Zaftig Publishing, $3.99, ISBN 978-1634810180
Contemporary Romance, 2015

Alyse Zaftig’s Once Burned is marketed as a BWWM romance on the cover. Wait, is that a new BMW model? Let me look it up online to find its meaning, since lord knows I’m so out of the loop when it comes to the lingo of the genre.

Oh, BWWM is short for “black woman, white male”. Wait, they have codes for the races of the main characters now? How does this apply to a Story with a horny dragon dude and a hapless human woman? “Abducted damsel, horny dragon” or ADHD?

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Let me just open the story and…

I was balls-deep inside of a blonde barfly. You know the kind. The sort of girl who wears bright-red lipstick that’s practically neon. She’s selling her goodies to anyone who wants them, and those goodies are free.

Her silver skirt is flipped up so I have access to an eyeful. I ripped the middle of her thong, so all she has now is a scarlet lacy decoration around her thin hips.

Her skin is the leathery orange that says that she lives in a sun tanning booth AND uses fake tan. When I touched her thigh, it was like feeling the embalmed skin of a dead person. Cold. Hard.

I’m using her skirt so that I’m not touching any part of her with anything but my dick, and that is covered up in a condom. I might be a man-whore, but I’m not a stupid one. I know better than to catch HIV from the kind of girl that I’m fucking right now. Even worse would be impregnating her.

What the hell? What is this?

Oh right, this thing came out at a time when it was all the rage for heroes of the new adult genre to be vile and disgusting pigs, the better for readers to touch themselves to the notion that the heroine is the only one pure and virtuous enough to earn the respect of this ManBearPig.

Ugh. With some grimace after finishing the first chapter, I move on to the second one and this is what I read the first thing I get there.

I’m sitting in the waiting area of my parents’ estate lawyer. The receptionist is hot, if you’re into curvy redheads who eye-fuck you. Maybe she’ll get lucky tonight.

Now, I’m not immune to Bad Boys, but here’s the deal: these bad boys need to be charming, witty, humorous, and seductive. Here, Logan ManBearPig is as alluring as a petri dish with all the most virulent STD pathogens being swabbed all over one’s face.

Oh, and the ManBearPig is 30. His father insists that he gets married or else, in order to get him to “stabilize” himself. No thought is spared, of course, on the poor woman that has to put up with this bag of feces.

“You have a year, honey.”

A year for what?

My dad nods. “You have a year to settle down and get married.”

I’m gobsmacked. I never saw this day coming. I thought I’d get married when I was old and gray and not hot enough to get chicks anymore.

There’s a rock in the pit of my stomach. Adrenaline is rushing through my veins. This feels like the end of my life.

How did this guy make it past the QC people at the romance hero manufacturing plant? How is he not marked defective and melted into goo?

Finally, I meet the heroine Violet. The story flashes back to three years ago when she had a one-night stand with a guy who walked off in anger after she admitted that she was 19, not 21.

Wait, where does this story take place? Weirdly enough, it’s not that the guy is worried about being arrested for statutory rape. Apparently, at 27, to him it is ugh to sleep with a 19-year old. I may think about this a bit longer if I cared one bit about any of these but sorry, I love myself too much to lower myself to that level.

So yes, Violet slept with ManBearPig, got knocked up, and now he wants to marry her without realizing that her daughter is his.

Okay, let me just say one more thing: one chapter before the supposed happy ending, these two are arguing about whose kid Violet is carrying now. Yes, she’s knocked up again and he is acting like he knows he can’t be the baby daddy.

With that, I’m supposed to believe that, by the next chapter, these two are going to have a happily ever after? Does the author think I’m born like ten seconds ago or something?

The author spends so much time building up a hero into a black hole of misogynistic vileness and pair him up with a nitwit that makes the Kardashian ladies come off like women with the best intuition ever when it comes to men. I tell you, this thing can’t be any trashier had it actually been printed out on toilet paper and then dumped unceremoniously into a trash can.

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