Harlequin, $6.50, ISBN 0-373-83573-6
Contemporary Romance, 2003
Paris or Bust! is not about a fairy godmother offering mothers a choice of owning harems in Paris or getting a breast boost to 36DD plus dimensions. No, Harlequin just wants your money, oh, give them your $6.50 and weep. And I find it amusing that the mothers-cum-heroines in this anthology are sexually frustrated and financially lacking single mothers. I guess now we know what kind of readers/mothers Harlequin assume Middle Class America that read their books are like.
The common thread tying all three stories together is that a magazine, Family Voyager (just think some tired and boring housekeeping magazine these New York editors believe all romance readers read along with their Ann Coulter’s Word of Wisdom on Evangelism, Housekeeping, Funless Sex, and Joylessness), has organized a contest for mommies in America. People will nominate mommies they believe worthy and the winning mommy will be sent to Paris for a shopping trip. The mommies in this story don’t get to Paris though, they get to become stereotypes instead. Oh well.
Kate Hoffman’s Romancing Roxanne? tells the story of Christopher “Kit” Lawrence’s father fixing it so that Roxanne Perry, single mom, will meet his son and they will live happily ever after. Because it’s too hard to introduce the son to a nice woman, this man (a radio station guy who is doing the advertising blitz for the contest) just has to do a Jeb Bush in Florida to get his son to meet a perfect stranger instead. Because we all know people who submit contest entries never lie. And this father must die. Once Kit and Roxanne get over the tired contrived conflict that is triggered off by their unorthodox meeting, they actually settle down in a comfortable rhythm of repartee, courtship, and love. Unfortunately, the premise of the story necessitates them to act in tedious, tired ways in response to a plot that is nothing more than a tired “matchmaker” gimmicky nonsense created just for this anthology, logic be damned.
Jacqueline Diamond’s Daddy Come Lately fares even worse as a Secret Daddy story. Callum Fox, one of the important guys in Family Voyager, chances upon the entry sent by Jody Reilly, a woman he had sex with, and after doing some calculation, starts to suspect that the twins of hers are also his. He goes to meet her, ostensibly to offer her some incentive to drop out of the competition (conflict of interest and all that), but soon ends up being the grand prize for Jody instead. Callum isn’t bad, but Jody is one of those weird women who, on grounds of “ethics”, not only deprives her kids of a father but also during the course of story, prefers to be “honorable” and deprive her kids of financial opportunities they will need. Jody may not be a selfless martyr as much as a selfish martyr. While the romance is readable, the plot is broken and Jody’s character is unsympathetic and even unlikable.
Jill Shalvis closes the anthology with Love Is in the Air. Unlike the other two stories where at least the characters have some decent chemistry, this whole story is one stupid gimmick – the Funny Dotty Old Woman Pairs Off Her Daughter, Tee-Hee-Hee one-note joke. And to add to the insult, the Dotty Old Woman is a bingo game manager at the local senior folk party home. Dotty Miss Daisy here enters the contest hoping to pair off her daughter with Wade McKinnon. Don’t ask. Wade talks like a sexist pig screaming for a slap and a sexual harassment lawsuit, Kate Birmingham acts like frigid shrew actually all indignant because she’s like, eeuw, having a libido, how disgusting, Momma make my privates some tingling, et cetera, and I must say, Ms Shalvis, please, make it stop. I can’t take this. The story has no characters coming close to being decent or realistic, the plot is a joke, and the whole story reads like an amateur’s first draft to the editor.
Forget Paris or Bust!, these authors would do better to find a decent plot instead. Or go bust.
