Harlequin Signature Select, $5.99, ISBN 0-373-83718-6
Contemporary Romance, 2006

3 Guys You’ll Never Date revolves around three women who decide that they will not settle for losers not worthy to shine the shoes of their highly-successful and beautiful selves. Of course, we can’t have these haughty, selfish, and clearly immoral women running around thinking too highly of themselves, so these disgusting creatures are going to get a reality smack down courtesy of blue-collar guys who will show them that love cares not for money bags.

Of course, with this being what it is, the message ends up coming off as horribly garbled because we have instead filthy rich and hard-bodied Harlequin hero clichés instead of blue-collar men.

Stephanie Bond’s You Can Leave Your Hard Hat on has architect Samantha Stone reconnecting with her high school buddy Teague Brownlee. They had a thing for one night back when they were kids and she fled the day after, so therefore Teague is going to seduce her just to get back at her. Samantha will realize that the financial status of the very rich guy you are going down on shouldn’t matter because love is all you need, but she will learn this the hard way when Teague reveals that he’s actually filthy rich before ditching her as payback for what he perceived as a humiliation from all those years ago.

Jennifer LaBrecque’s The Total Package is a familiar story of our marketing expert heroine Abby Carmichael giving geek Deke Foster a make-over. She’s determined not to fall for a geek while Deke is pathetically and desperately in love with her. Abby will realize that Deke has washboard abs and broad shoulders on top of his huge bank account so she too learns that money and looks shouldn’t factor when it comes to the very rich and very handsome man you are doing the doggy with.

Rhonda Nelson’s The Used-Car Salesman is similar to Stephanie Bond’s story – woman meets up with high-school buddy, goes eeuw at first, only to fall in love with him just in time for him to deliver the moral smack down. Carley Deluna believes that her high school buddy Jackson Harper is bit of a directionless bum, but when he turns out to be a filthy rich vintage car dealer with a large client pool comprising rich Republicans, she ends up swallowing her pride and accepting that really, a woman must not judge the very rich and very handsome man she loves by the size of his wallet or his looks.

Of course, such asinine Very Important Messages for a Humble Woman are very easy to hold on to as the center of one’s belief system when the man in question is filthy rich and good-looking, don’t you think?

Everything about this book is a lie. The title is a lie unless you swear to me that you will never date a very good-looking millionaire and if you do, you’re clearly crazy so your opinion doesn’t count. The Very Important Messages these authors are shoving down my throat are lies. The “Bonus Features Inside!” promise on both the front and back covers are lies because there are no bonus features here unless I count both the ubiquitous “subscribe to the book club and get the first shipment of books for free!” thing and my splitting headache as “bonus features”. Even the sea-life theme of the cover is a lie, although the vision of this book sinking to the bottom of the sea to become fish food is strangely most appealing.

I don’t know who the authors are trying to fool with their fraudulent “money and looks don’t count when it comes to love” messages. I think the real message I am getting here is: “Hah! You bought this book. Sucker.”