Big Guns Out of Uniform

Contemporary Romance
The first is BAD to the Bone by Sherrilyn Kenyon. A fictional publisher, Rose Books, holds a sweepstakes in which the lucky winner gets to go to a tropical island and reenact a favorite romance novel. We are told they also reenact the sex scenes. Eew. Astonishingly, the other side of the island is owned by the Bureau of American Defense (BAD), an anti-terrorist organization so secret that only the President knows about it.

Our heroine is Marianne Webernec, a schoolteacher from Illinois who spends the first chunk of the story feeling sorry for herself because she’s not a tall sultry glamorous secret agent like her favorite romance novel heroine. She has won the sweepstakes and is off to the island, which she mentally refers to as "Sex Camp" (eew). She gets bored with the reenactment and the guy posing as the hero, who’s a bit too girly for her taste, and wanders over to the other side of the island. There she meets BAD agent Kyle Foster, who, recoving from bullet wounds, rusticates whilest blowing things up. Kyle figures out that Marianne longs to be a damsel in distress, so he kidnaps her and they indulge in lots of hot sex. They spend the week baring their souls to one another and fall in love - but circumstances intervene.

The sex scenes in this story are frequent and explicit, but they’re tamer than I expected. I didn’t find them erotic, perhaps because I was distracted by all the other stuff that bothered me. BAD to the Bone may have the stupidest plot I’ve ever read. I’m highly affronted by the heroine as a portrait of a romance reader: a woman with no self-esteem who lives in a fantasy world and wants to be rescued from her passionless and ordinary life by a guy with big muscles - even if it means acting out her favorite novel with a bunch of paid strangers. If that’s what authors think of their readership, I didn’t want to know it. I’m not all that thrilled with the hero, either; he’s your standard SEAL-turned-spy from a bad neighborhood, and he gets passionately aroused by how ordinary and simple and normal the heroine is. Right. I guess the author was trying to turn the dissatisfied-housewife stereotype on its head, but instead she confirmed it. Eew.

This was my first Sherrilyn Kenyon, and although several of her books have gotten very good reviews at AAR, this story does not encourage me to seek them out. Grade: F

Contemporary Romance
I then turned to Let’s Talk About Sex by Liz Carlyle, which is an improvement. Dr. Delia Sydney is a psychologist, professor, and host of an NPR call-in show about sex. She’s also burdened with debt, thanks to her recent divorce. She’s stuck with a large, ostentatious house (with a large, ostentatious mortgage to match). When she meets Nick Woodruff, a policeman and neighbor, he initially assumes she’s as rich and snooty as her house. One look at her breaking-down car changes that impression, and soon Nick is tinkering under Delia’s hood.

The love scenes here are extremely steamy, and the basic arc of the story - two very different people who start out to have an affair and end up with a lot more - is pleasing. The story also has a wryly funny tone that I liked. Still, it has its problems. Delia is a bit prissy for a sex therapist, at least at the beginning of the book; she’s loosened up a lot by the end. Nick’s a bit of a jerk, and at the end of the story he’s still a bit of a jerk. If the story were longer, there would have been a lot more room for character development, but as it is, it’s just a sexy story about two people I didn’t care about very much. Also: how does a cop afford Nick’s quality of life? Grade: C+

Contemporary Romance
Finally, I settled down to read The Nekkid Truth by Nicole Camden, an author I have never heard of. I hope to be hearing a lot more from her in the future, though. This story somehow combines romance and eroticism with suspense and a chick-lit attitude, and it’s just terrific.

Debbie Valley is the first-person narrator, and she’s a very unusual romance heroine in that she considers sex to be a recreational sport rather than a life-and-death commitment. I wouldn’t say that she’s not hung up about her sexual past, but she has a sense of humor about it, and that’s very refreshing. Debbie’s got a vulnerable side, though. Some years ago she sustained brain damage that robbed her of the ability to recognize faces, including her own. Debbie struggles with identity issues and with a nagging fear that she is incapable of commitment: if her lover’s face is always that of a stranger, how can she really love him?

Debbie is a successful professional photographer who, since her accident, has made the nude body her subject. She also does a little freelance crime-scene photography for the local police (do you think that’s how police actually handle their crime-scene photography? Neither do I), and has become something of a station mascot. Debbie is deeply infatuated with one of the cops, Detective Marshall Scott, but he turned her down when she tried to seduce him before, and she can’t face the thought of another rejection from him. But she can’t stop thinking about him, either.

I loved both Debbie and Scott (whom I just can’t seem to think of as "Marshall"). They are both very well-rounded characters, something of a miracle in a story of this length. Their frequent sex scenes are highly explicit and described in some very forthright language, which might make some readers uncomfortable. This isn’t just erotica, though; it’s romantic. The author is skilled at showing the personalities and insecurities of both characters in the way they make love. We see their relationship grow, and they both struggle with how to deal with Debbie’s "stupid disability." The suspense subplot isn’t very compelling, but it all hangs together, which is nice, and it doesn’t intrude on the relationship too much. The ending is happy, and I turned the last page with great satisfaction.

To say that The Nekkid Truth is the best erotic romantic novella I’ve read this year seems like faint praise. The fact is, it’s far and away the best contemporary romance I’ve read this year. I wished it were longer, not because its short length was a shortcoming, but because I wanted more of the same. Grade: A

I do recommend that you buy Big Guns Out of Uniform, dippy title and all. Skip the Kenyon, skim the Carlyle, and then settle down to enjoy the Camden. Who is this woman, and when is her next book coming out?

-- Jennifer Keirans

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