This was rather disappointing. I love brainy characters, and I enjoyed the first book in the Nerd series: Nerd in Shining Armor, but this one fell flat.

Harry, the Nerd from the title, has, according to the cover: "...an I.Q. higher than Einstein's..." We get told this very often, but the only evidence we see of it is that he works as an accountant, and can lose at chess to a 4-year-old. Most of the time, he's just a stereotypically unathletic doofus, except when he gets protective about Lainie, the heroine.

Likewise, his big problem is that he hasn't found a woman he's attracted to who can keep up with him intellectually. I actually like this problem, because I think being able to communicate is hugely important in a relationship. But again, we never really see it. A couple of times, he tries to convince Lainie (and himself?) that her photographic memory and intuition means she's smarter than the rest of her fellow showgirls, but we never, for example, see him trying to talk to someone who just can't keep up.

The bulk of the story is taken up by Harry's retired-showgirl mom, her maybe-mafia boyfriend, and their group of friends while they try to keep Lainie's ex-boyfriend and father of her son from catching up to them.

There are some funny moments in the book, none of them really having to do with the apparent main characters. The laughs are worth the reading time, and if you subscribe to the notion that smart people are really doofuses, you'll probably like the book a lot better than I did. ( )

All of the Nerd books have something that they're best at, and something that keep them from being the best of the series.

The Nerd Who Loved Me has the Physically Best Nerd Hero. That's not by general "physically best" standards, that's by "most appropriate for a nerd hero" standards. Some of the Nerd men are rather unrealistically buff- a nerdy guy might look after his health, but he has better things to do with his time than body build. Harry is a reasonably handsome man, but he has what Thompson at one point describes as "motherboard abs." It's been about ten years since he was working out on any kind of regular basis. But he doesn't have to rely strictly on "inner beauty"- it's just that the kind of description he gets is being "safe" or "comforting." I like it much better when Thompson talks up the attractive points of a basic nerd than when she tries to make them hot based on standards of women who like jock types. Furthermore, Harry's nerdiness is almost always presented as a good thing in this book (except for one instance of him not being as romantic as Lainie would like), unlike Jackson's in Nerd in Shining Armour, where it is generally presented as something that needs to be overcome.

Also in the good column is Leo, Harry's mother's boyfriend of the past twenty years, who neither confirms nor denies any connection to the Mafia. Thompson has a talent for secondary characters, and Leo may be her best. This book also gets points for sticking to fairly realistic comedy (meaning I at least recognize the universe in which it takes place as being the same as my own) and for sex mostly coming up in contexts where it might be expected. These last two things can't always be said for the later books in the series, but they have their own good points.

The bad: this is still the stage of the series where nerdy women are presented as unsexy. Lainie is smart, but nerdy is a subset of smart, not a synonym. Nerdy requires smart, plus a nearly obsessive inclination towards the academic and/or intellectual, to the exclusion of spending any time or effort on being mainstream cool. As far as I can tell, the only nerdy women mentioned in this book are the "mousy" ones Harry usually dates, who are intellectually stimulating but not physically. ( )

From BookCover:
She's got the high-kicks...
Lainie Terrell is no ordinary single mother. With feathers in all the right places, she's one of the hottest showgirls in Vegas. Aside from a hot-tempered ex-boyfriend on her sequined tail, Lainie's biggest problem is finding a decent babysitter for her son. Lainie's dilemma is solved when she ropes Harry Ambrewster, the casino's shy—but very smart and cute—accountant, into the task.

He's got the low-down...
Inheriting his chemist father's high I.Q. and sexy good looks, Harry has always been intrigued by Lainie. He isn't thrilled at the prospect of babysitting, but he'll do anything to get near the gal who fuels his craziest fantasies. Then Lainie's dangerous ex comes knocking...

Their option? Run faster than a pair of net stockings...
In disguise and on the lam, Lainie's masquerading as the perfect wife. Harry's doubling as the he-man protector. But with a set-up this hot, who's fooling who? When the lights go down, and the masks come off, a nerd like Harry could be just the right ignition to set a woman like Lainie on fire...

Someone left this paperback in an airport to share as a gift - ? I read it on the plane because I could, it was vapid and trashy and a complete waste of my reading time. I think I left it on the first flat surface I encountered upon arrival. Sorry to the next unsuspecting traveler. ( )

Bleh. This book gave as shallow a view of a nerd as humanly possible. The two main characters were as cardboardy as they come. I'd have rather spent the time with the mothers boyfriend or the caretaker, they were far more fleshed out and interesting than the mains.

I'm not sure there is a plot to spoil when the premise is a struggling single mom and her unlikely white knight. I don't know how I ended up with this other than the title was appealing, but boy howdy, how the book wasn't. The upside was that it was a short enough book I finished it quickly. There is a lot of anguish about sex, not a lot of detail, but much titillation.

I got the feeling the writer read Microserfs a few too many times, but didn't actually get it.