How to Trap a Tycoon by Elizabeth Bevarly

Skeptic scale: ♥

I did NOT like this book. I get that this was supposed to be an ironic and tongue in cheek take on gender politics but it just felt like one long gasbag lecture about how "girls and boys are different but equal". C'mon now. Is equality even a question at this point!? 

The book is filled with long rambles about gender politics and sexual power dynamics that become frustrating and repetitive - perhaps a thorough edit could have solved that issue. But the truth is, NOTHING could have hidden the fact that the entire premise of the story was UNBEARABLE, flawed and offensively silly.

The protagonist is a woman holding down two jobs - she's a bartender at an exclusive club as well as a Sociology TA. In addition to her jobs, she has pseudonymously penned a bestseller called How to Trap a Tycoon where she talks about how women shouldn't feel bad about "getting theirs" and if money is their objective, they should follow her carefully laid out plan to trap a tycoon. 

Ok now I am going to go a bit nuts. I know it's "just" fiction yada yada, but it's DANGEROUS for anything to be this out of touch with reality. Let's begin the madness!

1) The premise of the book Totally Sucked. 
Here was the main point of the book (as well as the book within this book) summarized in a few lines spoken by the protagonist:

"How to Trap a Tycoon is a book that tells women how to go about getting ... nice things, things that they don't already have because they've been denied them by men."

Ummm...WHAT THE EFFING EFF??? How has this book not ended up on the banned list for this nonsensical premise!!?? Surely this is a more dangerous book than Lolita ever was? She's basically saying that because traditionally women have tended to be at an economic disadvantage, the way to even out that difference is to WHORE THEMSELVES TO A MAN WITH MONEY?? How does that not just EXACERBATE the bloody problem? Oh, so you don't have economic power so why don't you just make yourself so desirable a nice rich man will fall for you and then you can have everything you want, baby! Are you kidding me? 

Nothing about educating yourself so YOU can claim economic advantages for YOURSELF? How about arming yourself with the tools to acquire economic power (a fulfilling job, the capacity to provide for yourself, retaining control of your body etc)? You really think trapping a man is going to solve the whole gender power distribution thing?

2) Hugely irritating female characters
For all the big talk about women being up front and asserting themselves in male/female relationships, every single female character is extremely passive and panders to men. The main character, while educated and eventually financially independent, is entirely passive when it comes to her relationship with her love interest. He makes all the first moves, he is the sexual aggressor and he is the one who must "forgive" her for something he perceives as her betrayal. In fact, she never takes a single assertive step to help define their relationship. I mean, this could be a character from a Regency romance novel set in 1820 for all the pluck the woman shows.

Every single woman in the novel is portrayed as a passive player in their own lives and almost each needs to be saved by Mr. Alpha Dude Rich Guy. One of the main side characters was a woman who had been abused when she was younger and only comes to terms with her fears when a man takes it upon himself to "save" her. The main character's mother is not exactly passive, but she is a prostitute - oh, sorry courtesan, who has depended on the indulgence of men all her life. This character feels like she is truly "independent" because she doesn't need marriage. Um, I don't think being the sexual dependent of a rich benefactor counts as being independent, lady...

The one woman who is actively involved in shaping her own destiny - the owner of the bar where the main character works - is portrayed as a stone cold bi-atch. Because hey, you can't be an ambitious, money-minded, successful without being kind of a stinky shrew!

3) Equally annoying male counterparts
As annoying as I found all the female characters, the men were even more pathetic. Each man had exactly two attributes that define his entire personality  1) How wealthy he is, and 2) His willingness and ability to save the woman. 

For example, the main character's father was 1) Rich and 2) Unwilling to accept his bastard daughter. Ergo, he was a douche bag. By contrast one of the side characters who "saves" this girl who had been abused in her early years is 1) Rich and 2) A knight in shining armor. Ergo, he is a "hero". The main character's love interest is 1) Rich and 2) Willing to "forgive" his love interest for hiding her secret identity from him, so he too, is a hero. Douche bags and heroes. That's it. No further analysis of their characters. We know next to nothing about these men's motivations, their ambitions, their personal quirks, WHY they feel the need to save (or reject) these ladies. Nada.

Well at least we see some equality between men and women - as in there are equally dumb.

4) Wasted opportunities
There were so many other ways this book could have gone. I could CRY for all the wasted opportunities here...Maybe, in spite of writing about trapping a tycoon, the main character could have fallen for a poor man and then realized that true happiness has nothing to do with money and power when both are happy, well adjusted people. 

Maybe the secret author of How to Trap a Tycoon was the male character who was writing a tongue in cheek book to stir the pot, and then has to untangle the mess he makes when the female characters try to trap him, but he ends up falling for a women who doesn't try to trap him at all. 

