Chelsea Camaron, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463811818
Contemporary Romance, 2016
Don’t be fooled by the title and the cover. Chelsea Camaron’s Mother Trucker is a pretty conventional contemporary romance. There is no sizzling sexy moment or kinky choreography on a big truck.
What this one has is Greer Jones, the truck driver in question. He has a daughter with Becky, who is portrayed as a shrill cartoon loon so that the author has to put in less work to make the heroine Magnolia Cortez a real character. Now, Greer and Becky had a thing and a daughter pretty quickly, and here, he has a thing with Lia just as quickly. What makes this second time around any different? Because Lia is the heroine, of course. Throughout this story, she and other people act like Greer somehow can’t be held responsible for driving his truck into Becky’s garage—everything he did wrong in the past is Becky’s fault, naturally, and I’m just surprised that Becky doesn’t mutate into a demon or something, given how the author portrays her here.
The romance happens at an accelerated pace, with the heroine practically mauling at the hero’s crotch shortly after they meet. So yes, what romance? The rest of the story sees everyone calling Becky all sorts of names for daring to exist and be in the way of Greer and Lia. It is one thing if the author had created a believable conundrum for poor Greer to solve, such as the possibility of losing custody of his daughter should he hook up with Lia, but no. Let’s just call Becky all kinds of names instead.
In the end, this is another story that exists just to drive home the fantasy that you, dear reader the heroine is not like any other girl, and every woman that is even a slightest competition to her is a ho, shrew, Karen, demon, hag, prostitute, skank-bag, whatever. I’m sure everyone knows the song and dance by now. Mother Trucker is basically a cheap form of vicarious “let your pettiness out” ride for folks that are hard up with jealousy of other women for whatever reason, but don’t want to spend more money to get actual therapy.
