KL Donn, $0.99
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Jack Daily is 39 years old. Four years ago, he “broke up” with Eden Glass, a student at his high school, in the sense that he graciously “let her go” to pursue her dreams and what not.
Hah, luckily for him, Eden is now a dancer at a gentleman’s club—so much for big dreams—and therefore, she’s now ripe for romance in this classy tale of high school principal appreciation.
When the story opens, Jack is reminded strongly of Eden by the dancer at his lap during his friend’s bachelor party. She even says that her name is Eden, imagine that.
Well, it’s definitely “his” Eden, alright, and our heroine isn’t sure whether she should be grateful or heartbroken that the man whose pee-pee had been poking at her butt didn’t seem to recognize her off his bat, er, I mean off the bat.
What do you know, her little brother goes to the same high school as her, so now she and Mr Daily are going to see a lot of one another. She helps to accelerate the romance by being the kind to “forget” to dress nicely when bringing her brother to school.
Short cotton shorts—like, short, short. As in my ass cheeks are now feeling the slight morning breeze short—and a navy-blue tank top. Without a bra.
This leads to Jack wanting to do the kind of sexual harassment that is only acceptable if the guy had been hot.
My hands roam her body until I get to her hips and I drag her closer, allowing her to feel the rigid length of my cock and what she does to me. “You made a mistake today Eden.”
I see her eyes flutter as she tries to concentrate on what I’m saying. “How?”
“This fucking outfit. When I saw you, all I wanted to do was rip it off. You better still be wearing it when I pick you up tonight.” I groan, wanting to take her now.
Seriously? Is this kind of unga bunga I-want-you-now-hur-hur-growl nonsense considered “sexual tension” in a romance story these days? The above happens immediately after he spots her in the school, mind you, so there is no subtlety or dramatic tension.
What happened to building up an attraction, letting things simmer a bit, that kind of thing?
The guy comes off as the super jealous, constantly bad tempered, growling and snarling type that is exactly the worst kind of boyfriend for a gentleman’s club dancer. Still, the author insists that this romance works awesomely because she does an abrupt jump to four years later in the epilogue to show me that these two are still boinking.
I wonder how many men she’d danced for that he has murdered and buried in the basement out of jealousy.
Mind you, I won’t mind reading a tale of a dark and deranged love affair between a serial killer and a stripper, but sadly, Treat Me is just a clumsy pump and dump of a read that offers little passion and romance for what it is marketed as.
Whatever passed off for eroticism here doesn’t make up for that lack, as the author’s storytelling style has a lurching, lumbering, mouth-breathing paleolithic quality that kills any mood for raunchy nookie reading time.