I mean, ANYTHING other than the premise that girls should feel free to jiggle their boobs and learn how to give creme de menthe blow jobs would have been peachy. Oh sweet Aphrodite, I need to Listerine my mouth just thinking of how much garbage I ate reading this thing. Gack.

Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley

Skeptic scale: ♥


Wait. Before I begin the calm and reasonable part of the review, I NEED to first tell y'all this about this one scene in the book. It's a total non sequitur, because, of course, you may not have read the thing yet. But it is IMPERATIVE that you know it. Had I known this scene existed I would have hired a humvee just so I could run over this madness a thousand times until all that was left was a mangled fistful of tattered detritus.

So. Man and woman are living together and she's taking care of home and hearth and he's out earning the cheese (and by that I mean he's working in an auto shop). We know that so far he's not sure that he LOVES, loves her, but he likes her. And obviously he likes having sex with her. So he comes home one day and we see him sliding towards the realization that he's got it GOOD, son. He maybe, probably, definitely DOES love her. Aw. So sweet. But HOW does he come to this realization, you ask?

Well, he's back from the gym and he dumps his gym bag on the floor and then just gets this swell of manly joy - you know, because he knows she's gonna sort through his crud and take care of it.  

Dude. WTF? I'm old enough to know this for the garbage it is, but I fear, I TREMBLE, that some poor girl will be reading this and believing that is actually how she needs to operate to gain the love of a man. Listen little girl, no really, LISTEN TO ME. A man who thinks he can get away with that crap is NOT HOT. He's a baboon. A fuchsia-arsed BABOON. I think in 2013 we have come far enough to negotiate a SLIGHTLY fairer deal - say, him agreeing to dump his stinky gym clothes in the laundry hamper? Have we come THIS far at least? I like to think so, but then I read about goons like this and my world comes crumbling down again...

Oh, Mother Demeter. I think that must have been one of the most revolting scenes I have EVER read in a romance novel. Any novel maybe. And I've read some sick stuff.

And ANOTHER thing. I fully realize, I'm going on and on and everyone gets it, but here's one more thing about that whole stinky gym clothes bull that got me. These romance novels are fantasy. No man's abs are ever "as tight as a drum" unless he's an anorexic underwear model. Or Tom Brady. No man's buns are tight enough to bounce a quarter off of unless he's Michael Phelps training for the Olympics, alright. So yeah. It's all a great big fantasy. And I love that. BUT. If you get to build your FANTASY MAN - why, oh whyyyyyy, would you make him be a dude who thinks it's his woman's job to deal with his stink-ass piggishness? C'MON, sisters. We're better than that.

That is all. End of rant.

Resume in inside voice:

Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley is the most fascinating romance novel I have read in a long time. Not because the story was particularly interesting or original. But because it slapped me in the face with its sheer aggressiveness and swagger - drug-dealers, pimps, ex-cons, serial abusers of the English language. It has it all!

I was riveted - partly with horror and partly with an amused confusion that these words have been read (and seem to have been thoroughly enjoyed) by so many devoted fans of the author. Even though I doubt I will ever pick up anything else Kristen Ashley has written, I am sort of weirdly glad I got through it. Just because it made me think and analyze what it was that made me so uncomfortable.

Plot:
This is the story of a man who gets out of jail after being framed for a crime he didn't commit. He and the heroine, for reasons still slightly confusing to me, need to get married in order for him to put in motion a grand Plan o' Vengeance in order to clear his name and begin his life anew.

The hero and heroine spend the majority of the book having athletic sex all over the house and engaging in frequent misunderstandings with one another due mainly to the fact that the hero is unable to speak in full, coherent sentences. Everyone seems to be born of substance-addicted and/or abusive families and this can explain the cavalier attitude towards death and danger as well as the characters' generally poor language abilities. 

The hero does have some smokin' hot and also romantic lines and we know he is definitely alpha-dog extraordinaire. So, that was fun. But! I couldn't really fall for someone who refers to his wife as "his p*ssy" <wince> so all the alpha domination stuff just came across as cheesy and gorilla-like.

Relationship with money:
All the characters in the book have a strange relationship with money. Most of the characters are working class people. Some have done well for themselves running businesses. None of them seem wildly successful or able to earn a great deal through legal means but there's a lot of emphasis on buying "nice stuff". The money they talk of is of the duffel-bag-full-of-cash variety, not the steadily (and boringly?) accumulated weath you usually associate with rich individuals. And when people do have money they seem to be off buying bling for their "p*ssies" <CRINGE>, fancy cars and house stuff. How about a 401k, huh guys? For example, before his incarceration, the hero was working in an auto shop. That seemed to have paid well enough for him able to have purchased several luxury cars and a nice house chock full of fancy trimmings. Oh wait, he's a crack poker player. So when he needs some nice sh!t I guess he just trundles off to Vegas and earns him some Cash Money. Doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I guess it is fantasy. 

