Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86308-2
Contemporary Romance, 2013

Five Star Seduction is an entry in Jacquelin Thomas’s The Alexanders of Beverly Hills series, which means the main characters have more drip than all the leaky faucets in the third world countries out there.

Don’t worry, fam, these people don’t point and laugh at the Poor; instead, these are the good rich people. They dab at the tears in their eyes at the sight of the poor and the sick for, oh, ten seconds before zooming off in their Maserati for their lunch dates.

Zaire Alexander has graduated from her fancy grad school, and now she wants to start her own business. Naturally, her parents wave their hands and the business starts up like magic for her. They even give her a gift for her first ever business appointment.

A gleaming, vermilion-red BMW 640i coupe sat parked in the driveway of her parents’ home with a huge black bow on it.

Wow. I suppose I have to work at pretending to be rooting for this wretch to succeed at being a modern, independent career woman.

Her business appointment is with Tyrese Moore, a billionaire in his late twenties, because he runs a successful marketing group and she wants him and her to do that more and more oh yes thing. You see, she wants to run a “concierge business”. This is where things get confusing, as the author has Zaire first talk about how the poor, suffering elite people need working class folks to drive them around, then has Zaire go on a tangent in that same paragraph about rich people wanting to go to Africa to see new schools being built and what not.

So, I guess she wants to start a chauffeuring business for wealthy people to go to the slums of the world so that they can peek through an inch-wide gap of their BMW window to look at poor people and go, “Oh, I’m so noble because I’m breathing the same air as these poor folks, now I can go back to my hotel and molest the maids with full peace of mind and conscience clear!”? I don’t know.

The story doesn’t show me how smart or capable Zaire is. I’m told by many characters that she is the best, simply the best, better than all the rest, and there’s Tina Turner crooning the chorus right there. Hold on, let me look up that song on YouTube and play it. That will help me ease my pain as I write the rest of this review.

Okay, back. The rest of the story is a perfect definition of the phrase “freaking dull”. Tyrese and Zaire meet in the office and each mentally lust after the other. Then, they meet outside the office and lust after the other person. They also meet their friends and family members, and I am subjected to the tedious minutiae of inconsequential prattles about how awesome and successful they all are, and how they occasionally slum with the poor kids to show off that they have a heart too. The whole thing reads like a blow by blow insight on how empty and banal the lives of these characters are, how they only talk about themselves, and I have this sad suspicion that the author expects me to be impressed by these people.

Of course, there are some conflicts that pop up, often abruptly, as if the author was stuck at a certain point of her story, not sure what to put into the whole thing, only to then hear her editor’s voice in her head, “Sis, put in some skanks and hos, that always work!” So yes, Tyrese’s ex shows up announcing that they have had a kid together, and our hero wisely decides to keep the heroine in the dark and continue to wine and sleep with her until he’s certain that the kid is really his. I’m sure everyone can guess where that is leading up to.

The characters have zero chemistry. Wait, I think they have zero humanity either, as they are more like robots remote controlled by the author. For example, one moment Zaire is crying because she’s with a kid that has leukemia, and in the next minute she is laughing because the kid’s parents are expecting twins. It’s like she had been programmed to switch her emotions on and off just like that. It’s the same with Tyrese. One minute these two are talking about business, and then they start making out and then shagging, as if they were characters in The Sims and have met the game conditions to start doing the WooHoo.

Sure, there is some amusement to be had imagining these characters being controlled by the author in her own game of The Sims, but sadly, there is no one to take away the ladder in the pool or remove the door of the kitchen for maximum hilarity. All that is left here are the banal, vapid, and meaningless days and nights of beautiful, rich cardboard characters that can barely emote like human beings. Maybe that’s how the filthy rich people are in the real world, I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t make for a fun reading experience.

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