Book Review: "The Bikini Car Wash" by Pamela Morsi

There are two key reasons as to why this particular review can be considered out of the ordinary: 1) it concludes this previous post about the book, and 2) it touches on a genre that up until two years ago was derisively eliminated from my radar.

Romance.

I started reading romance a couple of years ago, when I saw this particular book in my public library's New Fiction end cap. At the time I was writing (or trying to write) an interracial love story, so after reading the jacket blurb, I took it home and read it in two days flat. Even though that book blew me away, a serious reader of romance was not I.

Why? Because I applied my same picky reading principles to this genre as I did to every other genre. The end result was that since 2008, I've read exactly three romance novels:

1} Whiskey Road by Karen Siplin
2} His Insignificant Other also by Karen Siplin
3} Fashionista by Erica Kennedy

As with the previous three, the jacket blurb that caused me to pick novel #4 is what hooked me:

After Andrea Wolkowicz abandons corporate life to help care for her sister, she quickly wears out the want ads in their rust-belt hometown. Time be her own boss.

Every mogul knows the best idea is an old idea with a new twist. So Andi proudly revives her father's business: an old-fashioned car wash...staffed entirely by bikini clad woman. That ought to get traffic---and blood--- flowing on Grosvenor Street!

This gutsy gimmick soon has the whole town in a lather, and not necessarily in a good way.

Scandalized citizens are howling, neighboring businesses are worried. But straitlaced grocery store owner Pete Guthrie is definitely intrigued. He knows it's hard to run a small business in a big box world. To him, Andi's brains and bravery are as alluring as the bikini she calls business attire.

Well, that and reading the first dozen pages while standing there with my glasses on top of my head convinced me to take a chance on checking it out and bringing it home. The end result was that it didn't let me down one bit.

As a reader, I found that the way she wove the main plot line (Andi & Pete) with the secondary (Her father and his high school sweetheart) was perfectly seamless. I found myself pleasantly lost within both plot lines, plus the small tangents that sprang from both. An interesting twist that Ms. Morsi added to the overall story, was a narrative in between the chapters that was told by Andi's mentally retarded twin sister Jelly (who was expertly, realistically and tastefully written throughout the book), that basically told the entire story through her eyes while she was reading her picture book. This book hooked me so bad that I found myself rereading parts of it at work while I was partially composing this book review.

As a newbie writer, I found her writing to be crisp yet not crisp enough to where you would be turned off by that type of prose. I picked up quite a few tidbits while reading this story; one was that sometimes less (as in the way the one overtly sexual encounter Andi and Pete had was written) is the best way to go; how to write dialogue; and I understood how that having a happy ending is not necessarily a bad thing. But most importantly, I saw what and how a well written story can hook someone and possibly make them search out other titles from that same author.

Overall, this latest offering from a USA Today best selling author in my book, is a fantastic read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes reading light romances/love stories. Because in my opinion, it will not disappoint, and in the end, that's all you should really expect from a book.