Dirty Like Me by Janie Diamond

8/7/2019

Category: New Adult Romance
Publication date: 11/02/2016
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No

I read this book because I legit felt bullied into it. Every single Amazon search I’ve done for the past 6 months has shown me this book first. The author’s ad spend must be astronomical, because it doesn’t matter what I was searching for, Amazon thought this book was the answer to my prayers. Need a great romance to read? Try Dirty Like Me! Want the latest Melanie Harlow book? Try Dirty Like Me instead! Want shinier hair? Dirty Like Me can help! It was getting ridiculous! So, finally, I caved. I’m only human, OK??? I can only take so much pressure before I snap! Well, Amazon, I read it. And guess what? I DIDN’T LIKE IT all that much! So there!

via GIPHY

Plot overview: “Average” girl Katie is hired by the hottest rockstar in the land, Jesse, to be his fake girlfriend while he’s on tour promoting his new album because REASONS. Lots of sex ensues.

First of all, I’d like to clarify that the first, oh, 35% of the book was enjoyable for me. I liked that Jesse wasn’t the typical drugged-out, whoremonger that you so often see in rockstar romances. He seemed like a fairly decent guy, even if he did make some unflattering assumptions about Katie when she was hired to be in his music video. He was cocky and acted unprofessional during that video shoot, but I could forgive that. For all that rockstar cockiness, he seemed like an OK guy deep down, and I liked him.

Now, Katie on the other hand…

Katie was a little harder for me to warm up to. First of all, she’s supposed to be this “average” girl that I, as a reader, can relate to. She’s supposed to be the kind of girl that helps readers indulge in the fantasy that ordinary, average girls CAN someday find happiness with the crazy-hot rockstar who is totally out of their league. But I didn’t find Katie to be relatable at all.

Katie keeps telling me (in her inner monologues) how ordinary she is, and yet she was cast as Jesse’s girlfriend in the music video right away, even though she didn’t have any modeling or acting experience. I don’t know about the rest of you “ordinary” girls out there, but nothing like that has ever happened to me.

And as if that wasn’t enough, pretty much every man that shows up in the book is hot for Katie. Again, that’s not typical, which makes Katie a bit of a Bella Swan. In other words, Katie is a ridiculously gorgeous girl with a completely warped sense of what she looks like and what people think of her. She keeps insisting that she’s plain and average, while clearly, she’s anything but. I have no time for that nonsense.

Then, pretty much everything from 35% of the book up through 70% is nothing but sex scenes. They’re well written sex scenes for the most part, but, Jesus...I get it. They’re horny and hot for each other. This book is over 400 pages long, and I think if you cut out every sex scene except for maybe one or two, the whole book could’ve been done in under 200 pages. That’s just too much sex and not enough plot or character development for me I’m afraid.

After all the sex, there was some totally unnecessary angst that drove the couple apart for a chapter or so. It was almost like the author said, “well, hell, I guess I need some kind of conflict to end this thing on,” and just threw some crap at the page to call it done. It all could’ve been handled with a nice, old-fashioned adult conversation. I have ZERO tolerance for conflicts that could be handled by acting like a grown-up instead of a whiny, overly dramatic brat.

So, long-story-short, I’ll no longer be listening to Amazon when they INSIST that I need to read something. I’m only going to read what I want to read, damn it! No one is the boss of me!!!

via GIPHY

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
It’s a little stigma-y. Not the worst I’ve ever seen, though.

Dirty Like Me by Janie Diamond

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