The Bedroom Assignment

THE BEDROOM ASSIGNMENT has a summary in the back of the book that gets your interest But when you get into the story, you're like "Ugh..." cause Zoe (the main female character) has an issue with being a virgin since everyone thinks of her as a raver. Then along comes our hero, Jay, the playboy. He's the only person in the whole wide world that she tells about her "shocking condition." They have this marvelous scene where they're like just scrambling around looking for the solution to cure her "problem." Eventually they do and the romance takes off in the middle of it. THE BEDROOM ASSIGNMENT had some of its good moments but it wasn't that serious for me to really enjoy the book. These kind of books are supposed to be fun reads and I guess they're supposed to be what they are but I hoped to expect something a little bit more. Don't get me wrong, it's an okay book and of course there was something that made me bulldoze through the story, I just hoped that the author would give me more substance. Anyway, I hope all you readers out there enjoy this one!

Even though Harlequin is hardly the stuff of serious literature and many people "wouldn't be caught dead reading one," there ARE titles in some of the Harlequin series that defy its small box mentality. THE BEDROOM ASSIGNMENT, corny title aside, is actually a rather literary read with dark undertones. Sophie West's story essentially is about one 23-year-old woman's quest to lose her virginity and her shame in having kept this "dirty little secret" so long by pretending to be a femme fatale. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the fact that the main character sees virginity as something embarrassing and hideous or the fact that it is her boss who offers to help "deflower" her. (What is even more troubling is that there is apparently a whole subdivision of Harlequins that center on romances between overpowering male bosses and their female employees who are outdatedly submissive, circa 1962.) THE BEDROOM ASSIGNMENT scores points for being emotionally moving and for not being afraid to take the romance out of what is the heroine's first time (in fact the scene is rather frightening, but thank goodness not in a 1970s historical romance "rape" kind of way). Very few things about this romance are candy-coated. The story, however, left me wondering whether this was more sexual harrassment than enduring love. The double standards (imagine if the male character obsessed so much over his sexual history) keep this from being a beautiful book which is a shame because the characters are amazingly well-developed in a genre that is generally (and sometimes unfairly) known for its easily replaceable characters. (Harlequin's other lines-DUETS and SUPERROMANCE-are usually more uplifting and less dated in their storylines than their regular HARLEQUIN and HARLEQUIN PRESENTS series. DUETS are probably the most enjoyable of the Harlequin series, but for more open-minded and less sexist storylines, look to the romance novels put out by the Kensington publishers.)