See Jane Score

- Rachel Gibson -

Fun read, despite the plethora of romance cliches - I like the sports background for some reason.

One cliche that absolutely drives me insane though is the type of character Jane is - the sexless female who dresses like a nun, blushes over the fact that hockey players are naked in a locker room and, despite being totally comfortable writing about dating and writing erotic fiction for a mens' magazine, is totally clueless and/or inert in her own romantic life. BORING!

One of my favorite contemporary romance reads recently was "Talk Me Down" by Victoria Dahl, largely because the heroine - Molly - was the total opposite of all these cliches. She liked a guy, so she let him know it. She enjoyed sex without apologizing for it. It's just so much more realistic to me than someone like Jane making it to the age of thirty without caring and/or doing anything about the way they look or appear to the world until a guy says something about it, bringing about a magical transformation into a high fashion sex goddess. Or, if this is the trope the author is going to go for, I wish they would inject some reality into - for example, how the hell is Jane, who customarily wears Doc Marten's, so comfortable in the high heels that accompany her infamous red dress? In reality - she'd have a hard time walking in them and want to kick them off before the night is done. Little things like that just inject a bit of reality into the situations, and make it much easier for me anyway to enjoy the overall story.

All that being said, Rachel Gibson is really good at creating a three dimensional world that the story takes place in and I did still enjoy the story for the most part, even if the obligatory wrench in the works was mostly a non-event. Cliched doesn't always equal bad, I guess!