Review: False. Advertising.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2014
Confession: I picked this book solely because of the cover. I mean, just look at it!  Sculpted man chest and arm, lounging in the sun, ripe for the picking....It has been a very long and very cold winter here in the northeast. I didn’t even read the synopsis of this book when I bought it. I just saw lickable man chest and went for it, hopes high for heavy flirting and steamy sex scenes to warm up my snow-frozen brain.Two words: false advertising.Our story begins with Reagan, a famous advertising model married to a famous Hollywood director. While at a party she is told by a location scout of a beautiful Victorian “confection” in North Carolina and decides to move there. She moves the very next day, leaving behind her husband and career. Once in NC, she discovers a sweet little town, a magical house, and a hunk of man, all of which she falls instantly in love with.It’s a sweet storyline with a brutal cliffhanger.Temptation Road is the first in a novella serial, and on first read I thought Ms. Lee had enough material in this one installment to make it a full-length novel, had she wanted to.  I thought it a bit sparse and the storyline jumpy, although I found the premise interesting. I hesitated to overly criticize someone’s work, so I reread the book last night after watching an episode of Sherlock.If you haven’t watched the tv or movie version of Sherlock, the title character speaks his thoughts in a quick and emotionless manner. A matter-of-fact retelling of facts. That is how Temptation Road is written. It’s a rather important detail I hadn’t caught the first time. How did I miss that? It changes everything.Reading this book in that matter-of-fact manner of retelling, the story isn’t sparse at all. It is very descriptive, in a concise manner. There is a lot of label naming, which I originally found pretentious but later it seemed fitting and not at all pretentious. However, there are some quirks and such in the writing that drove me bonkers.For starters, there is an exceedingly excessive number of run-on sentences. A plague of run-on sentences, if you will. Two complete sentences, joined together with a comma. Repeatedly. Maybe it was supposed to add to the ambiance, but it was just annoying. Distracting. At one point I had to put it aside so I could complain to someone about how damn annoying it was.Then there is the bit about “the Mary’s”.This house has always been owned by a collection of sisters named Mary. When people speak of the house, they call it “the Mary’s”. Shouldn’t it be “the Marys’” (plural possessive), rather than “the Mary’s” (singular possessive)? Perhaps the author meant it to be singular, as the requirement is the house belongs to someone named Mary, not necessarily multiple people named Mary. I am undecided which option makes more sense, but the reference is used regularly and it bothers me. A lot. I really think it should be “the Marys’”.Then there is the hunk. The obvious love interest of the story. Sure, he is gorgeous and large, as are most romance novel hunks.This guy, however, takes the “silent, broody type” to a ridiculous level. He doesn’t speak. At all. He hasn’t spoken since some family accident in his childhood, but that is all we know of it. It might not seem that off-putting but when the author has him practically pantomiming it just seems silly. How is pantomiming instead of speaking at all attractive?On to the cliffhanger. Reagan and the hunk have finally begun to hook up. They are naked, in bed, about to do the deed when they are interrupted. The partycrasher apologizes, then delivers his two-line mood-killing announcement. End scene. End book!And that was the only sex scene in the entire thing. They didn’t even finish! Worse, Reagan’s man was fixing the fireplace seconds before she jumped him, so his hands had to have been covered in soot. Those hands were everywhere on her, and her clothes, and her bed. Everywhere hands usually go in a graphic, romance-novel sex scene. Covered in soot. Ew. I keep thinking of the infection Reagan is going to get after that.Overall, it is a decent book but I am not certain I will bother with the next installments in the series. While the story is cute and there are allusions to the house being magical, I am not sure I really want to know why the Hunk doesn’t speak. It seems obvious that he and Reagan will get together and he will eventually speak again. Do I care enough to buy the next books?Actually, I do. I’m just a little miffed over the lack of sex after that steamy cover photo.