How on earth does an author become so famous when he writes this trash? Why do women support him and keep buying his books when his female characters are the stereotypical dumb blondes who don't know the difference between left or right or damsels in distress who can't help themselves and needs a big strong man to sweep them off their feet and make everything better? Don't get me wrong, I love romance and a lot of the popular troupes that come with it but what I never will understand is why men write romance from a woman's point of view. I know somewhere out there there's a male author who can do it correctly, but Knox Darcy isn't one of them.

I've read many of Knox Darcy's so-called New York Times best sellers and I honestly can't see the appeal of them. I know for sure these books aren't just selling because the author is attractive as no one knows what Mr. Darcy looks like. How can this man be on the bestseller list every week with multiple books and not do any promotion for himself? Not a single author signing, not even a TV interview. All we get from Mr. Darcy is a sunset silhouette author photo on the beach and a handful of interview articles on the internet.

I read his latest book Finding Love in the Outfield which was just released last Tuesday a few weeks ago thanks to the publisher on Netgalley sending me an arc of it. For all my newbie bookish people, arc means advanced readers copy. Upon reading I found myself extremely bored and terribly angry at the author.

He writes another female character who is blonde. I swear Mr. Darcy hasn't written a single book where the main female lead wasn't a blonde. Does dear Mr. Darcy not know that women can be beautiful even if they aren't blonde? That there is such a thing as other hair color. The day Mr. Darcy has brunette in his books is the day I will order one of his signed copies.

Not only is the love interest named Jessica, but he also mentions her "bouncing voluminous triple d's" every second he thought to describe Jessica's movement. Jessica got out of the car and bam he had to mention the bouncing of her triple d's. I would mind hearing about it during the sex scene or from Matthew's point of view, but we got it all, especially from Jessica's point of view. He really didn't miss a chance to mention those boobs.

Jessica gets hit in the head at one of the baseball games with an out-of-field ball. And of course, Matthew steps up out of the dugout to climb over the railing to get to her. Instead of letting the medical professional help her get checked out, he picks her up carrying her to the medical trainer. It just didn't make a lick of sense. Why pick her up and move her when help was already there? The amount of time I smacked my forehead during this chapter I probably had more brain damage than Jessica did.

We find out that Matthew is still seeing this other woman in another city that he visits when the team is in that town even after he and Jessica hooked up and were talking about going to dinner once he got back from his away game. And once Jessica did find out Mathew told her she was just being dramatic and that they weren't exclusive. I don't understand how any reader could find Matthew attractive after this. Despite the multiple red flags before this Matthew showed his true colors and literally the next day Jessica forgives him because she shouldn't expect someone as famous as him to understand how relationships work when he's been the Blue Horn's most eligible bachelor for three years running.

These are just some of the things that Knox Darcy included in his new novel. I can't imagine how he will outdo himself in his next book.

One thing for sure is Knox Darcy or whatever his real name is, is a sexist pig who definitely isn't getting any action, or he would realize that women don't want a man who cheats on them and has zero communication skills. Let's see how long it takes this hot dumpster fire of a book to hit the Times list.

I look over my blog post checking for spelling errors and grammar errors to make sure I hadn't accidentally misspelled anything before I hit publish. Opening Twitter, I made sure to share my post on my Twitter account for my blog. The Smutty Booknerd had hit over five thousand subscribers in the past year, and I was so excited to see some of my hard work finally paying off. Despite blogging for years now I still struggled to get the comments needed to boost my blog. Of course, I had my usual commenters who engaged on my posts but most of my followers were ghosts.

My legs tingled and I stretched as I got out of my chair at my desk. I shouldn't have sat down for so long when I knew I had to get ready for bed so soon. Tomorrow was a new day and was my first day at my new job at Love Bug publishing. All my life I wanted to work in publishing, and I finally got my chance to do just that. To work with romance authors all across the United States helping them make their books the best version they could be.

I closed my laptop and plugged it in on the charger. I needed a fully charged laptop for tomorrow.

"How's the blog post coming along?" Heather, my roommate asked as she walked from the hallway to the kitchen holding an empty glass rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her other hand.

"Well, it's finished. I'm honestly expecting to get a hate message at some point for this one. I really trashed this book. I tried to find some positive things to feature about the book but there really wasn't anything special about this one in a good way," I explained.

Heather wasn't a reader, but she enjoyed finding new books to recommend for me to read that she found on booktok. I had her to thank for me introducing me to Knox Darcy. I read the fourth book he wrote and then I read every book on his backlist to see if they were any better. They weren't. So now I hate read his books for my own enjoyment and share my findings with Heather and my blog. It also helped that my trashing posting got the most reviews on my blog compared to any of my other posts.

"His book was getting so much hype the other day when I was scrolling through TikTok." Heather sat down on the edge of the couch next to where I was standing. "Some are saying it will be in the top ten best romance books of twenty-twenty-two on Goodreads."

I shook my head. People will read what they want to read but I still have a hard time understanding why his books are so popular. Especially with a name like Knox Darcy.

