Dear E.L. James,

So I’m pretty much in the minority when it comes to this book as I hated it.

Fifty Shades [...]]]> This review is being posted in lieu of a morning opinion piece because it is an opinion piece of sorts and because, well, it is verbose. So you get three reviews today. Yay!

Dear E.L. James,

So I’m pretty much in the minority when it comes to this book as I hated it.

Fifty Shades of Grey came to my attention during a Twitter conversation. I was intrigued by the fact that the book was apparently once a Twilight fan fiction piece entitled Master of the Universe and featured a BDSM relationship between the main protagonists. I was told that there was a high level of WTFery but I ignored this warning. I’m usually a fan of WTFery. If I was not a fan of WTFery, I would not have enjoyed afternoon soap operas for most of my teen years. After all, WTFery is simply the absurd taken to new heights of, well, of absurdity. But this was not WTF in an absurd, adorable way. It was infuriating. I wanted to scratch my eyes out or maybe the characters’. I’m not really sure. At one point, I had to start drinking heavily. But even gin didn’t dull the fury.

In writing this, I’ve been thinking of alternate titles, something that plays on the title of the book, what it is about, and how I feel about it. Something succinct like: “50 Shades of Grey, 7 Shades of Scarlet, & 372 Pages of Dumb.” Or maybe: “120 Days of Boredom.”  What about: “The Story of Oh . . . My!” Perhaps, “Where There’s a Will, There’s an Ellipsis” or “The Whiner, the Witch, and the Wanker”? No, I’ve got it: “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” but I wouldn’t want to associate X-Ray Spex with this book. So let’s call this after my favorite safe word: Julie Andrews!

I should state, for the record, that I was did not buy this book. I was lent it and I am very grateful to that person.  Yes, I am very grateful despite the fact that I ended up loathing this book. So, what’s it all about?

Anastasia Steele is on the cusp of graduating from Washington State University. Before she can do that, though, she’s got to get through finals, a task which would be made easier if she didn’t have to drive up to Seattle to interview some billionaire named Christian Grey for the student newspaper. But she does have to, even though she isn’t technically on the student paper. Her BFF Kate is sick, and being sick she is incapable of driving the three hours or conducting the interview. So Anastasia does it instead. It’s a last minute thing and honestly, she’s just not prepared for it (or for anything in life, really, but we’ll get to that). She doesn’t know anything about Christian Grey. She doesn’t know how old he is or what he does. All she knows is that he’s rich and he donates to the university.

Whatever she expected, it wasn’t the reality of Christian Grey. He’s young, for one, and he’s intense, really intense. Anastasia knows that she’s no match for him looks-wise, so it baffles her when he starts pursuing her: showing up at her work, sending her a first-edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, rescuing her from a drunken evening out. She can hardly believe her luck when this perfect man whisks her away to his penthouse in Seattle. Only Christian Grey has a dark secret. No, he isn’t a vampire or a spy or Batman. He’s kinky. He’s into BDSM. He likes to whip and chain it. GASP!

That’s pretty much the plot. Ignorant young woman with virginity still intact and a case of low self-esteem meets a controlling, manipulative, hot, young billionaire who identifies as a dominant in order to justify the fact that he’s a paternalistic control freak. Yay! Oh, yay! It’s just such an original and imaginative take on heterosexual relationships, don’t you think? It really offers some new insight into sexuality and power.

I am, of course, being sarcastic. Fifty Shades of Grey does the exact opposite. Not only does it perpetuate damaging untruths about BDSM as a sexuality and a sexual identity, it also manages to do so in the most clichéd and hackneyed way possible. It is a thoroughly uninteresting book. The characters are as flat as a thing can be without entering the first dimension. The plot has only a single conflict: that Christian is BDSM identified and Anastasia is vanilla. E.L. James has managed to take the worst aspects of Twilight, the worst elements of a Mills & Boon circa 1977, and the worst of BDSM erotica and combine them into one glorious whole (or should that be hole?). She deploys the tropes and clichés with a heavy hand—tropes and clichés that, to be fair, are everywhere in romance. But it is the thoughtless use of these clichés that makes them problematic for me. And this is coming from a person who has just written and presented an academic paper defending the cliché and clichéd language!

Worse, the prose itself is stuttering and robotic. Sentences are rendered in a childish sing-song structure (subject verb predicate) and overwhelmingly they are in the active voice. Moreover, the prose beats you over the head with its intended meaning. James clearly doesn’t trust her readers to pick up on nuance, to infer traits and qualities from the characters dialogue and interactions, or to remember events from mere paragraphs prior (God knows Anastasia doesn’t). Instead, she spends a great deal of timing telling us all sorts of things about Anastasia and Christian but somehow manages to demonstrate the exact opposite.

What I hated about this book are certainly issues and problems that I have disliked in other novels. However, as I said above, by separating the clichés from the original forms and contexts (particularly in the case of Twilight), James loses the subtlety that made these problematic clichés at the very least tolerable in their other contexts. For instance, in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Wicked Intentions the hero’s desire for kinky sex is “cured” by his relationship with the heroine. However, the central conflict of that book does not revolve around the hero’s sexual identity nor does the heroine find it any way monstrous. As such, I was able to overlook it enough to enjoy the rest of the novel. That simply was not the case for me in Fifty Shades of Grey.

In order to address the multitude of problems in the narrative, I have divided the review into three sections. I have not written a thesis statement, which I’m sure will disappoint Maggie Stiefvater. C’est la vie! We can’t always get what we want. I certainly didn’t whilst reading this book.

