Review of Guilty Pleasures by Manuela Cardiga

**Received ARC through Netgalley**

Gorgeous, narcissistic, self-absorbed Lance Packhard is a sex therapist specializing in Awakenings, helping anorgasmic women find sexual fulfillment.

Lance’s spare time is dedicated to the cult of his body and writing a how-not-to book entitled Sexual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate. His personal life consists of Sunday tea with his grandmother and a monthly night out with his best friend, George. Oh, and no sex, none whatsoever.

When a wealthy, ruthless mother offers him an enormous sum to seduce and impregnate her thirty-six-year-old daughter, Millicent Deafly, a debt-ridden Lance hesitantly agrees.
However, Millicent is not into sex, and definitely not into Lance. She’s chosen the other end of the sensuality spectrum and is heavily into food. She is bright, bouncy and joyous, uninhibitedly plump, natural, and completely dedicated to her palate. The only way Lance will get her attention is if he dabs soy sauce on his pulse points.

Determined to get close to her, Lance creates an alter ego—sweetly shy Wilfred Pecklise—and takes a job at Millicent’s dinner club, Guilty Pleasures.

Guilty Pleasures caters to the flamboyant and the eccentric: supermodels pigging out, trash-metal rock stars with penis-piercings and their loving grannies, the widows of billionaires, and many more oddities.

Lance finds himself immersed in a sensuous world of scents, tastes, and color, and befriended by Serge Moreno—a homosexual black dwarf who has had a colorful life as a prostitute in Istanbul, a fluffer in skin flicks in Vegas, and is now a celebrity chef in London.

Ironically, Lance isn’t just failing to seduce Millie, but falling madly in love with her.
Balancing the two lives of Lance and Wilfred becomes next to impossible when his geeky best friend, George, suddenly marries and decides to hold the reception at Guilty Pleasures. Will the truth be uncovered?

*****

This is a DNF for me. I tried to finish the book, I truly did but there were a few things that I just couldn't get past.

1. Lance changes his name to Wilfred to get close to Millicent. Out of all the names in the world, he chooses Wilfred. How is that name suppose to be sexy, hot and seductive? I keep thinking of the movie Wilfred and expected to see rats running around the restuarant or pop out of the book to kill me.

2. Millicent. Every time I read her name I keep thinking it's saying Maleficent.

3. There is a part where it mentions that Lance a.k.a Wilfred, Wilfred a.k.a Lance wears silk thongs. *shakes head super fast* No. No. No. No. No. I don't care if the guy is super duper fine, sexy, hot, lickable and suckable, he should never...EVER be wearing silk thongs. Not even to try them on. That is a major turn off for me b/c seriously, how is a guy suppose to look good in silk thongs?

Some might think that the things that I listed are not worthy for a DNF but for me they are. I did give it a shot by pushing myself to read more of it but at the end I couldn't get into it. Will I go back to the story? Once the vision of silk thongs leaves my head and I forget all about it then I might give it another shot. But don't hold your breath.

Even though this book wasn't my cup of tea, it might be yours.