A sexually-repressed, whiny twenty-six-year-old loan officer who keeps a journal of erotic sex wishes is adopted by a half angel/half human cowboy whose goal is to show her how erotically appealing she is. Sounds like the beginning of a joke someone would tell in a bar when half sloshed, right? But that’s the premise of Kelley’s second in a trilogy.

Because Haley isn’t fashion-model thin and because she supposedly is brainy, her mother and her lawyer sister Rachel have told her she’s ugly all her life. Haley believes them until cowboy half-angel Ryder shows up in answer to her prayer for a miracle.

Ryder is fascinated by her and thinks she’s the epitome of female beauty; she isn’t flat as a board and bony as “most” women are. His goal is to convince Haley that he, and not her relatives, is right. In fact, he’s up (literally) for fulfilling every one of the fictional sexual encounters she’s written in her secret diary.

Repression in this fantasy story equates to doing anything in order to have sex, so Haley goes at it with Ryder after knowing him for less than twenty-four hours. Not only that, but she agrees to walk around the rest of the day nude —even to answering the door nude should anyone come to her home — something Haley sees as really “brazen.”

Methodically, Ryder takes Haley to every fantasy she’s ever imagined, with her protesting and commenting that each step is wrong and naughty along the way, even as she enjoys what he’s doing.

Read the rest of my review at AAR: http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=9267 ( )