Silly Fears

Silly Fears
Bridget Midway
Loose Id LLC
ISBN: 978-1-59632-447-0
Fiction, Erotica
Reviewed by Dave Thompson

At 136 pages, Silly Fears is way too long for what it is- which is, the somewhat contrived, and occasionally overwrought tale of a 30 year old woman whose silliest fears are, in order of sweaty-palmed, pounding-heart, chattering-teeth-shaped horror, the dark, voodoo and clowns. Which makes it extraordinarily inconvenient that she has fallen in love with- yes, a clown.
Admittedly, she doesn’t know that at first; he keeps the white face and funny shoes well out of sight when they’re together, and there’s not a bucketful of torn-up paper in sight. But his dreadful secret will emerge in the end, and now Jessica has to make the ultimate choice. Does she follow her heart and confront her fears? Does she cut and run, and hope he doesn’t chase her in the little clown car that he probably has tucked away for just such occasions? Or does Silly Fears abandon all pretense of being a romance novel, and tumble into the realm of a Face-Your-Phobia Self Help Manual instead?
It’s not a bad book. The erotic content is hot and, once you’ve learned to accept heroine Yessica’s neuroses, you can at least enjoy discovering whether or not she will ever overcome them. So the story itself is enjoyable. You will, however, find yourself distractedly skipping entire paragraphs as the book approaches its conclusion, and hoping that next time Midway puts pen to paper (or digit to keyboard), her story turns out to be stronger than her expositions.
The fear of clowns is a very serious subject. But so is the fear of being psychobabbled.