Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Brian Hartigan is a man with a problem: after a lab experiment went wrong, his sweat exudes pheromones that make him completely irresistible to women. It’s lots of fun at first, since he got to bang a buncha hot chicks, but the charms palled after a woman tried to kidnap him while another tried to tie him down so he couldn’t escape, not to mention all the fights he was getting into because formerly faithful (and not-so-faithful-to-begin-with) girlfriends and wives started dry humping him in public.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, though: one of the scientists tells him that if he has sex with the perfect woman, his sweat will no longer have the ability to turn 76-year-old women into raving nymphos. So Brian goes on the run, ducking and dodging The Man and desperately hoping he’ll find the perfect woman soon, ‘cause hot damn, he’s tired of being assaulted.

Allie Hamden is a waitress at a truck stop diner, and like just about every romance heroine, she’s had bad luck with men. She no longer trusts her instincts. So when a tired-looking man stops in the diner for some coffee and eggs and all her nubbins perk up in interest, she’s pissed off and determined to resist his charms.

She fails, of course. Hot nookie follows. Then they run. Then they nook some more. Nook, nook, nook. Run some more. Nook. Revelations happen. Nook. Oh, hey, HEA!

To say that this story happens fast would be an understatement. It’s barely over 100 pages long, and takes place over the space of a couple days. It’s really hard to pull off a convincing love story in such a short span of time, unless the characters had prior history with each other. The cynical little bitch in me was all “Are you shitting me? No way are these two going to last.”

But the starry-eyed dreamer was all, “Awwww, they’re so cute together! And they’re so nice! And look, you can totally tell they like each other, not just hot for each other’s twiddly bits!”

For once, the starry-eyed dreamer won.

Other than that, the only other complaint I had about the book was too much internal musing on the part of the hero. He ponders on and on and onnnnn about whether or not he should shag Allie stupid, about his situation, and yeahyeahyeahyeah just PULL HER DAMN PANTIES DOWN ALREADY. Too much internal musing is a problem most romance novels suffer from, however. It’s one of my pet peeves.

One other thing that niggled at me was the presence of a few really silly copyediting errors, but I wasn’t sure if the copy I got was an ARC or whether it was the finished product. So Kate, if this was an ARC, I take the niggle back. No niggle for you!

So yeah, the book was fun and sexy, and despite the warp-speed romance, I had reasonable faith in the HEA. It wasn’t perfect (har har), but it did a great job of de-stressing and distracting me from some really shitful events.

Allyson has decided to leave the business headquarters to direct one of their subsidiaries in Seattle, and Lucas has to figure out how to confess his feelings without losing all sense of pride, since he has no idea how Allyson feels about him.

Meanwhile, Allyson is having a hard time keeping her eyes off Lucas, and is half pushing herself out to Seattle to get away from him, and away from her feelings for him.

This short story starts out with one of my favorite romantic situations: he’s hot for her but thinks she’s not interested, and she’s hot for him but won’t risk the humiliation if he doesn’t return her interest. Moreover, they work together, so they’re around each other in daily doses, but aside from the professional interaction, neither has any clue if they’re the only one with the irmy squirmy crotches where the other is concerned.

Because the story is a quick read, I’ll only give the setup of the plot, because to go any farther would give away too much. However, I did like it, and it went way too quick for my tastes; as I mentioned, I don’t penalize the author for that, though I wish that I’d had more time to get to know the characters, find out how Lucas came into possession of that there genie, and who the other owners are who financed the purchase of its lamp. I’d also like to spend a little more time inside Allyson’s head, because most of the story is from Lucas’ perspective, as he’s the one what has the genie, the magic snake in his trousers, and those three wishes.

When Lucas and Allyson do hook up - of course they do, it’s a romance! - woo damn. But there was only one issue I had there: both of them went from possibly-unreciprocated attraction to hot n’ heavy boardroom boinking with a lot of verbal confidence. I would expect more hesitation between them for their first (very hot!) love scene, but they jumped right into the dirty talk that I would have thought would require more trust between them to allow. With an unknown person it would seem unlikely that they’d use such terms, without first establishing trust in one another. Otherwise it doesn’t sound like an emotional entanglement; it sounds and reads more like hot carnal satisfaction with no background - although it does plenty to make it clear how fiery the attraction is between them.

