Reforming the Playboy

by Inara Scott

January 13, 2014 · Entangled: Indulgence

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Erin. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

Here is Erin's review:

I didn’t find Reforming the Playboy wholly terrible, but I also can’t say it was an amazing experience either. Despite the fact that my notes are full of exclamation points and guttural words, my goal here is not to be overly negative. It’s too easy and besides, after a few days, I’m feeling more blah than bloodthirsty. So let’s just get started with it.

The book’s setup did not give me a good impression of the book. RTP’s beginning wasn’t just contrived, it left a bad taste in my mouth. To sum it up: Max and Kira are college sweethearts at RISD when Kira abruptly leaves and sends Max a Dear John email. Heartbroken, Max sends her a bunch of sexually explicit sketches of her, which she then trashes. The aunt who raised her rescues them and after she dies five years later, leaves them to Max in her will provided he come in person to pick them up. By this point, Max is hugely famous and rich but also suffering artists block. If he doesn’t come get them, the sketches go to RISD where they would be either displayed or sold.

Aunt Polly is depicted as a saint in this book. After being diagnosed with MS, she takes Kira in after Kira’s mom abandons her. Why this woman, who supposedly cares about her shy niece, would even consider giving nude sketches to first a man she’s never met and has a shady reputation and second to a public institution is beyond me. Kira states multiple times how humiliating it would be for anyone else to see them.

I also had difficulty believing that Max and Kira were anything more than fuckbuddies in college. They might have had great sexual chemistry, but evidence of an attachment that would essentially ruin them for future partners was not present in my opinion. Without that foundation, the rest of the book felt flat to me.

The characters were pretty 2-dimensional to me anyway. Max alternated between being kind and being an asshat depending on what the plot required. Kira was bland at best and a doormat at worst. She was constantly being manipulated and bullied by those around her. I also have little patience for the “You’re the love of my life and I’m leaving you and not telling you why” trope. At first, Kira’s reason is that her aunt’s MS required more care. Thankfully, the book elaborates a little, but even then, it didn’t seem good enough to justify cutting people out of her life. What I liked about Kira and Max was that they pushed each other. Mostly it resulted in bickering, but they were also frequently expressing my own frustrations with the characters.

While the plot sort of rolls along at first, it began to get more substantial in the back third of the book. There aren’t any surprises here. Of course Max’s artistic block is cured by Kira’s magic hoo-ha and of course they get snowbound (the book takes place in Colorado in February). At some point, though, the characters start to evolve and become more than the clichés and tropes they started out as and become interesting. Then the book ended.

This is the first book in a series set in a quirky little Colorado town called Passion Creek. I didn’t need to look it up in GoodReads to find this out. The fact that insignificant characters got full names, descriptions and a brief bio before disappearing for the rest of the book screamed sequel bait. I found it more distracting than intriguing.

I’m glad I read this book. Since it was nominated for an award, I was expecting something a bit better (I know very little about the selecting and awards process for the RITAs) so I was a little disappointed to read what I considered a lack-luster story.

A few final notes:

• I did like the use of art and the creative process in the book.
• Kira left college 2 months shy of getting her degree. I had major difficulty with this since I am a very goal oriented person.
• Max compares one of the characters to a soft-shelled crab retreating back into its shell.  I could be wrong, of course, but from what I’ve learned living in Maryland for a few years is that soft-shell crabs shed their shells and then are harvested before they have a chance to grow a new one. In other words, they don’t have a shell to retreat into. This inaccuracy ripped me right out of the book for a good while.