Big Bad Wolf Tells All, the (Paperback)

The plot is basically, beautiful columnist and small scale celebrity Ms Harrington is convinced by her fabulously wealthy great aunt to house sit the billionaire residence with who she believes is the geeky cold-fish of a family accountant but is in fact the sizzling hot body guard hired to protect Tanzy from the menace of a emailing stalker. They soon find that their mutual attraction is too hot to handle.

I have to say this novel was deeply disappointing and had me skipping pages in chunks. It took a very long time to warm up and I found that Tanzy's observations on life, love and single girl living irritating and unamusing. Suggesting that 'nice guys' are limp wristed, non-sexual, antisocial, submissive unattractive 'followers' to further the plot only results in making me dislike the heorine and her rash dismal of someone because he's 'not attractive' or agressive. I tried, in order to enjoy my read, to put my dislike of the heroine's views aside but Ms. Kauffman insisted on starting each chapter with a little snappet of Tanzy's column/thoughts which only served to irritate me further.

Yes, men do more or less divide into nice guys and 'bad boys' and if our hero had decided to just pretend to be a computer 'geek' that would have been more than fine but to say that the adonis that he is was sufficiently 'disguised' because he wore an off the rack suit and a pair of glasses (and was unworthy of our heroines time, respect or kindness because of if) is like suggesting we wouldn't see that Brad Pitt was gorgeous if he parted his hair down the side and wore plaid.

Plus, although I am prepared to suspend disbelief to a great extent, the plot that demands that we believe that Tanzy Harrington's millionaire aunt calls in a private detective/body guard to protect our gorgeous heroine based on a few wacky emails and convinces her to move into a mansion with a stranger on the premise that there isn't anyone else available to 'house sit' is insulting the reader's (my) intelligence

Although we do (eventually) get a few pages of steamy between the sheets action, it's totally formula and where as all the Blah blah between the principle characters that was meant to create sexual tension was simply distracting and irritating. The secondary characters are introduced in the first few pages but never really play a major part and Ms. Kauffman doesn't seem to get the 'girlfriends' banter down. The novel is slow, drab and even though Ms. Kauffman keeps telling us how funny and interesting our heroine is, dull. The best thing about it is the cover.

Read the same book/plot done better in Jessica Birds 'An unforgettable Lady' or pick another plot and read anything by Susan Anderson, Linda Howard, Karen Robards (contemporay) or the queen of romantic-comedy thrillers Jennifer Cruisie but give this one a miss.