THE COMPANY WE KEEP

Will or won’t sexy, successful 29-year-old Teri get back with sexy, successful Harrison?

Very little happens in Monroe’s latest (She Had It Coming, 2008, etc.), which inhabits the high-rolling world of Teri Stewart, executive publicity director for Eclectic Records. It’s a world of bawdy language, parties and occasional business, in which sexual matters tend to dominate. Teri has had no intimate relationships for the last six months, which is inexplicable given that she is still madly attracted to her most recent boyfriend, DJ Harrison Starr, and that he fancies her too. The pair keep meeting at parties, both are single and nothing stands in their way other than the plot’s insistence on misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Trivial subplots involving Teri’s office politics and her best friend/secretary Nicole, who is also sexually frustrated but unlike Teri hasn’t stopped playing the field, also fill some pages.

Crude and raunchy, the story eventually delivers its much delayed but entirely predictable gratification.