Room Service (Harlequin Blaze)

Room Service (Do Not Disturb) - Jill Shalvis I finished the prologue and decided to cut my losses. I saw this was number two on a "Favorite Blaze Novels" list. So, I figure a) I've enjoyed Jill Shalvis before, b) 30 some odd people say this is one of their top favorites, and c) I've DNF'd so many other books today, I might as well - let's give it a shot!No.Since it's the prologue, I don't think anything I say here can be a spoiler. So, I'm just going to break it down for you.Emma Harris is a small town farm-girl from Ohio... who moved to Hollywood to become a producer. Fine. I accept this as plausible.She has tried, and failed, three times now to launch a TV show. The first one failed and the TV station got sued, but it wasn't her fault. The second show failed because of everyone else being immature - totally not her fault. The third one failed because her boss' niece is a drug addict and Emma felt this wasn't important to anyone, least of all to the success of the show, but IT ISN'T HER FAULT!She just needs complete and total control over the show in order to succeed! *insert eye rolling here*But that's not the stupidest part of all this. No, the worst comes when you find out how much of a whining, simpering pushover Emma is! In the first sentence - the first freaking sentence in the whole book - the author claims that "Emma Harris was part Hollywood business shark, part Ohio farm girl, and though that might seem like an odd combination, it had always worked for her."Emma Harris is in no way a shark of any sort. Unless it's a dead shark. Or a really friendly shark that lets the tiniest of fish slowly eat away at him while he blathers on and on to himself about how kind he's being by letting the fish eat him and assuring the fish that he won't tell anyone they're hurting him while they eat him alive. *insert head-desking here*This woman would have been eaten alive in Hollywood. If she had somehow, without ever having done anything but drive a tractor in Ohio, been hired to produce a TV show, she'd have been fired and shunned from Hollywood after the first failure. You don't get to Hollywood on a Greyhound; get hired to your dream job; fuck it up and get the company sued; and then get a second shot at it. No way she'd get a third and fourth. That's just fucking ridiculous. If I'm having to suspend my disbelief that much before the first chapter begins, it makes me seriously doubt whether the author is running on all cylinders. *whispers and points to her head* Up there, you know?Aside from the fact that a sex-themed hotel in New York City would never happen*, I just can't believe a woman like Emma Harris could actually exist. She is so hell-bent on not hurting anyone else, she's never going to succeed in Hollywood! I understand not wanting to hurt people, but telling the truth is not hurting somebody. Telling your boss that you cannot do this show because the star is too high is not hurting anyone. If anything, not telling is hurting the addict. Emma keeping her mouth shut only made it worse and allowed the star to have a public breakdown, hurt the TV station's reputation, and had to cancel a show. Telling your boss that the staff and crew are sabotaging each other and the show is not hurting them. It's forcing them to take responsibility for their actions. Emma says that because she didn't hire them, she couldn't control them. Bullshit! That's a pussy excuse if I've ever heard one. You can't make people obey you? Find the person that can! Don't just let them run all over you and then try to shirk off the responsibility. You didn't tell anyone that you were having problems with them, you just kept your mouth shut because you didn't want to hurt anyone, so of course it looks like it's your fault. It is.If an author tells me, in the first sentence of a book, that the main character is a shark... then that character better be a lot fucking closer to Henry Rollins than Barney the Friendly Dinosaur.I'm not going to add a rating to this, because I don't think it's fair (no matter how much I hated what I read) to give 1 star to a book that I read 3 pages of.* Apparently child porn is now legal in New York, so... maybe I'll be eating those words some day.