Joanne McClean, $0.99, ISBN 978-1301603961
Contemporary Romance, 2013

In the opening scene of Joanne McClean’s Blue Eyes and Sweet Peach Pie, poor Lorelai Simmons is dumped by her beau of three years, on her birthday to boot.

She reels around like someone having an overdose.

My feet hurt and I can barely see anything in front of me I’m crying so hard. I fumble in my bag for my phone to find that there is no signal.

Great, just great!

I heave a sigh and look around me, trying to get my bearings.

I notice that I have now managed to walk to an even dodgier part of town. I bite back a scream and quickly look around for a payphone. No such luck.

Oh my god, the heroine is going to get killed, isn’t she? I can’t wait.

It is then that I spot a bar on the opposite side of the street. I quickly run across the road, managing not to break my ankle in the process and quickly slip past the doorman.

My first stop is the women’s toilets. I take one look in the mirror and feel like crying all over again. My mascara is streaked down my cheeks, my red hair is falling out of its upstyle and basically, I look like shit.

Where’s the killer? In the next stall? Hello, please do something.

I quickly repair my make-up and end up taking my hair down. It’s not so bad since my hair falls into bouncy curls. I throw my reflection a reassuring smile and then make my way out into the bar.

One quick glance around the room and I realise that I have somehow stumbled into a wannabe serial killer convention. Every single person in the room looks as if they are concealing a weapon of some sort. My heart thuds rapidly in my chest as I sneak past an elderly man who grins lecherously at me, flashing his gold tooth.

Yes, so many serial killers! Let’s make this an orgy of disembowelment and dismemberment on that idiot!

Oh dear God, I’m going to die!

First, I get dumped – on my birthday no less – and now I’m going to get knifed in some seedy bar!

Screw this. Give me the chainsaw. I’ll do it myself.

Sweet Peach is the nickname given by the hero Hagen Stevenson, because, you know, real men name their women, instead of using their names. To be fair, Lorelai calls Hagen Das Blue Eyes, so I guess they are now equal in tomfoolery.

This story sees the screechy, incoherent, raving heroine running around acting like a chicken being chased by a horny goose, and I can only marvel at how she can be like this without being completely obliterated by alcohol. Maybe drunken lunacy is coded in her genes.

She flails around, overreacting and being unnecessarily abrasive just because, and somehow I’m supposed to root for her to fall in love with some smarmy dude.

Well, I suppose I could, as it means these two will be removed from the dating pool and away from terrorizing innocents that just want to swipe right for a quick and easy lay.

This is a short story, but aside from that, I don’t know what this is. The heroine is a screechy Daffy Duck-like caricature that seems to think she’s adorable, and oh yes, I forgot to mention: she’s just turned 21.

Why is she so eager to be tied to some man at 21? Is she in some weird cult that requires her to marry young and work at conceiving the spawn of Yog-Sothoth?

Honestly, I can’t be arsed to care. This is a singularly unpleasant thing to read, thanks to the heroine being such a ridiculous loony, and the people in the bar should have just killed her and spared me the ordeal of having to read the rest of this thing.