Prose

The prose is dull, but it isn’t unreadable. It’s competent. The best thing I can say about it is that vast majority of sentences are grammatical. More problematically was what I shall call the rhythm of the prose. Like Gertrude Stein, I believe the sentence is the basic building block of narrative. The sentences in this book did not help me enter the world of the story. They were an obstruction. A series of pedestrian, pre-chewed sentences only slightly more sophisticated than the ones found in my 2^nd grade reader:

The drive to the heliport is short and, before I know it, we arrive. I wonder where the fabled helicopter might be. We’re in a built-up area of the city and even I know helicopters need space to take off and land [Reviewer’s Note: No. They don’t. That’s their advantage over the plane!] Taylor parks, climbs out, and opens my car door. Christian is beside me in an instant and takes my hand again.  (p. 63) Kindle Edition.

By pre-chewed, what I mean is that every sentence, every piece of dialogue is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect in a book like this. Like in a James Cameron movie where every character says exactly what such a character always says at such a moment. It is uniformly predictable and because it is uniformly predictable it doesn’t convey any subtle or nuanced meaning to the story. Its uniformity on a sentence level shapes the superficiality of the rest of the book—the plot, the characters, and the underlying themes. This is what I mean by clichéd.

The prose is further made awful by James’ weird and arbitrary use of the italics. Italics are used to emphasize certain words or phrases. They are also used, on occasion, as a way of setting off a character’s thoughts. By using the italics all the time, which she does, the emphasis loses all meaning and force. Quite frankly, the italics make Anastasia look dumb—not that she needs any help with that. They create a constant sense of Anastasia as a person easily startled, like someone suffering from short term memory loss who forgets she just saw you ten seconds ago and then jumps when she sees you again. It’s fucking ridiculous. For example:

“I assume you’re not on the pill.”

What! Shit.

“I didn’t think so.” He opens the top drawer of the chest and removes a packet of condoms [Reviewer’s note: the pill doesn’t protect from STDs, yo!]. He gazes at me intently.

“Be prepared,” he murmurs. “Do you want the blinds drawn?”

“I don’t mind.” I whisper. “I thought you didn’t let anyone sleep in your bed.”

“Who says we’re going to sleep?” he murmurs softly.

“Oh.” Holy hell.

He strolls slowly toward me. Confident, sexy, eyes blazing, and my heart begins to pound. My blood’s pumping around my body. Desire, thick and hot, pools in my belly. He stands in front of me, staring down into my eyes. He’s so freaking hot. (p. 82).

Why are these in italics? What is the purpose of the emphasis? What does it tell us that the context doesn’t? That the words themselves don’t? We don’t need them if they are just supposed to be setting off Anastasia’s thoughts because the story is told in the first person and we are already occupying her headspace. We don’t need to be told that this is what she is thinking via italics. They emphasize nothing. And at one point, dialogue coming from another room is in italics (Location 2842 of 10541). So to me, there is no rhyme or reason for this usage. It just takes the reader out of the story. Let’s not even get into the plethora of ellipses (oh my god . . . the ellipses!).

A final, but by no means last, word on the prose is the use of the word subconscious. The subconscious plays a large role in Anastasia’s life. Almost as large as her inner goddess, which I can only assume is some kind of euphemism for vagina. The subconscious is constantly berating and admonishing her. The problem is that this is not what the subconscious does. That’s what the conscience does or the superego, if you are going to be Freudian about it. You are not actually consciously aware of the subconscious because it is sub conscious; it is below the level of consciousness. This may seem like mean-spirited nitpicking, but it isn’t a singular instance of wrong usage. It is a constant refrain within the book. Every time the subconscious spoke, I thought to myself: No. Wrong. No.

Because the prose is so weak, it ends up highlighting and accentuating the book’s other weaknesses, which are as follows:

Plot/Character

The plot in this book is the characters. And that’s the problem. There is no other conflict or story other than the fact that Anastasia wants a normal relationship and Christian can’t give her one. He gives it the old school try, I’ll tell you that. Theoretically, this could be a really interesting story. What happens to a kinky person when/if they fall in love with someone who is vanilla? Is it bound (ha!) to be a doomed relationship? Or is there a way to make it work for both people? There’s a good story there. That’s a good premise. Unfortunately, that is not the story in Fifty Shades.

Going in, I had heard rumors to the effect that Christian gets “cured” of his BDSM kink and to me it was fairly clear from the beginning that this is trajectory of the story. This because of the way the narration—that is Anastasia as the first person narrator—characterizes Christian’s kink and the presumption that the reader is going to or ought have her same perspective about BDSM. But let’s talk about Christian first.

Christian is an asshole of the first order. At the outset of the story, he employs the classic move of mind-fuckers and bad boyfriends everywhere, “Anastasia, I’m not a hearts and flowers kind of man, I don’t do romance. My tastes are very singular. You should steer clear of me” (p. 52). Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ooohhh god! What girl hasn’t heard a version of that before? Am I right, ladies? Regardless of what language it is uttered in, this is the first tip off that you are dealing with a manipulative fuck. But you know what? Let’s give credit where credit is due, Anastasia actually takes him at his word, something Christian never manages to do when it comes to her word. No, no. He just steamrolls right on over every one of her objections. But Anastasia doesn’t pursue him after he tells her this. No, he pursues her. He sends her a first edition. This is not the action of a man who wants a woman to stay away from him. When she calls him drunk to ask him why he would do that, he tracks her down and takes her back to his hotel. Nothing happens, but again, his actions say something different than his words. I would call him a stalker, but he doesn’t have that level of subtlety

The mind games really set the scene for when Christian takes Ana to Seattle where he has her sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement prior to revealing the fact that he’s a dom. There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to begin. First, Anastasia has no effing clue what BDSM is. Second, she has no sexual experience. Third, the agreement says she can’t talk about this to anyone, which means that she cannot ask anyone bedsides Christian anything about BDSM. Thus, Christian gets to be the one who controls the interpretation of what it means to be a submissive. Does that not strike anyone else as abusive? This is such a violation of kink ethics, of ethics period.

