Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86447-8
Contemporary Romance, 2016
Siobhan Carr, said to be an amazing PR agent in her family’s company – some kind of home-safety business – spends the first chapter snapping at the men from other related companies in the party her company has thrown for these companies. Yes, I can why they consider her one of the best PR persons in the country. Apparently they all want to talk business with her, you see, and that won’t do. People talking business in an industry party – how rude! Incidentally, I wonder why these men want an in with the PR agent when her role is to blow up her company’s reputation rather than develop the company’s business, but maybe things work differently in America?
Still, when she meets Justin Cartwright and he is so cute, they dance and he asks her about her siblings and whether she’d go out with him. Alas, Siobhan has been hurt before so SHE WILL NEVER LOVE AGAIN BOO-HOO-HOO, but really, he’s so hot and the short conversation is so special for her, she eventually puts out to him. It is love, until she discovers late in the story that he initially attended the industry party to talk business – imagine that – so HE MUST HAVE LIED TO HER and thus, she knows that HE IS JUST USING HER, so despite the fact that he has been pretty nice and sweet to her, EVERYTHING IS THEREFORE A LIE AND ALL MEN ARE SCUMS.
Tender Kisses is like the same meal that I have to eat for the millionth time, and worse, it’s not even well-prepared, so the gorge is doubled in intensity. For the most part, Justina and Siobhan has a lukewarm courtship – it’s hard to warm up to a love affair where the “special moments” and “rightness” are all told rather than shown – but the conflict is pretty stupid and it makes Siobhan look like a complete twit.
The writing also has some odd moments, which I notice because the story is so dull that there is nothing here to distract me from things like:
She had a hard time keeping her eyes off his bulging biceps that flexed with every movement as he spread jelly on his toast.
Spreading jelly on toast uses mostly the lower arm. Unless the jelly we are talking about is made of tar, there is nothing why those biceps should be flexing to such a degree with each swipe of the butter knife.
The author gets some credit for me for going beyond missionary in her sex scenes, but is it doggy style or being mauled by mad dogs with descriptions like this one?
Holding her hips tightly, Justin pounded into her. The moment a gigantic explosion hit him, Siobhan let out a hair-raising scream.
Why is she screaming like that? It’s like she is mad that he is done before she is, so what is going on here? Am I to believe that she experiences a big one just because she somehow can feel that guy going woosh? And since he’s wearing a condom, how likely is it that she can feel that to such an intense degree? Maybe he woosh‘ed enough to make the condom blow up like a blimp, I suppose.
With things like the above, after a while, I get this feeling that the author is writing things as she imagines them, without stopping too often to check whether what she is writing are at least a bit plausible. The author’s efforts to bug up the heroine’s so-called amazing PR skills are also funny because Siobhan’s “talent” is actually atrocious.
At any rate, it’s probably a good thing that this one has some unintentional comedy, or it’d be a snooze all the way from start to finish.
