There is a trend, apparently, to make series romances hotter and hotter – in response to reader demand, I assume. Well hotter does not necessarily mean better, and L. A. Confidential is a case in point. Hot is nice; I like hot. But not at the expense of the other elements I look for in a good book.

Part of my disappointment with this book was that the beginning was so good. The author set up a terrific premise: boy and girl are in love, boy is about to pop the question, but girl has already decided to put her career as film producer first and leaves for The Big Apple without realizing boy was about to pop the big question, boy loses girl, boy goes on to become fabulous Los Angeles restaurateur, girl hitched her wagon to the wrong star and has failed miserably in New York, girl needs a second chance and ex-boy is the only one who can give it to her, girl returns to see boy, boy still loves girl but doesn’t know how to deal with her sudden reappearance in his life …

Lisa Neal and Ken Harper are deeply in love. On the opening night of his restaurant, Oxygen, Lisa tells Ken she is leaving for New York to pursue the career she has always wanted, that of film producer. She’s worked hard for this and now she has an opportunity to go for it, make it big time, be a name in the film industry. She wants this so bad she can taste it. It’s her childhood dream come true.

This is the night, it’s a beautiful night, and they call it the opening of Ken’s new restaurant. Ken has worked hard for this and now he has an opportunity to go for it, make it big time, be a name in the restaurant industry. He wants it so bad he can taste it. It’s his childhood dream come true.

As you can see, Lisa and Ken are at cross-purposes. So, Ken leaves the engagement ring he’d bought Lisa in his pocket. At his insistence, in their several years together, he and Lisa had never had sex. Neither is a virgin, but he wanted to wait with Lisa, until they were married. A sweet idea, quaint actually (especially given their ages and prior experience), but a contrived plot point, as you’ll see later.

Lisa goes off to New York, ends up having an affair her boss, a renowned film producer named Tyrell, and when Tyrell fails miserably, so does Lisa, by association. She loses her job and ends up unemployed and all but black-listed due to Tyrell’s poor reputation and drug habit. The only way she can get back in the swing of things is to accept a job offer from another producer who says the price for his taking her on is for her to scout sexy locations in Los Angeles, where he wants to shoot his next film. He’ll give her production credit if she’ll land him the hippest, trendiest, hottest place-to-be-on-the-planet, Oxygen (wouldn’t you just know it).

Lisa accepts. She goes to visit Ken. Things are tense. Boy, she looks hot. Boy, he looks hot. Boy, are they hot. She lays in on the line: I want Oxygen for filming. He lays it back: Okay, but my price is sex.

The remainder of the story is a foray into sexual tension and then, ultimately, sex.

As soon as Ken named is price – sex with Lisa – this story lost me. It turned from a real story with real people who screwed up and now want to fix things, to an excuse for two characters to have sex. They were no longer people who had once loved each other and had yet to realize that they still did. They became an interchangeable couple with every “Blaze” couple you’ve ever seen. He wants to do it with Lisa now because he didn’t do it with Lisa before (see paragraph 5, subject: “Contrived Plot Point”).

What makes this relatively okay (and not a mere victimization of Lisa) is that Lisa wants to have sex, too. After that, it just becomes a matter of where and when and how many times. Ken does make it romantic, however, and he doesn’t jump her the first chance he gets. The author has made both Ken’s and Lisa’s motivations solid enough to make this fluffy concept work, but I wanted more than that from this author and this couple.

In the end, poor dumb Lisa still hasn’t learned her lesson and history comes near to repeating itself. Sigh, well, what the heck, it was only a few hours out of my life. Let’s see, even at minimum wage, Harlequin Blaze owes me about $20 for reading this book. Perhaps if readers started charging publishers instead of the other way around, we’d begin to see more substance in the books we chose to spend our time reading.

No, L. A. Confidential was not a bad book, but it did reinforce the reasons why I so seldom read series books anymore.