Gender roles:
I guess it's sort of implied that the characters' view of men and women's roles is somewhat traditional (Byzantine). 

Man - protect woman, make money, buy woman things so she's happy

Woman - do whatever man says, do his laundry and make his protein shake when he comes back from the gym, put flowers and sh!t everywhere, keep it tight. Keep your sass under wraps until someone bad mouths Your Man, in which case, Let 'er Rip, girls!

Profanity:
I actually went to goodreads and amazon to look what other reviewers were saying about the luxuriant use of colorful language, but shockingly, I seem to be the only one thus affected. I thought that was really interesting and have been doing all sorts of introspection to figure out the cause of all the discomfort I am experiencing.

Also, here's the thing about the sex scenes. I have read, and appreciated, enough risque fiction where characters say all sorts of saucy and explicit things to one another that I was kind of let down by the scenes in this book. And there are MANY scenes. Maybe that was part of the problem. I had to digest a new (kind of repetitive) sex scene every chapter or so, and because I had been reading all sorts of interesting language in the character's regular day affairs, by the time it comes to the bedroom, those words simply don't pack the same punch.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE a well-placed expletive. I find that swearing, when used skillfully, can be used to create humor, express passion, anger, sorrow, and even happiness. But here, the characters seem to use the words all jumbled together in a way that just seems unnecessary. They all just seem to come across as uneducated and crass, and, forgive me, somewhat dumb.

Ultimately, I couldn't really understand the point. 

For instance
This is the hero talking to the heroine about how a man should love his woman:

"Now, I got a dick and I assume he had a dick so, seein’ as he and I have that in common, I’ll tell you, your pussy was my pussy I would not be sellin’ pussy, not that I’d do that shit anyway. I would not be sellin’ dope and I wouldn’t do that shit either. What I would do is make fuckin’ coffee drinks if it meant you could wear your heels and feel good about sleepin’ in my bed."

Here was my immediate reaction to THAT little delight:

Seriously. Try reading this bit out loud. Without laughing, please. It can't be done because the slang is being used awkwardly and there really isn't the need for that many extraneous expletives to make the words impactful. Here's where I began to squirm when I realized the hero was a little.. simple, maybe? 

Let's end with the numbers*, because as we all know, the numbers don't lie. 

# of F-bombs: 840 (this is an exceptionally LONG book, but still guys, that's almost 2-3 per page)

# of other swears (incl. ones starting with S, D and A): 622

# of times the C*** word is used: 9

# of times a woman is referred to as a


: 65







# of times a woman is referred to as a


:70






*For comparison Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence which was the first book where the F word was published legally, and a novel that met with a great big scandalous brouhaha, had 30 instances of the word and 7 instances of the C*** word. The books are of slightly differing lengths, sure, and Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in 1928 and things have become more racy here in 2013, but the order to magnitude difference in the numbers gave me pause. 

Candy Store by Bella Andre

Skeptic scale: ♥

Suspension of disbelief sends local Romantical Skeptic into anaphylactic shock. "I saw a tunnel," said the exhausted woman, "the light at the end of it grew larger and larger and then, all of a sudden, I saw a man standing there. That man was 50 cent."

Part 1 - Introduction
Before I begin, allow me to remind you of another candy store immortalized by the great, and simply charming, 50 Cent.

I'll take you to the candy shop
I'll let you lick the lollipop
Go ahead girl, don't you stop
Keep going til you hit the spot, whoaa

I'll take you to the candy shop (yea)
Boy, wanna taste what I got (uh huh)
I'll have you spending all you got (c'mon)
Keep going til you hit the spot, whoaa

You could have it your way
How do you want it?
You gonna back that thing up or should I push up on it?
Temperature rising, ok
Let's go to the next level
Dance floor jam packed, hot as a tea kettle
I break it down for you now, baby it's simple
If you be a nympho, I be a nympho
In the hotel or in the back of the rental
On the beach or in the park, it's whatever you into
Got the magic stick, I'm the love doctor
Have your friends teaching you about how sprung I got you
When you show me what you working baby, No problem
Get on top, get your bounce around like a low rider
I'm a seasoned vet, when it come to this shit
After you work up a sweat, you could play with the stick
I'm trying to explain baby, the best way I can
I melt in your mouth girl, not in your hand (uh huh)

You're welcome.

Because if you are in the mood to read something fun and raunchy, you may as well read the lyrics to this song, because Candy Store, the book, is just so far beyond absurd that you might end up with an aneurysm. I can't even review this. I am without speech. But you need to know so I will summarize the story in one breath so I don't waste a second Oxygen/CO2 cycle on this. 

