Skinny Dipping by Connie Brockway
May. 23rd, 2008 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreMimi Olson is a 41-year-old “spiritual medium” who lives like she’s 20 and works for a psychic hotline, much to her extremely upper class French mother’s disappointment. Her father’s side of the family, however, the carefree Olson’s couldn’t care less. What they do care about, however, is rich people like Prescott Tierney building huge “summer homes” on the same lake their old, rundown summer home, Chez Ducky, is on. Prescott’s father, Joe Tierney, has been trying and failing to reconnect with his estranged son for years, and gets pulled into the Olson family’s insanity when he rescues Mimi from shrubs after the lake stole her bathing suit. Prescott, meanwhile, has been spying on Mimi all summer, and has identified her in his head as a saintly, motherly, madonna. Basically, the opposite of what Mimi actually is. Meanwhile, the relatives are considering selling Chez Ducky, Mimi’s reserved and high class half-sister Sarah has recently turned concerningly carefree, a hotline client has declared Mimi to be her personal therapist, and there are suddenly all these dogs needing a babysitter.
Usually when a romance author switches genres, it isn’t for the better. Aside from Brockway, the only one who didn’t make me sigh and give up is Suzanne Enoch (because, seriously, the heroine is a Godzilla movie addicted former cat burglar with a pet British billionaire boyfriend, and when she gets really bored, she breaks into his mansion just to make sure she’s still in shape.) Brockway’s books after her move from historicals to contemporaies, however, have been a pure blast so far. Like Hot Dish, Skinny Dipping is more the heroine’s not-quite-midlife coming of age story with a side of romance. Though I think Hot Dish is better, I had a lot of fun with this. I do wish, though, that Prescott’s mother complex over Mimi hadn’t been quite so massive. Quite simply, even though he supposedly got over it, he had her on such a pedestal that I do not trust him to not find excuses to interrupt anytime he thinks Joe and Mimi might be having sex.
Usually when a romance author switches genres, it isn’t for the better. Aside from Brockway, the only one who didn’t make me sigh and give up is Suzanne Enoch (because, seriously, the heroine is a Godzilla movie addicted former cat burglar with a pet British billionaire boyfriend, and when she gets really bored, she breaks into his mansion just to make sure she’s still in shape.) Brockway’s books after her move from historicals to contemporaies, however, have been a pure blast so far. Like Hot Dish, Skinny Dipping is more the heroine’s not-quite-midlife coming of age story with a side of romance. Though I think Hot Dish is better, I had a lot of fun with this. I do wish, though, that Prescott’s mother complex over Mimi hadn’t been quite so massive. Quite simply, even though he supposedly got over it, he had her on such a pedestal that I do not trust him to not find excuses to interrupt anytime he thinks Joe and Mimi might be having sex.