Polly’s Perilous Pleasures 
Well, I read Polly’s Perilous Pleasures by Daisy Dexter Dobbs.
As those of you who visit my blog regularly will know, I was rather looking forward to reading this book, and to be honest, everything was going swimmingly until about page 157. Sigh.
I can’t be arsed doing my standard blurb, so this is the official blurb from EC:
Busting at the seams after months of feeding her face with chocolate, untold carbs and a gazillion calories, Polly Patrick is on a mission. She has just three months to lose weight and get in shape before a very special reunion.
Nikolas Kokoris, Polly’s personal trainer, is determined to help the sassy, full-figured beauty attain her goal—if his inappropriate, chronic case of lust doesn’t kill him first. After three excruciating months of watching her generous breasts jiggle and bounce, and that enticing bottom swing and sway, the handsome Greek is about to detonate.
With hot sex at the forefront of Nick’s thoughts, he doesn’t need exercise to feel the burn.Of course, things aren’t always as they seem. Nick has no idea that Polly’s been plagued with highly improper thoughts of a distinctly carnal nature about her charming personal trainer.
But that’s about to change…A seemingly innocent bottle of ouzo, a hilarious case of mistaken identity and Polly’s hazardous penchant for role playing all have a hand in turning life as they know it upside down.And oh what a wild ride!
The first half of the book was really good, it was a witty, campy romp, that didn’t pretend to be anything else. Polly was rather hilarious as the chocoholic heroine, who would have sold her granny for a box of Godiva’s, and Nick was likeable as the buffed-up Greek super-stud, who falls in lust with the overweight chick.
I liked Nick because there was nothing irritating about him. Does that make sense? He wasn’t moody, and arrogant, or an arse-hole, which is always a plus in my book.
I liked Polly because she was somebody who I’d be friends with if she was real. She was funny and heart-warmingly flawed.
Daisy Dexter Dobbs has a good writing voice, and although there wasn’t much happening plot-wise, you still wanted to carry on reading, which, with my attention span at the moment, is a very good thing.
Like I said before, it was quite humorous in the beginning, and there was a certain scene, that anybody who’s read this book already, will appreciate for it’s comedic value. It was one of those jaw-droppingly embarrassing moments, that can only happen to a heroine in a romance novel.
Now that I’ve got all the nice stuff out of the way, I’ll tell you what I didn’t particularly appreciate about the book.
If Polly’s Perilous Pleasures had ended at page 157, I would have been happy, and this post would have been very different. But unfortunately for me, there was more.
The thing is, the little conflict that was there, was resolved by page 157. The rest of the book was pure fluff in my opinion. Just lots of meaningless words geared toward meeting the targeted word count. Or at least that’s how I felt. I know you’ve all read books like that before.
For those of you who read the book already, I’m sure that the ending must have left the same icky taste in your mouth that it did in mine. I can’t say what happened without major spoilage for those of you who want to purchase the book, so I’m going to refrain on this occasion.
Although the first half of the book had been well written, witty, and lots of fun, I got the feeling that the author had run out of ideas half-way through, and thus seemed to introduce some outrageous events into the story, in order to divert the reader’s attention from what was a generally a poor second half showing.
Even the dialogue, which had been well-executed in the beginning, seemed to lose it’s way. In fact, it became just plain silly.
The dialogue during the sex scenes were the most excruciating. I ended up skimming quite a huge chunk so that I didn’t have to read lines like, “That fantastic cock of yours should be in a museum” WTF?
I’m not kidding, that line really was in there.
All in all, I think that the last half of this book ruined what had started out as a perfectly good story, but having said all of the above, I still think that those of you who wanted to read this book, should just go ahead and do so anyway because you may just appreciate the bits that I hated.
357martini
August 18
8:18 pm
Reading the stuff you hate eh…sounds like real pulp friction…….
Anonymous
August 18
10:52 pm
I read this too, and I didn’t think it was that great either.
Anne
August 19
3:35 am
Well, now I’m really glad that I didn’t buy the book. I was waiting for your review Karen as we tend to enjoy the same types of books. Why, oh why, don’t some books end when they’re supposed to? *sigh* What a way to ruin a good book. Bummer. Sorry your reading experiences haven’t been up to par lately Karen! I hope you find a good book soon! Sarah McCarty’s book Conception comes out in two weeks, and Katherine Allred has another book coming out in Sept. so those should be good reads!
Karen Scott
August 19
4:26 pm
Martini5357 I was reading a book I hated, I just discovered that it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.
Anonymous, like I said, the first bit was good, the rest unfortunately was pollyfilla.
Anne, we do have similar reading tastes, and I honestly don’t think you’d like it all that much. I noticed that Katherine has another book scheduled for September, I’ll be looking forward to reading that.
Marianne LaCroix
August 19
8:07 pm
I really wish there was a chubby chick heroine who loved chocolate and meets a man who wants to love her. I read a book by another author, another pub that had a woman unhappy until a magic potion made her skinny, and of course, attractive. Only then could she find love. *sigh* Chubby-chicks do find love without lamenting on a diet. Oh well…
Daisy Dexter Dobbs
August 30
4:58 pm
Hello Karen,
I just discovered your blog and review of my book, Polly’s Perilous Pleasures, through a Google search. I tried to find an e-mail link for you but couldn’t, so I’m posting this in the comments of your review instead. I hope you’ll find it! 😉
I just wanted to say thank you for purchasing my first Ellora’s Cave book and reviewing it in your blog. I’m glad you found the characters and the first half of the story enjoyable and I’m sorry that the second half disappointed. Naturally, I love the 5-star reviews and positive e-mails from readers who loved my book, but I also appreciate reading a less than stellar review when it’s well-written like yours. As an author it’s good for me to see exactly what readers may find objectionable because so many reviewers fail to include those specifics in their reviews. I do hope you’ll keep me in mind and give my next book a try when it’s released from Ellora’s Cave.
Thanks again,
–Daisy
Karen Scott
August 30
5:39 pm
Hey Daisy! Welcome to my blog. Thanks very much for not taking the review too much to heart, and threatening to remove an artery or two *g*.
My reviews are sometimes painfully honest, but I rarely give a negative review without clarifying exactly what my issues were with the book.
The other thing to remember is that the stuff that doesn’t work for me, may work for others anyway.
Daisy, I would have purchased your next book anyway, because I think that the issues that I had with Polly aren’t likely to come up again, and besides, like I said, I really enjoyed the first half of the book.
Thanks once again for being so understanding.
Ann Wesley Hardin
September 1
1:56 am
I’m feeling the love here *gg* As a new EC writer who’s going through growing pains along with Daisy, It’s lovely to see a classy exchange like this.
Daisy, take a bow for charm, maturity and business savvy. You ain’t alone. One of my books got ripped to shreds not long ago(not by Karen).
Karen, you’re the intelligent, hard-to-please reader we ALL want to win over. Like the cool, bad boy in high school. *quiver*
How does it feel to be so revered and feared by authors? *gg*
I love ya, chickie. Now give us another spew-worthy review. As long as it isn’t one of ours 😉
~Ann