Mills & Boon, £3.30, ISBN 978-0-263-87868-4
Contemporary Romance, 2010

Don’t be fooled by the cover or the rape-y title of India Grey’s Her Last Night of Innocence. There is no high stake gambling, the heroine wagering her maidenhead to save her beloved daddy from ruin, or anything like that.

Instead, this is about idiot Kate Edwards having a one night stand with race car driver Cristiano Maresca, whose pre-race ritual is to bed a beauty to release all that tension.

You know how it is, though, one vigorous vacuuming from a pure and pristine hoo-hoo and he’s realizing that he’s now a changed man. She’s not like all the other hos! She’s… she’s…

Oops, his car does a Mick Schumacher and he ends up in a coma.

Kate, meanwhile, pops out a brat. Let this be a warning to all randy guys out there: pop off inside a Mills & Boon heroine, and she’ll pop out a brat without fail, so don’t do it if you don’t want to pay the piper.

She then waits for Cristiano to contact her, and when she sees that he’s now out of his coma, continues to wait because that’s what a modern and liberated woman of the 21st century does.

Eventually, her more outgoing colleague drags her across the ocean to Monaco, where Cristiano is holding a party. She then waits for him to recognize her, because my god, I swear this woman will probably short circuit her feeble brain if she would actually do anything.

Oh no, he has retrograde amnesia, at least, the fiction version of it, and he can’t remember anything about the days leading up his spectacular kaboom!

Naturally, our heroine makes this all about her. Clearly, he doesn’t remember her because she isn’t hot enough for him, so reeeee!

Oh wait, her aura of purity, or whatever, makes him remember at least something about her, but when she tells him of his brat, he immediately decides that she’s one of those hos.

Really? The author can’t wait for the paternity test to happen before having Crusty Anus do that thing? Sure, Crusty has a sad past, wah wah wah, but this doesn’t mean he has a free pass to be an asshole with such a misogynistic view of his past conquests.

Anyway, the kid left behind has some disease that has Kate fleeing back home, and Crusty follows her.

Because the author needs more nonsense to pad the pages, Kate now decides that Crusty can’t be a father to her kid because he is a race car driver and he will one day die, so oh no, that will make her heart break and really, people, everything is about her.

What, her kid needs a daddy? Hello, forget that kid! She’s the romance heroine, so pay attention to her!

Seriously, Crusty Anus eventually, if somewhat unrealistically, transforms into a nicer fellow, but Kate remains an obnoxious whiny wreck that can’t seem to make up her mind about anything. One moment it’s yes, then it’s no, then it’s yes, and oh my god, I want to smash a bottle of happy pills over her head.

She also acts like she has no agency to do anything, aside from whining non-stop. My favorite is how she is happily willing to have unprotected sex again with Crusty, and only goes huh when Crusty mentions the condom.

Kate exhibits so little agency here that I don’t know how she managed to get in bed with Crusty in the first place. Maybe she tripped and accidentally impaled herself on his pee-pee? Perhaps she was asleep and he climbed onto her bed thinking that she’s his usual floozy?

I know, having the heroine not do anything is the best way to demonstrate that she’s not a ho, because really, one can’t be seen as a ho in any way when all she does is to whine and moan and only has sex when she’s “somehow” sex-ed up without any agency or input of her own. This does make Kate appear as a colossal idiot, though.

Oh, and there’s that evil ho that tries to keep Crusty and Kate apart. Sadly, I can’t disagree with her that Crusty is too good for Kate. That dingbat doesn’t do anything to deserve even a douchebag like Crusty, so yes, he’s too good for her in a way.

Anyway, unless the reader loves non-stop artificial drama that is designed to pad the pages until it’s time for the author to call it a day, this thing is going to be a test of one’s fortitude. If drinking games had become passe, here’s a new one: let’s see how many pages that the reader can endure before they exclaim in disgust, “Oh, for the love of just kill me god!”