A review of Playing Dirty by Susan Andersen

I was so excited when I saw that I had a new Susan Andersen to read.  There's really only one book of her's that I've gone back and re-read but she is definitely one that I'm never disappointed with.  Playing Dirty was not an exception.  In either sense.  I wasn't disappointed, really, but I'm not going to be reading it again.
It was all very expected.  This is the third book in a series and the last one came out in July of 09.  I'm glad she released the third because there were things left hanging that I needed a conclusion for.  I did not re-read the first two in the series before I read this one and I'm glad I didn't because it felt very much like the first book.  There were certain places that I felt like names, descriptions and jobs had been changed but the plot was the same.  Of course there are differences and this is often my complaint with a series but 1.  I felt like I had "been there, done that" and 2.  I want the fantasy of romance but I want it to be believable and I just have a hard time believing that these three friends really go through such similar experiences on the road to love.


What you might want to know:

Written in third person with his/hers points of view and also the POV of the "bad guy".
Contemporary romance with some mild adventure/suspense thrown in but that doesn't consume the plot of the book.


Good Parts / Bad Parts

• If this was the first one of the series I probably would have liked it a lot more, it just felt a little redundant.
• I liked that she was an average size for a real person and was gorgeous and guys loved her curves.  I liked, even, that she was so insecure about herself because it made her feel real.  I felt like it got old after a while.  OK, her Mom thinks she's fat, she went to fat camp, she was the "fat girl" in high school.  Can we move on?
• I had an issue with the language sometimes.  I want people to write like they talk and so phrases like "to make him see she in no way disregarded his declaration" would make sense for the character because she was so high brow but when she also used phrases like "that she would give her left boob to have..." it made the more verbose parts less believable.
• Best quote from the book:  (after a comment on her apartment's color choices)  "We have uteruses-- they give us magic color sense."
• If you've read the rest of the series you need to read this one because there is some closure.  I would recommend, at the very least the first book, so by default I would recommend this one.  **Don't read them all back to back!**