One word about erotic romance and terminology: do pussies have to weep? Allyson’s wept twice in twenty pages and really, I wanted to get the poor woman a Stayfree. It’s a damn shame that there are so many ways to describe an erection, but so few to describe female arousal, especially in the tropical and emotional sense.

Elias does an admirable job of setting up a story wherein the hero was smart enough to wish for his dream woman, but not smart enough to ask for her guaranteed affections. It’s obviously better that he forgot, since any possible feelings on her part are due to her own attraction, not due to magical influence. The only magic at work around her was his third wish, which would not let her leave him unless he let her go.

Clearly she is meant for him, but aside from the choices of her own behavior, she’s not getting out of his sphere until he lets her go. So not only does Lucas have to own up to his own mistakes in his wishes, but he has to put on his big-boy pants (or, put them back on after tossing them on the floor) and earn his happy ending. And Lucas does so in an admirable, original way that allows Elias to guarantee for the reader that Lucas and Allyson’s HEA is due to their own decisions, and not to external influence, which in turn creates an emotionally and sexually satisfying romance in a convenient snack-sized portion.

Fast forward a few years, and we meet our statuesque heroine and orgasmless widow, Kate Abbot. To her credit, Kate loved her husband, even if he was weedy and bespectacled and lousy in bed and womanish enough to die of consumption. (Side note: my personal experience has been that weedy, bespectacled boys tend to be good in the sack because they KNOW they have to compensate for their lack of studly good looks. Also: they’re usually very, very happy to get a girl and tend to be, well, accommodating, shall we say… Anyway, enough TMI, back to reviewing.)

Kate moved to Barbados following her husband’s death to be with her brother, who’s a commodore. One day, while accompanying her brother on parade inspection duties on a military compound, she notices a prison warden brutally beating a chained prisoner with a riding quirt. What does a gently-reared, recently widowed Englishwoman do?

The only thing she could do, of course. Run over (with skirts hitched up to her knees, no less), wrench the quirt from the warden and start beating the everloving snot out of him, while the prisoners watch on, appropriately speechless.

Naturally, she feels indignant when her brother tells her off for being a crazy-ass bitch. Now, I’m fairly used to feisty romance heroines, but this woman deserves a whole new category. Like, a “Tonya Harding On Altruistic Crack” category. OK, I’ll admit I enjoyed how the prison warden got his ass handed to him, because I generally enjoy watching and reading about women kicking patoot, but there was a definite “Oh are you SHITTING me?” feeling to the whole scene.

Anyway, one of the prisoners immediately decides to take advantage of the proximity of convenient hostage material and nabs our winsome Kate. This man is, of course, no other than Colin Wyndham, scheduled to hang for the crimes of patricide and piracy in just a few days. Using Kate as his bargaining chip, he manages to free his fellow prisoners (including the members of his crew who were captured with him) and scarper back to his ship, the Blackbird, conveniently anchored, unguarded and fully-manned, in a nearby cove. Which, again, are you SHITTING me? The pirate captain and key members of the crew are caught, but the military made no effort to find and secure the ship when it’s just minutes away?

The rest of the story involves the chase as the Blackbird tries to make its way to the relative safety of Tortuga, and Kate’s seduction by Colin, who is, as Kate’s brother noted, “ever popular among the strumpets” (hee!). Oh, and then there’s a plot twist, which I won’t give away—no, not even with the turn-text-to-white spoiler thing I do every now and then—but trust me: out of all the hostages in all of Barbados, Colin is lucky indeed to have nabbed this particular chippy because she’s the key to saving his ass and proving his innocence.

