Kimani, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-335-99882-8
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Nicki Night’s Sealed With a Kiss is “Every beautiful woman in Hollywood is a ho—except the heroine, of course!” story, with a hypocritical streak a mile wide because the hero Tyson Blackwell himself is a big player. Oh well, but that’s how the genre rolls.
Anyway, Tyson is the only producer in Hollywood that is shocked—shocked!—when his latest squeeze turns out to be someone that just wants to shag him for roles and social media clout. What is the world coming to, when women are like that?
Of course, he’s perfectly fine telling his women that he only wants them for the honey dipping, as he’s too manly to do that commitment to one woman nonsense. Somehow, “I only want you for your hoochie!” is perfectly acceptable when “I only want you to get movie roles!” is not, and so, our hero now swears off… you know, I don’t know what he’s swearing off. He’s certainly not going to stop using women for the fun times, and it’s not like his heart is broken, so I’m not sure what kind of hurt he is suffering from.
Anyway, let’s just say he now has a reason to whine and mope about how women are all users, as opposed to him that has the grace to tell the women upfront that he only wants to pet their kittens.
Then there is Kendall Chandler, our heroine. She has broken up with some cheating SOB actor, and now she just wants to focus on her acting career. Naturally, she and her producer soon hook up, but hey, this is a true love thing, people, so don’t anyone dare to think of Kendall as an open-24/7 pleasure ball for hot guys.
So, she whines that she has no time for romance, while he whines that women are all untrustworthy users so he must be very careful not to… again, I’m not sure how Tyson’s sex life has changed in any way from his recent breakup, because there was no emotional investment on his part in that one. He’s just whining and pouting over some bizarre nonsense passed off as emotional conflict, and it’s not like he’s sacrificing anything from his old life to hook up with Kendall.
Along the way, the author has these two hammer endlessly the evils of paparazzi. Wait, this is the present day, when nobody really follows the tabloids anymore because celebrities are now directly showing their rear ends on their social media for the price of admission of just a click of the follow or subscribe button.
Furthermore, aside from having an agent, Kendall seems to have no team to manage her PR. Instead, she’s just this sweet relatable gal that moves to a short distance out of LA so that she can live a normal life like everyone else, because she certainly won’t be hounded or stalked that way!
The whole depiction of life as an actor or producer feels completely made-up, but then again, the premise of the story is cracked from the very beginning. The hero is just a whining putz, the drama boils down to the hero’s ego being bruised because a woman dares to treat him the way he treats his past lovers, and the whole point of this story is to drive home how the heroine is such a humble, amazing, love-worthy woman compared to all those disgusting and nasty hos out there that just want to break the hot hero’s heart.
No, not hos breaking the hearts of these men! Won’t someone think of those poor wealthy hot men that clearly need protection from slatterns of the world?
