Weapons of Mass Seduction: A Novel to Unleash the Sensual You

* Weapons of Mass Seduction: A Novel to Unleash the Sensual You By Lori Bryant-Woolridge Harlem Moon/Broadway Books, May 2007 $12.95, ISBN 0-767-92665-2

Bryant-Woolridge's latest book gets off to an uncomfortable start, as Pia Jamison, a forty-something New York music video executive with a biological dock ticking like a time bomb, scares off dates by immediately announcing her intentions to use them to get pregnant. To say girlfriend needs a little work in the subtlety department is a massive understatement--what she needs is a lesson in tact, not a seminar on sensuality.

But that is exactly what her meddling assistant tricks her into attending, and Pia learns the fine art of flirting at "Weapons of Mass Seduction" a four-day bootcamp. There she meets Florence Chase, a middle-aged housewife from Dallas desperate to win back the attentions of her bored husband; and Rebecca Vossel, a twenty-something from Iowa who's been too shy and sheltered to embrace her inner sexpot.

The first third of this book reads like a self-help manual surrounded by character development, as we get to know these three women and follow them as they go through a series of confidence-building exercises and learn seduction skills from their flee-spirited instructor. Unleashed at the end of the seminar, the women return home determined to revamp their personal lives and monitor each other's progress.

Pia and Flo get their grooves back, although not with the results they had originally anticipated; and Rebecca, fired of being the wall-flower, morphs into Becca and discovers that her newfound, hypersexual alter ego may attract more than what she'd bargained for.

Although it may be hard to believe that these three women are so clueless at the onset about how to work their feminine wiles, all of them become likable characters, and readers will want to read on to find out if and how they get what they want out of their love lives.

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Melissa Ewey Johnson is a writer and editor in New York City.

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