Catherine Dane, $0.99
Contemporary Romance, 2012
Catherine Dane’s The Passionate Greek is marketed as an erotic romance, but a more appropriate descriptor for it is Harlequin Presents-wannabe. Perhaps this one was written for that line, only to be rejected by some acquisition editor that was in a bad mood that day, who knows, because this one pretty much ticks all the items on the list.
Asshole hero that thinks so little of the heroine and women in general? Nikos Chalambrous. Seriously, this guy is ruthless – he practically danced with joy when Melanie, fresh out of giving birth to his spawn, got thrown into jail because liar, bitch, whore, the usual.
A heroine that, for some reason, finds the above traits in a man so sexy that she can’t wait to be humiliated and denigrated some more by him? Melanie. I’m not sure what her last name is, maybe it’s left out so that I can imagine that she shares my last name and, therefore, she is me and this is now my perfect romantic fantasy, ooh.
Melanie wants to be the mother to her spawn, so she has no choice but to subject herself to whatever Nikos Chamberpotato wants to put her through. Sometimes he’s nice to her, usually because he wants to get it on with her, but after that, he’d go back to his asshole mode. Don’t get me wrong—a part of me actually agrees with him in that Melanie can be such an idiot that wants so hard to be a martyr, she really should face the consequences of her actions now and then. Still, will it kill him to show some compassion to the mother of his kid? This is one guy whose big bags of money will not make up for him being as sexy and approachable as an open sack full of turd left out in the sun.
So yes, there is a happy ending here, but I’m not buying any of it. He’d probably throw her out on the streets with only her clothes on her back the following week, after she makes him coffee that isn’t hot enough to his liking or something, and scold her in the process that her banishment is entirely of her own fault and she deserves whatever befalls her because of this. I’m pretty sure that there are romance readers that find such a guy very appealing as a romance hero, but me, I find him more like that evil patriarch stereotype typically present in Chinese soap operas.
Oh, and did I mention that this one is marketed as an erotic romance? Maybe I am thrown off balance by a hero that is as sexy as an STD diagnosis, but I personally feel that this one is closer to mainstream romance (ahem, Harlequin Presents) than anything else.
I have to give The Passionate Greek an extra oogie, though, even though the two main characters are off-putting to me, because Catherine Dane can serve up some lovely prose here. However, the author also commits the common mistake of telling me that the hero is worth being loved, by blaming the demons of his past, as if a grown-ass man had no accountability of his past and present actions because he wasn’t hugged and humped enough in the past. This is both a cop-out and lazy psychology in action, and if anything, the more the author tries to tell me that the Chamberpotato isn’t really that bad despite his perpetual heartless SOB mode, the more I dislike him. Don’t tell me—show me, persuade me, emotionally manipulate me into believing that the turd bag of a hero is indeed worth the humiliation and self-loathing he deliberately instilled into the heroine.
Anyway, this is basically a Harlequin Presents with a racier cover, and should be best treated as one. If you like that kind of heroes and that kind of heroines in that kind of “Prove to me you are not a lying whore and therefore worthy of being treated like a human being by me, whore!” story, hey, be my guest. Otherwise, there’s the exit, and I’ll race you to it.
