The Damsel In This Dress (Book Review)

Courtesy of Gulfer Ergin via Unsplash.

So, I just now finished reading this $4 romance novel called The Damsel in this Dress that I picked up at the grocery store the other night. I now remember why I don’t normally read romance novels.

It looked promising—the catchy title, above, was followed with the tag line “Helpless, she’s not...” and the synopsis on the back was written in a fresh style that told me the book might be amusing, and for four bucks, how could I go wrong?

Wrong.

Yes, there were humorous parts in it. But, the number of times the characters repeated the same thoughts of lust—oh, I mean “love”—like, three times a page, was enough to make me roll my eyes and say “Brother, not again. Would you just get ON with it?!” pretty much every ten seconds. My stomach was rolling too, I might add.

No, I’m not into steamy books. I like ’em clean, my friend. And the mismatch in expectations (the cover didn’t say “steamy”, trust me) was enough to ruin this book for me.

I think that some female comedienne should borrow the title and tag line and use it to write a funny commentary about the state of woman in the modern age. It had so much potential, but bombed out in content.

In case any of my readers ever see this book by Marianne Stillings and feel tempted to pick it up, I’ll save you the trouble. Following is the only truly entertaining thing in this book, and it was on the second-last page:

“Wait,” she said, touching her fingertips to his lips. “I have more good news. Daddy got a job!”

Soldier peered down at her. “Well, that’s great, honey. He must be really thrilled. But, well, given his, uh, condition and everything... I mean, he’s brilliant, but he doesn’t have any fashion sense, his social skills are pretty bad, he has trouble getting projects done on time, and when he does, sometimes they don’t work.” He shrugged. “What kind of job could he do where he would fit in? Who hired him?”

“Microsoft. He starts tomorrow.”

‘Nuff said.

---