Shitty Book Report: "One Night, Two Babies" by Kathie DeNosky

I shit you not.

WARNING: this particular entry is probably pretty NSFW, unless you happen to work at a brothel. Trek on at your own risk.

The prelude: I've never been much of a consumer of romance fiction, though I more than anyone delighted in the blackballing and subsequent downfall of noted plagiarist and writer of by-the-numbers Injun porn Cassie Edwards. Rather, I've always been fascinated from a distance by all of this talk of "love shafts" and "denim prisons." I had been intrigued by the hardcover Danielle Steel books my mother used to keep on the coffee table (and you wonder how I got to be so classy); as a youngster of eight, I asked to read one and my mother conceded. It may seem like a foolhardy idea, but I only made it about half a chapter into Kaleidoscope before getting bored and wandering off to play on the Windows '95 version of MS Paint. A mother always knows.

My current interest in bad romantic fiction, and Harlequin Romance in particular, sprung from two factors. The first is the recent announcement that, in celebration of Harlequin's 60th year of providing spank bank material for bored hausfraus and closet homosexuals, HR would be releasing a plethora of online material, absolutely free. I encourage you to peruse the stories there, particularly the NASCAR-themed Speed Dating and the hilariously-titled Baby Bonanza, which glamorizes a strange and previously unknown-to-me fetish I call Billionaire Baby Porn. As you will see by the end of this book report, One Night, Two Babies is very much a prime example of BBP.

The second wellspring from which was born my newfound HR obsession was the discovery of certain "moving-out" artifacts left in the lobby of my best friend Matthew's apartment complex by a former tenant who no longer found use for them. Among said artifacts were two particularly interesting pieces of literature: the first was a copy of The Joy of Gay Sex so old that a hasty foreword warned that, while perusing the book, the reader should "take into account the recent discovery of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome." The second was the book you see at the top of this post: One Night, Two Babies, by Kathie DeNosky. I took it. I had to. And I read it, in public (don't judge me until you've had a three hour bus commute, alright?), and now I will report my findings back to you.

The premise: Okay, the plot is a bit contrived, so you'll need to follow me here. This book is a part of a series called The Illegitimate Heirs, the premise of which is apparently that a crazy old billionaire named Emerald Larson discovers that she has six illegitimate grandchildren thanks to her son, who is a huge playboy (and, apparently a strict Catholic given his devout opposition to birth control). Being demented and having money to burn, Emerald sets up trust funds for all of her newfound heirs. The heirs consist almost entirely of men who look exactly alike:

All five men were well over six feet tall, had muscular athletic builds, and bore a strong facial resemblance. (p.179)

Essentially, the same guy. However, this would be too contrived, so one of the heirs is a woman. Who... happens to date a guy who looks exactly like her half-brothers. Cough. Oh, and it should be added that all of these men are gadabouts and cads, and part of Emerald's big scheme is to play matchmaker and set each of them up with women who will have their kids so they can settle down. And that's the series. Like seven or eight books of this. We happen to have the book about the female heir, Arielle Garnier, who believe it or not does not have the worst name in the book. That honour is stolen away with the cameo appearance by her half-brother, Hunter O'Banyon.

If you had to reread that paragraph three or four times over before it made sense: trust me, it's better than reading the book.

The plot: Arielle and billionaire resort tycoon Zach Forsythe spent a week of endless passion in Aspen. This weekend in Aspen is repeatedly referenced in the text as being exciting and stimulating, so of course we never see it. We instead come in eight months later, when Arielle is pregnant and looking for her baby's father. Zach walks in like "hey whats up lol" and Arielle is likee "wtf" and they pick up there.

The conceit is that Zach wanders into the pre-school Arielle runs by pure happenstance, but in the world of crazy old billionaire Emerald Larson, nothing is left to chance -- this is of course a cleverly-orchestrated scheme. Zach happens to observe Arielle exhibiting certain symptoms -- huge appetite, morning sickness, a noticeable glow -- and concludes what all of us would: that she is sick with the flu and nothing more. He then bullies her into coming to his palatial estate (for her own good, you understand) and entrusts her to the care of his old-fashioned Texan housekeeper Mattie, a salt of the earth type who immediately detects that Mattie is pregnant and gently coerces her into revealing the truth to Zach. If you've noticed that coercion, gentle and otherwise, is a main theme of the story, then well done. Also a theme: meddling old biddies who stop at nothing to get other people hitched. If that's your gig, I suggest you read Mary Worth instead: it's many times shorter, just as boring, and Mary does some pretty cold shit sometimes. (I simply must write a blog in the near future about Mary Worth, sociopath-at-large.)

Zach, upon the revelation that his former flame is pregnant, does what any sensible Byronic hero does and pressures Arielle into marrying him. She puts up a token defense, to give the illusion that she's "liberated" and has things like "thoughts" and "opinions," but really all she wants is a rich jerk to push her around. But Zach's not just any jerk: he's a jerk with a heart of gold. How do we know?

1. He's got a tragic past. The reason he's so set on marrying Arielle and raising the kids with her is that his former wife, upon getting pregnant, dared to terminate the pregnancy. She didn't get an abortion, of course, because that's too edgy for the set who buy their erotic literature at the grocery store bookrack, so instead she "starved herself until she had a miscarriage." It seems like a bit of a contrivance when someone with as much money as the wife of Zach Forsythe could afford the fanciest abortion in town, the kind where they leave the mint on your pillow afterwards.
2. His sister Lana got into a car accident, so he's helping her and raising her kid. Said sister and child only appear when it's convenient to the plot, to give Zach "character depth," and during a brief stint at the end when Zach's foolish-but-sexy male pride encumbers him from telling Arielle he loves her. Lana then offers advice so important and memorable that I literally needed to check the text to remember her name.
3. The news of his sister's accident is, of course, why he rushed away from Aspen in the first place, leaving Arielle to nurse a broken heart. He also used a false name at Aspen, but only because he didn't want special treatment from the staff at his resort. What a guy.

