Book: Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Series: Wynette Texas
Dates Read: Jan 11, 2019
Medium: Audiobook
Overall Rating: 2 old fashion “good men”/5
I have this obsession with trying to find really good dirty explicit romance novels. As such, I end up trying to find recommendations for just that and this is how I ended up with this book. The recommendation was that “this isn’t your typical romance novel, but it’s a genuinely surprising” I feel like the person that wrote that must not read any books, ever, cause nothing surprised me in this book.
But what’s it about? Well, it starts with a wedding between the perfect woman and the perfect man and ends with the very imperfect best friend of the would-have-been-bride and that so-called perfect man living happily ever after in nosey and stuck up Wynette Texas.
The romance is explicit one or two times and then mostly becomes a side mention so the book is not erotica or anything, but there was a bigger problem with the sex. Most of it can be summed up in the quote that the women who was supposed to marry the perfect man say to her best friend who is not courting the guy “every woman should be able to experience sex with Ted Beaudine” wooooahhh lady, people don’t say that shit about ex-lovers to best friends who are now your ex-lovers new lover. Well maybe some people do, but none of the characters seemed like insane liberal sex enthusiasts that I could image that sentence coming from in a genuine sense. I did love (said sarcastically) that the main thing they bond over is both being spoiled brats when they were kids. So yeah, I shouldn’t have expected much. But I wanted it to actually be surprising and good. I really did.
The other problem with the book was the good old Ted was a ‘good man’ which means he supposedly did everything for everyone else instead of developing his own personality. To the point where he counted his partner orgasms, which he would throw back in their face. Ironically, many orgasms aside the main female protagonist is very unsatisfied because he is such a people pleaser and doesn’t have any passion. Which by the way is why she broke up the marriage to the Good Man and her Best friend by putting doubt in her friend that he would never make her happy cause of his lack of passion. But low and behold, after her only two-three month relationship with that very same man she falls in love with him despite his continued lack of passion. He does show one bit of passion throughout the whole story, which she then uses as a reason to really be in love with him. But overall, he’s not going to change, not really. Whatever I give up. Then came a proposal that doesn’t make sense, then the whole “then x amount of time later” they married. Okay, no need to build a real relationship, just tell us about the first 2 interesting months and then let us assume that that was enough to foster a good long term relationship.
I think I’m just expecting too much from the genre. A solid meh. 2/5
If you want enjoyable, yet quite smutty romance, off the top of my head I would recommend Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai (the story is so so, the smexy times are quite steamy) or any and all of Christina Lauren’s Wild Seasons series (Sweet Filthy Boy, Dirty Rowdy Thing, Dark Wild Night and Wicked Sexy Liar). Christina Lauren’s more recent romance entries are generally very good, but a LOT lighter on the smut. They have maybe one or two love scenes, and nothing too graphic.
I broke up with SEP after giving her far too many chances. The one that did it for me involved a guy named Bobby Tom and a psuedo-rapey scene involving his mother and the Mr. Burns of their town.
Sounds like I should pass on this one, too.
Between Teddy and Gabriel in Devil in Spring, I’m now cautious about the heroes in second-generation romances. Some of these sons are entirely too “perfect”, but fail to be interesting in any way.