Fine. Whatever. Let’s move on. So then, he hands her a contract. Surely you jest? I mean, dude. Just . . . wow! For god’s sake, he doesn’t even give her a chance to find out what BDSM is or whether or not she wants to pursue something with him. No. He just hands her a contract that’s basically structured to be a 24/7 Dominant/submissive relationship. I mean, I’m not kinky but it seems to me to be common friggin’ sense that you ought to at least play with someone, do a few scenes with a new partner before you go all 24/7! Let’s hire a U-Haul! Forevah, Babes! Not the mention the fact that he’s totally pressuring her to say yes immediately. Argh!

Anyhow, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ana’s virginity would not stop him from just steamrolling right on over that issue and continuing with his plan to have her as his sub. Oh! And did I mention he blames her for not telling him she was a virgin. Douchewad! So then we get this romantic and touching scene:

“We’re going to rectify the situation right now.”

“What do you mean? What situation?”

“Your situation. Ana, I’m going to make love to you, now.”

“Oh.” The floor has fallen away. I’m a situation. I’m holding my breath.

“That’s if you want to, I mean, I don’t want to push my luck.”

“I thought you didn’t make love. I thought you fucked hard.” I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry.

He gives me a wicked grin, the effects of which travel all the way down there (p. 81)

Somebody call the producers of Jersey Shore, because it turns out The Situation is actually Anastasia Steele’s intact hymen. Yes, responsible sex at its finest. This attitude pretty much characterizes Christian throughout the novel. The only difference between Christian Grey and a Greek Tycoon is that Christian isn’t Greek, as far as I know. He also has more contracts. Other than that, his paternalism and general alpha-hole behavior may as well have been stripped from any number of Harlequin Presents, sans the nuanced characterizations or groveling scenes of penance.

Besides being the worst sort of alpha male, Christian’s personality can be summarized thus: spectacularly beautiful man who smirks a lot. There’s not a lot there. He’s pretty much a cipher, not so much enigmatic as empty.

Then there’s Anastasia Steele. She has shockingly little personality for a first person narrator. She’s vapid and dumb, so very, very dumb. She’s TSTL, but not because she chases down villains in London’s worst slums. No, but because she fails to register the blatantly obvious. Right after Christian tells her he’s kinky, we get this gem of an exchange:

My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified.

“You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly.

“No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.” (p. 70)

Is this supposed to be cute? Endearing? If so, fail. It is one thing to be a virgin, it is another thing to be so flamingly, fantastically ignorant of the universe and the obvious. I mean, good god, Xbox?! Freaking Xbox?! (Note the use of italics, used to emphasize my disdain). Come on, woman!

I don’t have a problem with virgin heroines, because I don’t equate virginity with being a brain-dead ignoramus. Call me crazy, but I don’t think one needs to have had sex in order to be able to connect the dots in basic human interactions. James has Christian constantly praising Ana’s intelligence and bravery and cleverness, but everything Ana does renders these compliments into ironic, nay sarcastic statements. Every time something sexual is mentioned Ana blushes or flushes or gasps. Any time Christian tries to have an adult conversation with her about BDSM, she bites her lip and peeks out from under her hair like Princess Diana used to do at the paparazzi. Then he tells her he wants to fuck her. Ana’s entire attitude towards their relationship is immature and adolescent, while Christian’s is controlling and manipulative.

If only she were just dumb and easily embarrassed by sex, but no. Ana’s also judgmental and shallow. I think her attitude towards Christian is fairly well summarized in the following lines: “The problem is, I just want Christian, not all his… baggage – and right now he has a 747 hold’s worth of baggage” (p. 217). And later she says: “I’m in this fantasy apartment, having fantasy sex with my fantasy boyfriend. When the grim reality is he wants a special arrangement, though he’s said he’ll try more” (p. 269). The sheer immaturity of these statements is awe-inspiring. Ana doesn’t want Christian with all his baggage. She wants the fantasy, not the grim reality of the actual man. The fact that her adolescent crush on him is characterized as true love illustrates the underlying fuckwitted-ness of this book.

In an adult relationship we deal with the other person’s baggage, whatever that baggage is because everyone’s got it. When Ana talks about how she doesn’t have any examples except literary heroines for knowing how to deal with men, her fundamental misreading of relationships is revealed. She says, “My other references are all fictional: Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, Jane Eyre too frightened, and Tess would succumb, just as I have” (p. 163). Ana seems to be under the misguided impression that Elizabeth was upset with Darcy for having baggage. That Jane was scared of Rochester’s baggage, which like most people he kept in the attic. But this is a terribly naïve reading of those books and the relationships they depict.

