This review was originally written and posted in February 2014.

This book opens up with a playlist.  No, really.

Iris by Goo Goo Dolls

I Love You by Avril Lavigne

That’s When I Knew by Alicia Keys

Love Bites by Def Leppard

High on You by Survivor

Love Song by Sara Bareilles

In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel

Kiss Me by Ed Sheeran

Come Away With Me by Nora Jones

All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You by Heart

Anyway You Want It by Journey

I Love You Like A Love Song by Selena Gomez

My Life Would Suck Without You by Kelly Clarkson

Flaws and All by Beyonce

The Fighter by Gym Class Heroes

On the one hand, a lot of those are pulling up some high school nostalgia for me.

On the other hand, I don’t want to feel like a kid again while reading erotica.

On to the actual story.  Our MC Brooke and her best friend Mel are watching an ‘underground’ boxing match, more in the criminal sense than the literal sense.  Brooke is positively distraught at all the violence going on, but she’s only there to support Mel anyway, I guess that gives her a pass for going in the first place when she doesn’t like it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and noooww … the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the man you’re all here to see. The baddest of the bad, I give you, the one, the only, Remington ‘Riptide’ Tate!”

A shiver runs along my spine as the crowd goes crazy over the name alone, especially the women, and their eager shouts tumble one atop the other.

Ah, yes.  The old “turn every woman in the room into a slathering, sex-crazed cartoon in order to show that the hero is, in fact, sexually attractive.”

Because, you know, I wouldn’t be able to guess that otherwise.

Melanie loves men. Loves to sleep with them, stalk them, drool about them, and yet when she catches them, she can never really hold onto them. I, on the other hand, am not interested in getting involved with anyone.

And this tired old trope rears its head again.

Maybe the drinking game for this book should be “anything that hews to the New Adult ‘romance’ formula.”  And also “anything that makes me feel like drinking.”

\~/ \~/

My.

God.

Dimples.

Dark scruffy jaw.

Boyish smile. Man’s body.

Killer tan.

Give me five minutes on Netflix and I’ll find you 20 of those.

True to formula, Remmy is so hot that he makes our poor little not-interested Brooke get all tingly with the lusties like she’s never felt before.  Because apparently Brooke doesn’t watch TV.  Or look at advertisements.  Or go outside. \~/

We get a long, long description of his perfect body which…is mostly just listing off body parts. 

I can see his quads, traps, pecs, and biceps, all gloriously tight and cut.

Um…good for you?

I feel the need to look at some ripped bodies, because a listing of muscle groups doesn’t actually get me going.

Mmm, Speedos and cheesy B-movie catchphrases, my kind of night.

Remmy, of course, locks eyes with our leading lady from across the room.

My sex clenches tight

You might want to see a doctor about that.

“You little slut, Mel!” I cry when I recover, shoving her playfully.

I’m not going to explain why this book is bad.  I’m just going to drink. \~/

“Like you would have sex with someone like him. You and your OCD!”

Because…she’s a neat freak who doesn’t like stranger-germs?  Because her guys have to meet an exacting checklist?  Because she’s so particular about the steps leading up to sex that guys get frustrated and/or turned off?  Because she can’t stand to be spontaneous and sex has to worked into her schedule?

Even without pitching a fit over OCD being appropriated, that line still makes no sense without more information.

Remington’s opponent takes off his robe. The man is all beefy muscle, but not an ounce of him can visually compete with the pure male deliciousness of that “Riptide.”

Is one beefcake really that different from another?

Despite being totally turned off by all the violence before now, once it’s Remmy beating the shit out of someone, Brooke gets all hot and steamy.  Because…

…yeah, no, that doesn’t make sense.

My panties are soaked, and my pulse has gone haywire.

Yeah, you definitely need a doctor.

After the fight, there is yet more eyeball-action that gets absurd amounts of description.  I really think Brooke needs help.  She’s got some sort of severe damage to whatever regulates her body temp.

My legs wobble, and I’m left with the distinct impression this man wants to pound me next. With his cock.

This is probably why it’s not a good idea to forego sex for so many years.

If it makes you feel any better, Brooke, I think it’s a side effect of your genre more than lack of sex.

Brooke leaves to go collect herself from fresh air, and Remmy runs after her.

A warm hand engulfs mine, and the touch frissons through me as I’m spun around with surprising force.

“What the…” I gasp in confusion, and then stare into a sweaty male chest, and up into glowing blue eyes. My senses reel out of control. He’s so close the scent of him tears through me like a shot of adrenaline.

“Your name,” he growls, panting, his eyes wild on mine.

“Uh, Brooke.”

“Brooke what?” he snaps out, his nostrils flaring.

Basically the rest of the scene is Brooke’s nerves going haywire while she mistakes it for sexual attraction and also I think there’s some smalltalk going on in the background.

My pulse skitters as he lowers his dark head to set a small, dry kiss on my lips. It feels like he’s marking me. Like he’s preparing me for something monumental. That could both change and ruin my life.

“Brooke,” he growls softly, meaningfully, against my lips, as he draws back with a smile. “I’m Remington.”

I still feel his hands on the ride home.

…what, not even a scene break?  What happened?  He kissed her and then…stood there awkwardly until she left?  Ran off again?  Brooke got freaked out by whatever her body is doing and ran like a bat out of hell?  That’s an incredibly awkward moment, you can’t just cut it off without telling us what went down.

