Review: Phone Kitten more that the Meow!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 1, 2012
Emily or Emma as the clueless men she encounters is an attractive but, Rubinesque young lady with a clerk job at St. Pete Times and even though she made more money working for a temp agency, her life long ambition is to be a writer.  After ten months as a copy clerk, she had an audience with the paper's editor and showed him a perspective column she had written detailing her efforts to change her life by dieting and working out with a trainer, thinking it might make a good special interest column for the paper.  Problem was that the skinny blonde, Dani, that was already writing a weekly column and who had been pretending to be a friend to Emily, had offered to critique her draft and make suggestions.  Not only did Dani not offer Emily any writing advice, she went so far as to steal Emily's draft column and published it as her work.  So when Emily showed the Editor her column, he immediately questioned her ethics and called in Dani who accused Emily of plagiarizing from her story.  Of course, the Editor (one of the guys who called Emily, Emma) believed the slender blonde Dani and lectured Emily about the necessity of creating her own material and then told her she could continue as a clerk but, wasn't ready for any movement into a writer's position.  Emily lost it and made a scene in the center of the office resulting in security being called to escort her out, successfully ending her job with the paper.  Her homosexual neighbors and friends were supportive and encouraged her to continue in school and just find another job.  The next days paper had an offer for a job as a phone sex operator and Emily was convinced by the advertised benefits, a signing bonus, incentives, flexible hours, insurance and 401K.  She called the phone number and was invited in for an interview by Taylor who as a tatooed Goth chick with every piercing imaginable, didn't exactly fit Emily's preconception of a phone sex manager.  The only question was whether Emily could talk dirty to guys or if her sheltered upbringing was too limiting for her to be successful in the business.  When compared to retail sales at Walmart, the choice was obvious. As you might have guessed, Emily was a natural.  The long side of the story is when Emily overhears information that makes her believe one of her customers was murdered.  Further, she makes it her business to investigate the case in an effort to bring justice to one of those wrong doers even though she felt the scumbag that was killed might have actually deserved it.  Emily was recruited to another phone sex business through a fellow worker that was migrating into the other business that actually was a more fair employer and didn't engage in blackmail to keep employees in line.  Emily refreshes her Nancy Drew detective skills and starts investigating the death of her former client.  She skirts the darker side of life in St. Petersburg and is rescued several times by one of her history classmates, Rick (who later turns out to be a police detective).  Emily's interviews with parties associated with the deceased draws the attention of the actual murderer and he takes several passes at eliminating Emily thus scaring her by failing to deter her investigations.  The humorous but feisty Emily leads the plot with her self effacing persona and ability to overcome every block with her persistence and strength of character.  A great story and a full stable of loveable characters.  I can hardly wait for the follow on stories of our detective and phone sex idol, Emily!Phone Kitten