Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Jayce Ito thought there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his childhood best friend, Marley Bonds, until she asked him to help her out posing as a geisha for a client’s birthday party. He’d done a lot of foolish things for Marley, but this just bordered on insanity--especially when the recipient of the gift turned out to be none other than his new boss, Reuben Danza.

Reuben Danza had received some outlandish birthday gifts in his thirty-two years on earth, but when his best friend Payton Roberts hires a beautiful geisha to perform at his birthday party to impress some important clients, the drunken Reuben decided to let loose a little and show the Japanese men that he really knows how to have fun. But the plot backfires when Reuben gets interested in the geisha and wants to date her.

 

Book Review

Finding out who you really are can take many different forms. Jayce, a young Japanese American, has managed to successfully reconcile his Japanese heritage with the American culture all around him. That is not easy, but he has managed to do it, even using it in his job as book editor when working with a Japanese author.

What throws Jayce for a loop is the mounting evidence that he may not be as straight as he has always told himself he was. Dressing up as a Geisha, as his mother taught him from a very young age, just to help out a friend, sets a whole chain of events in motion, at the end of which he has to face the truth. While I felt as if he was ‘drifting’ along during most of it, accepting what was happening without any outer signs of resistance, when push comes to shove and he has to make a decision whether to come out or hide away, he does face the situation with dignity and strength. Which just goes to show that, deep down, he really is very, very Japanese.

Reuben, Jayce’s purely American boss, falls for the Geisha impersonation first, then goes all the way to seduce Jayce. Reuben is a guy who is dominant, likes to tell others what to do, and stands up for his convictions. He is also a fairly stereotypical American without, as far as the narrator, Jayce, can see, much depth to him. I thought that was a pity and wish we could have seen more of him. Or maybe he was as superficial as he seemed to me? It is hard to tell when he uses sex as his major negotiating tool, if you can even call what he does negotiation. Most of the time he came across more like a bulldozer who wanted to get into Jayce’s life no matter what.

While this story does not contain a lot of tension and open conflict, it has some very subtle cultural observations about behavior, assumptions, and ways of dealing with developing relationships. Reading between the lines is a skill you will need to fully understand Jayce and why he acts the way he does. If you enjoy stories about cross-cultural relationships, if the Japanese way of doing things interests you, and if you like reading about a developing relationship where much of the getting-to-know-you phase happens via sex and subtle comments, you will probably like this story.

 

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Books reviewed on this site were usually provided at no cost by the publisher or author. This book has been provided by Phaze Books for the purpose of a review.

Additional Information

Format	ebook
Length	Novella, 39100 words
Heat Level
Publication Date	01-May-2012
Price	$4.99 ebook
Buy Link	http://www.amazon.com/Geisha-Hire-Shawn-Bailey-ebook/dp/B007ZRUZ74