Harlequin Duets, $5.99, ISBN 0-373-44096-0
Contemporary Romance, 2000

In Bed with the Wild One sees boring Emily Chaplin decides to spice up her life by stalking a man she deems a criminal. And here I am thinking that loosening up refers to the buttons of one’s dress, not the screws in the brain. Anyway, she follows the man Tyler O’Toole to a B&B and she checks into the Pollyanna room. There she ropes Tyler into bodyguarding her (ahem) while she wrecks mayhem in seedy bars and solves crime. Then, happy that she got her man, she runs back to her safe little world for more B&B with Tyler.

Thing is, Emily and Tyler are predictable. The humor is awkward, the banters are often than not in the vein of “Hero Teases, Heroine Flusters, Ha Ha (Not)” type, and the whole story ends up nothing more than a predictable, okay, but unmemorable read. At least it’s short.

And Emily gets more irritating as she gets more and more loosened-up. She veers from extremes – Closet Lesbian material to Bubblegum Ditz in a matter of pages. Yeah, she maybe loosened the wrong things in her quest for orgasms with a thuggish dude.