Is there anything worse than a sex-heavy romance where the leads have zero chemistry? This is the case with Text Appeal, which shines a fresh light on sex work while giving us a sometimes-funny heroine who is something of a shrinking violet when it comes to sex, and a bit of a dolt when it comes to learning the ropes. It also lacks chemistry between its leads – the hot rating comes purely because we get a lot of on-page porn, but there’s little emotion between anyone and their partners. An overbearing friend who does something jaw-dropping and some bizarre sexual politics further downgrade this one. I did like the way the book tackles friendship dynamics, but the sex and sexting doesn’t arrive until the last quarter of the book, and in the end I think this would’ve worked better as Women’s Fiction with a romantic sub-plot. I have no idea why Alcove Press are marketing this as a contemporary romance. The writing style and authorial personality going on here keep this away from D-territory, but I can’t give it a recommendation either

Junior software developer Lark is ambitious enough to teach herself coding, but her climb up the corporate ladder is thwarted by the sexism of the tech industry. A classic ‘silent woman’ constantly ignored by others at her company, her career tanks when – right after she’s finally been made a lead on a huge account – she accidentally projects a dick pic forwarded to her in a text onto the screen during a presentation. Bereft and jobless, with no romantic prospect to support her after a recent break-up, Lark allows her aromantic best friend Teagan – a sex coach and adult novelty seller – to talk her into joining a sexting service. After a few missteps, Lark soon finds herself making big bucks from talking dirty to strangers.

Toby and Lark have been close friends since college, but Toby became estranged from her and the rest of their friendship group due to the demands of his now-ex girlfriend, who didn’t like how close he was with each of them. With her now out of the picture, he’s trying to win his way back into his friends’ good graces, which leads to Toby and Lark getting closer. Lark chooses to hide her new job from Toby, afraid that if he finds out what she does for a living he’ll dump her. And yet she’s incredibly attracted to one of her regular clients as well. Will Lark figure out how to reach a proper work-life balance?

No points for figuring out the big plot twist here. Text Appeal craters in on itself because it has a heroine who works in the sex industry but seems to have no sexual conception of herself as a person before she signs up for the job. Lark not understanding how it works initially makes sense, of course, but she makes silly ‘adorkable’ mistakes no one in their right mind would make. To wit: she sends the first guy who gives her money a picture of the corner of her granny panties, which rightfully pisses him off, and he’s portrayed as a jerk, instead of a john who’s been stinted of his cash. The book nearly makes a point about how tech and the sex industry are equally exploitative to women, but then Lark gets in the swing of things and it begins to make her a sexually confident person willing to explore the further horizons of sexuality. Huh? Of course the sex industry can be both of those things, but the book talks out of both sides of its mouth.

In order to be a romance heroine and have a growth arc, Lark must remain somewhat naive about sex. She is scandalized, for instance, when it’s suggested she watch some porn to get some new ideas for her sexting scenarios. It’s as if the book needs to reassure us that Lark is ‘really’ a ‘good girl’ who would never look at porn while encouraging total strangers to masturbate to the fantasies she’s come up with… which is followed by a scene of her masturbating to porn while thinking of Toby. *cough*.

The author tries to show this as a learning curve, with Lark getting more and more confident in her sexuality and seeing it as an outgrowth of her feminism as time goes on. But why would Lark choose to do this job instead of, well, anything else professionally – except it’s easy money? Sure, she has an NDA and can never admit she worked where she worked, but freelance work on the internet is plentiful, and some jobs don’t exactly plumb the depths of their employees’ resumés. So why the sex industry? Because Teagan, who is the walking definition of ‘girlboss.’

Teagan is the most overbearing fictional character I’ve read about in many a moon, and she hangs over the book, eventually provoking changes in her and Lark’s friendship (there are also two more friends in the book, whose names absolutely and tragically elude me.) In any event, too much of the book is spent focusing on Teagan and Lark’s friendship, and with Lark following Teagan to sex demos, etc. that she nearly makes a third of the relationship. In fact, what she does – well, I won’t spoil it. But the last third of the book makes her the worst friend in the world AND needs to have an actual grovel. I did not want her to get her way, but Toby and Lark have balsa wood spines.

Toby and Lark are comfortable together, and that’s nice enough; their friendship actually does work very well. But there’s no real frission or heat between them, no matter how hard the author works to make it happen. The romance is very underbaked in Text Appeal. And that’s a shame, because the concept is appealing, and Roberts does show some promise and talent. Hopefully her next book will do a better job of showcasing that.