Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86454-6
Contemporary Romance, 2016
Once upon a time, Elle Lauren believed that she and Braxton Chase love one another, they would get married, and she would spend the rest of her life in a happily ever after clinch with her beau. Oops, it turned out that he’d rather have a career after college, so off he went to do this thing, leaving Elle with a broken heart. That was then. Now, she is a BFF to a woman who has married into the Chase family, so it is just a matter of time before she meets him again. Now that he’s rich, famous, and what not, of course he’s ready to get down with that woman again, so there you go, a second time romance.
Except, Braxton never really has to work hard to get into her pants again. He just has to loom over her, tell her she’d be his again, and she’d go ooh, apparently their teenage sex was so amazing – what are the odds, honestly? – that she couldn’t resist his allure, oh my. He doesn’t have to buy her diamond rings or anything – in fact, it is rather annoying how he just expects that she’d fall back onto his, I mean, into his arms just because now he feels ready to get down with her. I think the author is trying to go for the alpha-male-just-wags-a-finger-to-get-sex thing that, I suppose, is mandated by the editors of the Kimani line, but in this instance, the whole entitled sit-on-my-face act from a hero is so played out and boring that it’d actually be a nice change to have a hero work to get the woman back into his life.
A lot of things don’t make sense as well. He has been following her success as a fashion designer closely, it seems, and his family and hers have been in close contact, so why couldn’t he just call her or at least email her if he wants her back that badly like he claims? It’s not like she slapped him with a restraining order, so why wait until he sees her at his club again?
As for Elle, she claims that she isn’t sure whether Braxton and she are a couple again, because while she loves him, she isn’t sure that they’d be a together together, if you know what she means. Fine, if that is the case, why not just lie back and enjoy reliving those hot teenage sex times (seriously) with him again? Instead, she pickles her brain as she psychoanalyzes the whole thing to death. Oh, they are sleeping together, and she loves him, but oh, does he love her back, and if he doesn’t, what will she do, et cetera – ugh, I wish I can muster the enthusiasm to give a care about her issues. She’s easy, she made it easy for him to dump her and then hump her again whenever he feels like it, so if she gets dumped again, she basically walks right into that one.
Of course, there is no dumping in the finale of His Loving Caress, as this is after all a romance novel, but the whole “relationship” feels like two ships passing in the night desperately trying to convince the world that there is something more to it, and really, I find it hard to care.
