Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86393-8
Contemporary Romance, 2015
Pamela Yaye is a successful author who writes very dumb stories. Somehow, that makes perfect sense in the world of publishing, and Seduced by Mr. Right is dumb indeed.
Emilio Morretti was a successful race car driver until he quit after blaming himself for his nephew’s death. Now, all he does is to hole up in his spectacular, well-staffed mansion and watch videos of the dead kid. Unfortunately, he also has a problem. His manager Antwan informs him that, due to his accounting firm’s mistake, Emilio now owes the IRS 2.5 million dollars.
“Am I broke?”
“No, but if you pay the IRS you’ll only have a million dollars left in your bank account.
“I can live off that money for years.”
Let’s all point and laugh at Emilio. Seriously, our romance hero has a bottom-barrel tier level of intelligence normally reserved for romance heroines. Did I tell you that he has a huge mansion staffed with butlers and all? And those cars? And his family members all asking him for money? Sure, that one million dollars will last for years. I didn’t laugh this hard in ages, and this is only on page eleven.
Emilio has to get back to work, his manager insists, but our hero is fed up of people telling him what to do. He’s not a kid. Never mind that his refusal to listen to advice landed him in this mess with IRS – he will not go back to work, he will just keep watching videos of his dead nephew in a totally not-creepy way. Oh, and before I forget: to him, all women are bitches, beautiful ones are lying harlot bitches, and everyone else is untrustworthy because surely he can’t be at fault when everyone seems to treat him badly. No, it’s 99% of the world who is wrong, and bitches and whores are simply the worst.
Life coach Sharleen Nichols must get Emilio as her client or she will lose a VP position to the handsome but no-good, cheating Brad who once took her for a ride – no, not the fun kind of ride, the ones that leave romance heroines all sad and blue. Of course, despite claiming to be an experienced life coach, she wastes no time acting like a hormonal teenage girl who needs the dee-dee real bad.
Forty-eight hours after my disastrous consultation with Emilio Morretti, and I’m still thinking about him. That’s insane! He’s curt and serious and… and… oh, so dreamy. I wish he was my man.
How old is this creature again? For the rest of the story, she demonstrates what an amazing life coach she is by being jelly in Emilio’s paws, being unable to stand up to anything, and becoming all moist and horny each time she is within thirty feet of our hero.
Of course, she soon sleeps with him, and gets rewarded with a VP position anyway, because it’s okay to sleep your way to the top if it was also done with a penis attached to a man you fell in love with. The hero of course discovers her VP and bonus thing and is like, oh my god, she rode on his pole for job and money, so he knew it. Beautiful hot women are all hos and bitches who just want him for his fame and money!
In other words, despite the author thanking the editor for letting her write the the story that was in her heart, this one ends up playing out exactly like every other story in which the heroine needs to work with the hero for career advancement. Funny how that works out. The only difference here in Seduced by Mr. Right is that both characters display brainpower levels normally reserved for children below eight years old – bratty, petulant, whiny eight-year-old brats, that is. The author also inserts plenty of clues that she might just have little to no idea as to what she is writing here, beginning from how a million dollars can go a long way when you’re living extravagantly while not having any steady occupation in the process.
Sure, this one makes me chuckle and even laugh as I turn the pages, but yikes, I’m doing so at the author’s expense. I feel a bit dirty by the time I reach the last page, because laughing at this whole mess is like shooting babies in a barrel. It’s way too easy, but really not worthy of me.
