Wednesday Book Day

Last week, I don't know if the books I read wrung out my emotions, or if my emotions caused me to take the books harder than I normally would have, but whew, after those I needed something fluffy and sweet.

How to Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel filled that order. (Luckily, since it was another one I judged by the cover and didn't read any reviews or synapsis about. I don't know why I dive right in and won't take a minute to check it out first.)

Claire is the Celebrity reporter for a women's managzine in New York, and she gets the assignment to interview Hollywood's #1 Hottie, Cole Brannon (think Brad Pitt, or Johnny Depp - in their day. Um, now I guess it would be... um... or... hm, seems I don't know who the current Hotties are).

Claire's an experienced reporter and isn't really impressed by actors, though she does end up liking Cole as a person. But she knows better than to mix business with pleasure, and besides she had a boyfriend.
One day she caught her boyfriend cheating on her, and ended up getting drunk in a bar, where Cole Brannon happened to be hanging out. She passed out and he took care of her.

Turned out the woman the boyfriend was cheating with was the sister of a real bitch that Claire worked with. She came to Claire's apartment to pick up the purse her sister had left behind, and saw Cole there. She was jealous and went to a Tabloid and leaked the story that Claire was sleeping with Cole.

Of course that's just the cut and dried version, and a lot more happens, and of course the Happily Ever After.

After that, and feeling better in general, I figured I was ready for Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire.

This story came HIGHLY recommended, and was supposed to be along the lines of the Fifty Shades books, with the tortured, alpha Hero. Pffft. He was nothing more than a spoiled brat, throwing temper tantrums when he didn't get his way.

I really liked the story when I first began it, because I recognized it. I've written versions of this story myself.   And my stories are written as equally bad. Difference being, I know mine are bad and would be too embarrassed at publishing my ignorant scribblings.

I just can't for the life of me understand how this book garnered such high ratings and reviews.
Everyone likes a "Bad Boy", I get that, and Travis seems to start out that way, with the fighting, the tattoos, whoring around.  Then he meets Abby and I guess we have to assume he falls instantly head over heels in love with her.  It really seems more like he's just interested in 'bagging' her, another notch in his belt.
When she refuses to sleep with him, he likes being her friend and says he doesn't feel "like that" about her anymore.

The story is all over the place; it starts out to make us think Abby is a sweet little innocent from Kansas, and Travis's father is a drunk and his four older brothers abused him. Neither of which is true.
The best friend, America (Mare for short....neigh) starts out warning Travis off of Abby, then is disappointed when Travis and Abby don't hook up.
It makes no sense that Abby didn't want to room with her bestie in the dorms, nor why the roommate she gets is so hateful all the time.

Travis is a "bad boy" and everyone is scared shitless of him, but they aren't scared to tease and laugh at him. He beats the hell out of one guy in the college cafeteria, and later the same freaking idiot does it again and gets his ass kicked again.
It completely lost any semblance of credibility when we had to suffer through the entire rendition of "I Can't Get No Satisfaction".
Not to even mention when Travis gets Abby's "name" tattoo'd on his wrist and she goes all melty. He got the name he called her - Pigeon - not HER name. How does she (we) know he doesn 't call every chick Pigeon? That wasn't at all sexy.

I had to go look up the Bio on this Author, and I'm still not sure I believe it. It says she's a mother of two, but I think it's really probably a 14 year old kid, and all those good reviews are her middle school classmates.
I just don't see an adult loving such a poorly written book.

I read The Thrill of the Chase by Lynda Chance because it said it had a Firefighter character.

From Amazon:

Product Description
Warning: Alpha-Males are everywhere!
Lynda Chance is happy to present to you her style of erotic romance with a happily-ever- after: Monogamous, heterosexual and hot!
Three roommates. Three men. Three impossible situations!
Ashley Weldon runs scared when Ryan McKay puts moves on her that are too hot to handle! The more he pushes, the more she pulls back.
While Ryan chases Ashley, his friend Gibson Jones is quietly stalking Ashley’s younger cousin, Julie.
Throw in a hot firefighter, protective girlfriend, some sexting and a Corvette or two, and you have Temptation in Texas, Houston Style!


Even though it warned about Alpha-Males, I was thinking it was talking about the *good* kind of Alpha-Male: smart, strong, brave, protective.
Wrong. It's more of those eff'ed-up psycho jealous and possessive types that seems to be all the new rage with writers these days.

The book is actually three stories, so each one had to kind of rush through some of the critical points that make an erotic-romance story: together, conflict, together, sex, HEA.

When the story starts, Ryan and Ashley met and have been dating for a few weeks, and Ryan is frustrated and pissed off because Ashley won't give it up.  She's afraid it's just "the thrill of the chase" and once she gives in, he'll move on to the next conquest.

I'm not against rough language in stories, but Ryan cusses at her and talks very harshly to her. Since we didn't get the initial connection between these two, that just didn't work for me, at all.

The second story is about Ryan's best friend, Gibson, and Ashley's younger cousin, Julie.
Gibson and Julie had met the same time Ryan and Ashley did, a few weeks before, and they exchanged numbers, but then she never heard from him again.
She sends him a text to let him know, so he can let Ryan know, that they are going to be at the bar that night.
Ryan tells Gibson to stay away from Julie so he won't eff it up between him and Ashley, so at the bar, Gibson dances with other women and doesn't even speak to Julie.

But then all of a sudden he corners her in the hallway, pins her up against the wall, raging and cussing at her. (I assume we, the readers, are supposed to recognize this as his sexual frustration, but I don't understand her standing there taking this from him). He tells her to stop texting him (she sent him the one text), and tells her it won't work between them because she couldn't handle the kind of man he is. She begs him to show her.
Pah-leeeze.

The last story is Kyle, the Firefighter, and Monica, Ashley's best friend since childhood.  Monica has been in love with Kyle for years, and turned out Kyle had been in love with her, too, but the three year age difference between them was just much back when she was 18 and he was 21.

Kyle wasn't at the rehearsal dinner the night before his sister Ashley's wedding because he was away fighting a four-alarm blaze on the East Side (of wherever they are in Texas).
He and Monica meet up at the wedding the next day, talk, dance, kiss, and then he's called away to fight a forest fire in Colorado for the next week.
They have a minor-ly hot sexting session, but then we get many pages of a flashback memory from their teenage years, when Monica fell off her bicycle and Kyle drove her to the hospital.

He finally shows up, they have sex, and The End.

There's an Epilogue of HEA's, and a bunch of babies. Ugh.