Dead Rising by Debra Dunbar

Dead Rising by Debra Dunbar




Well, one benefit from finding myself in this position is the part where I can explain a new-ish shelf. 'Creepy is okay because hot'. It may or may not correspond to what you, the reader of this review, think it might mean. Let's modify your expectations by noting that it is a shelf I, up to this moment, used on books I didn't want to read, and now use on this book that I do not want to continue.

The shelf is intended to be genderless, in that the creep could be any gender, and the 'other party' could be any gender. I've, as of yet, never used the shelf for anything other than creepy men, though.

The shelf is for something I've found pop up in romance books. Mostly heterosexual, and a lot of them seem to be new adult romance novels. And that's where the female lead character gets abused, beaten, shouted at, fucked up by, a man. And she takes it. And takes it. And . . . because she finds the guy to be hot. So . . . creepy is okay because hot. It's kind of the James Deen vs Ron Jeremy issue.

vs.

Deen made a fortune and a career in porn. Many of his roles involved him savagely beating woman. Women still seemed to drool over him, though, at least that was the impression given on the internet. Because . . . I'd no idea really until I started seeing this 'creepy but hot' thing going on in romance books. Ron Jeremy also made a fortune in porn. I have two understandings on the issue: 1) he, apparently, had an enormous penis; 2) women made ew gross sounds when they saw him.

So, imagine, if you will, James Deen in the role of Dario (the creepy hot guy in this book), and then picture Ron Jeremy in the role. I was going to cut and paste a scene from the book, but I'll just state it - in the book Deen/Jeremy is driving the lead female character, Aria, home (or back to her car, not sure which), when he gets a call. He stops in a very bad part of town, turns to her and tells her that he needs to take care of something and for her to get out. They fight, I mean physically, he removes the seatbelt from her body, opens the door, and thrusts her out of the SUV. She falls a long way down to the ground and lands on her butt. She's now injured. In a very bad neighborhood. He slams the door closed and roars off. People on the corner stare at her. And, before she is able to get back to her place, she ends up having to fight a very smelly guy who chases her and stuff.

That's not where I stopped reading. There are assholes in many books. Not a reason to stop reading. No. It's later. Before these events had occurred, Aria and Dario had set up a date for the next night. That night Aria is doing research when Dario turned up.

he looked like a sexy prime-time lawyer in a charcoal-gray suit with the jacket tossed over his shoulder. I stared at him over the back of my couch, stunned into silence both by his incredibly hot appearance and his nifty door opening trick. Was that a vampire thing?
...
I opened my mouth to invite him in, then snapped it shut once I remembered him ditching me in a bad section of Baltimore to walk home.
[she uses magic to slam the door closed in Dario's face. Dario uses his own type of Vampire magic to fling the door open, repeat many times until she finally invites him in when Dario just won't take no]
...
He smiled. It was one of those slow, panty-melting smiles, like the ones I’d seen him give his victims in pubs and clubs. I’m ashamed to admit it kinda worked on me, too. Everything south of my waistband tingled and my brain stuttered.
[she's now drooling and 'melting' for the hot creep but still tries to restrain herself]
“You dumped me miles from both my apartment and my car with drug deals going on less than twenty feet away, and a hooker getting beaten up in an alley a few blocks down. You’ve got some nerve showing up here tonight and thinking I’m going to go anywhere with you, let alone dinner.”

[whereupon Dario says something like 'you look hungry', her stomach growled, and . . . she . . . agrees to go with him on a date.

The 'being a creep is okay, you can get away with it, if you look like James Deen, not like Ron Jeremy' phenomenon.

And so I'm done. I just can't handle this situation. I'm pausing instead of DNF'ing, but I might never come back. Or I will. Not sure yet. I have, mostly, liked everything else by this author.


Rating: --

August 12 2017



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