The Accidental Virgin – Valerie Frankel

32-year-old Stacy Temple is shocked to discover that it’s been almost a year since she’s had sex, particularly when she reads an article by columnist Diva XXX that twelve months without sex makes you a virgin all over again. “Stacy Temple was no virgin. And she would never be again.” With only a week until the revirginization, Stacy is desperate to hook up with someone (anyone!), but as each attempt meets with failure things do not look good.
I really should have known better – the title alone was a tip-off, and the cover blurb (an email to “Stacy, lapsed temptress” from “Venus, Goddess of Love, 120 Main, MI, Olympus” – a character who doesn’t appear in the book) should have set off alarm bells, but no. The writing is a little grating:

Charlie was high frequency… It wasn’t just his physical bearing (tousled blond hair, six-foot six inched of tautness, red lips and otherworldly green eyes) that drew attention. His voice, baritone, bounced, and the words he chose as effortlessly as a fish swims couldn’t be discounted.

But I could have overlooked that as a function of the genre had I been able to buy the premise. The biggest flaw was Stacey’s motivation – side-tracked from her romantic life by her job (for an online lingerie company), her about face based on nothing more than a mention of the concept of revirginization (a term used throughout the novel rather than coined by me) by her platonic male best friend and a couple of columns written by a stranger made no sense at all. This is the second strike for Frankel and despite my enjoyment of the first of her novel I read, I won’t be giving her an opportunity for strike three. - Alex