Published in: 2007
Publisher: Harlequin Press.
Read on: Feb –March 8th, 2012.
Hello and welcome to the Stone Cold Critique, where bad literature is given the cold shoulder! I am your host Contemptus, and today I’m taking a look at – gasp – a Harlequin novel in honour of St. Valentine’s Day. Well, I started reading it before V-Day, so it still counts. This one, oddly enough, is the sixth and final installment of a series called “Sex & The Supper Club,” which focuses on a group of six friends on a rotating cycle of main-characters. As I haven’t read the first five books, I’m going into this blind.
So let’s see if “Bad Behaviour” is more foreplay than follow-through, shall we?
The Gist:
I’ll be honest, folks. Harlequin novels aren’t particularly well written. They’re mostly dialogue and light on (believable) plot, metaphor, and depth. Oh, and the sex can, in some places, have prose so purple you start puking eggplants. Because that’s a thing, right? Right.
So with that in mind, we can continue.
We start with our main characters: Immature McFreespirit and her trusty cardboard love-interest Hunky von Workaholic. Our introduction, I’ll give the author this, is actually pretty decent at setting up our characters’ personalities. Freespirit blows off an important meeting at work for a vacation to Mexico already bought, planned and paid for. Workaholic is in Mexico with a long-time work friend on a vacation as a way of blowing off stress before a huge work project comes up.
They meet in a bar (of course), and surprise of all surprises, they already know one another! Apparently, these two dated in middle school before breaking up to go to separate high schools. Yeah, two 14 year olds were so awesome at kissing that they still remember it 16 years later (no, seriously, FS tells us as such over drinks with her girlfriends) AND think fondly about it. They end up clicking instantly and having a fling for the duration of their vacations – three days, for him, before he leaves back to LA.
Naturally – because this is a romance novel, after all – they don’t just let a fling be a fling, and spend the next hundred or so pages in a relationship that no one actually calls it a relationship. After all, FS doesn’t want to be tied down and thus grow up, and Workaholic has a big merger-meeting thing and can’t be distracted. And they have lots of sex. So of course this culminates to FS sending Workaholic a dirty text in a meeting and distracting him enough to completely fuck up the presentation and put the company expansion in jeopardy. This leads to a huge fight wherein Workaholic says he needs a break because it’s a really complicated time and he’d like not to fuck up his future and his dreams because some chick was in the way sexting him thanks.
All of two pages later they’re back together and going steady just in time for the Contractual Happy Ending ™. And end scene.
Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty, alright?
The Bland:
Let’s get one thing straight right now, gentle readers: This books is, more or less, an awesome example of So Okay It’s Average – to steal from TVTropes. It’s not horrifically, eye-scarring bad, but it’s not amazing either. It’s a mediocre Harlequin romance novel. I went into this knowing the quality wouldn’t be astounding, so there isn’t a whole lot to get worked up over.
But I will say this: most of this novel was made up of dialogue – not just dialogue, but banter. Now, compared to the last Cold Shoulder book I read, banter was a breath of fresh air. Too bad it went stale by the fiftieth page or so. Seriously, it was like these characters couldn’t have a serious conversation unless it was some sort of relationship-ending fight. It grated after a while; became cloying and annoying. Too much of a good thing, I suppose.
One thing that I didn’t think that would annoy me but did was the lack of character development. I mean, I knew there wouldn’t be much, but the utter lack of depth to all of the secondary characters annoyed me. The Sex and Supper Club members got one brief introduction and weren’t really focused on when it wasn’t to play the sympathetic ear for FreeSpirit and her bitching—
Publisher: Harlequin Press.
Read on: Feb –March 8th, 2012.
Hello and welcome to the Stone Cold Critique, where bad literature is given the cold shoulder! I am your host Contemptus, and today I’m taking a look at – gasp – a Harlequin novel in honour of St. Valentine’s Day. Well, I started reading it before V-Day, so it still counts. This one, oddly enough, is the sixth and final installment of a series called “Sex & The Supper Club,” which focuses on a group of six friends on a rotating cycle of main-characters. As I haven’t read the first five books, I’m going into this blind.
So let’s see if “Bad Behaviour” is more foreplay than follow-through, shall we?
The Gist:
I’ll be honest, folks. Harlequin novels aren’t particularly well written. They’re mostly dialogue and light on (believable) plot, metaphor, and depth. Oh, and the sex can, in some places, have prose so purple you start puking eggplants. Because that’s a thing, right? Right.
So with that in mind, we can continue.
We start with our main characters: Immature McFreespirit and her trusty cardboard love-interest Hunky von Workaholic. Our introduction, I’ll give the author this, is actually pretty decent at setting up our characters’ personalities. Freespirit blows off an important meeting at work for a vacation to Mexico already bought, planned and paid for. Workaholic is in Mexico with a long-time work friend on a vacation as a way of blowing off stress before a huge work project comes up.
