Perception, me, and Erin McCarthy's Flat Out Sexy

This is not a traditional review. I put off writing about Flat-Out Sexy because there wasn't much I could think of to say about it. A decent introduction to the series, interesting bits of NASCAR stuff here and a story that made sense. Woohoo. Don't you wanna run right out and grab it? It's better than I'm making it sound, buut something happened last night that made me re-evaluate how I saw the book.

An online friend of mine is a very talented artist and she's working on drawings for a new show. She showed me a rough draft of a take on Red Riding Hood and I said, in my own bluntly honest way, "I love it all but the nose. It's disproportionate." She's known me for a while so instead of being all "well, screw you and the broom you flew in on," she just said, "Thanks. But some people do have big noses."

And I thought about that statement. I enlarged the picture. Looked at it. Shrunk it. Looked at it again. And came to the conclusion that I still felt it was too big. However, I had to question why I felt that way. I realized that the rest of the drawing is perfect. The clothes are gorgeous, the background is evocative, and the feeling of wariness that the subject is experiencing just wafts from the drawing. Her face is beautiful, her eyes seem real, and then there's that nose. I've seen a lot of my friend's work and I expect every new piece to be beautiful. To have a so-called ugly element was jarring to me and my assumptions of what her work should be. In short, my perception of what I thought the work should be colored how I looked at it and, you know what? Some people do have big noses.

In Flat-Out Sexy, the hero, Elec, was a dumbass teenager and wound up with a STD. It wasn't caught in time and he wound up sterile. He can't have kids. He wants 'em, but he can't have them, which is why he views Tammy and her kids as a perfect situation for him. I really liked Hunter and Parker. In fact, in a perfect world, they'd get their own books someday. Parker, her son, reminds me of Harry from Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me, but I digress. McCarthy doesn't make light of Elec's sterility, but neither it is a big deal. It's just part of who he is and the life he has. If one of my friends came to me and said, "This guy I've been dating for a while just told me he's sterile," I wouldn't tell her that it's a deal breaker. I'd tell her he's clearly serious about her and she needs to think hard about if she sees a future about him. Of course, if they'd been dating for a week, I'd tell her to make him wear a condom anyway.

So where am I going with this? Well, I realized that, as I was reading the later books in the series, I was expecting the announcement that Tammy was pregnant. By Elec. Who McCarthy made quite clear can't have kids. WTF, self, WTF? I suspect the problem here is that Elec clearly wants kids and therefore my subconscious feels that a miracle should happen. I mean, I didn't have a problem with Cal and Min deciding they never wanted kids. I was agreeable to the idea and Bet Me is one of my favorite books. However, it appears that my perception of a fictional happily ever after is that the main characters, who've I become invested in, get whatever they want. In Elec's case, this means kids. McCarthy does an excellent job of demonstrating the relationship between Elec and Tammy's kids, and she continues to build on that in the later books. He's a natural born father and he should get a baby if he wants one, dammit! Yet some people have big noses and some people can't have kids. Facts of life. You take the good, you take the bad... (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

To boil it down, apparently my perception of art, whether it be a line drawing or a book, is that it should be better than reality. This makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I've always demanded a logical framework for the books I read. I spent about fifteen minutes once, figuring out how magical powers could be genetically passed down the female line. I made one of those chart things and muttered to myself things like "it would have to be recessive on the x chromosome and the father would have to be a carrier with a similar genetic lineage, but obviously enough generations removed from the original population to avoid inbreeding." I did all that for magical powers, but my view isn't broad enough to accommodate cute girls with big noses or sterile heroes who want kids.

I didn't have much to say about Flat-Out Sexy when I first read it, but it proved to be the catalyst for a dose of self-awareness. This is why I love romances. They're about all different kind of relationships and if you look hard enough, you can always find some truth buried beneath the fiction.

