Jove, $5.99, ISBN 0-515-13416-3
Paranormal Romance, 2002
Gail Crease’s latest book Poseidon’s Kisszzzzzzzz… huh? Sorry, did someone say something?
Anyway, as I was saying, this book is so dull that it can put insomnia out of fashion. The plot is interesting, but nothing happens until something finally happens, and after that, nothing happens again. Every scene is either our hero or heroine staring into each other’s eyes and transmitting italicized bat signals or dreaming about each other in dreamy italicized scenes of wanting and needing and writhing around, with very little variation in between those two types of scenes.
Chelsea Porter’s great-granny almost drowned in the sea until she was rescued by Poseidon, the Deity King of the Sea himself. The payment that will be exacted is that Chelsea will marry Nicolas Demitry, the son of King Possie here himself. Nicky knows Chelsea, and he approaches her trying to woo her, but Chelsea doesn’t know him, naturally, but she is attracted nonetheless.
And so I have what seems like a million chapters of she admiring his seascape arts and he admiring her beauty. They drink coffee and stare into each other’s eyes. He gives her a ride home and they stare into each other’s eyes. She sleeps and dreams of he and she staring into each other’s eyes. They meet again the next morning and stare into each other’s eyes. Repeat, repeat, repeat until I want to take a rusty pair of forks and start gouging eyeballs the next time somebody starts making goo-goo eyes at each other.
The rhythm varies a little when Chelsea encounters some tragedy that causes her life to change, but things soon settle into yet another monotonous rhythm. This time, replace “stare into each other’s eyes” with “sigh at each other and lament why they can never be together”.
Nicky is flat. He’s a brilliant artist, I’m told, but other than that, he has no personality, nothing. Chelsea is like an ethereal doll of fragile vulnerability, again no personality, nothing. These two are like cardboard cut-outs of beautiful people, nice to look at but having very little substance as characters.
With a plot that is nothing more than an extended broadcast of static sounds starring characters barely more than cardboard placeholders, Poseidon’s Kiss is just too dull for its own good.