Overall, Draven’s writing style isn’t too bad. It does verge towards lilac in spots, especially the love scenes, but I’ve read a lot worse. The use of some standard romance cliches (the orgasmless widow, the feisty heroine who’s willing to take on all comers and come on all takers [no, wait, I only WISHED Kate had come on all takers] despite what one presumes is a sheltered upbringing, the emasculation of the first husband) didn’t thrill me, either, but at least Draven didn’t take it all the way and make, say, the husband abusive on top of being sexually ineffective.

The story does suffer from significant pacing problems, though. The novella starts in a very leisurely fashion, as if it were a full-length novel. The set up is quite good as a whole, aside from Kate’s impression of a certain batshit insane figure-skater-turned-pugilist, but it’s not suited to a 54-page story. As a consequence, the last few bits are incredibly rushed, and Kate happily tumbles into bed with her captor after only a few days at sea and a really good dinner conversation. It’s not that I don’t think this sort of thing can happen; I just didn’t buy into it in this particular instance because I didn’t get to see Kate interact all that much with Colin, and what little interaction there is, is antagonistic up until the dinner and the performance of the humpty dance. And as I noted before, I didn’t know this wasn’t a stand-alone story, and the ending perplexed me until I e-mailed Draven for confirmation that yes, there WILL be a sequel.

In short: this novella would’ve been a lot better if it had been much more even in tone and pacing, instead of being crispy on the outside and doughy and unset in the middle. And not in a good way, like a chocolate lava cake. More like a chiffon cake that hadn’t been baked long enough.

Sarah:

We need to make a category for “erotica/romantica” on our site because Candy and I both like us some romantic nookie action. That being said, there was not nearly enough erotic action for this to be an historical erotica novella. There was a hot, descriptive, cock-laden love scene, but there wasn’t a powder-keg build-up of tension or any other sexual interaction, just a minor spat over dinner that led to some in-and-out sex.

The other element that I felt was missing was a full twist on the established cliches. Draven already made her heroine tall, and curvy, and buxom, and contrasting her with the dainty and petite sister in law made it clear to me she wasn’t the average romance heroine. Add to that her incredibly short-sighted assing of the prison guard and I get it loud and clear: she is not average.

But then, to make her an orgasmless widow, it’s like when a figure skater (to keep up with the Tonya-Harding-on-Altruistic-Crack analogy) goes up in the air to spin four times before landing, and her leg pops out and she manages just one half of a twist before landing. Making Kate an Orgasmless Widow is the author’s leg popping out of her midair twist-on-cliche. Candy is right: the nerdy guys learn fast how to get it on. So why not have her a multi-orgasm widow? Why not have her hungering for some man action as she sits in her black dresses unable to really socialize with anyone aside from family? The restrictions of mourning on women at that time were pretty daunting; granted there was tremendous freedom once one came out of mourning, but still, being able to take a lover and finding that same companionship as she had with her husband would be very difficult. To make Kate this tall, strong, powerfully tempered woman, then to sell her short in the sex department, left me with a, “Darn it, why not go all the way, here?” feeling. And really, it’s an erotic novella; it should go all the way, circle around, come back, and go all the way again.

Now, I feel like a right heel for doing this, because I’m second guessing the author’s decisions, but I have to say it. Suppose for a moment that she was a multi-orgasmed widow, desperate for action. And she gets herself kidnapped and held on board a pirate ship with a hot, manly captain who has been in prison for quite awhile, and prior to that on a ship full of men. Now thems is some sex-crazed individuals, and a ripe scenario for an erotic novella. As it is in present form, the orgasmless widow and the well-sexed-but-not-recently hero who just got sprung from prison, is a solid thump back into cliche-land. While I am shamed to find myself being something of a backseat writer in this review, I have to point out that this particular cliche was surprising to find in an erotica novel, many of which exist to twist cliches of romance and sexuality on their ears and spin them around some more.

Aside from the TPS report Candy sent from the Too Much Reality Suspended Department, from the eagerly awaiting pirate ship, to the fierce attack on the guard, my disappointment in this novella rests mainly in the lack of action - nookee action. I have no problem suspending reality, and really, sometimes some over-the-top fantasy in a romance makes me very happy to leave my own reality and live in such a completely convenient world. But leaving me with an, “Oh, but...” feeling is not enough of a reality suspension.