And this naïve attitude toward sex and romance is reiterated in the way that Ana repeatedly characterizes Christian as a monster, as depraved, as a nut-job, as scary, and as dangerous. At one point she says, “This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight – or the dark knight as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?” (p. 259). And that pretty much sums up the problem with Ana, Christian, and the plot. BDSM is something you do when you don’t know how to have a “real” relationship. Something you use when you don’t know what “real” love is. “Real” love being two flawless people with no baggage loving boinking. And that’s bullshit.

Spectacle

Oh BDSM! Up Yours! Kink serves three contradictory purposes within this story: it is a justification for Christian being an alphahole (He’s damaged! He’s dominant! He doesn’t know what real love is!). It is the erotic titillation and tension in the sex scenes—which, FYI, are so boring they could have acted as general anesthesia. I could have had a tooth drilled during and not realized it. And it is the obstacle or conflict the hero and heroine must overcome in order to be together.

The narrative wants to occupy a position where we get to take the moral high ground sexually speaking but at the same time get to be thrilled by the eroticism of BDSM. It wants us to think of Christian’s BDSM as something that’s wrong with him, a symptom of his inner, childhood demons. But it also wants us to get off on it. Like teenage girls giggling over pictures of penises, it seems to say of BDSM, “Tee he he he! That’s so gross!” But secretly loves the titillation it gets from viewing the forbidden.

Nowhere is this made clearer than in the depiction of Mrs. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson is the name Ana gives to the older femdomme who introduced Christian to BDSM when he was but fifteen years old. Ugh! But friends, it gets worse. Ana, in her typically sensitive and insightful way, refers to her in front of Christian as Mrs. Pedo. To which Christian responds, “She’s a dear, valued friend and a business partner. That’s all. We have a past, a shared history, which was monumentally beneficial for me, though it fucked up her marriage – but that side of our relationship is over” (p. 314).

Cue stunned silence.

I don’t even know where to begin with this: the fact that one of the few, and certainly the most important, femalez involved in BDSM is depicted as child molester. Or the fact that she gave Christian the only kind of love he would accept and saved from a life of darkness and drugs. Oh my! Or the fact that it basically justifies Ana’s view of BDSM as “scary” and “dark” . . . like Christian’s eyes. This is just so, so, so WRONG.

The characterization of Mrs. Robinson as a pedophile is followed by Ana getting turned on, for the umpteenth time, by Christian and then trying to use sex to get him to tell her about his past. Followed by BDSM being characterized as some kind of therapy. Followed by another mind-blowing orgasm. This is fairly typical as far as this book is concerned. One minute BDSM is wrong, wrong, wrong. So scary! So dark! Then the next it is hot, hot, hot! Then it is therapeutic. Then it is wrong and dark again. Then Ana’s getting off on images of Christian with a riding crop, and so on and so forth. In short, the depiction of BDSM as an identity and as sexuality is careless, inconsistent, and rests on common myths and misperceptions about it. And I haven’t even gotten to the contract, yet!

It is entirely obvious to me that this used to be Twilight fan fiction because James manages to capture the vibe of the original: the shoe-gazing, eye-gazing, pseudo-angst of Bella and Edward’s tumultuous love affair. Yes! It’s all there from the zero conflict to the zero chemistry! However, as it turns out—and believe me I’m as surprised to be saying this as you are to hear it—Twilight turns out to be the more sophisticated version. If we were to characterize Edward and Bella’s relationship as BDSM, then unlike Anastasia, Bella eagerly and unconditionally accepts Edward and his darkness. She embraces him and his baggage wholeheartedly. She is happy to go into his world. She never thinks of saving him from his darkness. She never thinks of him as a monster. Edward is the one in the closet, so to speak. Edward is the one who fears his desires. This book has completely missed that aspect of its source material.

For all that Twilight normalizes the Gothic, the monstrous, and the kinky it never “cures” it. It never tries to “drag it into the light” and reform it from its bad, bad ways. Instead, and I’m quite startled to realize this, Twilight posits a world in which the “monstrous”, too, can be happy. Even the villains experience real love and true love. In fact, Victoria’s pursuit of Bella is based upon the fact that she did love her partner and mourns his death. Fifty Shades, on the other hand, persistently characterizes kink as abnormal except when it uses it to excuse bad behavior or to titillate its readers. It is exploitive and appropriative in the worst sort of way. More importantly, it separates the “hearts and flowers” sort of romantic love Anastasia wants as being distinct from and incompatible with BDSM.

I could say a lot more about this book: the use of musical references as status symbols, the weird relationship to food the narrative has, the weird relationship to appetite generally the narrative demonstrates, how the text defines love and normalcy, etc. Not to mention the hoops E.L. James has to jump through to keep Ana innocent of the world. I mean seriously, what student doesn’t have an email address? Or a computer? And there is a helluva lot more to say about the depiction of BDSM. But I will refrain.

While I recognize that there are two other books in this series that I have not read and have, therefore, not completed the narrative arc, I have no confidence that the problems that were so garishly on display in this first book have, in any way, been resolved in the subsequent installments. And I will not be reading the others to have my suspicions confirmed. I’m quite positive that my predictions will come true: Jack Hyde will turn out to be some kind of bad dom; Mrs. Robinson will play the role of jealous, glamorous older lover that Christian has to break free from in order to be with Anastasia; and finally, Christian will be set free from his need to be a dominant once he has fully come to terms with his dark past.

