Chasing_Perfect

Chasing Perfect by Susan Mallery Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I got the book for $1 from Winners after seeing that it had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR red clearance stickers attached to it.

What kind of book deserves a 1/5? An offensively bad one. I was two-thirds through Chasing Perfect when I started this review. I just couldn’t take any more of this.

The premise is slightly interesting on the surface level. A quaint little California community has a lot more women than men. How many more? At least 5:1, it seems. Why? It’s a mystery, and our large-breasted, frumpy protagonist Charity has been hired to fix it. But that’s not the point. The point is that the MMC is tall and hot and famous and athletic and rich and perfect and Stuff.

Every woman of legal age wants to jump his bones. Immediately. They sneak into his bedroom naked. They fake pregnancies when he has never even slept with them. They preposition him constantly and aggressively. They fantasize about him while sleeping with their husbands.

My god, what a SLOG. I looked up a bunch of reviews (after, for once!) and this thing has 4.4 stars on Amazon with 2000 reviews. Lots of praise for the quaint small-town vibe. A small town where people regularly die from rock climbing and other unnatural means:

Last year three rock climbers fell. Two died before they could reach the trauma center

I’m no anthropologist, but that seems like a lot of deaths for a town where everyone knows everyone and everything is within walking distance.

If anyone here was special, it was Robert, not Josh. Robert was a regular guy, doing an honest day’s work with minimal appreciation. Sure Josh was famous and a great athlete-

Yeah, Robert never stood a chance.

There’s a point worth making here about how our fictional Robert takes her on multiple paid dates, treats her kindly, cooks for her, etc. All he asks is that she not be obsessed with MMC like literally every other woman in the area. Can she do that? Nope. She dumps him and calls him a “nice guy.” The jokes write themselves.

But she’s actually justified because he’s rude and kinda pathetic about the breakup, like “you can come back to me when he dumps you” pathetic. And he stole 1.5 million dollars from the town. He’s also a murderer. Just in case you still liked him.

Maybe I’m just a romance hater. I like my romances as a small part of a larger plot, not as a load-bearing element. If it must be romance, at least make it romantasy. Give me dragons and necromancers and a looming end-of-the-world threat in the background, not a Large Boobs city planner protagonist.

But as it stands, I’m suffering through the boring protagonist FMC, her boring thoughts, the boring things she does, interspersed with inevitable appearances of MMC at the most predictable moments. Page three? MMC appearance.

He was tall and blond, good-looking to the point of being almost another species

Hotel room? He lives in the next hotel room. How convenient! Girl’s night out? He’s there in spirit, if not in body. Thinking about Robert? She’ll immediately pivot to how she’s not actually attracted to him, as much as she wishes to be. Alas, the fire in her loins burns only for our tall and blond and famous MMC.

And NO, DNF IS NOT AN OPTION. I am young and I have all the time in the world. I gotta make it to at least 150, accounting for advances in avian husbandry. Because, yknow, the 120 years thing is tooootally not fabricated to get more people to visit a certain garden centre in the UK.

You see the little pink part of the cover that says “Brand new Fool’s Gold novella included”?

I thought it would be like a conclusion chapter with FMC and MMC’s wedding.

It’s actually a completely different story set in the same small town during a wedding of two irrelevant characters. And it’s half the length of the main story. On one hand, I was so happy that stupid story ended earlier than expected. On the other hand… ANOTHER ONE????????

If I were to rate it, which I’m not, it receives a surprisingly generous 3/5.

I liked the MMC a lot more. He’s insanely short for a MMC (under six feet? can you imagine?) and socially awkward and not hot to 100% of the female population. He’s also a genius surgeon, because we women are romance readers and we universally pine for high status men, no exceptions.

I also figured that romance books get a lot more enjoyable when you skip through all the passages where FMC thinks about, talks about, or interacts with MMC and vice versa. So maybe that’s why it gets the higher rating. I just didn’t read most of it.

My favorite quote:

Joaquin felt a strong kick in the gut and had no idea what to do. Beating up the other guy seemed inappropriate - nor was he sure he had the skill set.

I was expecting him to propose to FMC during the wedding, which is a total social faux pas, but maybe that’s what romance readers are into? Nope. I was wrong! I like being wrong.

Yet more gripes, because this review doesn’t deserve to end on a positive note.

Nearly every woman is described as “beautiful” or “pretty” or “attractive” or “gorgeous.” Okay, maybe there’s one described as looking like a mousy child. Is the place just loaded with hot, receptive single women? It’d last all of two weeks in the age of the internet. Passport bros would have a field day.

Until you remember that 100% of the women are obsessed with one specific guy. That might put a damper on things.

Some other books in the series are teased:

An attractive woman with cancer freezes her embryos. Who gets those embryos when she dies? Future book.
A handsome, rich CEO man mentions woman troubles once. Book.
A handsome A-list action star is mentioned in passing. Book.
An attractive sister is marrying her finance bro husband. I bet it got a book!

Basically, every time someone attractive, beautiful, pretty, or handsome is mentioned, I’m assuming they have a book of their own.

It was funny how FMC/MMC aren’t mentioned once in the novella. Can’t have too many perfect guys on-page or they’ll steal the show.

From the same clearance Winners batch, I still have another romance and a book about contemporary witchcraft. We’ll see how it goes.

Better yet, we won’t.