raleigh Campbell goes to Rio on a whirlwind happy divorce tour with her bestest buds in the whole world. While she’s looking at the Brazilian babes and thinking she shouldn’t let her cheating bastard of a soon-to-be ex ruin her life, she notices a masked super-hottie dirty dancing with two women. What she doesn’t know is that Cristos has been hired to spy on her for the last few months because her cheating husband embezzled a bunch of money. Poor Raleigh is a suspect and doesn’t even know it.

Due to his fiery Latin blood, Cristos has conceived a wild obsession from watching Raleigh from afar. Now he sees his chance to do more than watch her and grabs it with both hands. They make with the wild monkey sex and then he takes off with all her shit, as proof for the case. She think she’s just been rolled by a boy-whore and she’s sad because she believed all his, “Baby, I love only you” sweet talk before they did it.

What can I say about this story? It’s 27 pages long and it read like Readers Digest Condensed version of some Jackie Collins novel. I guess if you like that shit, you’ll be in love with the jetsetter melodrama and pleasantly purple prose. As for me, no thanks.

You may buy Raleigh in Rio here.

What Lies in Winter

Grade: D

Hayley Barrett is a half-Vietnamese hottie with attitude to burn. She’s into extreme sports and thinks, “No one did that to Hayley Barrett and got away with it,” after the Brit hero slams the door in her face. See, she’s rented his winter cabin for the last three years, but this year he means to use it himself and there’s been a mixup in the scheduling. Ms. Kent uses the words “sodding”, “bugger” and “bloody hell” liberally to convey the British accent. So after a zany snowball fight, the hero caves and allows Hayley to stay in his cabin for the next two weeks. The author delights me on page 9 with the line, “Damn, the man oozed something fierce,” but probably not in the intended manner. While I giggle over this, I read on.

The heroine is meant to be fearless and feisty but I want to hit her with a snowshovel by page 15. Nicholas Rhiordan, the hero, manages to spark my interest because he’s a widower and I’m a sucker for men who’ve lost the women they love to death. But he loses my sympathy by page 18 where he spies on Hayley getting ready to take a shower. Nothing says stalker like peeping at a woman you’ve just met.

They enjoy some tender emo moments and there’s, of course, lots of boinking. I love when dear Nicky commands her to scream his name. That’s an awesome jailhouse image right there. I always see two big guys named Burl and Larry, while Burl pulls Larry’s hair and shouts, “Say my name, bitch!” Anyway, the story rounds out with another Big Mis.

This author may have promise, but her sense of conflict needs work. In conclusion, if you’re looking for stories about rich women and the guys who roger them, you may enjoy Cassidy Kent. Me, I don’t like stories solely about the affluent and the beautiful. Poor, imperfect people need love too and it’s the mark of an amazing author when she sells me that.

You may buy What Lies in Winter here.

Average Grade: D

[Ed. note: Thanks, Annie!]

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 9:10 am and is filed under Books, Grade: D, Romance: Contempo, Reviews by Annie, Romance: Erotic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.