I'm gonna gloss over the rest of the story at this point because I figure I might as well give you some reason to read this masterpiece -- and I'm sure all of you are rushing to amazon.com right now (seriously, click the link; there's a sample of the text there. LIVE MY HELL.) -- but it basically consists of Zach bullying Arielle, her putting up a token defence, and then acquiescing. I've included an example for flavour:

"How long will it take you to back an overnight bag?" he asked as he helped her into the back of his limousine.

"Why would I need to pack?" she questioned, when he slide into the seat beside her.

"Because I'm moving you into my place." It was more important now than ever that Arielle took good care of herself.

"No, you're not." She shook her head.

[...]

"We'll spend the night at your apartment and move you into my home tomorrow morning."

"No, we won't. You're going to drop me off at your place and then go home to yours while I call my brothers. End of discussion." She sounded quite adamant, but he noticed that she wasn't scooting away from him, was allowing him to hold her close to his side.

"Sorry, darlin', but I told you that I would be with you every step of the way." He kissed the top of her head. "And that means from here on out, we'll be doing whatever needs to be done together." (p. 76-77)

Fact: I just opened the book to a random page, confident I'd find an instance of this shit, and I was right. Also a fact: you'll notice that he calls her darlin'. It's supposed to be hot. By the end, he's calling her darlin' two or three times a page. It makes me hard every time.

Also sexy: Zach's scent/cologne are described on two separate occasions as "woodsy." Yum.

The plot twist: Arielle and Zach find out halfway through the book that Arielle is not just pregnant.

She's pregnant... with twins!

I feel like it's not a very good plot twist if it's readily apparent from the title of the book.

The porn: Because why lie? It's why we're all here. Having read the entirety of One Night, Two Babies, I can confirm what I had suspected from the start of the book:

Kathie DeNosky is a virgin.

Failing that, she is the single least compelling writer of incredibly vanilla sex I've ever encountered. I mean... perhaps it's the fact that I'm used to the nifty.org method of people having massive amounts of sex which escalate in intensity and improbability until the last chapter where they're fucking their blood relatives in spacesuits on the moon (crying all the while, because nifty characters love to cry to during sex [I assure you, my interest in nifty porn is similar to my interest in Harlequin porn (don't you dare judge me)]). And I know that Arielle is pregnant here so it's not like he can just throw her against the wall and tummy-fuck her until the baby breaks (though from the way he fetishizes her baby bump, you wouldn't know it). But man, the sex here is absolute dullsville. If I were an unfulfilled housewife who wanted to do the nasty with a Texan billionaire, I would want him to fuck my shit up. But maybe that's just me.

Out of 184 pages, a total of 10 are devoted to sex. Mind you, these are pages the size of fortune cookie slips, so that's really like a paragraph and a half of nookie. Their average romp lasts only five pages. By contrast, they spend six pages on a lunch date in San Antonio walking around in an open air market and making small talk. I'm not gonna lie, I maybe skimmed over those particular six pages.

I didn't skim over the sex, though; I chose instead to read it in the back row of my English Lit class, blushing and hoping no one noticed what I was reading. So, to give you what you all came for, here's some Bad Sex Euphemisms. (If you've got a weak constitution, you might want to skip ahead):

As Zach revealed himself to her, her eyes widened when she noticed the strength of his thick arousal rising proudly from the patch of dark hair at his groin. (p. 111)

She felt his body pulse with need and her own body respond with a tightening deep in the most feminine part of her. (p. 112)

As they moved together, his lips skimmed over the sensitive skin of her throat, accelerating the delicious tightening in her feminine core. She desperately tried to prolong the swirling sensations building inside her, but the hunger he created became a force she couldn't resist and he gave herself up to the power of his lovemaking. (p. 114)

When he cupped the curls at her apex and his finger dipped inside to stroke the soft, moist folds, she moaned and arched to his touch. (p. 142)

That's pretty much it. The best DeNosky had to offer, though if you didn't cringe from second-hand embarrassment you're a better man than I. Presently I need a shower, to wash off not the lasciviousness but the bad purple prose. That having been said, I've read worse. Even DeNosky's bad sex is mediocre.

Wrapping it up: One Night, Two Babies is very similar to the film Twilight in that it's not even so-bad-it's-good. It's just incredibly boring. It's 184 pages of a poorly-written couple with a massive power imbalance talking about a baby. I heartily recommend it to anyone whose has been abandoned by their baby daddy, as a kind of bizarre wish fulfillment tale. Everyone else should steer clear.

The good: Zach isn't the worst Harlequin Romance hero you'll ever meet, not by any stretch of the imagination. Be thankful he didn't rape anyone.

The bad: Much ado is made of how Arielle and Zach fell for each other's playful banter and witty conversation, and dear God, I wish they'd been gracious enough to provide us with some of that during events of this book, because this was mundane as hell.

The ugly: My 'literature' tag now consists of Twilight, Tagalog romance novels, and One Night, Two Babies. I am a veritable Rhodes scholar.

That last one made me depressed. I shall seek a drink.

t.