Avon, $5.99, ISBN 978-0-06-223131-4
Historical Romance, 2013
Warning: there are spoilers in this review. You don’t want me to restrain myself and give vague allusions when I am going on about this book, do you? And then you would have no idea what I’m talking about. Anyway, if you do want to see for yourself why Avon is selling Jennifer McQuiston out for cheap – $5.99 – you may want to come back and read this review after you’ve read this book.
Our heroine is Caroline Tolbertson. Eleven years ago, she came upon our hero David Cameron trying to drown himself – she thought he was having trouble swimming, and the fact that he apparently tried to swim while wearing his military uniform didn’t strike her as odd – and they had a talk, after which they went separate ways and she was convinced that she would love him forever. She was eleven. And creepy.
Today, she convinces herself that she is an awkward girl whom no man would even want to play porky pie with. She just had her first kiss, which ended in ridicule as the man in question told everyone that she kissed like a boy. The obvious insulting response – “So… you kiss many boys, do you?” – doesn’t cross her mind because heaven forbid we have a romance heroine with some wit to back up the bra size. She and her sister are invited to a fashionable party, obviously to be the entertainment of the evening, and her s-s-s-stu-t-t-t-tering id-d-d-d-d-d-iot s-s-s-s-sister thinks it is so cool so Caroline just turns extra surly than usual and goes off to the party.
Guess who she meets there. Of course, she can’t get interested in him because hot guys will never want to pork her so she will never marry him which is depressing as she wants to get married, but only for love, of course, even if the money is running out – thank you, Daddy – but she wants to play with him anyway and maybe even have sex with him as she’s in love, but wait, maybe she shouldn’t, but oh, he looks so hot and she feels so hot and she really, really, really – NO, HE SAYS HE DOESN’T WANT HER!!! – oh, he is just like all the other boys, never mind that she insisted earlier that no boys ever paid her attention but HOW DARE HE DOESN’T WANT TO SEX HER UP OOOOH THIS IS AN INSULT… wait, wait, there are boys after her now? But that boy is weird and this boy is creepy and OH, WHY CAN’T DAVID LOVE HER AS MUCH AS SHE LOVES HIM! SHE WILL NEVER MARRY HIM BECAUSE HE CLEARLY DOESN’T LOVE HER, BUT SHE WANTS TO HAVE SEX WITH HIM SO, SO, SO BAD…
Oh, please die already.
You know, for a self-proclaimed ugly girl with no hope when it comes to getting stuffed by hot boys, Caroline is behaving like a dumb tart on her personal The Bachelorette show, wanting so badly to have sex but trying so hard at the same time to act like she poops out chastity rings. Worse, she talks about how she would get married soon, so she needs to be careful, but she has no problems teaching David how to swim in private. Without even asking for money, despite the fact that her family is on the verge of bankruptcy. She just goes swimming when she’s not trying to get David to shag her without being too overt about it, while whining that it is so unfair that she can’t marry him as he doesn’t love her. Putting out is fine, though. This book needs to sell, after all.
As for the hero, he’s a charmer too. He will never marry another woman because, once, his heart was broken when his true love died and he would never subject himself to such a pain again. Of course, he sort of knows that this true love was a melodramatic whore, but come on, little baby here needs an excuse to protect his pee-pee from ravenous hydrophilic nymphomaniacs like Caroline, after all. While he decides whether or not he should keep pining after that melodramatic whore, he says that he should just treat Caroline like a friend. Naturally, a male friend asks a female friend to give him swimming lessons in private and does other things that would ruin her completely if they were caught. David wants to help her find a suitable husband, but actually sabotages her because he gets jealous when another guy even inhales her carbon dioxide. He tells her that he doesn’t love her because it’s for her own good – snort – but once he finally realizes that the story is about to end, he’s like, “Okay, that woman I spent the entire story calling my one true love really was a whore, after all… Caroline, my pee-pee is forever yours, XOXO!”
He can die already, too.
I know, the author probably just wants to make me laugh, but this vomitous tale only underscores the fact that comedies are best left to professionals. The authors gets a A+ for her knowledge of the most annoying clichés in the land and her industrious cramming of as many of them as possible into her characters’ kitchen sinks, but Summer Is for Lovers is a spectacularly insipid failure.
