Let's Get It On
The romantic clichés fly fast and furious in this collection of four interlocking, novella-length tales from the authors ofWelcome to Leo's, with the stories focused exclusively—and monotonously—on the efforts of attractive, successful young African-Americans to find true love and steamy sex. Food becomes the vehicle for seduction in Alers's "Love Lessons," when Tyrell Hardcastle, a handsome, 30-ish chef, hooks up with a local school to enlist students for a culinary project and ends up meeting the woman of his dreams, Viola Chapman, a gorgeous 40-year-old teacher. In Hill's "Lady in Waiting," an engaged but ambivalent couple ends up briefly separating to sample other potential partners. Jackson's "Irresistible Attraction" investigates the magic of instant chemistry between beautiful Sydney Corbain and Tyrell Hardcastle's twin brother, Tyrone; Ray's "Blind Date" tells how a woman's efforts to avoid a blind date propel her into the arms of a handsome local bachelor. The authors do a solid job coordinating their efforts and building on the foundation they laid inWelcome to Leo'sby using the same upscale New York restaurant as a meeting place. But the upwardly mobile buppies who populate these stories are scarcely distinguishable from one another, and their erotic moves prove wooden and uninspired.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.