Review: Wow...I almost don't know what to say.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2014
Reading the Beauty of a Man and Woman was one of those rare, earthy experiences that you'll look back on and wonder how it all happened.I will preface this review by saying I read this first volume and the next eleven volumes directly after, in approximately 18 days, because I had absolutely no choice in the matter.In fact all those days after I hobbled my way through many sleepless nights just to get to the next "episode"  made it completely impossible for me to coherently review every book on its own merits.I can tell you that some characters, some books, some storylines, and some subplots were better written and more interesting than others but I found I couldn't stop reading them all long enough to process...truly.  One after the other I read each of the books in the series like they were crack.  Then I'd laugh, cry, get turned on, and turned off but, only a little, because almost every one of these wild, zany, perplexing, inappropriate, complex, and highly entertaining characters often had me hooked the moment they said hello.The one thing that bothered me were the many times I felt like the race of characters was being caricaturize but honestly I got over it by the fourth book and can even see how in ways it added to my enjoyment of some plotlines.Despite my own ridiculous intellectual insecurities about reading books that go down like baby food -- the BOMAW series (as it's called by those in the know) is truly a masterpiece of addictive soap operatic story telling, and the fact that it is a story that is also overrun with IR relationships and approximately 20 or 30 protagonists (a slight exaggeration) makes it far ahead of its time in this reader's humble opinion. Mercedes Keyes should be so proud of this body of work because while it may not be for everybody it is unique, special, and worthy of every accolade we can send it's way.