Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86528-4
Contemporary Romance, 2017
It seems like the easiest way to show me how the heroine is made of selfless awesomeness these days is to tell me that she works at a non-profit organization. Not only is Serenity Williams so awesome like that, having co-found a non-profit school for underprivileged kids, she is also the music teacher in that school. The only thing lacking in her life is a hot and wealthy dude. She meets “Chris Mullins” while doing on the online dating thing, they get along so fine, and they even share a love for music. She thinks she’s perfectly fine with putting out to him…. and then she learns that he has lied about his name. He is actually Christian Chandler, of that fabulously wealthy family that is practically drowning in dollar bills! Oh, the horror!
That’s basically the entire story found in Desire in a Kiss. Yes, the summary on the back cover give away the entire thing, because this is one of those stories that have zero things that can be dramatized to attract readers, so I can’t blame the person who came up with that thing for having to do what has to be done. “Hot woman being courted by hot rich dude – read all about it!” doesn’t have the same pull, after all.
As for me, I don’t have much to say about this one. Not that it is bad, far from it. In fact, this is one of the better written Kimani stories out there, in that the secondary characters are not intrusive at all, and there is a distinct lack of meandering scenes of various characters wandering from one point to another talking about nothing interesting. Every word and every scene in this story keeps the story going somewhere, and I appreciate that.
It’s just that the places the story takes me to are on the forgettable side. The two main characters have no discernible vulnerabilities. There is no interesting conflict here – even the lie thing gets resolved quickly, as the author realizes that it’s silly for the heroine to be so salty over her man having far more money than she can spend. This is just a story of a hot dude and a hot woman falling in love and having perfect sex, and that’s the problem in a nutshell: such a story isn’t particularly interesting.
Mind you, being courted by a hot wealthy dude should have no right being boring in the first place, as we all know that money can buy one many interesting, lovely things. However, the courtship here is mundane instead of larger than life. Really, why hook up with a rich bloke if he’s not even going to take her to some grand castle in Europe for the grand ravishment? Even the bulk of the supposedly fun and romantic conversations and text messages between Serenity and Chris are never shown to me. I’m told those things make them connect on a deeper, emotional level, but I wish I’ve seen more of these romantic exchanges – they would have made the courtship feel more alive to me. As it is, I know they are happy, and I’m glad they are happy, but this story is the very definition of easy come, easy go.
