Cobblestone Press, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-60088-098-8
Contemporary Romance, 2006

Poor Jessica Davis. Her grandmother insists on telling her about this grandmother’s sex life – in the grocery store, of all places – and trying to set up Jessica so that Jessica can get laid. In short, Grams is trying to be Jessie’s pimp, only this pimp is trying to get Jessica to sleep with a pimply twenty-year old fellow who works in a coffee shop. What does this say about Grams’s opinion of Jessie, eh? I suppose Grams is lucky that her granddaughter doesn’t send her for a full psychiatric evaluation there and then.

Grams also “persuaded” Jessie to take part in the Buy a Dame auction. I let author Shelli Stevens describe what that is in her own words:

The auction was a notorious fundraiser that the town put on every August to raise money for the public schools. Women dressed up in revealing clothing and paraded in front of the single male population on Leaf Island. Overall, it was a bit sleazy, with the highest bidder getting to keep the woman for twenty four hours. The men loved it, and the women who were within the age of participation usually scrambled to get in.

Leaf Island is one cool place, I tell you, where schools pimp out the local women in the name of the kiddies. I won’t be surprised if they are all possessed by some kind of evil spirit that will make Salem’s Lot come off like good ju-ju in comparison. Anyway, Jessie ends up being purchased by Josh Thomas, formerly a sixteen-year old pest with a crush on Jessie who now greets her with: “So you’re gonna be my bitch for the weekend.” Yes, I can certainly tell that he’s now a grown-up. He has a Harley, a goatee, and some tattoos.

They have sex, she walks away and wishes that he can read her mind and beg her to stay, he shows up with a… surprise, let’s just say, and they decide to get together for good. The end.

Love for Sale is pretty much like every other Cobblestone Press book I’ve read. Short, short, short. I think this publisher is trying to get the market of pointless short stories cornered. I really don’t know what to say about it other than… gee, I don’t know. It won’t kill you to read it, obviously, but with it being so short that it doesn’t leave much impression on me other than how obnoxious that grandmother is, I don’t know why I should tell you to read it either.