Shameless

Bunco Babes Gone Wild by Maria Geraci   Berkley Trade, $14.00, 316 pages

Bunco Babes comes disguised as a Jennifer Weiner-like chick-lit novel.   Like Weiner’s Best Friends Forever, it starts off jerky and disjointed before changing gears and offering the promise of a good story.   But in Babes this preface is just a façade, as the story degrades into a sex romp with characters having sex in near-public places.   The story is supposedly about Georgia, whose divorced boss/boyfriend does not want to commit to her so she runs off to Florida to lick her wounds – among other things – at her sister’s house.   There she runs into a Latin hunk (“Mr. Hunky” to her and her sister’s friends), whose chest muscles are always heaving.

Eventually Georgia begins to forget her ex-employer as she has sex in an exhibit hall closet with Mr. Hunky while hundreds of guests attend a major function at the junction.   Author Geraci supposedly warrants a pat on the back for ensuring that her Mr. Hunky uses a condom while jumping on Georgia; he’s a so-called “safe driver.”

Our mothers and aunts read racy novels like those written by Harold Robbins.   The Carpetbaggers or A Stone for Danny Fisher would be considered to be of National Book Award quality when compared to the ultra-trashy Babes.

Reprinted courtesy of San Francisco Book Review.

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