Review: Hot Finish by Erin McCarthy

Hot Finish by Erin McCarthy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm giving Hot Finish 3 stars. It would probably have been less, but I don't want to torpedo the book's rating. The main reason I feel this way is the book's very first sex scene. I didn't like it. I would go so far as saying it affected my opinion of the characters. It's not that I thought they weren't a good match, but I didn't want to hang out with them. I didn't have a problem with Suz or Ryder in the first two books, but their interactions here rubbed me entirely the wrong way.

Ryder calls Suz a 'sexy bitch' after oral sex and McCarthy writes:

"And he used to call her sexy bitch all the time. It was a term of endearment some women might not like, but she loved it. It had told her that Ryder got her and her sense of humor, and he always said it with a grin, a satisfied smile, or an indulgent exasperation." -page 110
This is one of those times when I understand what the character is trying to convey, but I don't get it. I don't understand it. I think it's demeaning and it doesn't even happen again, although they have sex multiple times later on in the book. So why include it at all?

In addition, I found the sex scene between pages 113-119 to be jarring. I think the problem was that Suz and Ryder are basically an established couple. Sure, they're trying to find their way back to each other, but they already have a comfort level as a couple that allows them to be, um, a tad more raunchier than you would expect to find in a non-erotica romance.

Their communication throughout the book was awful. Suz was very defensive and seemed to treat Ryder worse than he deserved. Ryder seemed bewildered most of the time, like he had no idea what would set Suz off or what to do about it. And I'm sorry, and maybe it's because I'm single, but the big fight & the reason behind it? Suz was running scared and latched onto it as a pretext to extricate herself. Frankly, I found it to be rather immature behavior.

Hot Finish follows the other two books chronologically, so it takes place during NASCAR's off-season. I didn't know NASCAR had an off-season and I also don't know what "intensive training for Daytona" (pg.39) entails. I would've liked to find out. Aside from Ryder's profession as a driver, there was really no other 'sporty' element to the book. It's disappointing all around, but I'm willing to acknowledge that maybe after the awesomeness that was Hard and Fast, Hot Finish simply couldn't measure up.

Review: Hard and Fast by Erin McCarthy

Hard and Fast by Erin McCarthy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have mad love for this book and it boils down to one thing: the hero, Ty, has dyslexia. He can barely read. Ty has created workarounds to hide this fact and relies heavily on his assistant to cover his ass. Yet it's crystal clear, just by virtue of how logical his workarounds are, that he's intelligent. He just can't read. The only other book I've read that featured a hero who couldn't read is Skin Heat by Ava Gray and that hero had mad scientists muck around in his brain (Percy Jackson doesn't count because he can read in Ancient Greek). No, Ty is just a famous, sexy, modern-day NASCAR driver who simply can't read that well.

Ty hides this fact because he's ashamed of it, which I totally understood, given his fame in this day and age. However, I felt like he doesn't dwell on it. He accepts it and moves on with his life. Part of Imogen's (the heroine) appeal for him is her intelligence. Ty feels his dyslexia makes him her inferior, but he goes for her anyway! He doesn't let his disability stand in the way of something he wants. His insecurity regarding the dyslexia does eventually trip him up, in true romance novel fashion, but in the end, he handles it like a man.

Imogen is indeed crazy smart and I could relate to her, especially her angst over her thesis. I loved how honest she was and her disdain for any kind of game-playing. There were several points where McCarthy could've fallen into romance cliche, but she skillfully avoids it by having Imogen using logic and good communication skills. There have been countless times when I've rolled my eyes at some spectacularly boneheaded move on the heroine's part, like not telling the hero about that phone call from that guy or pretending she can do something when she can't. Imogen is better than that.

I would have liked to seen just a bit more on behind-the-scenes on the NASCAR front, although I loved the scene where Ty takes Imogen to the garage to see his car. In addition, the only real conflict comes rather close to the end of the book and, therefore, gets wrapped up fairly quickly. Still, I highly recommend this book.