Well, frankly, dude, you don’t. You look like your name should be something along the lines of “Russ Trayed”, and you look like you stepped out of the pages of gay cult artist “Tom of Finland”, who specialized in throbbing black and white illustrations of strapping young lads in motorcycle jackets and shades and nothing else. So why are you on the cover of “a smart and sexy contemporary romance about a smoking-hot professional football player and the small-town girl he can’t resist“, by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Ilsa Madden-Mills, no less? And why are your brothers appearing on the covers of the likes of Not My Match, not to mention I Dare You, I Bet You, I Promise You, and I Hate You?
Clearly, Ilsa knows a lot more about the tastes of Wall Street Journal readers than I do. But I can’t help feeling sorry for the poor guy in search of some decent all-male action picking up Not My Romeo and then discovering, all too late, that the book’s title is all too accurate.
Ilsa’s “author’s page” on Amazon has this to say about her:
A former high school English teacher and librarian, she adores all things Pride and Prejudice, and of course, Mr. Darcy is her ultimate hero.
She's addicted to frothy coffee beverages, cheesy magnets, and any book featuring unicorns and sword-wielding females. Feel free to stalk her online.
Now, does this dude look anything like Mr. Darcy? Does he even have a library?
Amazon “suggested” this title to me after (SNOB ALERT! SNOB ALERT!) I downloaded the Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne. I know that the mega-internet outfits like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are supposed to know everything about us, but it seems to me that Amazon’s algorithms still have a long way to go.
Afterwords
I admit that I was totally thrown by Ilsa’s proclaimed addiction to “cheesy magnets”. At first I thought she meant (possibly) that she enjoyed frothy coffee beverages with cheesy beignets, though I still didn’t know if cheesy beignets were a thing, but ultimately decided that she meant she enjoyed cheesy refrigerator magnets (definitely, still a guess). Ones bearing the likenesses of the covers of I Dare You, I Bet You, I Promise You, and I Hate You, perhaps? It would definitely brighten up a kitchen.
