Lead Me On - Victoria Dahl

Maybe I should have quit while I was ahead with this series. It's bad enough this book isn't about Helen and Juan, because a woman in her 40s and a Mexican man aren't interesting enough to headline a book. But I already hate Jane.

 

She will not shut. up. about her past and how she's pretending to be conservative and respectable. (Which was a blow as I was so excited when the book opened with her being so . . . the type that would make a guy wait four months.) Her whining about it is constant and all I can think is shut up shut up shut uppppppp. (Not to mention she was a teenager when she stopped being like she was and started pretending so, ew.) Honestly, what is the point if that is all you ever think of yourself and your family?

 

Even though she says she's been pretending for ten years, and is therefore not as she seems, her uncharitable thoughts about Chase predicated upon the way he looks and his job were seriously annoying. She thought such demeaning things about him with no basis.   That made me not like her even more. Though we aren't getting much of his POV Chase is pretty adorable. I wish he weren't such a "guy". He had asked her out on a date like a normal person because he thought she was cute and seemed interesting. After coldly turning him down flat she later decides that her façade has slipped enough that she can be like her former self for one night and calls him up to use him for sex (because he wasn't worth much in her eyes because of her snap judgments). I wish, once she made her intentions clear, he'd have said something about not jumping into bed with strangers and made her feel like a using ass. By this point that's exactly what I thought of her. But this wouldn't be an erotica "romance" if he would have walked away and not jumped into bed with her. Sigh.

 

They were already getting it on at page 52. (Twelve page sex scene.) While she was grinding on top of him she thought something like, 'This is who she really is. A woman who loves inspiring lust in strange men.' There was more to it than that but I may have blocked it out because, dafuq? Okay, a) gross, b) she was a teenager, seriously, again – ew, and c) dude, I can think of like three professions off the top of my head better suited to you and who you "really are" than this whole persona you've been pretending to be for the past ten years about which you will not. stop. whining. Really, it must be exhausting considering how much she's wangsted about it in the first 62 pages. I'm not looking forward to a few hundred more.

 

God, and what she did after the sex with Chase was just such an asshole move. He clearly didn't deserve that. Probably no one does. That's what clenched my hating her. If the hero had done that people would have been tossing the book across the room and screeching that he isn't a romance hero. I don't know if she can be redeemed for me, I doubt it at this point, but we'll see. I wish I could spend the rest of the book in Chase's head.

 

(Page 78 – Yes! He said pretty much exactly what he should have said to her about what she did. But unfortunately he let it go too easily. Even apologized when she started crying. Ugh. And for some reason he's still really into her. I still wish he'd ditch her and find someone better, but I know what kind of book I'm reading.)