But why did this infuriate me so? Why? I think, after much contemplation, it was because the way in which the clichés and elements of genre romance were deployed served to reveal a troubling and repugnant worldview. Troubling for the very fact that these are not issues isolated to 50 Shades of Grey. The artless way in which they were written simply laid bare the problems, exposing a terrible underlying ideology. Whether James realizes it or not, intended it or not, she has written a book whose ultimate message is this: the only people who deserve love are those who are perfect and normal. Redemption is nothing more than learning that you were always already chosen, always already perfect.

How Calvinist! I find this message foul and damaging. Because of that fact and because it is rendered in dull, robotic prose, I hereby give this book an F.

Lazaraspaste

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As a self professed lover of sports romances, I get quite a few recommendations for books featuring athletes. Sarah Wendell found this book and suggested we both read it despite the blurb that was poorly drafted and contained cliches. Unfortunately for both of us the blurb was our first clue as to [...]]]> Dear Ms. Brown:

As a self professed lover of sports romances, I get quite a few recommendations for books featuring athletes. Sarah Wendell found this book and suggested we both read it despite the blurb that was poorly drafted and contained cliches. Unfortunately for both of us the blurb was our first clue as to the quality of writing in this story. There are several sentences in the book that actually portray the opposite of what was meant to be conveyed. There are formatting errors. The spelling of the hero’s name changed from page to page, sometimes even in the same paragraph. There were about five appearances of a square []. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be some form of punctuation or what. While other books feature rampant comma abuse, this one appeared to be comma allergic (i.e. “You are not taking a bath you are awakening the senses.”) But even beyond the editing, formatting, and typos was the really awful story.

Yvonne Floyd leaves her graduate studies and sublets her apartment for one year to serve as the beard for her best friend, Robbie Gutierrez. He recently was acquired by the famous Roma Internazionale and will be up for a multi million dollar contract the following year. Unfortunately, questions about his sexual orientation are dogging him and in Rome, at the steps of the Vatican, homosexuality isn’t well accepted (and heck, in sports, it is not either). With Robbie footing the bill, Yvonne agrees to pose as his fiance until the next contract is signed.

Unfortunately, Robbie has an enemy. Il Duke, Paulo/Paolo (depending on the paragraph), the captain of Roma Internazionale, lost his best friend to suicide when the best friend lost his position to Robbie. Paulo has hired a paparazzi photographer to follow Robbie around and get incriminating pictures. Unfortunately, none could be had but once Yvonne comes, Paulo turns his attention to seducing her away from Robbie. But Paulo wants the reader to know that he’s selfish, not an asshole. “He hated scenes especially with women. Paolo might be selfish, but he wasn’t an asshole.” He says this after this:

Not fully buying it, she crossed her arms and thrust out her chin stubbornly. “Have you been out with anyone else?”

Paolo tamped down his rising anger. For some reason, one’s celebrity equaled a disturbing familiarity on other people’s part. “Even though it’s none of your business, I haven’t been out with anyone since you.”

…

“I’ll think about it. The team’s twice a day practices don’t make me good company of late.” Paulo chucked her under the chin. “But when things slow down, you will be the first person I’ll call.”

“Promise?”

Paolo almost rolled his eyes. “You’re at the top of my list,” he reassured without locking himself into a promise he knew he wouldn’t keep.

Paolo/Paulo, you just made her a promise.

Yvonne does a fairly shoddy job of acting as Robbie’s fiancé given that she is constantly panting after Paulo and when she isn’t panting after Paulo (name intentionally screwed up to mimic the book), she is having sex with a stranger in a mask during Venice’s Carnivale (who conveniently turns out to be Paolo/Paulo).

The book is filled with cliches and bad metaphors.

**His game plan should have been simple as a wall pass. Of course, like any play the execution turned out to be damn near impossible because he hadn’t anticipated the strength of the defense or taken into account his own weaknesses. And above all he was consistently breaking the cardinal rule: never take your eyes off the goal.

**She’d kissed plenty of frogs in her life.

**She’d had one or two lovers who’d rocked her world, yet none of them completely demolished and rebuilt it like he did.

**Paolo fell into a tailspin…

Even beyond the use of cliches is the representation of the characters. Yvonne has a smoking body, beautiful skin, and an attractive face yet she doesn’t realize her own beauty, only wears sweat shirts and jeans to hide her curves, and doesn’t know how to use makeup. Oh the reluctant and hidden beauty trope. Never heard of that one before. Worse, it is totally inconsistent. In the very first chapter, Yvonne states:

Her savior was the face of Allure cosmetics! Only last week the woman’s gamine profile had convinced her to buy the cosmetic lines’ Go-On Sheer-Stay-On Sheer lip gloss in jazzy pink.

and then later:

Another gift from Robbie, she eyed the sleek tubes and pots resembling candy. How did he know what colors to pick? Makeup had always been a foreign concept and she couldn’t remember the last time she bought a tube of lipstick.

Um, I don’t know. How about LAST FREAKING WEEK! Or

She might have been blessed with a curvy Coke-bottle figure and thick shoulder-length hair, but her cinnamon brown skin and average looks wouldn’t call any boys to the yard. So very few tasted her milkshake.

But then about two paragraphs later:

her pearly whites and twin crescents embedded into her brown skin always worked back home.

Which is it? Either no one tastes her milkshake or her dimples and white teeth always work? Paulo isn’t a manwhore but a guy who loves reading about fertilizers. “Careful to stay inside the teams’ VIP area, he avoided making polite conversation, signing autographs or posing for photographs with fans. He loved his fans, but they would only delay his departure. And if he left now he could still catch Luigi, The Renaissance Guy. Tonight’s episode was on repurposing old newspaper into fertilizer.” Yet he acts like a manwhore (see infra prior excerpt where he promises to call said woman).

