Shannon C.’s review of The Last Man on Earth by Raine Weaver
Contemporary Erotic Romance ebook released by Samhain 4 Apr 08

This book is cute. Cute works extremely well for some readers. But this particular reader has only a charred lump of coal where her heart should be, so the cuteness of this story wasn’t so much charming as it simply grated on my last nerve.

It’s Halloween night and Russell has invited Iris over to his house to watch scary movies. He’s got the champagne, the buttered popcorn, and the atmosphere to tell her that he really wants to sleep with her. But just as he’s about to speak up, a storm breaks outside and news bulletins warn of the end of the world just before the power cuts out.

Weaver tries to create a campy atmosphere reminiscent of B movies. Sometimes it succeeds to provide a sense of place, but most of the time, the atmospheric touches really didn’t seem to have been handled terribly well. I mean, if I can predict the punch line, it’s hard to really enjoy the joke.

The characters also mostly didn’t work for me. They run around like ferrets on helium, and Iris in particular was way too shrieky for me. I felt like a lot of the time she was being particularly dense about the stuff Russell was telling her just so that there could be added conflict and tension.

I did like Russell, though. His campy sense of humor wears a bit thin, but I found his awkwardness about finding the right words to say to Iris to be very convincing. And he does some incredibly sweet things for Iris throughout the story that warmed the small, charred place where my heart once was.

Overall, I can’t recommend this book, because the humor didn’t particularly work for me. But there were some very sweet moments I liked, and those do raise my grade just a bit, as does the fact that I suspect there are a lot of people that this style of humor will work very well for. I’m just sorry I’m not one of them.

Grade: C

From the back cover: 

     This is NOT a test…  Iris Foley and Russell Carr are old friends who share everything. As they indulge in a marathon viewing of old, campy horror films on a stormy Halloween night, they are suddenly faced with the very real possibility that something has happened to the outside world.

     Just as the last gasp of the Emergency Broadcast System issues a dire warning, they are plunged into isolation and darkness. Naturally, they decide to do what any frightened, civic-minded young couple would do.

     They decide to have sex.

     Now if only old fears, a surprise adversary, and the Apocalypse wouldn’t keep getting in their way…

     Warning: This title contains explicit sex, but all references to alien coochie have been censored.

     Read an excerpt here.