  Author(s): Lynda Curnyn Genre: Women's Fiction Deposition: If you’ve read Lynda Curnyn’s urlLink Engaging Men , you’ve already met Grace Noonan, the heroine of Bombshell. Grace was one of Angie DiFranco’s confidantes, confined to the outer fringes of Engaging Men. In Bombshell, Ms. Curnyn tells us Grace’s story. After her boyfriend Ethan reacts selfishly to a condom “mishap”, Grace gives him the boot and focuses on her career as a marketing professional at a cosmetics firm called Roxanne Dubrow (think Estee Lauder. ) Her thoughts also focus on her birth-mother, who has not responded to the letter Grace sent to her months ago. Grace is lonely and bitter and the story follows her dating foibles, her job stresses and the angst of feeling unloved. I did not enjoy this as much as Engaging Men. Grace is simply not very likable. She’s entirely too serious. She’s humorless and keeps to herself – refusing to confide in friends and loved ones. It’s no wonder she’s lonely. Because Grace constantly rejects those around her and makes little effort to help herself, I found it difficult to care what happened to her.
There’s lack of characterization of all secondary characters – they become so much background scenery as Grace stews internally about her woes. Later in the story, Grace meets Jonathan Somerfield at an art auction. Since this was at a critical point in Grace’s story, it was vital that Jonathan be a strong, memorable character. He was so passive, wimpy and unsuitable for Grace’s personality, there was absolutely no chemistry.
Which leads me to the narrative. The story is told in first-person point-of-view – a format I typically enjoy. But Grace internalizes so much, her thoughts became such a depressing burden, I had to resist the urge to skip ahead to scenes containing dialogue. There are a couple of redundant, gratuitous sex scenes and numerous shopping scenes that had me rolling my eyes and yawning. Grace Noonan’s story just isn’t interesting or engaging enough to carry an entire novel. Verdict: 
