Judy Angelo, $0.99, ISBN 978-1310459580
Contemporary Romance, 2014

The hero of Judy Angelo’s Rome for the Holidays is Rome Milano. Really, are we doing this now? Are there going to be sequels featuring Lyon Parisio and Hague Amsterdam?

Meanwhile, the heroine is Arie Angelis. I haven’t even started beyond the names of the characters and I am already feeling like I’m reading a teenage girl’s fan fiction of some sort.

Arie and her BFF Lena Rossini, whom her mom must have disliked at first sight as she’s saddled with that name and not Lyriennielle or something equally florid, are doing the catering for a big company when our heroine spots a hot guy and immediately runs to some corner to spy on him like some deranged stalker.

Today, for the first time since she’d started her business, Arie was distracted. And it was all the fault of that too, too sexy man sitting at the head table, making her think thoughts that had absolutely nothing to do with cooking or catering.

This is so bizarre. It’s like she has never seen another male of the species before, much less a hot one. Can’t she just look and move on, or look and then slip her number down his pants or something?

Luckily for her, she’s hot so Rome isn’t going to call for security anytime soon. As the boss of all bosses, he wants her, and what he wants, he gets. So, instead of asking her out for a date like any sane hot guy would, he tries to get her to work for him instead.

Wait, what? Is getting sued for sexual harassment a favorite hobby of his?

You’d think our heroine will jump at the chance to get to know better a hot, wealthy guy that wants her just as bad as she wants him, but oh no, that may get readers to think of her as a fun-loving, normal woman that dates and has a social life like all the despicable whores out there OH MY GOD, so our heroine fumes at how arrogant Romy McItaliano is and how she hates men anyway so…

Bitch please, as if him being an arrogant snot isn’t what drew her to him in the first place. Is she going to genuinely date a fat nice guy anytime soon? I strongly doubt it.

But then Rome put his arms around her and as the muted trumpet caressed the rhythm of ‘Your Love Is King’ he began to sway to the sensual sounds, pulling her close, making her follow his every move.

That’s all it takes for her to melt and let him do the nyum-nyum thing on her nipples. I’m not kidding, Seven short paragraphs after the above, she’s willingly in his hotel room. He doesn’t even have to buy her dinner first!

Perhaps because the author remembers at the last minute that she can’t make the heroine appear too much like an easy ho, she has Rome kiss Arie and… that’s it. What? Why? Is he impotent?

So anyway, now Arie works for him, but she still won’t put out… well, until the author decides that it’s time to end this bizarre story and then the two fellows have sex…

“No,” he said, his face serious. “We don’t want this.”

Arie could only stare up at him, searching his face for a clue to what she’d done wrong. “I don’t understand. I thought…you wanted this, too.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, his face rigid and his voice firm. “And neither do you.”

Shut up! Just poke and end the story already! The whole thing can be over in three minutes and then we can all go separate ways so damn it, JUST SHAG ALREADY!

In the next few pages, Rome realizes that he truly loves Arie because he can’t seal the deal with her, and that moves him enough to want to propose to her. Really? I’d think that if he really loves her, he should at least see a doctor first about his inability to close the deal. They have pills for that nowadays, after all.

Anyway, I realize at the very last page that these two will have their story continue in the next installment.

No thanks, I’m bailing at this point. These two characters don’t emote, think, or behave like human beings of this particular dimension, and the whole “I can’t bring myself to sleep with you even when you’re gagging for it, so it’s a sign that I really love you” spin is like some bizarre adolescent idealization of true love in some virgin’s mind or something.

It would make more sense if this fellow is a staunch adherent of some religion that forbids sex before marriage, for example, but there’s no sign here of Roman McPizza being anything of that sort. It’s just… strange. The whole thing is strange.

Meanwhile, Arie will swing from one extreme—””I hate men! I don’t like arrogant men!”—to another—”I’m so horny from a single touch… TAKE ME NOW!”—and back again that she comes off as someone with at least two multiple personalities.

The whole thing is just the author making her characters lurch and pant in perpetual sexual frustration without giving these characters any cohesive or credible motives for their actions.

As a result, I turn the pages with eyes wide, perversely anticipating the moment when this story goes completely off the rails and has the characters do truly over the top absurd and unintentionally hilarious nonsense.

Alas, that moment never arrives. This story is just a mess of indecipherable antics from characters that barely resemble normal human beings.

File this one under “More entertaining when enjoyed alongside strong libations.”

Heck, try having a drinking game in which you take a sip each time the characters stop mid-making out to declare that sexual frustration is the symptom of true love, and laugh all the way in the ambulance to the nearest A&E.

It’s up to you to find ways to enjoy yourself while reading this thing, because it isn’t going to deliver the fun on its own.