Liquid Silver Books, $4.50, ISBN 978-1-59578-681-4
Fantasy Romance, 2010

Seducing a Wallflower returns to Strange Hollow, a small town where hurt and outcast spooks come to stay and pretend that they are in an X-rated version of Gilmore Girls or something.

Nia Reynolds, who runs the local teashop, is an anomaly among spooks in that she can’t work magic, unlike her family members. Instead of partying it up among humans, she spends her time making sad faces before finally moving to Strange Hollow. I guess living among people who can turn into hairy monsters is somehow different from living among people who can do magic? I’m not surprised that Nia spends apparently all her nine years in Strange Hollow still moping and acting blue.

You know the plot – the boring drab somehow manages to have a more outgoing female friend who dares the drab to go to a sex toy shop and buy herself a battery-operated boyfriend for her 30th birthday. Bishop Steward, owner of Sensual Were, is conveniently enough infatuated with Nia. Therefore, when she steps into his store, it is time for him to make his move.

From all the time Nia spends moaning about being unable to stand the sight of her naked body in the mirror and how everyone ignores her when she goes to parties, I am certainly sure that this woman weighs at least five hundred pounds, has bad body odor and hygiene issues, and possesses a face that only a blind mother could love. Oh, what was I thinking? Nia turns out to be hot – her breasts are big, her eyes are beautiful, and she drives Bishop into spending more time examining his private parts in the shower.

The rest of the story is basically Bishop boinking Nia as she keeps protesting that she is ugly and what not. It’s all so tedious and boring, and the whole fake ugly duckling thing is annoying too. If the woman wants to enjoy getting off on being a martyr to her supposed plainness, then for heaven’s sake, make her a genuine plain Jane, warts and all. There has to be something better to read than this, surely.