anna genoese

The bookstore last night was pretty much a total bust. They only had one of books I was looking for, and that was an alternate to begin with! Also, the romance section was woefully tiny, especially compared to all the other sections. SFF covered two walls -- it was, like, thirteen or fifteen floor to ceiling bookcases -- and romance novels got two half-size bookcases. Are you kidding me? Ugh.

Anyway, I ended up just browsing, which is, honestly, one of my favorite things to do. I bought the following:

• Forbidden Pleasure by Lora Leigh (but I got the version with the pink cover you see here)


• Dangerous Games by Lora Leigh


• Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James


• The Seduction of an Unknown Lady by Samantha James

My friend was late, so I trudged through the snow (snow!) (well, flurries) over to the Waverly diner to eat cheese fries and read while I waited. I started with Forbidden Pleasure by Lora Leigh. Now, I'd bought it because I was really intrigued by the cover copy and the ostensible plot of the book. I couldn't figure out if the phrase "...[the men] want to indulge the desire to share their women with a carefully selected male partner" was code for "dudes kissing with a lady in between" or code for "the kind of crappy text porn abundant on Usenet in 1995."

I'm about halfway through (I didn't read it on the subway). I'll be blunt, since I know you people are into that: this book, as you may have suspected, is not very good. I can't figure out how this author is a New York Times bestseller. I also can't figure out why her publisher didn't pay more attention to the proofreading. There are a lot of glaring errors. And we're talking about St. Martin's Press! Usually their books are cleaner than this.

I don't think I'm the audience for this book. And, honestly, I am wondering (sincerely!) exactly who the audience is. Because normally I would be 100% into the idea of two hot male FBI agents (who apparently both look like the love child of Christian Kane and mid 90s era Mark Harmon but with long hair) and their ladyfriend getting it on. My problem is with a couple of things the author chooses to do.

( Cut for discussion of rape, sexual situations, BDSM, and misogyny. This gets kind of long, has some quotes from the book, and probably isn't work safe, despite being entirely text. )

Anyway, I'll finish it (or attempt to, anyway), but after that... Anyone else interested? It might really appeal to someone else more than it does to me! If you want it, drop me a line at annagenoese@gmail.com -- first come gets it.

(Damn it, I just now, when tagging this entry, realized that I read and hated one of this author's books back in 2008, and wrote a blog post wondering how the heck such a terrible writer made it to the NYT list. And even pointed out that the first word on the first page had a typo! Haha. I should reread my own blog posts sometime.)