The Billionaire's Maid

ROMANTIC EROTICA

Guest review: Caitlyn Lynch

Title: The Billionaire's Maid
Author: Stephanie B. Nixon
Published: 1/5/2017
Publisher: Kevin Tyler
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 1 out of 5

Amazon blurb:
Raine Sumner is your struggling freelance reporter. She thought she was going to be a journalist who would change the world, but instead, she ended up doing sugary gigs for little pay. Then, she receives a job offer that’s a little more interesting than the others. It’s another fluff piece, but it involves something a little more challenging: doing a piece on Zach Frayne.

Zach is a billionaire playboy, and he’s throwing a party. Raine is to get a profile of Zach and write a piece on him. Then, as she’s mingling at the party, she ends up breaking Zach’s most prized vase.
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Before she can make a run for it, Zach catches her. Raine expects to spend millions she doesn’t have, but Zach gives her an offer: be his maid until the vase is paid off.

Having no choice, Raine accepts. Can she write a piece, or get a piece, on Zach? Find out.

My review:
I can thank this book for one thing only. And that is, my new-found resolution NEVER to agree to review a book without having previewed it or seen excerpts first.

I’m not sure what book the other reviewers were reading. It certainly wasn’t the same one I did. (One of them is talking about Arthur. There is definitely no Arthur in this book.)

Frankly, this book reads like someone read Fifty Shades Of Grey and made a porno parody movie, and then someone ELSE saw that porno parody, took it seriously and decided to write a really bad self-insert fanfiction of it.

It’s THAT bad.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter.
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"The room was so entrancing, and I walked around with a daze. By the time I realized where I was going, I bumped into a small table with a vase. The vase was quite wide, with authentic diamonds at its rims.

This vase turns out to be worth a million dollars. The MC knocked it off the table, where it shattered. My first thought was… What? Why is a million-dollar vase on a ‘small table’ and not in a secure glass case?

The titular billionaire demands that the MC pay him back, and when she can’t, demands that she be his maid. In a French maid’s outfit.

Congratulations, Dear Author. Since it didn’t appear to occur to the MC that the vase should have been insured against accidental breakage, you’ve just succeeded in making her look like an ignorant idiot, and the billionaire look like a manipulative asshole. Now I thoroughly dislike both of them.

Here’s a few more particularly special extracts:
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"To my surprise, he seemed quite intelligent. I mean, most billionaires are smart, but he actually seemed to be in tune with the peasants.

PEASANTS??? This is set in the twenty-first century, not the Middle Ages
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"Underneath his boxers, I saw his throbbing billionaire moneymaker, ready to please me.

His… oh my God. No. I just can’t. I thought I’d already seen all the awful euphemisms for ‘dick’. Turns out I hadn’t.
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"I was being defiled by a man who had prestige, and it turned me into an insane horndog. I lost track at how many orgasms I had from this man. As for himself, he tried acting all cool and in control, but I could tell he was melting with every passing second.

I can tell you what is melting. My brain cells.
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"It’s been six months since my clumsy ass broke that vase. Since then, Zach replaced the vase with one that looked exactly the same. I still cooked and cleaned for him, but did it as a girlfriend and not as a maid.

I… do not think you know what a billionaire actually is. Either that, or this should be called My Cheapskate Asshole Billionaire Boyfriend, and not The Billionaire’s Maid.

This is the kind of book that gives self-published erotica a bad name, and frankly I resent the heck out of it because books like this in the genre give talented, hard-working erotica writers a bad name. The technical writing issues alone should disqualify it from publication, but that could be partly overlooked or fixed by a competent editor if the plot were original and the characters likable.

I can’t call this anything more than a word vomit bound together in the hopes that some unsuspecting sap purchases it. And I resent the heck out of the reviewers who either didn’t read it and supplied generic nice reviews when asked, or just said nice things in order to spare the author’s feelings.

Half a star, rounded up to one for Amazon. If I could give it none, I would.

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
This is the Charlie Sheen of books, folks. No amount of rehab can fix it. Save yourselves. It’s too late for me...

Other reading suggestions (from Romance Rehab)
Try anything by Selena Kitt or Emma Holly instead. (Note: both authors write stuff other than erotica, too, so if you’re looking for erotica, make sure you read the blurbs and categories carefully to avoid any purchasing surprises.)

Also, try the Caitlyn Lynch backlist. It’s pretty awesome!

Or really, just read ANYTHING other than this.

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