Review: For the Love of Mollie
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 09 9, 2010
This review contains spoilers.Mollie has it bad for JC, who has the hots for Suzy, who is Mollie's best friend and clueless that JC has the hots for her so she pushes Mollie to get it on with JC.  JC likes Mollie as a friend and for some reason that is never explained hasn't made a move on Suzy, but does lots of mooning over her.  Mollie joins a fitness club because she is overweight and out of shape presumably so she will be worthy of the dreamy JC.  We know that Mollie is miserable and suffers from low self-esteem because she whines about it incessantly to anyone who will listen and, man, did I ever feel sorry for them.  And now we meet the hero Conner, Suzy's cousin, gym owner and fitness instructor, owner of a muscle-bound hardbody, who falls into instant lust with "curvy" out-of shape Mollie. Mollie falls hard for Conner's manly form, but knows that her "curves" and the fact that she sweats will turn him off because he is surrounded by evil, predatory, size 2 bimbos who sport fake, pointy nails. (That's how we know they're evil.)  Conner handily seduces Mollie. They have sex, a lot of sex.  Next we get a double Big Misunderstanding followed by makeup sex, the setup for the Suzy/JC sequel, and the HEA.  It's all very high school with everyone running around having secret convos about who likes whom.I hardly know where to begin with the problems I had with this book. If you want to put a plus-size woman with a hot guy, fine, I can buy that.  But it strains credulity to think that a man who has dedicated his life to fitness would lust after a woman who is carrying around enough extra weight to have rolls of flesh and shortness of breath. He doesn't want her to lose weight even though her health is adversely affected and she WANTS to shape up. When Conner's reason for wanting Mollie to stay chunky is revealed, my eyes just about rolled out of my head. Bad agenda, Conner. You need therapy.About those sex scenes. I did not enjoy reading them and I am a fan of well-written erotica. The author must have gone to The Big Golden Book of Euphemisms for Ladyparts.  The overuse of the term "weeping flesh" made me worry that poor Mollie needs to see her gyno, stat.The dialogue between the girlfriends...what can I say...unnatural and jarring. Exposition is clumsy, phrasing is awkward, information is delivered via dump truck. The writing is so painfully amateurish that I had to force myself to finish it.  The best thing I can say for this novella is that it's mercifully short.