Kathleen wrote this review after a book made her so angry, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Confusion! Frustration!

More confusion and frustration!

So, of course, writing several thousand words and finding the perfect Archer gifs to go with it was the exact remedy she needed.

Fortunately for us, she shared her rant, so now we get to enjoy it, too. Ahoy, there, Book Ranting ahead!

 

---

Dearest Bitches, I arrive a failure.

I picked up Satisfaction Guaranteed on clearance at a dollar store, thinking it would be fun to read and write about. Turns out I couldn’t even finish the damn thing.

Our heroine, Beth Whitney, works at an “ultra top secret” spy agency called The Goddard Project, because her daddy owns it.

One morning, after enduring a harrowing gauntlet of First World Problems – she wakes up before her alarm clock! her kittens, “Mozart and Beethoven,” have scratched up her “perfect silk drapes!” her bagel is burnt! her D.C. hotshot mom calls to set her up on a date, again! –

– she heroically makes it to work and discovers that the ex-fiancée she hasn’t seen in three years, Alan Hyatt, is the newest agent at TGP and she is expected to show him around. Oof. Or, in the narrative’s words:

“[T]he day from hell took a nosedive.

And really, that shouldn’t be possible. Only Beth’s shocked vision was telling her that it was. In Technicolor.”

New subtitle for this review: “Technicolor nosedive.”

Beth somehow fails to turn around on her heel and march back home, middle fingers held high. But she does suspect that her dad/boss is doing this, to her, on some nefarious matchmaking purpose, which is self-centered and bizarre and also accurate.

He’d lied when he said he never let his personal life impinge on his work decisions. This time, he was in up to his eyeballs on a personal basis. […] He didn’t know what made his daughter tick, but she was his only child and he loved her, even if she’d never accept how much.

But he had a plan to show her and that plan included getting himself some grandchildren. He’d always been one hell of a tactician and his daughter didn’t know it, but she was his most important case.

He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he instituted Step Two in the Plan.

Yes, really.

Amazingly, Daddyboss here isn’t even the most overbearing creepshow in this book.

 

That award goes to Beth’s actual love interest, agent Ethan Crane.

See, Beth and Alan become friendsies again by bonding over five or six pages of surprisingly dull exposition about their high-tech spy world, and Ethan? He doesn’t like that one little bit. Now, at this point he and Beth have no relationship to speak of – they barely talk – and both characters tell themselves and the reader many, maaaaaany times that They’re So Not Each Other’s Type.

But that doesn’t stop Ethan from immediately fixating on Beth’s status with the new guy. What’s more, he shows what an Alpha Male he is by:

• Calling Beth every five minutes, for an hour, when she’s not instantly available
• Physically blocking her from leaving her desk and “standing much, much too close”
• Grilling her about her relationship with Alan, which she makes clear she doesn’t want to disclose
• Stroking her face while promising to dig up her past
• Forcibly holding her car door open to prevent her from driving away from him

… all during the very first day we see them together. Because nothing says hot lovin’ like relentless, and I mean relentless, invasiveness.

So what’s Beth’s reaction to all this? In a word: upsetting. In a lot more words: she comes up with a doozy of a denial mechanism, convincing herself that Ethan couldn’t possibly be preparing to stalk her, because: She’s Sooooo Not His Type! He’s much too hawt and exciting and James-Bondish to be obsessed with little old her. Ethan (lovelessly, compulsively) dates, like, Russian Ballet dancers and supermodels, whereas Beth is just the scion of a powerful political family, with a face that’s merely “Madonna-like,” and a figure that’s only “somewhere between Uma Thurman thin and Mae West curves.” Uh… hmm.

Point is, rationally or not, she doesn’t see herself as especially desirable. What’s more, she and Ethan barely know each other. What’s furthermore, she has a personal policy against dating agents, for Sad Reasons.

For those of you screaming at your monitors, “wtf does any of this have to do with getting sexually harassed at work?” I… you’ll have to ask Beth.

Over the roar of her own cognitive dissonance, Beth tells herself that Ethan must see her, not as a person woman, but “as an extension of the agency and thereby as belonging to him first and the new recruit second.” Yeah, that’s it! He’s just “marking his territory,” all “just another way to razz the new recruit.” Phew, no problem here then. She further decides to find this bullshit funny, and not at all weird or obnoxious or dehumanizing or even, I don’t know, inconvenient?

Oh, wait: every single thing Ethan says, does, or looks at makes Beth go all tingly in the vagina-bits. Ohhhh.

[S]he was back to catching glimpses of him that sparked erotic fantasies no good girl would admit to… even to her very best friend. Even to her cat….

The subject of her most private fantasies smiled in a way that always sent shivers to interesting, if embarrassing, places….

Ethan fixed his attention on her and her whole body tightened with primal anticipation she fought to hide…..

She took a deep breath and nearly cried out at how dumb that had been as every sense went up a notch in awareness of his masculine appeal.

“You can tell me [about your relationship with Alan,] or I can find it out for myself. I’m good at that sort of thing, baby.”

He’d never called her baby before and he said it so seductively that the word went through her like a five-alarm fire, sending every nerve ending clamoring for things she could never allow. How she maintained her composure, she had no idea, but she managed it.

That last one tho: an overt stalking threat from a professional spy, no less, completely eclipsed by the reality-warping eroticism of getting called “baby.”

Anyway. Thaaaaat’s yer hero and heroine.

But what about the damn plot, you’re probably asking?