He never took a woman home, no matter how much he wanted to shag them. Once a woman came over, she started acting like she owned the place, making it even harder to get rid of her. As a rule, all of his affairs were carried out elsewhere either in hotels or the homes of the women he dealt with.

But let’s talk about sentences that make no sense:

• “I’ve never known you to juggle less than one woman,” Nico sputtered.
• Keitha lip-synched the rest of her sentence because the crowd suddenly went wild.
• The champagne might as well have been fruit punch because during the season he couldn’t touch anything stronger.

Let’s take a look at the editing:

• she regained a semblance of normalcy she opened her eyes, gaining her fist good look at her savior.
• Standing a little over six feet her wolf wore nothing more than a mask and a pair of brown silk pajama bottoms, hanging low on his hips.
• Instinctively, Yvonne knew what was coming next[]her.
• A flourishing expanse, the lawn was a lush, intimate oasis that combined secluded sitting areas, meandering walkways, covered with creeping vines, a full garden with fragrant roses, a sparkling swimming pool and even a small orange grove.
• When she turned around Yvonne realized she was in deeper trouble than she first assumed.

Let’s not forget the completely WTF moments during sex:

• Hurricane preparedness could put you in the right frame of mind, but no amount of plans or preparation could ever diminish the impact. And on the Saffir-Simpson scale, her orgasm slammed into her with the force of a category five!

and

• Instead of presenting a counterclaim, he pulled back until his cock was almost completely withdrawn except for the head. Sensing he was seeking damages, Yvonne reached for his hips to soften the blow. Before she could get a handle of him, he yanked both of her wrists above her head.

Sometimes a good story and a great voice can overcome problems in editing, formatting, grammar but when the story is just as bad, there is nothing to hang the reader hat on. There are two good things in this book. The soccer scenes seemed authentic and the way in which the sports world had to deal with Robbie’s sexual orientation was great. That’s about it. F

Best regards,

Jane

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One of the great things about self publishing is that books that don’t fit the mold can still find an audience. Unfortunately for readers, this also means that a great many things that should remain unpublished are now available for consumption. This book series falls into the latter category. I’m not sure [...]]]> Dear Ms. Beck,

One of the great things about self publishing is that books that don’t fit the mold can still find an audience. Unfortunately for readers, this also means that a great many things that should remain unpublished are now available for consumption. This book series falls into the latter category. I’m not sure who would be the target audience for this ‘erotica’ series. It’s not sexy. It’s not funny. It’s just strange and bizarre.

Dumpsterotica: How Dirty Are You was free on Kindle. It had a cute cover. It certainly had a title that made me look twice. And I figured that a romance involving a dumpster was either going to be hysterically funny or just plain weird. This falls into the ‘weird’ category. I told Jane about it, and she asked me to read the sequels and review the group for Dear Author. I agreed. As a warning to anyone reading on, please don’t eat anything while reading this review. Not because I think it will be hilarious, but because I think you will lose your appetite.

There are three books in the Dumpsterotica series: Dumpsterotica: How Dirty Are You, Dumpsterotica: Talk Dirty To Me, and Dumpsterotica: A Hole In One. I’m going to do a short review of each one.

Dumpsterotica: How Dirty Are You is about Joe and Marcia. They have been married for a few years and are experiencing marital problems. Marcia doesn’t want to have sex. Joe has to wine her and dine her beforehand, get her drunk, and then go home and have sex. Marcia also seems incapable of orgasm. Marcia doesn’t want to have sex with Joe because she is too busy constantly masturbating with her electric toothbrush. Yes, you read that correctly. She masturbates at work with the toothbrush, and at home with it, several times a day. This is the only way she can come.

Later on, Joe and Marcia are at the restaurant and Marcia is drunk and loud and getting horny. They stumble outside and she begins to try and go down on her husband. He drags Marcia behind the restaurant to get away from prying eyes and they see a police cruiser, so they get into the dumpster. They proceed to make love in the midst of all the garbage.

He looked down and saw Marcia rubbing a banana peel all over her ass.

Still clamped inside her and coming down off the sex high and the booze, Joe took a good look around. His suit pants were under a bag of bagels. Marcia balanced herself on a few torn bags of food garbage dominated by white paper cups with a coffee shop’s logo on them. Coffee grounds dotted his thighs and his wife was now writhing, her ass glowing in the open air, his cock stuck insider her while she rubbed a damn banana peel all over herself.

They get home, unable to talk about what happened. Marcia finds herself turned on so goes into the bathroom and uses her electric toothbrush on herself as well as her curling iron. Joe walks in and catches her with her curling iron shoved up her vagina, a cliffhanger to entice you to buy book two. This is very short (less than twenty pages) and is clearly to entice readers to read the next two books in the series.

Dumpsterotica: Talk Dirty to Me begins where the last story left off. Joe finds Marcia masturbating and when he finds out how often and how frequently, he is furious with her.

“So all these years your goddamn toothbrush has been getting more sex than I have? You turn me down, you claim you’re tired, you throw me a blow job here and there and I have to blow $100 on a bottle of champagne to get you to fuck me once a month, but you use the Health and Beauty aisle at the drugstore like your own personal sex toy catalog?”

