Liquid Silver Books, $5.95, ISBN 978-1-59578-366-0
Contemporary Romance, 2007
Our heroine wakes up one morning in Love, From A to Z with a problem that many heroines in past romance novels as well as soap opera lead female characters have experienced before: she has no memory of her past. On the bright side, she finds herself in bed with a truly handsome fellow named Zach Harris who turns out to be a sexy guitar player in a rock band. Now all they have to do, apart from the obvious, is to help her piece together her past. Zach hasn’t met her until the night before, so all they have is the name she gave him – Angel.
What I know, thanks to the prologue and the blurb, is that April Valenzuela is an heiress who keeps a tough facade in order to deal with her slimy relatives who try to make her life miserable in a passive-aggressive manner while being nice to her face in order to get her to hand them some of her millions. The latest fix April finds herself in was due to her dim-witted cousin Richie, acting on the instructions of his father, slipping some drugs into her drink while they were clubbing so that she’d be woozy enough to sign some contracts that will give Richie’s father some measure of control over her money. Unfortunately for those two men, Angel sneaked away with Zach before the drug kicked into effect. Richie slipped up with the drugs and gave April a more potent drug that ended up knocking out her senses and giving her amnesia.
The plot sounds like something straight out of a soap opera but I can also easily see Love, From A to Z being made into a romantic movie starring Lindsay Lohan and Jared Padalecki, although some of the more explicit love scenes may have to be left on the cutting room floor in order not to scare the teenage girls that will flock to watch that movie.
Zach is a dream guy. He better not exist in real life because if he does, I’m going to capture him and make lots of money renting him out to men and women in need of some hot love in their lives. This guy is good, I tell you, he knows how to play his guitar and make a woman orgasm just like that. And seriously, Ms Forte manages to make this skill of Zach come off as pretty amazing instead of ridiculous.
“It’s called a vibrato. Or a tremolo – either one. And, if you do it just right, it’s supposed to stimulate something known as the vaginal frequency.”
Gives Killing Me Softly with His Song a whole new level of meaning, doesn’t he? Vibrato, tremolo, pomelo, whatever – Zach, call me!
Magic tremolo aside, Zach is also a dream guy in every other way. He’s understanding, he’s sweet, he comes off like a zen-type of guru without being smarmy (hey, he’s living in LA, people), and he’s like a My First Boyfriend action figure and Rock Slut Guru rolled in one. He also claims that he’s not ready for commitment, but I’m sure we all have heard that one before.
There isn’t much I learn about April in this story since for the most part she has no idea who she is, but she turns out to be a standard unhappy poor-little-rich-girl who finds happiness by falling in love. Nonetheless, she and Zach have a developing relationship that is a very nicely done mix of quiet fun moments and really hot love scenes that include the use of toys and Zach’s sexy love guru knowledge on how to hit all of a woman’s right spots. Author PG Forte has done something amazing here – she’s written in hot sex scenes and some introspective moments of bonding so that they coexist nicely in the main characters’ relationship to the point that I find the love scenes too sexy at times because the emotions felt by the characters come of as pretty real.
The ending is a little on the saccharine side with a touch of surreal implausibility – the part where our heroine forgives her scheming uncle and cousin just like that has me rolling up my eyes in disbelief – but for the most part, Love, From A to Z is a most enjoyable fairy-tale romance that captures the whole “poor trapped heiress finds love and a grand adventure” fantasy perfectly.
