Dell, $5.99, ISBN 0-440-24116-2
Contemporary Romance, 2003
Vicki Lewis Thompson’s Nerd in Shining Armor is a cute book about a nerd (with a hot body, of course, we don’t do nerds who look and smell like, well, nerds) and a trashy heroine stuck in a deserted island with lots of condoms. Yes, they blow up the condoms, scribble “Help us!” on them and send them flying up to the sky… no, really, what do you think they do with those condoms?
By the way, this is the second book from this author where the heroine swallows – or I think she swallows, and then she and the hero enjoy a hot kiss afterwards. If I’m stuck in a deserted island with me not knowing if there will be much fresh water around, I’d be thinking twice about swallowing, but hey, that’s just me. Maybe these people are made of stronger stuff.
Still, gourmet sex aside, I find this book very cute. Genevieve Terrence is a bit on the silly side. She is pretty easy with the sex thing, although she prefers to initiate physical contact with guys of the marriage material sorts. She sets her eye on Nick Brogan, a guy whom only she believes is a catch. She accepts an invitation to a one-night-sex thing cum business trip to Maui with Nick, but she isn’t too pleased when nerd Jackson Farley comes along. She’s definitely pissed when Nick turns out to be a scum and abandons them by parachuting off the plane halfway there. I’m not kidding. Jackson lands the plane successfully (it’s a private plane piloted by Nick until he decides to do something more fun elsewhere), but now the both of them are stuck in a deserted island.
The fun comes from Gen and Jack interacting with each other. Jackson learns that he likes to be called “Jack” – “Jack” has a macho ring to it, right? (“Here, Jack, go boy, fetch!”) – and he decides to be gung-ho to sweep Gen off her feet. He does, and he does it in a cute way. Gen is a ditz at times, but she’s a sweet heroine with some pretty fun one-liners.
A tiny niggling problem though: Gen and Jack’s attraction never seems to go beyond the superficial. He has been sweet on her all this while because she’s hot. She thinks he’s hot so she’s sweet on him since. He’s hot, she’s hot, but what else is there? I’m not sure if there is anything else, to be honest.
But hey, a book that offers a few hours of pleasant, sometimes laugh-out-funny diversion can’t be a bad thing, right? Nerd in Shining Armor won’t be causing any motherboards to short circuit from excitement, but it’s not bad at all. At the very least, when faced with a bag of condoms and too much time on their hands, Gen and Jack sure know how to do the right thing.
