Avon, $5.99, ISBN 0-380-81852-3
Contemporary Romance, 2001

Look at the cover of this book. Why does the hero Chas Buchanan color his nails and hold a lipstick like that? He’s not trying to tell me something about his lifestyle, is he? It’s the heroine’s hand? Are you sure? The angle of the hand makes it look as if it is Chas who is holding the lipstick. Nice nail polish, by the way.

I am talking about the cover because I am trying to postpone saying this. I hate ripping into a debut author’s efforts. I mean, almost everyone gets it a bit off the first time, right? But when off here is more akin to a train derailing into the Grand Canyon, I don’t know how to get about being diplomatic and nice about Something About Cecily.

Cecily Scatterton (haha, the author is sooo funny) can’t type. She can’t file. She can’t walk without tripping down. She can’t think without wringing her hands. Her eyes well up in tears when she thinks of bad, bad things in her life. Let’s just say I am not surprised when I am told this woman is broke, her eviction is nigh, and her car is going to be repossessed ASAP. The final straw is when she gets trippy and giddy and breaks her nose. She can’t afford the hospital bill, so she decides to be a secretary to Chas, whom she brains with an abacus (stop it, she’s killing me already).

Er, have you ever just stare at a ghastly sight? Just stare, and your brain just shut down in horrified fascination? That’s me, staring with my eyes wide as this story stumbles, whines, ditzes, and trips its way to the predictable “clumsy dotty but big-breasted (but insecure) woman rescued from herself by a man with limitless bank account” ending.

Cecy having a hormonal hot flash is the scariest thing I’ve ever read. No, wait, the most ghastly is when the woman has an orgasm. I swear, I thought her head would rotate three-hundred-sixty degrees and fly off her spindly neck to the moon.