This was a fun read, but I had some issues with it.

Charlie McDowell* started the popular Dear Girls Above Me Twitter feed on a whim, and he got a book deal out of it. Twitter-to-Book deals always seem sketchy to me, but this one had gotten pretty good reviews, so I picked it up from the library. Like I said, it was fun, but as this is a supposed novelization of the feed, it doesn't even have the virtue of really being about McDowell's life, and in parts it seems like he really had to stretch it to make his 'character' have a believable arc, so the book wouldn't entirely read like it was a commercial ploy to exploit these two girls even further.

*He's the son of Mary Steenburgen and Malcolm McDowell, and to his credit, this isn't something he highlights in the book, except for the horrifying story of the time he caught one of his friends, er, jerking his sausage, to a blurry sex scene his mother had done in a film before he was even born.

Make no mistake, the things the girls say are ridiculous and hilarious, but shoehorning 'Charlie' in there as well just felt forced. The book ends with 'Charlie' supposedly having learned something from his interaction with the girls, but I'm sort of at a loss to figure out what that something is. If you just want something funny, you'll probably love this, though. And the ending was pretty great -- I laughed out loud in the coffee shop where I was reading. I won't spoil it too much, but I will tell you that it involved mice, a broken sewage pipe, and the girls not following directions.

If you're looking for a quick read you could do worse than this, but don't go in expecting anything deep.

I didn't love nor hate this one.

I felt that a lot of the concepts and themes had already been done, and in some cases done better. The erotic themes were pretty tame in terms of content, it really did read like a guys fantasy, lots of thrusting and grunting etc.

The rest of the story read better, the romance and thriller/crime themes were more fully formed and offered more to the reader.

Characters:
Aaron - I liked Aaron at the start of the book, he seemed fairly real, someone I could imagine living in New York, he's floating through life just being, not striving for success, but just existing. At first I thought 'the change' would be for the worst, but things seemed to sort themselves out between Aaron and Michelle.

Aaron developed into a character that I really couldn't relate to. He had too many powers, too many good things going for him and only one negative that I could really see, it seemed unbelievable. Where we're left at the end of this book is a bit of a cop out, like Travis realised like I did that Aaron is too perfect/good/powerful and rushed to come up with something to make him less awesome. This didn't really work for me.

Michelle - I didn't like her. Aside from the constant reminder of how 'hot' she was, I felt like all we ever really knew of her was that she had a cute, yet annoying, french accent. Occassionally she only spoke in French instead of English (which, by the way, was kind of annoying considering I don't speak nor read French), also, did I mention that she's smokin' hot?

She had some 'real' moments, but ultimately she was a very two dimensional character for me. She was led by her emotions, which seemed to fluctuate with the moon cycles or the direction of the wind. Rather scattered.

Blurb:
This blurb sounded so awesome, I was imagining a paranormal version of something akin to a diary of a sex worker or hooker, what I got was rather quick, teasers instead of full blown sex scenes. Way to get the audience in, but let them down...

Story:
Some parts were too quick, things that seemed like they should be really important (Michelle's training and history for example) seemed really rushed, where as other parts that seemed to be thrown in for entertainment (Aaron/Michelle/Delia) seemed to drag for ages.

The Verdict:
What seems like it should be a XXX paranormal story ended up being barely a M rated romp of vampiric exploration. Quite a let down.

Things I noticed:
22% - '...stripped for men (insert 'for') the money.'

**Note: I recieved an electronic copy of this book for free.**