Marcia is devastated that her husband has caught her and that he’s upset with her. She knows her inability to come is not normal and she has a lot of hang-ups, and she’s upset that Joe is so angry.  Joe decides that he’s going to save his marriage. He goes and gets the garbage from outside and spreads it out over their bed.

Joe laughed, a wicked, defiant sound that made her pulse quicken, a deep throb forming in her clitoris. Sweeping the pillow and her old tampons aside stirred a scent of rotten steak and she cringed.

“This isn’t exactly what I-” and then his mouth was on her, between her long-suffering thighs, tongue lightly dancing on her pulsing red nub, soothing the burn and stirring the fire all at once. She inhaled the scent of garbage, rotten chicken and blood and aloe-scented tissues and limp celery – and began to gag.

But Marcia finds that she still cannot come in the garbage on their bed. She needs something more.  When Joe catches her masturbating at work with her toothbrush again, they decide they need marriage counseling. When they see the marriage counselor, though, he makes things worse. He’s unprofessional and weird and thinks Marcia is a freak. He knows she is the woman that got her toothbrush stuck inside her vagina and had to go to the emergency room. Marcia is upset and begins to cry. This causes Joe to get defensive of her – she is his freak. He ends up attacking the counselor, and they go to another dumpster and have sex together again. He does not mind that Marcia is a freak as long as he gets plenty of sex with her.

Dumpsterotica: A Hole In One is the third episode in this series.  Joe has decided to rent a dumpster for their front lawn so he can have sex with Marcia whenever they like. Marcia is worried their neighbor will not approve of the dumpster and sue them.  Joe chats with the local cops and makes sure that he has approval for the dumpster, and then he sets to filling it. He has to steal trash by transporting it in his Prius, and brings it home to show his wife.

“Joe.” She drew out his name, her voice lifting up slight at the end, the syllable lasting four seconds but taking up half her head. “What on earth are you doing?”

Leaning in for a kiss, he laughed.Cringing, she darted to the right.

A giant chunk of greenish-white mold, the kind that forms on the top of liquid, covered his cheekbone.

They attempt to have sex inside the house like normal people, but Marcia still cannot come. That night, they sneak out to the dumpster and begin to have sex. The neighbor catches them and jerks off on the side of the dumpster and gets some on Marcia and Joe. They are naturally upset at the neighbor catching them having sex and the dumpster in front of the house is ruined for them. They go in search of a new dumpster behind a restaurant, and select a donut shop the next night, and make love amongst the donut garbage.

She made a tsk tsk gesture with her finger, then stretched back slowly. Now she was the one holding a frosted donut – directly over her spread-wide pussy, the donut’s hole centered perfectly. Candy sprinkles dotted the pink frosting, turning her vagina into a pot o’ gold at the center of a rainbow.

And Joe was ready to exercise his luck o’ the Irish.

“Have you ever made a hole in one, Joe?” she asked ,her voice smoky and provocative, like a phone sex operator ad. “If you can get a hole in one, you might make par for the night.”

Aiming carefully, Joe plunged inside Marcia, the soft dough pushing against his balls and her vulva. An urgency pushed him to go deeper, the normal sensation of filling her mitigated by the ever-flattening donuts’ thickness. In, out, in, out he thrust, smashing the [donut] ring against her taint and lips until he arched his hips slightly, slid up into her and she came with a fiery explosion, a nuclear climax that drove her body deep into a ripped bag of jelly donuts, congealed red filling covering her head, making her look like an extra in a zombie movie.

The story ends with Marcia and Joe happy with their new-found strength in their relationship, of course. Joe gets all the sex he wants as long as he can find Marcia a sufficiently dirty dumpster.

These are billed as erotic comedies. As erotica, they failed at every level. Not only were the descriptions disgusting, but the sex itself was ridiculous and full of purple prose. The descriptions of genitalia were mentioned in the most unsexy way possible. Neither Joe nor Marcia seemed happy in their relationship. In addition, the stories aren’t funny. Bizarre, yes. Funny, no.  There are a lot of shocking things mentioned in the story – the psycho counselor, the subplot with the gay cops, the toothbrush – but I didn’t find them funny. Just strange.

The subtext of the story was terrible – that Marcia is the one responsible for all their marital problems because she cannot orgasm. Marcia’s crippling OCD is laughed at in the third book (she is a compulsive hand washer and is tweezing her yard). I found myself pitying Marcia more than anything else. She doesn’t need sex in a dumpster or a toothbrush or even Joe – she needs a good psychiatrist. But instead, she is painted as an object of ridicule and someone we can laugh at.

I also do not normally speculate on the gender of the author, but I have to wonder if these were written by a man. I feel that is unfair to bring up, and yet at the same time,

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

What grade can I give this? What else but an F all around.

All best,
January

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I ordinarily don’t pick books from the category Suspense line.  Most of what I’ve read in that line has glaring problems in balance between a believable suspense and a believable romance but I like Elle Kennedy books and I wanted to try to get back into the Intrigue game (it sells really well [...]]]> Dear Readers:

I ordinarily don’t pick books from the category Suspense line.  Most of what I’ve read in that line has glaring problems in balance between a believable suspense and a believable romance but I like Elle Kennedy books and I wanted to try to get back into the Intrigue game (it sells really well as a line).  Unfortunately, it is so effed up and crazy that in true Nonnie style, I have to review this in list format.  Beware, there will be spoilers because I cannot express how crazy and insane this book is without spoiling it.  If you plan to read the book, don’t read the review.

