Chelsea Camaron, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463636510
Contemporary Romance, 2017
Chelsea Camaron is an author new to me, despite her bestselling author status, because as I am a lowly person living in third world countries, many progressive online booksellers like Amazon don’t like the idea of me giving money to independent authors. When this one pops up on Smashwords, though, and Panty Snatcher is marketed as a “suspense”, I can only assume that there is a villain running around stealing panties.
Oh boy, am I wrong.
I assume this one is marketed as such because the heroine, Sawyer, goes to the courthouse in this story, and that’s it. It’s like the heroine having made a trip to the clinic and her story is therefore a medical romance. The panty snatcher in question is the hero, Zane, and he’s called that because he screws every woman that even breathes in his direction, and that’s always an attractive quality we romance readers desire in a man. They had a thing once, and now they have many things together.
And that’s it, really.
The author has a vibrant, lighthearted writing style with a pretty good sense of awareness about her story, but that doesn’t change the fact that Panty Snatcher is one of those things that are written solely to make the author some quick bucks. In return, the reader gets a brief moment of comedy and some sexy times with a man who has shagged so many women that getting to shag him is like succeeding in stealing candies from a baby, but hey, some readers like that so good for them. Characterization is shallow, there is hardly any plot, the story is marketed as something it isn’t, and the whole thing is designed to get the reader panting for the sex scene. Mind you, the sex isn’t that hot, it’s pretty much the standard quick and boom affair found in many stories that are quickly churned out so that the author can keep making money off her fans.
Mind you, I have nothing against such capitalistic practice. We all need to make money, and if this method worked for the author, seriously, good for her, However, this also means that this story offers little to anyone who isn’t already a die-hard fan. It’s the equivalent of paying someone for a cheap fix – one snort, a short high, and then, it’s on to search for another cheap fix. Surely there is a better way to live.
