Title: Practice Makes Perfect Author: Julie James
Published: March 3, 2009
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 291
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Payton Kendall and J.D. Jameson are lawyers who know the meaning of objection. A feminist to the bone, Payton has fought hard to succeed in a profession dominated by men. Born wealthy, privileged, and cocky, J.D. has fought hard to ignore her. Face-to-face, they're perfectly civil. They have to be. For eight years they have kept a safe distance and tolerated each other as coworkers for one reason: to make partner at the firm.
But all bets are off when they're asked to join forces on a major case. Though apprehensive at first, they begin to appreciate each other's dedication to the law—and the sparks between them quickly turn into attraction. But the increasingly hot connection does not last long when they discover that only one of them will be named partner. Now it's an all-out war. And the battle between the sexes is bound to make these lawyers hot under the collar...
In spite of my high expectations, Practice Makes Perfect was boring, tedious, aggravating, and rather a drag. I almost set it aside in the beginning, and I kind of wish I had. Casual sexism is never okay, not even if you have a “sassy feminist” character to counterbalance it. The additional fact that I found Julie James’ prose to be very stilted and unengaging did not help matters at all.
We have J.D. and Payton, two lawyers who are competing for promotion to partner. They’ve hated each other for the past 8 years, and this competition just makes everything worse. J.D. is an obnoxious elitist whiner, and Payton is a nearly-caricature of a corporate feminist. The fact that she doesn’t lose her ideals when loves comes knocking was a relief, but I’m still not a big fan of her as a whole, and in light of everything else, I’m not sure that Practice Makes Perfect really portrays women in the way it’s intended to.
So, J.D., our wonderful male lead, introduced himself to the reader by bitching about how rough he had it, complaining about “reverse discrimination” and how “everyone leaves white men to fend for themselves”…ARE YOU KIDDING?! This guy is the child of upper-class white people, he attended Harvard Law, and he drives a car worth more than my family sees in an entire year, and he’s whining about how his law firm is making a push to increase female partnership by 10%. (The firm, by the way, currently only has 18% female partnership, so 28% is still woefully lacking.) NO. As both a woman and a minority member, guess how sympathetic I am to his problems?
Oh wait, I’m not sympathetic at all!
J.D. also, charmingly, slut shamed the female lead, Payton, because he was obviously threatened by the fact that a woman was just as capable as he was, positioning that she got to where she was by selling her body. Nice. To be fair, Payton didn’t take his shit and he did apologize. But seriously, if those are the kind of things that naturally come out of this guy’s mouth on a regular basis…where’s the appeal?
So obviously, any chance that I would root for this man was pretty much obliterated within the first 5 chapters. And the worst part of it all is that nobody ever called him on his bullshit. One day he decided he was going to be a nice guy, and that was it. He never apologized or seemed to have a major change of heart—aside from falling in love with Payton, of course. James really put herself in a tight spot by having a completely disgusting character like that who then turned out to be the novel’s hero. Very, very difficult.
Needless to say, the romance in Practice Makes Perfect did not wow me. I found it lacking in chemistry, believability, and likability.
Also, this book completely fails the Bechdel Test. Normally, that kind of thing doesn’t bother me too much and I don’t pick up on it as much or tend to point it out in reviews. But when you consider there is only one three-dimensional female in this book and maybe two secondary female characters, and that the only thing those females ever discuss is having sex and whose ass looks best, I was annoyed. Not okay. You have this “feminist” character, and then you just make it look like the only thing she and her friends thought about was the Almighty Penis? Come. On.
Add in the fact that every single male character in this book makes some sort of crass/sexist statement at some point…absolutely not. There is better romance out there, and I’ve read it. Women do not have to be the brunt of a joke. And women, I assure you, were more often than not, a joke in this book.
I’ve heard good things about Julie James from multiple sources, but right now I’m not looking forward to ever reading another novel of hers. Practice Makes Perfect was offensive, not to mention boring, and I am completely underwhelmed by this as a whole. Like I said, this book is a complete drag.
