A review by aggeliki_obsolete
Big Girls Don't Cry by Taylor Lee
1.0
[UPDATE: OK, I finished it. It doesn't get any better. I wish the writer used more synonyms of "shriek", instead of making me imagine everyone sounding like a banshee, whether they were men in combat or couples having sex.]
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I'm half way through and not sure I'll be able to finish it. It's that bad.
Apart from the fact that the description of the book made it sound more like a thriller/adventure, when it is actually a romance with adventure-like pretenses, my main annoyances are two:
First, the heroine, Lexie, is presented as a strong woman, who's been practicing martial arts for ten years, has eleventy hundred trophies and teaches homeless and abused women self-defense. She decides to investigate her brother's murder and all but chews the heads off a room full of police and military officials for not trying hard enough to solve the crime.
Then, she meets the hero, Jake, and from one paragraph to the next she is transformed into a snivelling weakling who gets bullied into a date, allows herself to be manhandled and handcuffed and her only protests are lines of the "you can't tell me what to do" teenage pout type. She never even tries to use one martial arts/self defense move on him. Not even once, when in the beginning of the story we see her attacking one of her young students just for surprising her and throwing her down during sparring. We get it, he's strong, hot and irresistible, but that is just ridiculous and insulting to both heroes.
My second annoyance has to do with Jake, who at first appears as a professional that knows how to handle his colleagues and the upset sister of the victim and who is determined to solve the murder of his friend, only to suddenly decide that not only will he protect Lexie and take care of her, but also that he's going to have sex with her. Yes, we get that she's beautiful and sexy, but at least give him a few pages of resisting these "I will boink her" thoughts for the sake of professionalism and respect towards the story and all characters involved.
In the end, what it comes down to is the same annoying thing a lot of romance writers do: The descriptions of the heroes' characters and personal attributes are completely different, even opposite, to their actual behaviour.
~~
I'm half way through and not sure I'll be able to finish it. It's that bad.
Apart from the fact that the description of the book made it sound more like a thriller/adventure, when it is actually a romance with adventure-like pretenses, my main annoyances are two:
First, the heroine, Lexie, is presented as a strong woman, who's been practicing martial arts for ten years, has eleventy hundred trophies and teaches homeless and abused women self-defense. She decides to investigate her brother's murder and all but chews the heads off a room full of police and military officials for not trying hard enough to solve the crime.
Then, she meets the hero, Jake, and from one paragraph to the next she is transformed into a snivelling weakling who gets bullied into a date, allows herself to be manhandled and handcuffed and her only protests are lines of the "you can't tell me what to do" teenage pout type. She never even tries to use one martial arts/self defense move on him. Not even once, when in the beginning of the story we see her attacking one of her young students just for surprising her and throwing her down during sparring. We get it, he's strong, hot and irresistible, but that is just ridiculous and insulting to both heroes.
My second annoyance has to do with Jake, who at first appears as a professional that knows how to handle his colleagues and the upset sister of the victim and who is determined to solve the murder of his friend, only to suddenly decide that not only will he protect Lexie and take care of her, but also that he's going to have sex with her. Yes, we get that she's beautiful and sexy, but at least give him a few pages of resisting these "I will boink her" thoughts for the sake of professionalism and respect towards the story and all characters involved.
In the end, what it comes down to is the same annoying thing a lot of romance writers do: The descriptions of the heroes' characters and personal attributes are completely different, even opposite, to their actual behaviour.