As much as Mallory Dale loves performing at the burlesque club, Blue Angel, it doesn't pay the bills. Especially in New York City. So she lands herself a day job as a paralegal, working for a divorce lawyer. Besides being inappropriately attracted to her boss, she has other problems on the home front. Her boyfriend, Alec, loves pushing sexual boundaries with her, and Mallory gets the feeling that he wants them to hook up with the newest performer at the club, Violet Offender. Violet is a dominatrix, is more into stripping than burlesque, has major ambition - oh, and she wants Mallory. Like, bad. Really bad. Naturally complications abound.
What follows is Mallory and Alec hitting the skids, Violet manipulating things behind the scenes to get what she wants, Bette Noir rolling back into town, and Mallory exploring her attraction with her sexy boss. It's soapy, it's sudsy, and it's compulsively readable for it's "OMG, what is going to happen next?!" factor.
My issue is basically with Mallory. She's one of those females that obviously hasn't heard the expression "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." She gets insanely jealous and angry with Alec if he so much as looks at another woman - but it's apparently OK for her to have some hot girl-on-girl action. I mean, golly - why is he so upset with her?
Oh, I don't know - could it be the whole you're an unfaithful hypocritical slut thing?
Just a guess.
Sigh.
Now in her defense, she did display this behavior in the last book - so I shouldn't have been surprised. And I really wasn't. The bigger sin here is that she's the sort of female who is easily manipulated. She went through all of the last book debating on what she wanted, what she wanted to do - and she ended up dumping the idea of being a lawyer and went burlesque. But in this book? When her hunky boss suggests that she'd be a "good lawyer" - she makes moves to dump burlesque and head back to law. I mean, seriously?! Make a choice and stick with it cupcake. Be who you are and own it. If the man doesn't like that? Well, maybe the door won't smack him too hard in the butt on his way out.
Now, all that being said, Belle continues to excel at delivering on her world-building. Yeah, I'm hooked now. She's created the club, created the culture, and populated it with secondary characters who keep the whole thing chugging along. She also delivers us a villain in the form of Violet, who sure as shootin' is going to play a sizable role in the next book, Naked Angel.
So I'm pretty much left at the same bus stop I was at when I finished the last book. I still can't really wrap my loving arms around Mallory, but like Shakespeare said, the play's the thing. Er, or the burlesque stage. Er, or more like it, the plot. Belle's got me sucked in with her plot. So yeah, I might want to smack Mallory upside the head - but that doesn't mean I don't care. I do.
Now, what happens next? And what do you mean I have to wait until the end of March 2012 to find out? Ugh.
Final Grade = C+
