Review: No Stranger Danger Here
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 7, 2012
It's incredible just how far the human species has evolved. Over the course of thousands of years, male and female have come together due to factors such as weather, heat, hunger, community, and so forth and have somehow managed to populate the planet.Somehow, the intangibles of what attracts one human being to another have survived---and thrived. Sandra Ross acknowledges this in her book "Strangers Just This Night: Sweet Erotic Romance."In the story, Jessica is an auburn-haired beauty with an hourglass figure and a smoldering sexuality that surges forth from her very being. She knows she is attractive and consciously desires to find a man of similar qualities and stature. She is sitting at a bar and enjoying a drink while playing the unspoken dating-mating ritual with countless men, all of whom seem to be silently vying with one another for her attention. She is polite, but simply does not feel an instinctive connection with any of them---until she casts her eyes upon Logan, a dashing individual "with longish black hair and piercing blue eyes" (ch. 1). The timeless soupcon of looks, pheromones and sexual desire within Jessica merge and bubble to the surface, and manifest themselves with steady eye contact and "a slow, sexy, welcoming smile with her seductive bee stung lips" (1). Ross puts her keen eye for detail to good use in "Strangers" with her clever, descriptive wordplay and lets her readers visualize the setting that unfolds: Jessica's dress; the bar where she is sitting; the interactions with the bar patrons; and so forth.As I read "Strangers," I wondered about the qualities in a man that the protagonist is seeking. Besides the obvious (good looks, virility, erudition and education), what else would possibly draw Jessica---or any woman for that matter---to a particular individual? Why is it that some women are attracted to intelligence over looks, while others appreciate and bask in the presence of an Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque type? Why do some women favor nerds while others find love and attraction with bad-boy archetypes?Social scientists have struggled for years to determine what universal, underlying qualities stir emotional and sexual passion in women and men. The fact is, human beings are such complex creatures loaded with numerous unpredictable emotions and attitudes that their individual agendas cannot be accurately measured to any particular outcome.What is known, however, is that people are not static creatures. Personal experiences shape and influence how we react with our immediate environment. And who we are as adults are entirely different from when we were teenagers, just as we were different people as small children. Were these physiological and emotional changes to never happen, perhaps the human race would be nowhere near as diverse as we know it today.Ross has written "Strangers" as an example of how the mysterious dating and mating rituals among humans occurs. We read about the developing relationship between Jessica and the mysterious Logan evolve as they play out their roles that have managed to sustain the survival and growth of human beings over tens of thousands of years."Strangers Just This Night" provides a good read and a well-crafted storyline.