Arabesque, $5.99, ISBN 1-58314-195-2
Contemporary Romance, 2002

In this book, What Matters Most is the man. Screw your sisters, stab your mothers, cannibalize your grandmothers, and push your girlfriends face-down into the toilet bowl and let them drown, as long as you get that man for yourself. And career? Dump that, sisters, all you need to be whole is a penis.

If you find that offensive, stay away from this book. The heroine Ashley Steele is an international superstar mezzo-soprano (not that she trains, warms up her voice daily, or even have a career, all she does is to sing about maternal warmth and loving your man… hmm, maybe she’s a superstar sponsored by some wingnut fundamentalist groups) but in the end, she learns that (a) daddies are the best, mothers are all evil sluts, (b) sisters are sluts, murderous sluts, (c) girlfriends are backstabbing sluts, and (d) men are the best ever!

Single daddy of a boy (of course it’s a boy, remember, all women and their daughters are evil sluts), our hero Derrick Quinn sleeps with our heroine even as he is sure that a career-minded (hahaha), globe-trotting heroine like Ashley will never be the right woman for him – after all, he wants a stay-at-home, loving, maternal housewife who will love him and his son forever and ever (translation: laundry, cooking, cleaning forever and ever). But Ashley will soon prove him wrong by dumping everything for him and his son forever and ever and ever.

Goodness grief, what planet do these creatures come from? Everyone with a vagina is a slut/traitorous bitch (except for our heroine, of course) and everyone with a penis is worshiped like some god. Give me a break. Let’s face it, when juggling marriage with career, we all have to make compromises – both partners, mind you, not just the woman. But in Ms Craft’s simplistic, juvenile world, all you need to do is to stay at home and make the man happy and all’s well in the world all over again. I got two words for that, really: bite me.