jen reviews a romance novel

[originally posted on myspace on August 7, 2008, Thursday]

Can't sleep. Let's complain about a book instead.

This post is rated "R."

So, I gave up on reading that one romance novel (the Spanish trillionare or something) via dailylit because, well, it was boring.

Someone donated a bunch of romance paperbacks to Mumbles (imagine my surprise! to Christiany, morally upright, still trying to marry me off Mumbles and she accepted them!). I took one today to read at lunch time, mostly out of boredom (and hoping to find funny passages to read out loud to the kitchen group). So, I picked: Dangerously in Love by Allison Hobbs.

It's essentially the story of a woman (a whiny woman), her husband (a sex freak) and a stripper (that the husband is kinda obsessed with, more on that in a sec).

The wife, Dayna or something, married her husband Reed and really wants to have his baby, even though he's a complete ass during the entire book and seems to never have been remotely nice to her. For some reason (I skipped her sections as she was so annoying), she realizes she needs to divorce his dumb ass, which really ticks him off.

The husband, Reed, likes to go to strip clubs and have sex with other women (preferably dirty, stanky women, which his wife is not). So, yeah, there's lots of talk about variations on him describing his hard ons. Fun. Anyway, he really likes this one stripper but she's not available and he has a crack-head back up that he turns to for cheap sex...but he also has sex with some old lady stripper (with a "reputation" and having sex with her is like making history) and (get this!) in a moment of desparation, the crack-head's great-grandma (ewwwwwwh). When the wife he hates asks for a divorce, he gets pissed (wouldn't he want to be rid of her?) and essentially goes down hill, turning crazeeeeeh.

Then there is the stripper, who is young and stupid and plays out all the stereotypical movie/book stripper mistakes. She loses her job at the club when a co-worker spreads lies about her and ultimately, she becomes an escort (apparently, it's an easy transition) and has all the stereotypical escort run ins (creepy weird guy not into sex, creepy weird guy into dressing as a woman, creepy weird guy who likes it rough, snore). Anyway, somehow she decides to give up that line of work and becomes a waitress. Quickly, she chats up a regular patron, a "nice looking," normal call who calls himself Greg (you see where this is going?). Greg offers to drive her home one night but turns out, Greg is actually crazy ass Reed! He kidnaps her and tortures her (because now he's beyond sex and is all into the power struggle) and, hey, turns out he also kidnapped the crack-head. Who knew? The crack-head somehow escapes and goes to the police.

Stripper gets put into the hospital and decides to get out of stripping/escorting (saying she prayed for a miracle to escape and that crack-head delivered it). Crack-head sells her story to the tabloids for lots of money (seriously). Reed gets arrested or something (who cares at this point?) but whiny wife Dayna? She finds true love! She meets this guy and they eventually have sex...only he goes down on her, he does not (to use proper romance novel lingo) have his own natural, manly release. She worries about this and he tells not to, that this is SACRED LOVE. Um, ok. And again, at the end, he talks some b.s. about sacred love.

Huh?

This book is so confused. It wants to be a thriller, it wants to be preachy. Some of the graphic stuff sneakily borders on American Psycho territory. I just don't picture the stereotypical romance novel reader digging on this (but according to the reviews on Amazon, they did), but props to the author for trying something kind of different.

And I kind of like the pacing. Each chapter is in the voice of a different character but it can be a bit confusing. You are in a scene with one person and she cuts it, akwardly, to another person, in an unrelated scene, but then cuts back to the first person, still resolving his scene. It was a little too back and forth. Overall, it felt like three separate stories smushed into one book...three predictable stories (unloved wife finds real love, stripper with heart of gold repents, and crazy man gets his in the end) that wouldn't have been strong on their own, I suppose...so let's cram them all together.

But my real problem with it is that basically, it teaches that if you enjoy sex, there must be something wrong with you and you will be punished (Reed, the stripper). But somehow, Dayna, who is prudish and just wants to make babies with a husband, any husband, gets rewarded with Mr. Sacred Love and some weight loss induced boost of confidence.

And, just for the record, this is an "African-American" oriented book ["urban romance']...which really meant nothing to me. All it really resulted in was variations of (obnoxious) descriptions of skin colors ("color of coffee with a touch of cream," ugh), some "street" language thrown in for "realness," and some racial slurs towards Italians and Asians. Oh, and the title is referring to a Beyonce song title. I think she'd be proud...