Review: Entranced

Entranced by Nora Roberts
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF @ pg 242 (74%)

In this book's defence, it was an accidental purchase, and not something I'd have picked up if I'd known it was romance. I was unlucky in that the first Nora Roberts book I ever read was light-hearted and fun and so I thought she wrote contemporary, rather than romance. So that's on me.

But JEEZUZ.

Is all romance really this terrible? I mean, I like a good love story but what the heck was this?

I do like that the series stays in the family but follows different people. It's a neat idea. And I like magic and the paranormal. Plus there's a mystery. But all of this stuff is stomped all over so that two people who hate each other can be thrust into one another (see what I did there) and forced to play out a cringe-worthy 'love' affair.

The blurb: 'A missing child. A desperate mother. A private investigator running out of time.'

The actual story: Mel's friend's baby has been kidnapped. Despite her best PI efforts, she hasn't been able to find him so desperate mum turns to a psychic for help. Naturally the psychic is a handsome fellow and he and Mel hate each other instantly, which is apparently super hot(???) and leads to much kinkiness. Sorry, did you say there was a plot somewhere?

I mean, she's cynical and hot-headed, and he's super rich, so naturally they hate each other. Because, ew, a rich man, and ew, a woman who doesn't take shit. So naturally he forces himself on her and they have this super passionate kiss that definitely doesn't mean anything to either of them because, DUH, they hate each other!

I'm not even going to go into how much I hated the blatant sexism in this book. Or the same old, dude-forces-himself-on-girl-but-it's-totally-okay-because-she-kinda-likes-it BS. Not touching it. I will only get more mad and if this is what counts for romance these days I will continue to spurn the genre. Mel might actually have been okay if her tough talk matched her actions.

But the story is just so pathetic. The mystery of the missing child is solved early on, and then it just goes straight into Mel and Seb getting it on and hating on each other while they screw each other into 'melted flesh'. Or something. I'll be honest - I was skimming pretty heavily by this stage.

But of course there is more detective work to be done and the only way they can possibly detect is to pretend they're married. Because who needs his amazing psychic talents when you can just play pretend, right?

What utter rubbish.

Look, I'm not a romance reader so I can't really tell you if this is good romance or not. I can tell you it definitely didn't work for me (and I was totally generous about the last kinky romance I encountered). I can tell you there is an overuse of the word 'sexy' in the first 100 pages or so, and that if a man treated me the way this guy treats Mel initially I'd have kicked him in the balls so hard he'd never have to worry about his kids getting kidnapped, if you follow me.

Honestly, I'm proud of getting through as much of it as I did, and so grateful it was small pages with big text and easy to skim. If there'd been more on the paranormal side of things without it being turned into kinky sh*t maybe I'd have put more effort in, but that male lead was a total d*ck and the world has too many good books for me to waste more valuable reading time on trash like this.

Enjoy, you kinky bastards.

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