Book Review – Neanderthal Seeks Human

Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid
Series: Knitting in the City #1
Published by Kathleen Paulus on June 17th 2013
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 323
Format: eBook
Goodreads

There are three things you need to know about Janie Morris: 1) She is incapable of engaging in a conversation without volunteering TMTI (Too Much Trivial Information), especially when she is unnerved, 2) No one unnerves her more than Quinn Sullivan, and 3) She doesn't know how to knit. After losing her boyfriend, apartment, and job in the same day, Janie Morris can't help wondering what new torment fate has in store. To her utter mortification, Quinn Sullivan- aka Sir McHotpants- witnesses it all then keeps turning up like a pair of shoes you lust after but can't afford. The last thing she expects is for Quinn- the focus of her slightly, albeit harmless, stalkerish tendencies- to make her an offer she can't refuse.

 

Lynn’s Review:

Sadly, there are no actual Neanderthals in this book. That title is very misleading! Though, the paragraph linking the story to the title by Ms. Reid is pretty clever.

Can you even imagine? It’d be like Planet of the Apes. He’s Charlton Heston with all the muscles and such. And I’m that girl ape. They could never be together because it’d be like a Neanderthal with a human, cross-species breeding … and that’s just not right.

The book opens on Janie’s worst day ever. She caught her boyfriend cheating. She was fired from her job. She spilled coffee all over herself. And there is no toilet paper in the bathroom stall. And to top it all off, the security guard escorting her out of her office is her crush, Sir Handsome McHotpants. Quinn is his actual name.

I’m on the fence with this book. Parts of it were really clever. And other parts were really predictable. Though, the most off-putting aspect of the whole book was Janie. I wouldn’t say she’s stupid, as clearly, she’s very intelligent. But she is VERY naive, lacks self-confidence, and is oblivious to most everything around her. As an example, she just assumes Quinn is a simple security guard, even after he recruits her to work at his company. It took Janie more than 200 pages to figure out the Quinn is the big boss. If I were Janie’s friend, I would want to shake some sense into her on numerous occasions.  

One of the other aspects that drove me crazy was the closed door sexy times. Everyone knows what I’m talking about. And really, I don’t need the actual sex scenes. But the “we made out on my desk” or “we made out in the back of the limo” is rather disappointing. 

I did find Quinn and his flirting to be rather adorable. Janie has no desire to have a cell phone. But Quinn insists, “for work”. Quinn takes to texting her clever jokes to put Janie at ease. Jokes like this one:

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numbers, and those who don’t.

Quinn is also out to protect Janie, assigning security guards, keeping Janie away from her cheating ex-boyfriend and her criminal sister.

In the end, I liked Neanderthal Seeks Human. And I’ll likely read the others in the series. It isn’t the best book I’ve read. But is somewhat clever. 

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