Foxtrot Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1393092827
Contemporary Romance, 2019
In Garnet Davenport’s Bedside Manners, heroine Paige is annoyed because the person moving into the now vacant apartment upstairs is causing a commotion. Imagine that, moving furniture and stuff into an apartment can generate noise!
Annoyed by the law of acoustics, she charges upstairs to demand that the noise be stopped at once, only to melt when she spots a little boy in the elevator on her way up. Indeed, she forgets why she is mad and the two start conversing in a way that would be absolutely disquieting and even creepy if taken out of context.
“I’m going to say… nice girl.”
His nose crinkled just a bit in thought and then said, “but you give shots. You can’t be a nice girl.”
Oh yes, the shots part is because Paige is a doctor. She introduces herself to strangers by saying that she’s a doctor. I don’t know why. Maybe she wants them to know that she can manipulate big syringes like a pro.
Then, she meets Sam’s dad and he’s so hot that Paige soon start fantasizing of the two of them making more noise than he did on his own while, er, he moves in through the door.
He immediately calls her Sweetheart, which is something he can certainly not get away with had he been fat and ugly—Paige would run screaming into her phone to make a TikTok video about the absolute dreadfulness of men these days had that been the case.
Cash doesn’t even know that his son is MIA until Paige brings him in, and he proceeds to scold him, cutting off Paige’s attempt to explain, until the boy bursts into tears.
Sam burst into tears and clung onto the woman that was now witness to one of my most embarrassing parenting moments. Lost the kid. Didn’t know the kid was missing. Yelled at scared kid. Made him cry. Yep, four for four.
He’s hot, so yes, she still wants it. Bad.
Fortunately, after bringing his dad and Paige together, Sam turns out to be one of those marvelous kids that thoughtfully stay in the background whenever the grown-ups want to do grown-up things.
Throughout it all, Clay makes everything about himself, growls about Paige to himself or someone else when he doesn’t get his way when it comes to her, threatens to kill men that look at Paige funny, and generally comes off as someone that would be unpleasant to deal with when he’s in a bad mood, which seems to be most of time in this story.
Still, he’s hot, so I guess that makes up for everything else about his personality?
The best part of this whole thing is that the hero is described in the back cover synopsis as “laid-back-cool-dad-Cash”. Did someone order a big jug of Coke Zero Awareness?
