And my unstoppable yen to keep reading grows despite the following list of absurdities:
1. Not only are there an abundance of punishing kisses (ow) but there’s a great deal of insistence on the part of the Insane Hero that she likes it: “You little liar! You love it when I kiss you!” That pretty much sums up the hero, that sentence right there.
2. The heroine: weird. WEIRD. She resists the Insane Hero but when he kisses her, it’s not as if she actually LIKES it. 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!
Now, the awkward process that is removing a bra from another person, let alone panties or socks or God forbid pantyhose, would wake someone who was merely sleeping, so what kind of haze is this woman in!? And, perhaps I’m over-thinking this, but I can’t help but ask: where is the line that defines “I’m so hot for you I can barely see straight” as opposed to “taking complete advantage of some ninny who descends into non compos mentis with one kiss?” I’m telling you: roofie kisses: Mmmmwaaaahhzhzzzzzzzzzzzz. Hey! Where are my clothes?
3. There’s profoundly little variety in the plot. Avast! We have a storm front of punishing kisses with a 90% chance of throwing the heroine down on the nearest horizontal surface!
Then, the wind changes. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz runs away to another location, fleeing her own home like it’s been condemned by the power of his tornado of burning, somewhat stalkery and utterly insane love.
Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You follows Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz (see “stalkery and utterly insane” above) and hello...more punishing kisses. Nearest Horizontal Surface + Roofie Kisses MWAAHHHZZZZ + Absurd Removal of Clothes = UH Oh Spaghettios!
4. They get caught! By her fiance, one week before the wedding! Oh, noes! Milquetoast Fiance finds them IN her bedroom, buck naked, in flagrante licking-toe.
Cue the woeful haiku chorus:
She’s not pure as snow?
Virginal expectations
Dashed to muddy slush!
4. Jilted Milquetoast Fiance, he’s up to something. No man is that controlling while being that kind, particularly if that man is a spurned, humiliated former fiance in a Harlequin Presents romance novel. He will be villainized by the end of the book, mark my words!
Cue the mournful trombone.
I found you in bed!
With HIM?! The wedding is off!
...I can has yr house?
I smell financial shenanigans on the part of Jilted Milquetoast Fiance to be unearthed by the tender business acumen that runs alongside the passion for punishing kisses in the Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You.
5. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz runs away again. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You follows her again. Roofie Kisses Mwwwaaaahahazzzz promises she won’t run. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You begs her for her love, her mad sexxoring, her hand in marriage, whatever. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaaahahzzz takes off the minute Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You closes the door to take a leak.
6. Lather rinse repeat.
7. Even the setup of the plot is absurd: after one week of knowing one another in a boss/secretary environment, and after four years of subsequent separation, there’s more punishing kisses and entirely bizarre declarations of love from Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You than you can shake a stick at. A long, suddenly naked, where did THAT come from stick.
8. Enter the insanely beautiful and potentially insane ex-wife of Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You, the oddly precocious son of Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You, and some additional conflict, and stir.
I promise, you’ll get fizz. Lots and lots of fizz.
And you know what? Candy is right. That fizz is drinkable. Drink the fizz, it says. You’ll want more. Turn the page, more fizz!
This book is like that crackly fizzy candy - the sugar variety, not the Malaysian variety. It’s not satisfying yet you can’t stop the compulsion to taste it some more.
It’s cracktastic, sudzy, over the top, silly and utterly insane fizzy candy, and I cannot put it the hell down. It’s a horrible turn-the-page omg-what-next experience, reading this book. What is IN this book? The utterly frothy insanity is just too absurdedly entertaining to put down, and even though my ability to suspend belief deflated by page 3, I am still reading at a crackalicious pace simply because I cannot stop myself from wanting to know what crazy ass car will be loaded next onto the holy crap locomotion. Seriously.
It’s absurd. The Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz heroine vacillates between spineless - or possibly unconscious - and strong enough to run away from a hero who scares her. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You is autocractic, demanding, and, dare I say, punishing in his affections, which he declares immediately and presumes she returns based on… well, based on what evidence I have no idea. Perhaps falling in love for him is based on the idea that if you insist upon it enough, it will come true?
The plot goes in loopy circles that don’t spell out so much forward progression as they do plain old loopyness, and yet. I. Cannot. Put. It. Down. Even the ending is one last resist, one last insist, one last punishing kiss. Nothing’s so much resolved as just...exhausted, and thus the story winds to a unsatisfying finish. I believe I said out loud, “Are you kidding? That’s it?”
Bottom line: this is bad entertainment at its finest. The book on its own is a solid D. But that D comes with a hefty caveat: it’s practically impossible to retreat from this book. You’d love to fling it at the wall, but you can’t, because there’s one more page and surely she isn’t going to -
Oooooh, yes, she did. *turn page*
