Review: Needs a little more "dirt"
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 7, 2014
“A Clean Romance” by Cindy Christiansen is a short story about a cleaning product saleslady who is mistaken as a maid from a cleaning service.  The story and the title are a type of pun because the author has developed a reputation for writing stories that are clean of sexual content and foul language.In this story, a young woman is selling cleaning products door to door.  When she rings the doorbell of an artist, he assumes that she has been sent by a cleaning service to help him tidy his house before his mother arrives for a visit.  His mother owns the cleaning service, and is a real stickler for white glove inspections.  He agrees to buy her products if she will help him get ready for his mother’s arrival.While I don’t want to give away the ending, I felt that the final resolution of the problem would have been better motivated if the story had a little more “dirt”.  By “dirt”, I mean research.  If the heroine had shown methods or remedies for house cleaning problems that are hard to resolve, the ending would have been more believable.When writing a clean story, there is usually something else that is used in place of love scenes.  It is an element that starts off mild, and becomes more complicated in much the same way that love scenes start with kissing and work their way up to being passionate.  It is something that makes the characters want each other more in another way.In this story, that element could have been cleaning problems.  It could have started with picking up the trash, worked up to getting a rust stain off of the bath tub, and culminated in removing baked on grease from the oven.  In each of those situations, the author could have shared a solution that the reader might not know about, adding an intellectual element, creating a heroine that has a strength or virtue, and giving the hero a real reason to retain this person in his life.For example, she could have shared the method of using hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to remove baked on grease from metal cookie sheets and bake ware.  Or she could have combined two of the products she was selling to create a new one.  Either of those solutions would have made the heroine look ingenious, smart and competent.  It would also have given the reader something to say “ahhh” about.  It would have made the plot a little more suspenseful if the reader wondered how she was going to solve a household problem that the reader has never been able to fix themselves.As such, the story is a simple, pleasant read.  It moves along nicely, and is a “feel good book”.  It is of the same quality as the author’s other books, including “Time Will Tell” and “Risky Seeds, Risky Hearts”.