Nerd in Shining Armor by Vicki Lewis Thompson

In my last post, I said that I'd get around to reading this romance novel that I found while at work, and then a couple of weeks ago, I finally did read it. And it was amazing. This was my first (and probably only) venture into the romance genre of books, and I was very satisfied with the book that I chose to read. That being said, I have no clue how romance novels are supposed to normally play out. This one was definitely abnormal in at least one or two ways. I think.

The book starts out in Hawaii with Genevieve, her little brother and her mother (who is only 15 years older than her daughter). Turns out that they're from a hillbilly town from Mississippi, and Genevieve's great grandma almost had sex with Elvis, pre-fame days. She kept his underwear, which got Gen's mother enough money to move them away from the hillbilly lifestyle and do something worthwhile with their lives. Genevieve works at some computer company, Rainbow Systems, and she longs to marry her douchebag boss. While that's going on, the nerdy programmer has a crush on Gen.

The boss turns out to be an even bigger douche by stranding Gen and Jackson (the nerd) on a plane. He was completely prepared for those two to die simply because he stole millions from the company that he co-owned, and he didn't want anyone to know that he was running off with it. Luckily, Jackson had flown computer simulations of airplanes, so he sort of landed it near a small Hawaiian island.

Genevieve and Jackson, stranded, decided to have copious amounts of sex simply because she had condoms that she had packed for the douchebag boss and her to use. And yeah, I didn't really need to read all of that stuff. I still have virgin eyes!

Stuff happens, they're saved, Genevieve gets put into peril again back at home, Jackson saves her, thus proving that he's worth her time even though he's a nerd, and they eventually get married. Yay.

The thing I was most surprised about in this novel was the character development. I was lead to believe that romance novels were two people hooking up and a lot of sex. This one, at least, was not. They had advanced backstories, emotions other than lust, and reasons for why they were the way that they were. Jackson was even color blind, which oddly enough played a fairly big part in the characters getting to know each other. I was very impressed, to say the least. And I was completely hooked. I stayed up until odd hours reading it and I even tried reading it while my friends and I were watching a movie, but then I felt awkward for reading about naughty things while the rest of them watched Tangled.

Sidenote: Because Gen had hillbilly roots, when she was stressed she started talking like a hillbilly again. The language was hilarious, Jackson's reactions to her language was awesome, and I started talking like a hillbilly because of reading it so much. Great...

Overall, it was pretty dang awesome. I approve.

http://www.librarything.com/work/897175/book/79477304