The Best Present I Ever Received

My husband has been known to be a bit hit and miss when it comes to buying me gifts.  Gifts aren't terribly important to me, but I like to receive something  on the appropriate holidays.  (I consider appropriate holidays to be my birthday, Christmas, and Mothers Day.) It has worked well for me to just tell Mr. Anne what I want for each holiday, either specifically or with some wiggle room.  That way I'm not disappointed and we're all good. I rarely get surprised, but I'm fine with that.  Christmas this year was a major exception though!  Mr. Anne got me the most thoughtful, shows-how-well-he-knows-me gift EVER!  He got me a romance novel personalized with our names!  SO cool!  I was laughing and crying at the same time when I opened it.  I think it will forever remain at the top of my favorite gifts list!

He ordered it from www.booksbyme.com.   The idea is pretty cool.  You can pick romance or regular fiction.  They even have children's and young adult books.  Within the romance there were even several genres to pick.  Once he picked romance and fantasy, he put in our names, physical characteristics, friends' names and more.   He chose a science fiction fantasy romance where he was a Water Mage and I was a self trained illegal Mage and we came together to, of course, save the world.  He chose a heat level that was "less than ménage but still hot" and that was fine with me.  (Note:  after I checked out the website myself, I asked him about this, because I didn't see any menage books.  He said he'd checked out a few different places, and it must have been another place that offered several more risque books you could put yourself into, including books where you already started as a couple, but then explored other interesting scenarios together.  The website he bought from, Books By Me offers books that range from no sex to a Blaze level.)

I have to tell you, though, that while it was an awesome gift, it was a weird read.  First of all, I was hyper aware of all the fill-in-the-blank spots.  I don't think they really stuck out much, but because it was about ME, I noticed when the heroine flips her straight brown hair, because it's MY straight brown hair.  And when the hero looked at MY "athletic" body, I had to break out of the story and appreciate that Mr. Anne had charitably described me as athletic!  (It made my day again!  See, best give EVER.)

Besides noticing the physical descriptions, I also was surprisingly squicked out to read the sex scene in the book!  I mean, I never skip sex scenes.  I'm not ashamed to say I look forward to them and really appreciate a hot sex scene.  The one in my book wasn't bad at all, but I really didn't enjoy seeing our names like I thought I would.  It was just...weird. 

The story itself was just ok, though it's hard for me to judge, since I was so wonderfully distracted by all the ME in the book.  It was a hoot and hands down a wonderful and thoughtful gift!