Episode 57 – Double Standards by Judith McNaught

She’s brought her masters’ degree in performance piano and her new Trans Am to the bright lights big city Detroit to… engage in corporate espionage for her eighteenth cousin once removed.  He’s a 36 year old high flying executive with the world and all the women in it at his feet.  Together they do crimes cry a lot have a gross 80’s boss-secretary relationship. 

This is obviously gonna have some content warnings.  In addition to the urrrrgh of the whole workplace romance thing, there’s also some child abandonment, some chucking kids into the Doberman enclosure, some ludicrous it’s-a me, Mario! Italian stereotypes, some sexual callousness – the whole thing is kind of a mess.  The biggest problem a lot of people will have with this is that she’s presented as REALLY young.  Younger than her chronological age.  She keeps getting mistaken for a teenager.  It does have good outfits though!

Sadly I can’t find a good image of the cover we read with the weird sex-irises – above is the original but you NEED TO SEE these covers, particularly of course the internationals.  Need to.

This is amazing.  I love this so hard.  This is goals.

Whereas this Thai cover captures the actual vibe of the book.  They’re all very thinly drawn and why are you so unprofessional my dude?!

This is evidently Lithuanian and it’s lowkey great.

This is Russian and somehow these people really look Russian.  But he looks like a Russian middle school student dressed up for his concert band recital.

For Portugal, the whole piano thing is the important part.

Whereas for Turkey it’s the blondeness.

Vietnam only cares about the lake house, which is fair.

Slovakia has a… is that a young Tammy Faye Bakker?

Okay this is not ACTUALLY about a teenager.

YOU CAN’T BE AN 80’S SECRETARY WITH THOSE NAILS, GIRLFRIEND.  YOU HAVE TO TAKE DICTATION.  

(This is Estonia.)

And Latvia – I like the localization of her name, that’s cool.  I don’t like how I kept blinking at it because I didn’t realize the lady is out of focus on purpose.  Cover does understand that this is a cold ass lake.

Somebody break it to the Czechs that this book isn’t really all that sexy.

Another French one – and he is not THAT old in this book, why is this lady fucking Steve Martin?