Sizzling by Susan Mallery

Sizzling by Susan Mallery

Book Three in The Buchanans series

Published February 2007

“She was met by soft, seductive music, lit candles everywhere and the man of her dreams walking toward her.”

If you didn’t roll your eyes or mentally fiddle with the punctuation, this may be the book for you.

Grade: D+

Official Summary from Author’s Site:

Reid Buchanan was always a fan favorite on the baseball diamond. A spiteful article about the former pitcher and current playboy questions his talent in the bedroom. And the newspaper's just the first bad news. Reid's grandmother Gloria's broken hip means she needs constant care—but Reid hired Nurses 1 and 2 for their bedside manner with him. So for Number 3 he chooses Lori Johnson, the first candidate who seems immune to his brand of charm.

Lori's never wasted her time with amoebas like Reid Buchanan. So why are her well-fortified defenses starting to crumble under the force of his sexy smile—and the kindness he shows her at every turn? There's only one explanation for the feelings flaring between them—chemistry. Chemistry so hot, it's sizzling!

I Say:

This was a book I took out from the library because of the title and the cover. Not much thought went into my decision. I expected it to be a light, fluffy, fun, escapist read. And in some parts it was. But other times it was contrived, awkward, or just inappropriate. So I’m pretty glad it came from the library.

When the book opens, Reid Buchanan, former baseball star and the hero of our story, is furious. A one-night stand wrote a newspaper article about how bad he is in bed and he is righteously indignant.

This was about revenge. About getting back at him by humiliating him in public. Because he was good in bed, dammit. Better than good.

He made women scream on a regular basis. They clawed his back—he had the scars to prove it. They stole into his hotel room at night when he was on the road, they begged, they followed him home and offered him anything if he would just sleep with them again.

He was better than good, he was a god!

I, for one, am unimpressed with this talk of Reid’s Magic Wang.( I was about to say “show, don’t tell” and then reconsidered my phrasing.) Furthermore, this situation is not the most credible. I know there’s all kinds of celebrity gossip out there, but it’s usually about weight, drugs, or cheating—it’s not actually an analysis of sexual performance…right? But here, it’s a huge plot point, as women feel the need to offer their own remembrances, whether to Reid himself or on national television. That squicks me out.

Also, one of the more disappointing things about the writing: Reid’s expository brag is followed by the thought

He was also completely and totally screwed

without the author or the character acknowledging the irony of their word choice.

Anyway, Reid is pretty useless. For way too long, he spends his time pouting about the article and all the unwanted attention. Also about how he’s getting blamed for things that go wrong, like his absence from events he promised to attend. Instead of investigating and firing his scumbag manager, for half of the book he whines about how organizing that stuff isn’t his job. Of course, the Love of a Good Woman encourages him to improve by the end…

When we meet Lori Johnston, she’s busy bragging about being competent at her job. And thinking about getting some chocolate after work, because “Chocolate always brightened her day.” Seriously? A heroine who is able to do her job and likes to eat chocolate. Really memorable, there. Of course, maybe that’s the point, since Lori is Just an Average Girl. She enjoys passing her time by resenting her sister for being “perfect” (read: more physically attractive) and resenting Reid for not wanting to have sex with her (read: she thinks that Reid would turn her down for sex and so she treats him terribly). She also resents herself for wanting to have sex with Reid, and keeps thinking things like

She was an embarrassment to intelligent women everywhere.

I agree, not because she’s attracted to Reid, but because she groups herself with intelligent women.

Exhibit A: Lori’s current job is to nurse a septuagenarian and provide home care. (Said septuagenarian is Gloria, Reid’s grandmother, which is how the Average Girl meets the Former Sports Star with Magic Wang.) One day, she goes to work and this happens.

Lori was startled to find a woman lurking on Gloria’s front porch. In this upscale part of Seattle, the houses were mansion size, the lawns perfect and no one lurked.

“Can I help you?” Lori asked…While the woman was perfectly well dressed and seemed normal, Lori had a bad feeling she couldn’t explain.

Sweetie, you mentally described her as “lurking.” Do you not know the definition of the word you just used?

Exhibit B: Reid comes to visit Gloria when Lori is around doing nursing things. He tells them that his brother is here.

A second man walked into the room. He looked enough like Reid for her to be able to guess their relationship.

Seriously, Reid JUST told you that’s his brother. You don’t need to guess.

I’m being a little harsh on Lori. It’s probably not her so much as the author. She appears to have just thrown this story together without paying attention to things like logic and consistency. For example, in one scene, Lori is trying to raise her blood sugar and asks Reid to get some chocolate for her. He refuses, insisting she needs something healthier, and makes her a quesadilla. A quesadilla. Where three of the four ingredients are a flour tortilla, cheese, and sodium-laden salsa. Let no one think I am in any way criticizing chocolate or quesadillas. The issue is that this quesadilla isn’t that much healthier than a few pieces of chocolate! To make matters more frustrating, in a later scene, Reid shows up with a junk food spread and Lori berates him for it. Make up your mind, please, Ms. Mallery—which one insists on healthy eating?

I’ve spent most of my time picking at details, I know. But this book is so shoddily constructed, and I don’t want to deal with the plot. It’s pretty predictable. Lori gets Gloria to stop being a dragon and start being nice to people. Lori complains about Reid not wanting to have sex with her, and they have sex. (At least the love scenes are decently written, though for a book that talks about sex so much, they’re not very intense.) The gorgeous sister treats Lori to a makeover. Blah, blah, blah.

I actually came to like the book better as I read it. Lori’s and Reid’s reasons for staying apart were so contrived, once they got together things like dialogue and plot got more believable and Reid starting being a kind-of decent human being and Lori stopped being so resentful. And I got used to the sequel bait/prequel-related exposition. But then a major event happened 17 pages from the end. A major, dark event, that completely threw off the tone of the book. So major and so dark that it needed more resolution and it made the sudden, thrown-together ending insulting.

Bottom Line:

If you want your inner editor to get some practice in, or you haven’t had the pleasure of reading well-written romance, or you really like rolling your eyes and scoffing, go for it. I'm going to go back to reading Ruthie Knox contemporaries.