3.5 Smooches!

Synopsis

Stone Wright is Foreplay’s hottest act. While entertaining at the popular L.A. strip club known for catering to the feminine wild, the fever-inducing Aussie with the sex-saturated accent and moves to match is preparing for the audition of a lifetime on the sensational hit reality show Then Prove You Can Dance.

When retired principal dancer and ballerina Emilie Cartier stumbles into his dressing room, she’s still reeling from the one wrong spin that altered her entire life and obliterated her dreams.

After a humiliating public, albeit meteoric, orgasm—the kind so desperate to escape, it took over her body without her brain’s permission—and a second, more intimate and deliriously deliberate one, Emilie makes a deal with Stone: he helps her get her dancing mojo back and she readies him for his national audition.

But she insists he keeps his wily, wandering hands to himself and his dirty mouth shut. Of course, that’s going to be an extremely hard challenge—one of herculean proportions.

Emilie is not prepared for Stone—the way he spins her mind dizzy, rocks her body into sweet oblivion or dirty dances into her every daydream—and falling in love with him is so definitely not an option.

The closer Stone gets to Emilie, the more he realizes he’d do anything to make her his own. Problem is, he’s a real f*ck-up with relationships. And that means he’s dangerously close to becoming her next major f*ck-up.

What happens when all of the emotional layers—along with the stage props, their dancewear and every last shred of their clothes—are ultimately stripped?

REVIEW

“You’re fun to be with.”

I joke lightly, “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

He answers in a serious tone. “No, baby, I don’t say that to any of the girls.”

Kindred spirits, Emilie Cartier and Stone Wright have much in common. Both have sustained devastating injuries that have changed the course of their lives; both are now in Los Angeles in an effort to move forward to the next phase of their lives, whatever that may be; and both of them share an unparalleled passion for dance. Although they’re in different places, they both find so much more than they ever expected in each other. Stone is the spark that reignites Em while she becomes his muse.

“…the stripper and the ballerina. “

A deal is brokered, a goal is set and plans are in place. He has the opportunity to finally chase his dreams, and she will help him prepare for it. What she doesn’t anticipate, though, is what the experience of training him will bring to her. Being with Stone has brought her happiness, he’s healed her soul, and he’s opened her heart and mind to possibilities she thought were out of her reach. And during all of their late nights training, this incredibly sweet, romantic and dirty-talking Aussie weaves his magic, and the impossible happens – Em’s tattered and tender heart heals. But has she fallen as hard for Stone as he has fallen for her? When faced with a completely out-of-character, once-in-a-lifetime chance, will Em take his hand and follow through with the greatest risk of all?

“…we were born to be together – born to dance together.”

So…I started this book loving every single second. It was so, so funny! I’m talking tears streaming down my face, holding my sides, pain in my abdominals, uproariously laughing-out-loud funny. The non-romance portion of the plot was GOLDEN. Well written, with fabulously witty dialogue, characters I loved and exceptionally well developed. I adored every word of it. Awesome, right? Yeah!

Em and Stone were so ridiculously perfect together – sexy, silly and so natural – I couldn’t wait to see their romance bloom. I was eagerly anticipating where all of this dirty-talking, flirtatious foreplay Stone was dishing out was going to go. In my mind, there was no way it wouldn’t be anything but great when they got there, right?  <sigh>  WRONG. And the worst part? The potential was so great; it really could have been incredible.

In her attempt to carry Em and Stone’s witty banter from outside the bedroom into it, the author went too far, too over-the-top with the cutesy body part renaming. Oh, how I wished she had just dialed back – or preferably, dropped it all together. Those cringe-worthy gardening and feline references doused the heat the burned between Em and Stone, turning what would have been some seriously hot scenes into ones that were goofy and immature.

Without all of that juvenile talk, which came off more sophomoric than sexy, this book would have absolutely been a candidate for one of my top romantic comedies of the year. But, disappointingly for me considering how much I thoroughly enjoyed everything that happened outside of the bedroom, the sex scenes – of which there were plenty – were so overshadowed by the use of these words, that each time I hit on one of these references, I was taken completely out of the moment, out of the scene and out of the whole story. They were so disruptive, they made not only the scene, but the entire book difficult to get through, and it actually pains me to say that, because I truly did enjoy everything that happened in this book outside of the bedroom. But the sex – which between these two characters who were so organically sexy and hot together – was just so disappointing and uncomfortably silly.

Stripped could have definitely been a knock-it-out-of-the-park, grand-slam homerun. Unfortunately, for the reasons I stated, it devastates me to say that, ultimately, it just didn’t work for me. I’ve never been in this position before, both loving and disliking a book in such equal measure and then having to review it in a public forum. I want to both apologize to the author and then rail at her for it.

3.5 smooches for Allie Juliette Mousseau’s Stripped from me.

~ Danielle Palumbo

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