Aug 12 2006

REVIEW: Good Girl Gone Bad by Karin Tabke

By Jane • Book Reviews, F Reviews • • Tags: , ,

Dear Ms. Tabke:

Good Girl Gone BadI have a feeling that after this review, you aren’t going to like me very much. Please try to remember that this letter is about your book and not about you. Because I hated it – the book, that is. It was the worst piece of drivel that I have read in a while (and that’s saying something since I just read some drivel last week). There are so many things that I thought were wrong in this book, I barely know where to start.

Let’s just begin with the fact that I have no idea where this story took place. You never name a town, a city, a county, an unincorporated municipality or even a village. Not even a fake one like they used to do in those old Silhouettes. There was some reference to “I hope you like California penal-orange” but that was it. So this book takes place somewhere in America, possibly in California and, I think, in the present day. But who knows. It could have taken place in Oregon or Idaho for all the detail you give about it. What I do know is that the County Sheriff’s department is handling a sting operation at a local strip club where dancers are disappearing. I don’t know why the County is handling this matter versus the city. I don’t know why the county detectives are called officers as opposed to deputies (I thought county officials were sheriff’s deputies and police people were officers). I don’t know why you choose to continually refer to your characters as cops when they are county employees.

I think you were trying to be clever and pretend like you knew what you were talking about by throwing out acronyms like PD, GO, and PC (probable cause). Unfortunately, when the reader doesn’t know what the hell you are talking about, it just makes everyone look ignorant. I think PD meant police department, but why does the Sheriff have offices in the Police Department? Wouldn’t that be where the police and not the Sheriff’s people work? I mean, in my world that is what takes place, but maybe in your alternate reality world that you forgot to tell us about it doesn’t. I was actually willing to set aside the issues regarding the technical aspects of the plot if the character development and growth are worthwhile.

Except the hero in the story is an asshole with a capital A S S H O L E. He makes Dane from Linda Howard’s Dream Man read like a beta hero. Ty Jamerson is one step away from the Missing Link on the evolutionary chart. Hell, maybe Ty is the Missing Link. He is a knuckle dragging, chest thumping, woman hating neanderthal. He does have a good reason (NOT) to be an asshole to all women around him and that is because his mother was a whore. Ty is unable to get past the fact that his mother was a bitch so he treats all other women as bitches. He constantly demeans the heroine (and other women in the book). He sexually harasses her. He treats all the women as if they are mere objects.

The heroine isn’t much better. Philomenia Zorn, aka Kat, aka Siren, is a candidate for the mental institution. My 3 year old neighbor refers to himself in the third person. “Joe is going down the slide next.” “Joe thinks that was fun.” “Joe likes his socks.” When Joe says these things, it’s funny shit. When your heroine says it, she sounds like a loon.

“Phil's heart thudded against her chest. Kat wanted to let loose, strip down to her birthday suit, and flaunt it all under Ty's nose. The thought left Phil mortified.”

Phil is a good girl who has alot of sexual hangups due to the fact that she was raised that sexual desire was somehow dirty. Yet, Phil can get into her character as a scantily clad cocktail waitress trading sexual quips in a nanosecond. How does she do this? By letting Kat come out and play. Phil refers to her inner sexual being in the third person and is found saying “Kat is this, Kat is that. Phil likes Kat.” That’s crazy. What makes it worse is when Phil starts stripping, Kat morphs into Siren. Yes, that would be three personalities for the price of one book. That’s crazy with a capital C R A Z Y.

In fact, now that I think about it, CRAZY and ASSHOLE go together like peas and carrots. Brillaint.

So what about plot if the characters didn’t work? The plot, besides the fact that your knowledge of procedure seems limited to what you may have seen on a bad and poorly researched television show, is that there are dancers from a local strip joint disappearing. One of them was an undercover “officer”. Zorn, an investigator for Internal Affairs, is tapped to go undercover as a cocktail waitress/stripper. Having no experience in undercover investigations, she is asked to go into this long standing sting operation. Ty is also undercover acting as the floor manager at the club. They hope to dangle Zorn as bait to stop the kidnapping and find out where the dancers are. Despite supposedly being undercover, Phil/Kat/Siren and Ty engage in many a discussion inside the bar and outside where Ty refers to Phil/Kat/Siren as “Officer” and Zorn refers to Ty as “Lieutenant.” They use their real names, not fake names. One of the customers recognizes Zorn from college (but apparently doesn’t realize that since that time she is a “police officer”). Very sneaky guys. No wonder the other undercover “officer” went missing. My neighbor Joe could have run a better sting operation.

I think this is supposed to be one of those ramped up erotic romances so maybe the sex will save it. But no. After all, you have ASSHOLE and CRAZY getting it on when ASSHOLE doesn’t even like CRAZY.

“Do you like me? At least a little?”
His eyes burned hot and he smiled. “I like you enough.” He cupped her breasts in his hands, thumbing her hard nipples. “Now shut up and strip.”

There is no love between these two and I don’t believe there ever will be. Belay that, I think CRAZY may love ASSHOLE but ASSHOLE is too much an asshat to love anyone but his own dick. Let me talk about that dick for a minute because do you know how many times ASSHOLE’s cock (your constant term) moved? Alot. It should have its own circus act. It twinged twice and twinged hard two more times. I think that is 3 twingings too many. But it also jumped (2), thickened (2), reared, stiffened, swelled, throbbed, twitched. I wonder at ASSHOLE’s ability to keep it in his pants, it was so animated. But ASSHOLE’s cock met a perfect match in CRAZY’s breasts which swelled and her nipples which were constantly stiff and stabbing little holes into her shirts.

This book was one hot mess from start to finish in all aspects of the story. Even the sex couldn’t save this from being an F because who wants to read about sex scenes that involve characters that you want to see offed by the bad guy?

Best regards,

Jane

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By • Book Reviews, F Reviews • 59 • Tags: , ,