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

If the book is a tenth as entertaining as your review, it’s worth full price! *wiping tears of mirth off my face*

I think I’ll skip the book and just re-read your review. Talk about fantastic. My kids keep asking me what is so funny.

ROFLMAO!!!

It’s more like he has incredibly fast acting rohypnol on his lips and whenever he kisses her, she lapses into a coma. A complete cessation of brain function occurs. At one point, I’m not even kidding, she’s in her passion-fog coma, and then realizes that at some point, she got naked and so did he and neither of them had a stitch of clothing on! Oh, noes!

Insane Hero’s kiss sounds like the template for Austin Powers’ mojo!  Both inexplicable and, yet, strangely powerful.

I’m debating whether I should:

1) drown myself in my tears of pity since dribble like that can get published and my GH-finalling ms can’t
OR
2) hurriedly dash off a book with assinine characters and an effed up plot and send it to Harl!

Leslie,I feel the same way, except I don’t have a GH-finalist MS. Still, I know my MS is so much better than what was described. Maybe we should pen a MS that’s all crazy like this one, make a date to send it to Harl, and see what happens.

Okay, now I’ve had to turn on Echo and the Bunnymen - “Lips like roofies, roofie kisses...”

Please, please tell me you set up macros for those names instead of typing them over and over.

(Review? LOLtastic.)

I need this one! I just can’t seem to find a really so-craptastic-I-can’t-put-it-down-HP lately!

I wish I were ashamed or embarrassed or even slightly mortified about how much I look forward to STORY HOUR AT CASA BITCHES ---- I am not --- I love it.

Mmmmwaaaahhzhzzzzzzzzzzzz!????

Is there a lot of description of meals in this one?  Does the heroine eat a rather weird sounding appetiser of hollowed-out melon filled with a cornucopia of fruits? 

If so, I know the one you’re talking about.  (In my experience, the later the CL novel, the more time is spent describing meals.  This gets on my nerves if for no other reason than the fact that the heroine is always thin and always refuses dessert.  Bitch.).

But I don’t mean to be snarky - I am an unashamed Charlotte Lamb fan.  I officially love her.  She wrote about 20 completely fantastic category romances in the late 70s/ early 80s and they are CLASSICS.  But if I’m honest, everything she wrote after about 1985 has been a bit of a disappointment to me because of those perfect little books from her heyday.

FYI - I would be DELIGHTED to send you or Candy one of those heyday books for review.

Dude.  I am absolutely running out to buy this extravaganza of awesomeness.

LOL SB Sarah - you had me at roofies.

I’m seeing a disturbing parallel between your inability to put down the book, and the heroine’s inability to stay conscious during the Punishing Kisses (tm).

Are you certain that the book wasn’t printed with some sort of roofie-impregnated ink?

:) Never mind the book - the review should get an A grade.

Charlotte Lamb:  I remember when I rather madly wrote a novel in the mid-80s and submitted it to M&B, when turning it down (with great kindness and courtesy, I may say), Lamb was one of the authors they suggested I study to get a better idea of what they wanted.

Just for the record, fresh fruit with a touch of appropriate alcohol is excellent.  Kirsch is a clear, strong spirit distilled from cherries, and it is not sweet. It looks like water, smells of cherries, and is capable of putting you under the table.

;)

Spamfilter:  March49.  Yep, I remember March 1949.

I have review-reading afterglow.  Thanks.  It was great for me.

What, no slapping?  Charlotte Lamb *did* move on to some extent, then!

There is no way that book can live up to that review. I’m still cracking up.

Excellent. Thoroughly excellent.

Licking toe? Egad. Where be my smelling salts?

And she takes another one for the team!

Your reviews are splendid, but the point I found most interesting was you kept reading.  This may be worth exploring further in your book--why are these novels like crack?  We keep reading even when our levels of credulity are stretched to the max.  What does that say about the books, and about us as readers?

When am I going to learn NOT to read your reviews at work? Dead silence in the office and then I burst out laughing at “Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz.” I’m sure my lame excuse was believed by no one and unemployment is imminent.

OMG, I’m going to agree with the general here: roofie kisses.  Laughed. Out. Loud.

Oh god, Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz and Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You!! I wish those were the real names for the hero and heroine!

Oh man.

My top 5 heyday reccs are:-

1. Frustration (best evah)

2. Obsession (gratuitous spanking scene *cheers*)

3. Dark Dominion (it IS dark.  If you hated Claiming the Courtesan, you’ll really fucking hate this.  Personally I have a strange corner of my brain that I go to when I read this sort of Old Skool category romance and I’m basically ok with it *shrugs*.)

4. The Long Surrender (Kind of ditto. She wrote this book in ONE weekend.)

5. Savage Surrender - NO - Duel of Desire - OR - Love is a Frenzy - SCRUB THAT - Fever.  Shit - any of ‘em.  They’re all great.

And srsly, if you can’t locate one, I’ll happily send you one.

I totally love you in a totally non-lesbian way. That was the best review I’ve read since your last low grade review.

LOL. I abase myself at the feet of SB Sarah; who can write a ridiculously funny review that is more entertaining the last book I read, but also came up with two haikus. TWO. It takes me days to come up with one. And then, not so funny.
*kneels and genuflects*

Hey, stop making fun of my roofie kisses!!!

And I second Dark Dominion.  Insane.

Bitches, I think Sarah needs an intervention.  STAT!

Tumperkin, were we separated at birth?
Charlotte, my favouritest 1980’s M & B author.

I totally love you in a lesbian (but totally platonic) way. Best character names evah.

I’ll sheepishly admit I keep reading this as The Boss’s Virgin Lamb, and really, wouldn’t THAT make for an interesting plot?

You have no idea how much I needed to read this wonderful review. I have laughed so hard my monitor has been sprayed with coffee not once, but twice.

I bow to your greatness, Sarah.

ROFLMAO!!!
sometimes i wonder if my husband wonders what i’m doing down here when i burst into laughter late at night.  :)

fwiw, my favorite classic Charlotte Lamb is Forbidden Fire (Harlequin Presents #298).  (http://www.bibliothecae.com/bk_detail.asp?ISBN=0373707983)
though i have to admit i probably wasn’t even 18 when i first read it, and it may have been 10 years since i read it last.  but i could still give a decent summary!

i’ve probably got about 100 Harlequin Presents on my keeper shelf - but i haven’t read any of them probably since 2000.  Savage Surrender (#401), mentioned by Tumperkin, is also on that shelf.

Okay, so why was the book so good? Sounds like shallow, one dimensional characters.

R

OMG!  I have never laughed so hard at a review in my life.  This review could be for almost any of the more ridiculous HP’s I’ve read in the past. 

There are times when I just wanted slap the heroine silly and then slap the hero for being such an arrogant jackass.  However, SB Sara said it much more eloquently and with a razor edge sense of humor.  PRICELESS!

I forgot to add, I feel an uncontrollable urge to head to the 24 hr Wal-Mart to purchase it just for the crack-like quality of the reading fix!

Oh ow...I think I actually ruptured something laughing that hard. I may have to find that one!

I love books that are so horrible and yet so insane that you just can’t stop reading them. And I love this review! Funny stuff. To be not so funny for a moment: wow, did I identify with what was going on in this book. Sounds like it was written by someone who was sexually abused a lot, dissociated from it a lot, and grew up to think that totally checking out and going around in a fog especially around sex was… you know… HOTT. To seal that deal, the guy who totally insists that she does like it and if she says she doesn’t she is lying/wrong is a spot-on portrayal of my dad!