Kiss, Marry or Kill: 17
BOOK EDITION. I've been reading/listening to fiction non-stop all summer. Here's my "I liked it," "I loved it!" and "I hate-read it to the very end" list (with one DNF)
This is my weekly series for subscribers only, where I’ll share things that caught my eye this week in a fun and flirty way (kiss), a sustainable way (marry), or a not-so-good way (kill). And yes, this trendy game is technically “f***, marry, or kill” but we run a family-friendly-ish show around here.
Kiss (I liked it!)
The Freedom Clause by Hannah Sloane
This was sent to me by my publisher (Dial Press). I’m not a Romance reader, and I’m not even sure this is Romance, but this is not a cover I’d normally be attracted to. But—it was good! Boy (Dominic) meets girl (Daphne) in college, they get married young, and three whole years later (!) their relationship is getting stagnant. Then, hubs (who I could immediately tell was kind of a dud in all of the cliched ways) convinces wife Daphne to take one night “off” a year to sleep with someone else. What could possibly go wrong?
The Freedom Clause was a fast and fun read (if not predictable at times) as the story moved through the next five years of “who do they bang this year?” The surprise bright spot for me was the wife’s anonymous recipe blog. Daphne loves to cook, and she begins chronicling the arrangement, her hit-or-miss sexual exploits, and some of her best recipes on the web, under a pen name. Her "posts were a wealth of biting humor, brutal self-deprecation, and the kind of creativity real-life recipe creators are sure to try to mimic. (Her first recipe was called “I-Can’t-Believe-He-Came-in-my-Hair Salad.” Discovering this side of Daphne was a delightful surprise.)
Unsurprisingly, however, the arrangement goes sideways, and you can see where the story is headed before the book smacks you in the face with it. Some of the lessons were a little heavy-handed, but overall this was an engaging and tasty little snack that left me wanting to cheer other women on. (Although if you’re hoping for hot and steamy sex scenes, it’s not that. Just sayin’.)
