It took a few books before Anita Blake started sleeping with the 100+ year old jerk men? That helped. A little. I mean, at least the first 2 books were good.

Anyway, Uprooted has a lot less sex than the Anita Blake books did by the time I gave up on reading the latter (around book 8? With Narcissus in Chains). The romance subplot is *really* minor. Like, you could cut out maybe 6 pages, describe their ultimate relationship as "close mentor/mentee friendship", and it wouldn't change anything.