"Well good for Knox then. But I hope that the book read last month by Kara Maxwell wins the overall title for the best romance of the year." Hidden Master was such a great read. I usually tended to read lighter rom-com books, but Hidden Master was one I found online, like most of my recommendations. It was a darker romance self-published by the author, but it had so much heart and soul to it. I never had a romance book make me cry but this one made me sit next to a box of tissues for the ending. It made me surprised that it was self-published. It was good enough that I could see it being picked up by a publisher, especially with the ratings and reviews it was getting.

"Well for your sake I hope it does too. Otherwise, you will be standing around the apartment moping for days," Heather joked.

"I don't mope," I shook my head.

"Sure you don't." Her voice carried off as she got up from the couch rolling her bright blue eyes at me.

"I don't!"

I rolled my own eyes and walked back to my bedroom closing the door lightly behind me. "Night," her voice carried down the hallway from the kitchen as I assumed she went to fill back up her water glass.

I didn't mope when authors I loved didn't get something they deserved. The only time I truly moped around when it came to a book was when my favorite book-boyfriend died at the end of a fantastic fantasy series. Now that was tragic.

My finger flipped the light switch beside the doorway and my fan art-covered walls shinned to life. Pictures of my favorite characters or couples in a beautiful collage above my desk.

I really should have sat in here and written by blog post to make sure I didn't keep Heather awake but I had been hiding in my room reading for the past week. Avoiding Heather and her overly sexual boyfriend had made me introverted in my own home. Luckily tonight Heather's boyfriend, Dylan went home to do his laundry for work this week.

As much as I enjoyed romance books, I wasn't a huge fan of seeing others being romantic in front of me. Call it jealousy or what I just never understood why people made others uncomfortable like that. A simple kiss on the lips in public never bothered me but Heather and Dylan would be completely sucking faces in the grocery store at ten in the morning. Yesterday Heather dragged me to the store with them to get groceries for the apartment I spent most of the time trying to avoid the free show, sipping on my coffee wondering what I ever did to deserve this kind of torture.

I was happy for Heather. She found a decent guy, but they never kept their sexual adventures to just the bedroom. A few nights ago, I came from work to find the two of them screwing on our living room couch. Thank the lord we had a couch cover on it that was washable. Despite washing that thing so many times, I still didn't want to sit on that thing. I couldn't get the image out of my damn

Changing out of my work clothes I got dressed in a pair of Victoria's Secret pajamas and climbed into bed. The air was so chilly in my bedroom that I was sure I could see my breath. Fall was here and it was giving Chicago a taste of winter early. The weather was supposed to warm up tomorrow and actually feel like fall. Just perfect for my first day at my new job.

Who knew that I would be working at one of the most prominent romance imprints in publishing? All those years of working on getting my degree and getting a presence on social media finally are paying off. I knew what was popular in the romance genre, and what people were willing to buy.

I put in my phone's pin and scrolled mindlessly through Instagram. I knew I should fall asleep so I could get an early head start for the morning, but my mind just wouldn't stop going over all the possible things that could go wrong tomorrow. What if I actually wasn't hired and this is all some fever dream? Wouldn't that make me look like a big fool showing up for a job I didn't actually get hired for? I knew that was just the anxiety speaking so I tried my best to remind myself this was something I'm qualified for.

I woke up to a sound coming from my phone. How on earth is it already five? I groaned and reached over to grab the phone from my nightstand, ready to shut off the alarm to get a few extra minutes of sleep. But when I went to swipe the alarm off, I got a notification swiping not my five o'clock alarm. My phone shined the time four fifteen just bright enough for my sleep-filled eyes to see.

No way was I getting up this early due to a notification. I threw the phone on the left side of the bed and cuddled back up to my pillow and closed my eyes.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

"Jesus Christ!" I cursed and grabbed the phone to see who the hell was messaging me this much so early in the morning. Heather didn't have to be up for work today until seven. She had the night shift at the hospital working a ten-hour one.

I put my pin in and looked at my notifications list. The list kept going as I kept scrolling down. The first one was so far down I couldn't get to it. They were all notifications from my blog, Instagram and Twitter. I had gone viral overnight. Typing open the link for my blog I gasped. Over five hundred comments! Even more likes and shares. How the hell did this happen?

My body was wide awake now, so I sat up in bed looking at some of the comments. The general consensus was split. Half agreed with my review of Love in the Outfield, the other were the cult of fans of Knox Darcy.

Going through the comments I liked and replied to a couple of them. I would have replied to all the positive comments, but they kept coming and I couldn't keep up with them.

Even my Instagram was full of new followers, messages, and mentions. Twitter was just as full if not more. Thousands of people had shared my blog post and tagged Knox Darcy's own account in them.

One thing I knew never to do as a reviewer was to tag the author in a bad review. That was opening a whole can of worms. Over the years I've seen many reviewers and other influencers get attacked by authors for saying bad things about their books. Some authors didn't understand that reviews were for readers and not authors. Going viral could make or break my reviewing career.

Maybe Knox Darcy wouldn't see it. He hasn't posted on Twitter in years. Maybe I would get lucky, and this wouldn't turn into a shit storm. It wasn't like it was that big of news. Just a couple new followers and comments. That's all.