However, that all being said, the writing style is snappy - there were parts of description that could have been explicated, but Draven does have an ear for language that depicts an engrossing image, and her dialogue, particularly between Colin and Kate, is snappy enough to keep me reading. Even if the cliches piled too high for my liking, good dialogue will redeem a story with me any time. Arrrrgh. 

The premise of the book sounded like so much fun that I’m sad it didn’t turn out better. Caitlyn James is a hairdresser who owns her own salon. While out on a wild night of partying with some of her sorority sisters, a car accident renders her less-than-alive. A secret gub’mint agency decides that her body is salvageable, however, and re-engineers her into a bionic woman. The trouble is, since this was all done without her consent, Caitlyn doesn’t figure she owes anyone anything, and is especially unwilling once she meets The Boss, a creepy eyebrowless wonder who will stoop to nothing when it comes to national security.

Then somebody starts whacking the members of the team of scientists who created the cyborg technology, and Caitlyn reluctantly agrees to work on the case. The prime suspect is Dmitri Novakov, a Lithuanian cyborg gone rogue. Problem number 1: He’s hot. Problem number 2: He thinks she’s the one killing all the scientists.

Think this might provide pages upon pages of interesting conflict and action-packed adventure? Yeah, dream on, kid. This mystery is solved so fast that it’s rivalled only by how fast Caitlyn and Dmitri hop into bed and fall in love, but then everything that happens in this book does so at super speed, since it’s only 195 pages. 195 pages of large print, at that. And of those 195 pages, there are as many scenes of Betsy—oops, Caitlyn—burning out exercise equipment with her bionic strength and speed as there are of her kicking bad guy ass.

Aside from an obsession with hair instead of shoes (and since Caitlyn’s big thing is hair, I don’t know WHY the cover’s tag-line says “Saving the world—one Manolo Blahnik at a time…” unless it’s to associate this character even more closely with Betsy), Caitlyn is basically Betsy from the Undead series. OK, Davidson keeps noting that unlike Betsy, Caitlyn was a straight-A student, but given the way Caitlyn acts and the way she talks, I think the people in her fictional world should find which university gave her all those As and start lobbying to have its accreditation yanked. And when I say Caitlyn talks like a stupid person, I certainly don’t mean Caitlyn’s predilection for bad words; I mean she just plain sounds dumb. She stumbles over perfectly ordinary words that a bright 6th grader has no trouble with. Seriously, at one point in the book she has problems pronouncing “enmity.” What in the everlasting fuck? Three syllables, all easily pronounced and more-or-less phonetic (what a rarity in English!) with the root word quite clearly being “enemy.” It’s not as if the word were a mouthful like, say, “prestidigitation.” So the author takes care to say over and over that Caitlyn’s smart, as do all the secondary characters, but what Davidson shows over and over is a bimbo who has trouble with problem-solving, task accomplishment and multisyllabic words.

The hero is pretty much a cipher. His history is fascinating, because he’s turned into a cyborg against his will much in the way Caitlyn was, and at one point he turned rogue. Do we get any of that juicy backstory? Like hell we do. Instead we get another scene featuring Caitlyn dishing on and on and ON about whatever with Stacy, her best friend. In fact, most of the book is from Caitlyn’s viewpoint, and when we switch to Dmitri’s, all we get is that he thinks she’s hot and smart and funny, a conclusion he comes to after exchanging all of 10 sentences with her. I’m not kidding when I say there are more scenes from The Boss’s point of view than Dmitri’s. What does that say about a romance novel?

When it comes down to it, the book isn’t too bad a read; it’s certainly fast and funny, though completely unmemorable. I had to dock it a few points though, because Davidson is now parodying herself, and worse, doing it poorly. If you’re a MaryJanice junkie, I highly recommend that you check this out from the library before shelling out $14.00 for this extremely slim volume that’s basically a re-tread of her vampire books in cyborg guise.