Pearl's World of Romance - Reviews with a Passion: Bad As She Wants to Be

August 1, 2007

Bad As She Wants to Be - Thea Devine

5:59 PM |

She's gone from rags to riches....
Now she's a good girl gone bad.

One hot summer's day, everything changes for Frannie Luttrell after she rescues rich, young Marianne Nyland from drowning. An innocent small-town girl from the other side of the Bar Harbor tracks, Frannie is rechristened "Frankie" and swept into Marianne's glamorous world of wanton sensuality and expensive fun. Soon she is enjoying decadent pleasures beyond her wildest imagination with any and every guy she desires—except for the man she really wants, the ever-aloof Dax Cordrey, who disapproves of her new, indulgent life.

Offered a job as Marianne's personal assistant (aka permanent party pal) in New York City, Frankie and the insatiable Marianne hit the town on exotic nightly sexcapades, fulfilling their wildest fantasies. But when Marianne is found dead—and Frankie is named her sole heir—gossip flies like wildfire and a steamy sex tape featuring the Cinderella heiress suddenly appears. Deciding to make the most of her fifteen minutes of fame, Frankie acts the part of a publicity princess—while trying to prove to Dax that she's not the scandalous vixen she's been made into. She's only as bad as she wants to be...for the right person.

I hesitated for quite some time with this book, first whether I should buy it and my curiosity got the better of me, so I did.
Then whether I should take it with me on holiday and again curiosity won and finally if I really could write a review on this book. I decided to do it anyway because every book deserves a review, even books that I do not like.
But there's actually not much to review except for sex, a lot of meaningless, cold sex. And of course that's to be expected in an erotic romance but I must say there was little erotic or romantic to it. And although I like a good erotic scene in my books and not much really bothers me, the scenes in this one really did. They were so on automatic pilot, so cold and emotionless, some of them actually made my skin crawl and almost all of it was just straightforward (vanilla) sex, but still....

There's a hint of a story that can be summed up as Frankie (poor girl) saves Marianne (rich girl) from drowning and to reward her Marianne offers her to show her and let her live the life of the rich for the rest of the summer. After a few years Frankie goes to live with Marianne in New York and spends her days and nights going from one raunchy sexfest to another. Meanwhile she's in love with Dax, who is also part of Marianne's entourage but does not involve himself in her sexual escapades and he wants nothing to do with Frankie because of her lifestyle. He tries to warn her that Marianne is no good for her but she doesn't listen.
Then Marianne ends up dead and Frankie is her sole heir. The press has a field day when more and more details of Frankie's depraved lifestyle leak out.

The end is quickly scrapped together to create a lousy explanation of the course and why of things and events and there's a small hint of Frankie and Dax's HEA but that's it.

Very unsatisfying and not what I expected from an erotic romance at all.
But of course not all authors can capture the exquisite balance between erotica and romance to create a story that's both hot and emotional. In this case I'm sad to say that it was neither.

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