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Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Mandi. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.
The summary:
The last man on earth she should hook up with!
Poppy Spencer has discovered that there’s one thing worse than Christmas alone in her flat, and that’s spending it with Isaac Blair—her sworn-enemy-turned-reluctant-flatmate! And that’s not just because he knows all her secrets…but because his sexy-as-sin smile and taut physique are making her all hot and flustered—despite the icy cold outside!
Unless a casual hookup is just the thing she needs…? It’ll certainly break the simmering tension between them. The trouble is, with their history, this is going to be anything but casual!
Here is Mandi's review:
One of my favorite things about reading historical romances is stumbling upon all of the ridiculous anachronistic bits or the items/actions that are plainly in the wrong time period. So imagine my surprise and initial delight when I not only found something anachronistic in the contemporary romance Enemies with Benefits, by Louisa George, but that the anachronistic bit was the heroine herself, Poppy Spencer.
It honestly feels like Poppy stepped straight out of a romance written twenty or thirty years ago. She is scared of mice and dependent on men to (humanely) take care of those pesky intruders. She is an almost virgin who had sex just the once when she was eighteen years old and manipulated by her teacher; she’s not even kissed a man in the past eight years. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, she is the last non-engaged woman of her group and spends a large chunk of the book lamenting her singlehood.
By the second page she has already insulted all womankind, “Oh, and there was some woman crooning about not wanting a lot for Christmas. Yeah, right, said no woman ever,” and later on refers to her male doctor friend as a “definite catch” with “good prospects”. She also has the annoying habit of referring to her lady bits as “lady bits” or, even more frequently, as “her unmentionables.” I get that even in this modern day and age there are heroines with old-fashioned sentiments, but you don’t expect to find them in a book titled Enemies with Benefits that discusses casual hookups in the description. And you really don’t expect that type of heroine to be an OBGYN.
Yep. Our heroine is an OBGYN who frequently refers to her vagina as her “unmentionables.” I’m just gonna pause and let that sink in for a bit (imagine having that convo during your next annual exam).
So you can imagine how excited I was at the level of ridiculousness found in just the first chapter. And while there are definitely more moments of ridiculousness, usually in the form of outdated romance cliches including the ever popular snowball fight and laugh-out-loud ending, unfortunately, it’s really not worth wading through the glacial and torturous plot to find those tasty morsels.
Poppy is lonely as all of her flat mates have paired up and moved out. All except for Isaac, her brother’s old school friend who, despite being a successful international businessman with a bank account in the millions, (conveniently) needed to move in a few months ago. Fortunately he is out of town a lot because Poppy has never been able to forgive Isaac for (conveniently) being there in her greatest moment of need when she was eighteen. But too much alcohol timed with Isaac’s (convenient) return results in a kiss and “flushed unmentionables.”
Of course, Isaac has commitment issues, so a traditional relationship won’t work. But that’s okay because she hates him, always had a crush on him, never really liked him, somehow knew he was a good guy all along, and can’t stand him anyway (character consistency is not a strength of this book). So after half a book of why-don’t-they-just-on-with-it-already, our couple finally decides to get down and dirty with it (well as dirty as a book with an almost virgin heroine with unmentionables can get), no strings attached. Except both characters are already attached of course, and they just can’t admit it to themselves. Until they do admit it to themselves, only to deny it again, then admit, then deny, then finally proclaim it to the world.
I’m sorry that there’s not much to the plot summary, but there really wasn’t much to the plot. And, despite reading it just yesterday, my excellent memory has decided there is nothing else worth remembering. If the author had stripped away all of the boring chunks and just incorporated the ridiculous bits into a novella, then this would be a really fun read that I couldn’t recommend highly enough. But as it is, it’s just not worth having to sludge through everything–not even for an OBGYN and her unmentionables.
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I literally cackled with laughter when you said the heroine was an OB-GYN who calls her girl parts her “unmentionables.” That is hilariously bad. Excellent review.
As a pediatrician, I hang around a lot of deliveries and a lot of OBGs. None of them, male or female, have ever, in my presence, used anything other than appropriate medical terms. And I have had some detailed discussions with some of the lady OBGs. (Which is how I found the contraception that worked well for me and, now that I am older, the hormone regimen I love.)
I thought “unmentionables” is an euphemism for underwear, not for body parts usually covered by it? Weird. Maybe I should start referring to my genitals as “fig leaf”?
(Also, now I’ll have to come up with a different name for my hero/villain love story, since this one is taken.)
Reading your review reminded me of everything that annoyed me about this book. That, and the whole thing about her being self conscious about her job as an OBGYN due to lack of sexual experience. What was that about? “I need you to have sex with me, so I can be better at my job”. Yeah, that makes sense. But, anyhow, funny review.
I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but how you made fun of Poppy made me a bit sad.
“She is an almost virgin who had sex just the once when she was eighteen years old and manipulated by her teacher; she’s not even kissed a man in the past eight years. At the ripe old age of twenty-six, she is the last non-engaged woman of her group and spends a large chunk of the book lamenting her singlehood.”
I would probalby count as an almost virgin because I’ve only had sex once with a friend when I was eighteen (I had a crush on her and thought she liked me too but it has turned out that she only had sex with me to see if she would like being with a girl (which she didn’t)). I’ve never kissed neither guy nor girl since then (or before). I am 25, a lot of my friends have boyfriends and have/are getting babies and I often feel very alone and sort of behind and the classic “why does no one like me there must be somethting wrong with me”-feelings.
Like I said, I don’t think you mean to make anyone feel bad, and Poppy DOES sound like a really bad character. But there were just too many similarities for me to really be able to join in on the fun. Is a 25-year old almost-virgin really something to laugh about? If the answer is yes I will probably feel horribel, but I still really want to know.
P.S. I’m sorry if I’m bringing down the mood here in the comments. It isn’t my intention. It just hit too close to home. D.S.
@KM:
First, I’m sorry that you felt slighted by the comments about the heroine. That’s not how I want anyone to feel here and I apologize. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, or with anyone who hasn’t had many sexual experiences. I’m sorry that made you feel sad.
I think what the reviewer was objecting to here was the line up of very tired cliches about virgin heroines, plus the fact that the heroine seemed so disconnected from her sexuality (with her “unmentionables”) while also being an ob/gyn. It would seem to me that someone in that profession would know that sexual experience happens at any age in any order – and that “unmentionables” have, you know, proper names. 🙂
A 25 year old virgin is not in herself or himself comedic. But in this case, judging from this reader’s reaction, when that trope is lined up with many other exhausted characterizations and combined with being unaware or unexperienced of her own body/sexuality despite being an OBGYN, it creates a lot of bizarre and very direct conflict.
You, however, are totally cool, and I’m sorry that you were hurt. My apologies.