Samhain Publishing, $5.50, ISBN 1-59998-858-5
Contemporary Erotica, 2008

Meet Allie McAllister. She’s the “Alley Cat”, the hot bartender at the club called The Guild on Friday nights. From what I gather in the opening scene, she yells at people that she’s in the house and she wants y’all to scream the roof down if y’all are thirsty. That’s nice, I suppose. She also helps her ex-boyfriend work on his spicy novel until he manages to sell it and she has also written four published erotic romance novels herself. When she’s not auctioning a tequila body shot on those Friday nights, she’s also being lusted by men from thirteen to ninety. She has her pick of these men and she keeps them in her bed for a maximum of six months before kicking them out. She also keeps busy by holding classes for men wanting to write romance stories that make the toes of female readers curl.

No, I’m pretty sure Allie McAllister’s real name is not Monica Robinson. What gives you the idea that this is one of those books where the author is living out her fantasies through her heroine?

Breaking All the Rules sees lawyer Adam Carlton being the latest meat to grace the bedsheets of the Alley Cat, our hot shot erotic romance guru. Of course, Adam needs to have a silly pretense to get the ball rolling with Allie and you can bet that nonsense will bite him in the behind, because otherwise there will be no story here, just a ridiculously sassy and suspiciously Mary Sue-ish heroine on a roll and having a blast. This is ultimately the biggest reason why I don’t really connect at any level with this story: it reads too much like the author’s own party of one and I’m like an intruder who is watching her toast her own sass and sexy womanly spirit via a pair of binoculars.