When I saw that there was a book called "Smut" that was about the whole idea of writing smut with all its cliches and a romantic comedy as well, I couldn't pass it up. It sounded pretty meta and would not only poke fun at the genre it would be reading about people writing smut while living in a smut book. 
 I had to give it a try. 
 First off, I want to admit that Smut was almost a DNF for me. For the first 50% of the book I found our main characters, Amanda and Blake, to be entirely insufferable. Seriously. They were the worst people and I couldn't stand them. So overall, I really wasn't a fan of the first 50% of the book. I didn't like the characters, I didn't like the story, and I didn't even like the writing style. Everything felt really phoned in. 
 That being said, I decided to soldier on because Amanda and Blake still hadn't had sex. Since the book was called Smut I had to see what the actual smut would be like. One the deed occurred, I have to admit... I was impressed. Maybe I'm just a big perv to be impressed by a sex scene but it was remarkably steamy and ended with a chase scene involving a rather stern and fast on her feet librarian. So I went from being turned on to laughing out loud. The rest of the book was actually really good. So many funny moments where I was laughing out loud instead of just in my head! Also, there was a lot of smut. O my. Just saying guys... it's impressive! 
 So I guess, overall, I enjoyed the book. I still think Amanda and Blake are not people I would ever want to have as friends but, who cares? There were steamy sex scenes and funny moments that were funny for real in the story. Were the characters a bit one dimensional? Ya... and it really bothered me at first but I stopped minding once the story finally picked up some steam. (Haha! Get it? STEAM?) I think maybe I'll check out another book or two by Karina Halle and see if this is a one hit wonder for me or if this is really a new author I can get invested in.