Part 2 - Snapshot summary
Here goes:

Callie's beloved candy store is going to have to close because she has put all her energy into making orgasmic truffles and none into learning how to do the books but that's ok because it turns out Derek (Derek!?) who she hooks up randomly with at her friend's wedding is the Candy King, the man who Fixes Things for the candy industry (I know, WTF?) and can help her fix her business by making her a website (because the Internet is SO hard, you guys) and advising her to sell hot chocolate to ice skaters and while doing all this they hook up multiple times in uncomfortably icy places (an industrial refrigerator (!?), by the side of a frozen-over lake, in a supply closet) which they are apparently unconcerned with because their passion keeps them toasty.

I think you may as well stop reading right here. I mean, the dude's name is DEREK and he's the CANDY KING. The profession of being a Candy King, apparently pays well enough to let him drive a Ferrari. Apart from a general curiosity about what type of emergency fix-it man is needed at the Hershey's and Jelly Belly plants, you already have all the information you need to make a decision about whether or not this story is to your taste. You should probably all just move on and save yourselves.

Unfortunately for me, I'm sunk. I can't let it go and I will move on to Part 3 of my rant. I advise you not to join me there because it'll seriously bring you down. The negativity, the harshness. You'll be miserable.

Part 3 - Chapter breakdown
I'm going to practically have to go line by line from beginning to end and make my comments because I won't be able to sleep ever again until I purge everything from my system. Let's begin.

Chap 1&2: H & h meet at the bar at the wedding of mutual friends. He's having a drink, she asks for "anything strong". He instructs the bartender to give her a tequila shot (rude, you can't just barge in and force someone to drink nasty hard alcohol). He then proceeds to teach her how to drink a tequila. The sexy way, obviously. By licking the salt off the other person and then sucking the lime off of the wedge in the other person's mouth. Yeah, ok I get how this can be hot on a sultry night in Tijuana. But we're at a wedding in Saratoga guys. Pack it in. 

Also, how come she didn't learn how to do tequila shots from watching The Cutting Edge (that movie about a US Olympic ice skating double) like everyone else? I watched that when I was 15 and although I didn't actually get to drink a shot till I was legal, I knew the mechanics. 

Chap 3&4: While the are doing their inappropriate little public tequila seduction, the H is called away to make his best man speech and she runs off to hide because she is so embarrassed. Where does she run off to? Not out the door into the parking lot or anything. But into the kitchen and into one of the big refrigerators. Recall that these are places where the mob stores their fresh kills or locks people in to die of cold and fright. He follows and finds her - the creepiness of this stalkerish action gave me chills down my back - and they proceed to do it against one of the shelves. 

Several points to make here: 1) George Costanza gets "shrinkage" from a few minutes in the pool and this guy can get it up in an icy fridge against a cold metal shelf? What a stud. 2) Why don't they arrange to meet in warmer climes (a bedroom, perhaps) in an hour or so when the wedding is over and they are not standing in a place that houses meat and dairy. They had one lousy tequila shot - they were hardly drunk enough engage in this level of nonsensical behavior.

Chap 5-12: They meet again when both learn that that he is, in fact, the Candy King and she has hired him to save her business by making innovative suggestions like having her build an e-commerce website. They manage to hook up again in several awkward and horribly cold places (e.g. outdoors next to a public ice skating rink in winter) while her business and their romance begin to thrive. 

I take a moment here to mention Derek's backstory. He has been hurt, terribly hurt, before by a money-grubbing fiancee who wanted him to be more than the Candy King (more? the man has a Ferrari for God's sake!). In fact, the ex-fiancee would have definitely approved of Derek's brother's insistence that Derek join his boring but successful accounting firm. But Callie is different. She loves him for him, not his Kingdom of Confection. Or so he thought. At a family dinner, he overhears Callie compliment his brother on his successful accounting practice and Derek construes this to mean that she too is a money-crazed b*-atch who wants him to sell out and be a boring old accountant. 

He drives off in his Ferrari (Wait! I mentioned that the automobile he drives is a luxury sports car, right? Because you should know that despite how it sounds, being a Candy King is a huge alpha dog characteristic) and throws a hissy fit at her apparent duplicity. She decides to go after him but chooses to wander around in the freezing rain and cold and ends up shivering in a ball at his doorstep. He picks her up and tenderly cares for her because she's a cold, helpless lamb who doesn't own proper winter gear. He now realizes he's been an ass and apologizes by sending her dozens of bouquets of flowers (oh, brother) and hires a string quartet (gag) and proposes to her in her candy store (barf). On Valentines Day (Sweet Merciful Zeus, there's no room left in the puke bucket!)

The end.

I'm feeling a little better now. Thanks, Skeptics. Sharing really does help.