I don’t want him, or any man, period. What I want is a job.

Unfortunately, you’re in one of those books that teaches women that wanting a job is the wrong answer and what they really need to find fulfillment is a man.

But it’s been two weeks and no call.

I’m at the point where I’m starting to get into the mental funk where you feel no one will ever call.

It takes roughly one month of job searching for every $10,000 of income you hope to make, and that’s just a very rough ‘guideline,’ it can and often does take even longer than that.  Two weeks of looking is nothing.

“How could you give him my number? What do we even know about this man, Mel? Do you want me to end up murdered in some dark alley and my body parts tossed into some trash can?”

“That’s never going to happen to someone who’s taken as many self-defense classes as you.”

1) Don’t give out someone else’s number.  That’s just rude.

2) He was banned from ‘legal’ boxing and likes to run up and randomly kiss women, not exactly a safe bet.

3) You just watched him beat the shit out of two guys consecutively and both of them have been in more fights than Brooke, you really think ‘self defense’ classes are going to be a guarantee against a man who PUNCHES PEOPLE FOR A LIVING?

4) 

No, I’m not against having sex at all, but relationships are complicated, and I don’t have the emotional equipment right now to deal with any of it.

Perfectly valid sentiment.  I wonder how long it will take for the book to completely undermine it.

We find out via musing that Brooke ones tried out for the Olympics as a runner but tore her ACL during trials. She goes on about how this means she’s an utter failure and all her training is for naught.

…um, can’t you recover from a torn ACL? The internet is telling me that you can ‘return to sport’ after six months.

She says she doesn’t even know what she did wrong to tear it, which to me says “I am not actually that badass at running” because to get to Olympic levels you have to be all kinds of up on proper form and have a coach (or team of coaches) to tell you stuff like that. At the very least a doctor should have pointed to her video of the event (which there was one) and say “this right here, don’t do that again.”

But no, Brooke is over and done with that and now she’s into sports rehab and trying to get a job in that field.

What was she doing before now?  I hear ‘training in obscurity’ doesn’t really pay well.

The next day, the girls sit around and do nothing except talk about Remmy without actually telling us anything new.  He’s hot and has anger/self-control issues.  Booooring.

As they go back to their apartment, because apparently they were out and bout during all this, some random person shows up and delivers Brooke some backstage passes. 

…all he had was a cell phone number, but he skipped calling and went straight to looking up her address?  This is known to normal people as “a fucking huge red warning flag and overstepping of personal boundaries.”

Wait.  Backstage passes?

Are illegal fights that organized?  He’s been banned from sanctioned, professional boxing, and we don’t have a good read on what the “Underground League” is, but you can’t fight without being insured (for obvious reasons) and unsanctioned stuff tends to be quick and dirty and easy to break down in case of cops.  But apparently there’s 300 people at the last even and Remmy has his own twitter feed with millions of followers and basically if this illegal it is the worst kept secret boxing league ever.  What, do they have some dirty cops in their pockets protecting them?  Is it legal, just semi-professional?  I’m so confused.  I need a drink so I’ll stop thinking.

Also, I could really do without Mel and Brooke calling each other “slut” and “whore” all the time.

Naturally, like any female with working cyclical hormones, by Saturday, I’m at a total different point in my monthly cycle, and I’ve regretted over a dozen times having said I’d go to the fight.

…

… …

So, your claim is that your period made you do it?

And a drink just for good measure. \~/

A couple of new friends enter the picture, and one of them is a guy friend named Kyle.

he’s so sweet and shy with other women that he actually had to go pay some professional to take his virginity at twenty-one.

…pretty sure ‘sweet, shy’ guys get laid.

Also, don’t go to hookers in the US.  Just straight-up don’t do it.  The whole industry is rife with human trafficking, and anyone who gives their money to sexual slavery, or even takes the risk of doing that, is going to get my foot up their ass.  I’ve no problem with paying people for sex as a concept, if you’re going to do it, you damn sure better do your homework and find someone that you know isn’t being forced or coerced into it.  I’m not really sure how you’d do that outside of actually having a friend who’s a prostitute and knowing her life story beforehand, but yeah, don’t give money to pimps and sex traffickers or I will get as close as legally possible to murdering you as I can.

\~/

Also, ain’t nothing wrong with being a virgin, and a one-off with someone isn’t going to change anything.  I mean, it’s not like he learned how to connect with another person on an intimate level and can carry that information forward to new relationships.  Hell, I bet he didn’t even learn how to be good at sex.

The crowd in the Underground tonight

Okay, really, is ‘underground’ just an edgy name these guys gave themselves?

They get to the fight and Brooke goes backstage, where she runs into Remmy and there is more hot eyeball-on-eyeball action.

like I’m all dessert, and he has the perfect spoon to use.

If you know what I mean.

The fighter from the opening scene shows up (Hammer) and he and Remmy get into a mild pissing match over Brooke because of course \~/ and that’s the end of the chapter.

What a random string of events.  There’s no sense to the chapter break there, no feeling of completion or cliffhanger tension, and the events of the chapter were so…plodding that it feels like the author just went “I need some coffee, break time! *end chapter*”

I need some vodka, break time!

Oh, and least we forget:

I want to die because I swear to God he just ducked his head to smell me.