Silhouette Intimate Moments, $4.50, ISBN 0-373-27071-2
Romantic Suspense, 2000
Once upon a time, Amanda Wainwright is betrayed by her boyfriend who turned out to be a traitor. The man was just using her position as a secretary in an FBI base to get information. The result was some sort of sabotage never made clear to me.
Now that the accident is over, Agent Joshua Carter thinks that Amanda has enough time to heal and now he is going to woo her. But Amanda just keeps saying no, not that it deters Joshua. A man wants something, he will go fight for it until he gets it, you know. That’s what Josh does anyway. He is a nice man, sort of like a James Bond who has just been hit by a truck and lost the word “promiscuity” from his vocabulary. Frankly I don’t see how any woman could say no to a man who has waited so long and will do anything for her.
But Amanda, I dunno. She is what some guys would call a “high-maintenance woman”. Not that she is expensive, but she is very, very weak. I’m not surprised to see that she’s a virgin, even though I’m told romance thrives on virgins. I can’t even see her actually taking off her clothes for any man. I don’t think she even likes men. Or people. All she does in the book is to say yes, then change her mind (men, all useless people, you know), then say yes again. All the time she keeps sighing, “Ah, my life is so sad!” and clinging to Josh like a barnacle.
Amanda will definitely be a hit among guys who like their women clingy, passive, weak, weepy, and even unable to function without a man by her side (or better still, in front of her, protecting her from all evil). Some man like these sort of women, I know some friends whose wives are like clinging ivy vines. But me, no way. I like the heroines in my spy stories, romance or not, who never let their problems change them into turtles. These women have lively humor, spirit, and they can take care of themselves. Amanda? She makes a boring heroine. Since Cinderella and the Spy has little to keep it going apart from Amanda’s crybaby party, I find it very dull.
