Lily Harlem, $0.99, ISBN 978-1393381457
Contemporary Romance, 2018

Rookie Rules & Red-Hot Trouble by Lily Harlem is obviously two stories in a single volume. Red Hot Trouble was previously published in another anthology, which the author also helpfully adds to have hit the USA Today bestseller list.

Alright, stand up and let’s give the author a three-minute applause for that tremendous accomplishment. Come on, it’s the nice thing to do.

I bought this thinking that the whole thing is one single title, so this is going to be some novice’s introduction to dominating some troublemaker guy in some baby’s first BDSM thing, but hey, I can live with my mistake. After all, I’m getting two for the price of one, so maybe this will be a good thing!

The first story Rookie Rules begins at a wedding of, I assume, some woman that starred in a previous story in this Hot Ice series.

Harmony, the BFF of this woman, and their other girlfriends are the bridesmaids, of course. Also there is the bridegroom’s friend and teammate, Jackson Price, whom Harmony had done the clichéd “I shagged the best man at the wedding” act with way ahead of this day.

So, they dance to Bryan Adams at the wedding—that’s how we all know that this is a wedding of super hip and trendy young people of today—and decide to make their one-time shag into an event of multitudes and multiples. 

To celebrate this momentous epiphany, they of course shag.

He came with me. His cock pumping and pulsing as he filled the condom.

That’s nice, they are shagging responsibly, but is this the best the author can do to describe the pinnacle moment of this story? I feel like I should be opening my notepad and telling the author, “Noted, ma’am, but how much did he fill the condom? I can’t submit a full report to the manager without that detail.”

I found his mouth, cupped his cheeks and kissed him. Showing him with my lips and tongue just how amazing I thought he was, how well we fit together and how much I wanted him, still wanted him.

See, this is where I have to raise my hand to voice my concerns to the author. The story is as short as it is, and the author tries to spice things up at the end with a condom-filling scene, but come on, can we have more excitement please? Like that cheek-cupping above. Why can’t we have something different and let her toss his salad or something? She’s already cupping some cheeks after all.

If the story is this short, why not do something to make it memorable?

Anyway, the narrative style is clean and polished, the conversations are fine, and the secondary characters don’t feel intrusive—impressive indeed considering that this story is basically a parade of sequel baits—but at the same time, this story is so basic, like a hump with a guy that is done in three seconds, that I can only wonder what the point of the whole thing is.

Next up is Red-Hot Trouble. Our heroine Dr Sophie Delaney shows up to stand in for her twin brother, also a doctor, when Benjamin is double-booked and can’t tend to the injuries of the Orlando Vipers after the game.

She’s in luck as star player Nathan Walker, “the Flash”, needs her healing touch on the bump in his head. His big head, people, sheesh… although now that I think about it, those dirty-minded people aren’t wrong.

Will Sophie learn the dismaying truth that the Flash is also that fast to finish in bed? Oh don’t worry, he’s a romance hero, so he’s going to make it last for at least three hours in bed.

This is the longer story, but just like the previous story, this one seems to go out of its way to be as forgettable as can be.

The story reads like a day-by-day account of these characters’ daily lives, but sadly, their daily lives consist of mostly mundane conversations and a lot of walking around from this place to that place. Does it need to be like this? The author could have spiced things up, such as having some exciting drama or lots of sex in store rooms and what not, so it’s a bewildering decision for her to present this kind of story instead.

I can only assume that this story is meant for readers that are already so enamored of these characters that it is enough to plonk down $0.99 just to get some black and white assurance that these characters won’t spend the rest of their lives without a hot person to have lots of sex with.

Sure, the idea of lots of sex with a hot person can be exciting, but these stories make them feel so mundane and tepid.

Maybe the author doesn’t want to overdo the perfect sex in her stories so that her readers won’t feel so let down by real life sex afterward? That’s a commendable public service, but I’d take exciting stories over settling for mundane things any day.