Victoria Dahl
July 2009, Contemporary Romance
HQN, $7.99, 384 pages, Amazon ASIN 0373773900 Part of a series
Grade:
B+
Sensuality:
Hot
Lori Love is a mechanic in a small Colorado town. She had aspirations of studying international business and traveling the world, but her father was seriously injured in a barroom brawl and left in a semi-vegetative state. Lori returned from university to care for her father and after he passed away, took up his mantle as town mechanic.
It’s not what she wants to do for the rest of her life, but she feels stuck there by circumstance. Unfortunately, Lori is tired of wearing overalls and having greasy fingernails; she wants to wear a dress every now and then. Her friend Molly, the heroine of a previous story, helps her into high heels and soft fabrics and is excited to learn that Lori is looking for a little fling. All sex, no deep feelings.
Lori hasn’t formulated a definite plan or partner for this fling but in a funny turn of events, Molly’s architect brother Quinn volunteers to be her sex object since he’s also looking for lots of sex, little feelings himself. He’s notorious for getting lost in his own world to the exclusion of all else - including his partners - but as Lori says, he’s “hot and rich and successful. Poor baby.”
Lori has known Quinn for most of her life, but though they've always been friendly, they've never been close. She’s never had an out and out crush on him (apart from noticing his hotness and having a thing for his hands), but her attraction to him burns hotter when she finds out it is reciprocated.
I really enjoyed Start Me Up and its two main characters shone. Lori is a great contemporary heroine – she’s imperfect; a stubborn, proud dreamer, certain of some things, insecure about others, and has feelings that I could commiserate with. She holds tight to her independence - but not stupidly. Quinn is your typical romance hero in that he’s hot, rich and successful, but he’s also more self-aware than most contemporary heroes I’ve read who act as if they’ve been plucked out of Victorian England and shoved into a suit. He wants to protect Lori, but not in an overbearing way.
I love Dahl’s style of writing. Her dialogue between the two is fun without being overly witty and thus tiring. Not every line has to be a humdinger, thank you very much. Given that their relationship begins as a fling, the sex scenes are plentiful and very hot but without a prose of purple in the bunch, and not a cliché to be found. Yay! I don’t want to get all TMI on you, but let’s just say my cheeks got hot.
When Lori finds herself in danger and the couple have their Conflict, things went off the rail somewhat for me. I didn’t understand why Lori distanced herself as she did, but then (full disclosure) I’m usually on the hero’s side in these romances. So sue me. Following this, Quinn had a douche-bag, clueless Alpha moment which, as my bias will explain, I was quick to forgive. Since it’s Lori’s life though, she had to be sure she was making the right decisions, not all of which revolved around Quinn. Though the effect of this was to make Quinn suffer for a while, I appreciated Lori as a great contemporary heroine all the more. In addition, his suffering made way for a very romantic ending.
Start Me Up isn’t an A for me only because I would rather the story held more scenes between Lori and Quinn, particularly towards the end. I suppose what I’m saying is, I’d have liked the book to be longer, and if the big, bad publisher made this impossible, I’d have liked their relationship to be meatier, meaning Dahl could have made the novel into a fully character-centric book with no mysteries to solve (apart from the mystery of their lurve).
Dahl has another book to follow this one set in the same town and I’m already intrigued by the heroine. There was no heavy sequel baiting but I was hooked and reeled in nonetheless. I loved this one and I’ll be reading the next.
-- Abi Bishop
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