They meet in a bar (of course), and surprise of all surprises, they already know one another! Apparently, these two dated in middle school before breaking up to go to separate high schools. Yeah, two 14 year olds were so awesome at kissing that they still remember it 16 years later (no, seriously, FS tells us as such over drinks with her girlfriends) AND think fondly about it. They end up clicking instantly and having a fling for the duration of their vacations – three days, for him, before he leaves back to LA.
Naturally – because this is a romance novel, after all – they don’t just let a fling be a fling, and spend the next hundred or so pages in a relationship that no one actually calls it a relationship. After all, FS doesn’t want to be tied down and thus grow up, and Workaholic has a big merger-meeting thing and can’t be distracted. And they have lots of sex. So of course this culminates to FS sending Workaholic a dirty text in a meeting and distracting him enough to completely fuck up the presentation and put the company expansion in jeopardy. This leads to a huge fight wherein Workaholic says he needs a break because it’s a really complicated time and he’d like not to fuck up his future and his dreams because some chick was in the way sexting him thanks.
All of two pages later they’re back together and going steady just in time for the Contractual Happy Ending ™. And end scene.
Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty, alright?
The Bland:
Let’s get one thing straight right now, gentle readers: This books is, more or less, an awesome example of So Okay It’s Average – to steal from TVTropes. It’s not horrifically, eye-scarring bad, but it’s not amazing either. It’s a mediocre Harlequin romance novel. I went into this knowing the quality wouldn’t be astounding, so there isn’t a whole lot to get worked up over.
But I will say this: most of this novel was made up of dialogue – not just dialogue, but banter. Now, compared to the last Cold Shoulder book I read, banter was a breath of fresh air. Too bad it went stale by the fiftieth page or so. Seriously, it was like these characters couldn’t have a serious conversation unless it was some sort of relationship-ending fight. It grated after a while; became cloying and annoying. Too much of a good thing, I suppose.
One thing that I didn’t think that would annoy me but did was the lack of character development. I mean, I knew there wouldn’t be much, but the utter lack of depth to all of the secondary characters annoyed me. The Sex and Supper Club members got one brief introduction and weren’t really focused on when it wasn’t to play the sympathetic ear for FreeSpirit and her bitching—
Which leads me to my final complaint. As a female reader, I am forced to assume that the female protagonist and primary narrator is the one I’m supposed to be empathizing with. This is not the case – not in the slightest. I found that I had more in common with the love interest – the serious, workaholic ith a dream and a goal and a lot of pressure/ stress to deal with – so that when the couple was fighting by the end of the book, I was completely on his side. As it turns out, Workaholic has this big work project, he needs to do presentations and win people over to expand his garage business, and he finds that he can’t juggle his relationship, his job, and a billion other things. So he asks if he and FS might be able to take a break, just until the pressure let off a bit and he could breathe.
Naturally, FS freaks out, and it’s up to Workaholic to come crawling back.
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
The Okay:
Well, I’ll say this, at least: the relationship between FS and Workaholic was … healthy. They communicated, they set limits on what was acceptable behaviour, and they actually seemed to like one another. They played off one another quite well, and that made for an enjoyable read, even if the majority of their conversations were mind-numbing banter.
For once in a Harlequin novel, there wasn’t any rape or dubious consent. That was a treat. Actually, the only mildly dub-con sort of situation happened in the first few chapters, and it was FS groping Workaholic in public when he just wasn’t into putting on a show. It was a refreshing change.
Sadly, no infection – and thus, a dash of realism – was mentioned.
So, to be short (a bit late for that, I know): this was a very safe, cookie-cutter romance novel. The characters were everymen (and women) and there was a dash of fantasy-wish-fulfilment, which is a given in this genre. The conflict at the end wasn’t an accusation of cheating – which is way over-done, if you ask me – but the more realistic ‘time crunch’ idea, and it was solved easily enough with a talk and a compromise.
My final word on the matter? Don’t read it. If things can be damned by faint praise, some should be left alone strictly by how bland they are. This book at the oatmeal of the literary world: mushy, tasteless and a staple of the genre (as it were).
As always, if you have a book you think deserves the Cold Shoulder, let me know and drop me a line.
This is Contemptus, the Stone Cold Critic, signing off. I’ll see you next month, gentle readers.
My final word on the matter? Don’t read it. If things can be damned by faint praise, some should be left alone strictly by how bland they are. This book at the oatmeal of the literary world: mushy, tasteless and a staple of the genre (as it were).
As always, if you have a book you think deserves the Cold Shoulder, let me know and drop me a line.
This is Contemptus, the Stone Cold Critic, signing off. I’ll see you next month, gentle readers.
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