Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-1-335-21667-0
Contemporary Romance, 2018
If you look closely at the cover, you will notice that the hero apparently is missing his entire body below the waist. Sadly, this is the most interesting thing about Kianna Alexander’s A San Diego Romance. Another entry into the Millionaire Moguls series, one revolving around the San Diego charter, it only demonstrates how all that money can’t transform dullards into diamonds.
Christopher Marland is the president for this particular millionaire dude club, and he is vexed by a series of unexplained pitfalls that threaten to ruin the image of the club – right after it had won the Charter of the Year award too! – and jeopardize their upcoming gala. Right there, I have to say: trivial little clubhouse drama involving galas and parties ranks up there in my list of least interesting things I care to read about. Who cares if a couple of rich brats are unable to throw some evening gala? They can wipe their tears using hundred dollar bills for all I care.
Our hero’s thirteen-year old daughter needs a dress for her school dance, and naturally, like every normal thirteen-year old, she needs a custom-made expensive dress from a prestigious boutique. That’s how our hero bumps into his old flame again: Eliza Ellicott, sister of the soiled diaper of a hero in the previous book in this series.
Can Eliza, an independent woman, bring out her inner maternal goddess to mother his twin brats? Can she believe that she ever has a place in Christopher’s life, as he has a job and therefore clearly will not have time for her? Don’t ask me just how much time in a day she expects a man to devote to her in order to qualify as her sweetheart – the people here seem to be rich folks who have no reasons to whine, so they invented a few of their own to do so. Oh no, she feels like he’s mansplaining to her and treating her like the little sister of his BFF instead of the hot, independent woman she is, so she’s going to flounce off in a huff while whining that she really, really wants to shag him because he is so hot and, like, totally, her true love forever. Oh, her father never hugged her or praised her enough so… DADDY!
Yawn.
These people talk, talk, and talk about these boring matters when they are not having expensive lunches and dinners before going off to make out or make love or whatever. They also argue over silly, trivial things, and I can only wonder at the end of the day how all these hot people with so much money to waste can end up being more boring than all the drying paint in the walls of the northern hemisphere. Can’t some of them get a drug habit or something? Or maybe have one of those brats turn out to have a fondness of skinning the cats in the neighborhood? The closest thing this story has to genuine drama is when our hero goes all OOOOH BITCH about the things his predictably nasty ex-wife did to him, but for the most part, these people put the duh in dullard. Or something.
Maybe A San Diego Romance is part of a plot to convince me that rich people are as boring as the rest of us mere mortals, but come on. I’ve paid for a show, so these people bloody well put on a show for me.
