Spotless (Spotless Series Book 1)
By: Camilla Monk
Rating: 5 of 5
“Spotless” is a campy action thriller story, the first I have read by Camilla Monk as well as the first in her Spotless series. I enjoyed reading it once I realized that it was all being tongue-in-cheek and spoofing romance novels as well as action books.
Each chapter has a “quote” from a supposed romance novel – each of which is funnier than the last. The reason for this is that the heroine of this story is Island Chaptal, a young woman who is addicted to reading romance novels – probably because she has so little romance in her own life. What is funnier, is that Island actually quotes from these books through the story – as if real life mimics the over-the-top antics that go on in her beloved novels.
She finds herself in a real-life thriller when she is kidnapped by March – a killer-for-hire who has compulsive cleanliness OCD (hence the spotless of the series) as well as a habit of providing himself with last names that are based on the months of the year. Yeah, he might be good looking and an excellent killer, but imaginative maybe not.
The characters race around the globe trying the find the stolen diamond that is at the heart of this story while evading bad guys (yeah, March is a bad guy but not the baddest of the bad guys and he keeps saving Island from death and worse than death scenarios.)
Along the way, just as her beloved heroines from the bodice ripper romance novels, Island becomes attracted to her kidnapper. Stockholm syndrome or is this the real thing?
It took me a couple of chapters to understand the book was completely camp. Up until then, I was a little perturbed at the violence as it was not what I was expecting. Still the violence was a little disturbing, so be prepared for it. I could have wished that Island had a little more backbone from time to time but then again, she was being typecast into the mold of the romance heroine, so it made sense that the times she stood up for herself were a little few and far between. I ended up enjoying the book (especially those crazy quotes and the names of the books they supposed derived from – seals, cowboys, vampires, and many many billionaires.) It was a fun book and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher, Montlake Romance, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.
“Spotless” is a campy action thriller story, the first I have read by Camilla Monk as well as the first in her Spotless series. I enjoyed reading it once I realized that it was all being tongue-in-cheek and spoofing romance novels as well as action books.