Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86441-6
Contemporary Romance, 2016
Back in high school, Tyson Steele had slept with every girl that crossed his path… except our heroine Hunter McKay. When she comes back to Phoenix to start her own thing, he is thrilled, because here is a chance for him to nail that broad and complete his perfect record. He would mark her with a hickey, just like he and his brothers did in an equivalent to notches on their bedposts and so forth – I am privy to how he and his brothers make their high school conquests more than I need to know here, and it’s all pretty gross. But even more gross is how Tyson, as an adult, is still operating like a man-child stuck in high school mentality.
This is a part of his smooth conversation when he first bumps into Hunter:
“I’m so surprised you remember me, Tyson.”
He chuckled, and the sound was so stimulating it seemed to grace her skin. “Trust me. I remember you. And do you know what I remember most of all?”
“No, what?”
He leaned over the table as if to make sure that his next words were for her ears only. “The fact that we never slept together.”
Tyson thought the shocked look on Hunter’s face was priceless. He also thought it was a total turn-on.
It’s fascinating how the author actually thought she was making her hero all suave and sexy, when here I am, thinking that my skin is going to crawl away to the next state and sue me for subjecting it to abuse. For a very long time, Tyson is basically humping Hunter’s leg, constantly reminding her – and the reader – that he really wants her bad because he never had a taste of her honey, and really, the whole thing is gross. At the same time, his nostrils are also flaring as he constantly catches scent of Hunter here and there, and I can only wonder whether he’s part-romance novel werewolf. Needless to say, Hunter thinks that his antics are so hot and sexy, and secondary characters basically cheer and urge her to give it up to that boy, while I am right at this corner wondering just in what universe can this ridiculous man-child with his clumsy come-on lines can be passed off as a smooth player, at least without liberal amounts of alcohol and recreational drugs in the system of the person at the receiving end of his leg-humping antics.
It is one thing if the author proceeds to mock and make fun of the hero’s horndog antics, but no, Tyson is being passed off as a smooth player. I can only cringe in second-hand embarrassment.
And then, once Tyson has had that honey, he immediately morphs into an overprotective buffalo who professes to love Hunter. How did that happen? The turnaround is so abruptly done, I can only guess that the heroine’s hoo-hoo has awesome personality-transplanting powers or the aliens have struck again.
Oh, and Tyson is a surgeon. Who seems to have a lot of time chasing women in the evening, and he seems to actually work only after he’s succeeded in scoring with Hunter. Maybe his hospital gave him a leave of absence to go chase honey, something like shore leaves for sailors, I’d imagine.
All things considered, Possessed by Passion is a clumsy effort to regurgitate tropes onto the pages, with the hero being such an unlikable man-child twatwaffle for so long that I have no idea why any sane, sober, drug-free woman would put out to him willingly.