Well, it’s in there. Even though Beth isn’t really an agent – she’s just been through “basic agent training,” whatever the hell that is – Daddyboss assigns her to infiltrate the lair of a “dangerous” information broker named Prescott, presumably because it’s a great way to ensure those grandkids he wants so much.

So who’s Prescott? Well, we’re told he’s involved in the deaths of two foreign agents, but more than that he’s… unpatriotic and evil in, uh, lots of additional ways I’m sure. He’s a total threat, okay? Just… just roll with it.

Daddyboss breaks the case after finding a classified ad, in the newspaper, that begins:

Eccentric millionaire seeks gofer to watch stock trends, oversee market investments, and keep employer apprised of personal stock movement as well as market trends.

I did mention that these people are supposed to specialize in high-tech espionage, right? And that this book came out in 2007? How about the revelation that Beth – out of a whole parade of Goddard Project agents we’re made to read about, none of whom have any function in the story – is the only person there who knows anything about finance?

So Daddyboss bullies her into agreeing to be a gopher/mole for the brain trust who buys out a “Henchmen Wanted” section in the Washington Post, solely so the relevant ad can then be circled and dramatically tossed onto a conference room table attended by people who can “throw a knife to kill a mosquito at a distance” but who apparently don’t know the NASDAQ from the National Anthem.

Had enough plot? Good.

But look, national security or whatever is hardly the point here!

The point is that Beth will go to work for Prescott, so Ethan can pose as her boyfriend and pop into her/Prescott’s office on the regular to do the actual spying. (What non-abusive boyfriend ever does this?)

So of course this means that Beth and Ethan have to pretend to be a couple, and of course this means that they have to start going on sham-or-are-they? dates to get into character, and of course this means that Ethan simply has to examine every piece of lingerie in Beth’s closet, while she reluctantly-yet-wetly watches, because that’s “necessary. For the case” (yes, really!), and, and, and…

Honestly? I made it through the first few chapters, but started getting bored after the ellipsis-to-page-count ratio finally exceeded 1:1 on page 68. After that I just flipped around to see what, if anything, happens, versus how much of the book is sex scenes (much of it).

But the sex scenes! Are they hot, at least?

Well, turns out that Beth’s shocking! outrageous! appalling! fantasies involve getting choked handcuffing her dude and being on top, which… yay for her at least having that degree of sexual agency, I guess. Although she’s petrified by it. Since all she usually does is let various male characters push her around, squeaking in feeble protest, even this impresses me.

But it gets better: when they inevitably get it on, Ethan’s so into it he goes out and buys the cuffs himself! And then she totally tops him! Now, lest we forget, he’s still a Total Alpha Male, and there’s some nattering about how he’s not really domitable, and he’s definitely not actually a sub, blah blah, sure.

Still: his enthusiasm for Beth’s kink is almost enough to make you forget what a dick he is outside the sack. B’aww.

So, you’re reading, and reading, and it’s getting kind of steamy, right? And then:

“Suck it,” she demanded, her need making her voice harsh.

He laughed darkly and did just that, taking her entire areola into the heated wetness of his mouth. She had never known anything so intense. Pulses of pleasure traveled straight from her nipple to her womb….

He stopped suckling to nibble her, then he sucked again… then he upbraided her tender nipple with his teeth….

His thrusts were hard and deep, driving her to a second climax with dismaying speed.

 

Which brings us to the prose of Satisfaction Guaranteed. Now, I could probably write a whole ‘nother post just pointing out the grammar carnage, the malapropisms, the redundancies, and the clunking attempts at metaphor so abundant in even a small sampling of this book. Not that I need to. The characters are cardboard, the plot is an afterthought, and the central relationship reeks of coercion and gaslit acquiescence. All of which kind of outweigh any quibbles I could make over English mechanics, don’t you think?

…Oh, what the hell. Here are a few gems:

Her dad saw far too much as it was….

[One page later] And if her dad could not see that then he was blinder than she’d always believed. A man that vision impaired shouldn’t even have a license to drive.

 

And then there’s this part, which….

He crossed the room and brushed his thumb over her lip, disengaging it from her teeth. “If you don’t stop doing that, you’re going to end up bruised… or bleeding.”

She looked up at him, the sensual longing in her eyes so strong he had to exert iron control to keep from stripping her naked and showing her how much she really did want him.

What a guy. Look at him, threatening to – yet heroically managing not to – commit rape.

Look. We all know how this is supposed to go. Thrown together by Fate, plus the machinations of a power-drunk employer, the Good Girl and the Bad Boy are supposed to find a middle ground between their ostensibly clashing personalities so they can fall in True Love.

She tames his uber-Alpha ways by being “so serene and cozily domestic,” and in return he awakens her “inner vixen” and teaches her how to Seize the Day.

Accordingly, they have sexy times, adventures (although it apparently takes over 200 pages just to get to the job interview for this Prescott dude), and a big fat diamond ring at the end. Guess Beth gets past that whole “no dating agents” thing.

I ain’t sticking around for all that.

Not just because of the glacial pacing, but because I don’t want these people together. I want Beth to get a therapist, quit her obviously toxic job, and change the locks on her doors. I want Ethan to be an interesting villain, since he isn’t a likable romantic hero.

What I don’t want is to watch Beth blush and pant and ignore one red flag after another, while Ethan and Alan The Ex (remember him? Me neither) compare pissing distances, pausing only occasionally to whip out their (other) super-spy equipment. Like the “graphical interface computer.”

Yes, really.