Bijal Rao, a lesbian indian-american republican gets her first staff position working for Janet Denton, a republican mayor that is trying to unseat an openly lesbian democrat congresswoman, in a red state. As told by Bijal to her best friend in the beginning of the book, Janet, like Bijal is fiscally conservative but has liberal positions regarding LGBT and women rights. Colleen O'Bannon, the congresswoman who is fighting for her first reelection, has gone into politics due to the death of her partner in a bombing of a women healthcare clinic and is depicted to the reader as being an honest politician for whom having a moral compass is of the utmost importance. The strength of the book is the witty and funny dialogue. Its main weakness is that the characters are not credible, even giving some leeway that this is a romance. There is an obvious conflict of interest and ethical problem in their involvement since Janet is never aware of it throughout the story, and while that is acknowledged when Bijal and Colleen meet, soon it is mostly ignored by them. Bijal, finds sexy Colleen’s integrity, yet has a spineless behavior throughout the book, accepting both any assignment given by her by the campaign manager, however ethically reproachable, and also the lack of integrity from Janet. In fact, when Janet, for electoral reasons, changes her liberal positions Bijal keeps working for her, even when there is an open homophobic advertisement made by Janet’s campaign. All this makes Bijal not a likeable person and also doubtful Colleen’s moral compass. Lesbian romance, like any fiction niche, has a high self-published, badly-edited, ridiculous-euphemism-ridden crap factor. I'm inclined to give this book an extra star just for not falling into the well of painfully earnest dreck, but I don't need to, because it's also funny, well written, and entertaining as hell. And the sex scenes, far from being cringe-worthy, were actually hot.The woman who recommended it to me said, "You'll laugh with it, not at it," and she was absolutely right. It's exactly what I wanted to read at the time -- fluffy escapism without flowery prose or unintentionally hilarious typos.
What do You think about Parties In Congress (2011)?
I couldn't put this down. Great humor, fantastic dialogue. Definitely will be re-reading it!
—ajsmith
The wittiest! Why the hell did I wait this long to read something from Colette Moody? Why?
—Neo77
Loved this book! made me lol so much! It's a definite Re-read :-D
—vmac