For those who don’t want to be spoiled, the summary is thus:  A very innocent and stupid heiress is kidnapped and she falls in love with one of her kidnappers.  Their love is endangered by her kidnapping and his involvement.  Things happen. HEA. F for many reasons articulated below the cut:

1. Heroine is an heiress but she hates money.

Deacon had that look about him, the smug one of a man who’d totally pegged her. “I bet you even gave your trust fund to charity, didn’t you, Lana?”

Her lips twitched. Yep, he had her pegged. “The day I turned twenty-one,” she confirmed. She neglected to mention that her irate father had promptly deposited the same amount back into her account. She didn’t have the heart to give the second trust away; spoiling her gave her father such silly pleasure.

2. The hero and heroine have a one night stand. He leaves her hotel room without saying a word. She gets pregnant and figures it out two weeks later that she may be pregnant. She actually takes a pregnancy test in a train station bathroom in Italy.

3. She gets on the train and is kidnapped. Guess what? One of her kidnappers is Deacon, the guy she had a one night stand with.  Deacon is not an undercover agent secretly working to protect her.  Instead, he’s a mercenary.

4. Deacon is surprised and unhappy that the guy he is working for is a total dickhead who is okay with hurting women and would even allow his men to rape and beat a woman that they kidnapped. WHAT DOES HE EXPECT? He’s a hired mercenary. Who has he been working for before? Santa Claus?

5. Heroine determines that Deacon is a good guy because he must be. He’s the father of her child. Also because she has this sixth sense about people so even though Deacon had a one night stand, left her before she woke up, kidnapped her, and won’t help her escape, she knows he is a good guy.

6. The heroine loves her daddy, a US Senator, even though he has constant affairs. She knows this is “embarrassing” to her mother but still, he is her daddy.  She thinks her brothers who have turned their backs on their dad are just being too hard on him.

7. She is kept captive for a month and still believes her daddy is going to save her. He loves her. A MONTH!

8. During said captivity, she is guarded 24/7 by a number of men, but Deacon and her have plenty of time to have sex and long discussions about her captivity, her feelings on love and romance, and family.  They even have  loud arguments about how he needs to help her escape.

9. She is an artist and Deacon gives her paper and charcoal and she proceeds to sketch everyone in great detail and leave the pictures lying around and is shocked that the leader is angered by this. She would never use them against her captors!  She promises.  She just needed something to do with her hands!  She is an artist and she must paint.  It never occurs to her to hide these pictures and when Deacon sees them he thinks, oh, maybe that isn’t so good but then he doesn’t hide them either.  What the every loving hell?

10. The mother is contacted by the husband that their daughter has been kidnapped and she’s pacified by the husband’s promise that he’ll take care of it. Her brother is super wealthy. Her sons are wealthy and powerful but her husband tells her that things are “complicated” and that they can’t call in the authorities and that he’ll take care of it. Remember, this is the guy that cheats on her regularly.

11. Dad sends in ONE GUY to save her and that one guy gets her out except before they escape the grounds, the bad guys confront them. It is her and her rescuer against four bad guys including Deacon. She doesn’t want anyone to get shot and so she lays down her gun and returns to the bad guys. The bad guys then shoot her rescuer between the eyes.

12. After the guy is shot, she goes back to the cabin where the head bad guy leave her and Deacon alone and Lana, the heroine is so distraught, she sexually attacks Deacon.

13. A week passes after Lana’s mother is called by the father. Guess what, honey, still haven’t gotten our daughter back and my operative got shot between the eyes, but I’m still going to fix this. What conclusion does she come to faced with this:

She gathered up every iota of strength in her body, slowly lifting her head. It was becoming glaringly obvious that if she wanted her daughter home safe and sound, she really did need to do the impossible.

Trust her husband again.

What? No. You call your brother, the effing billionaire, and say “save my daughter by whatever means possible and if it includes endangering my lying, cheating husband’s life, so be it.”

14. See the kidnappers wanted the father to trade himself for the daughter. They kidnap the father to lure her father, a US Senator, out of “hiding”. Because he is involved in a plot to assassinate the president and then backed out. But he knows too much and they have to kill him. They have enough operatives to kidnap the daughter and keep her in a remote sophisticated setup in the mountains in California but they can’t kill one friggin’ US Senator?

15.  Also, this family is so wealthy and powerful that the mom can just call up the military and get her son, a member of DELTA, to abandon his post and go save his sister. The family is so powerful that after Lana is recovered, they just make all the kidnapping charges against Deacon melt away. Yet getting the daughter back takes over a month?

Dreamspinner Press had five shorts I was interested in this week, so I thought I’d do lightning reviews of them. And then I ended up ranting at the end of the reviews, ending up more like an Opinion Letter than anything else.

Russian Roulette by Alex Alder: Jacob teaches martial art fighting in…somewhere in [...]]]>

Dreamspinner Press had five shorts I was interested in this week, so I thought I’d do lightning reviews of them. And then I ended up ranting at the end of the reviews, ending up more like an Opinion Letter than anything else.

Russian Roulette by Alex Alder:
Jacob teaches martial art fighting in…somewhere in Texas. His new neighbor is worryingly reclusive, but then they finally meet and Jacob sees how gorgeous he is. They get together, go out a couple of times, have great sex, go out for three months, everything’s great. But because Nate still hasn’t let Jacob into his apartment, Jacob convinces himself that Nate is the Dallas Strangler, the local serial killer (who started in Dallas but is now wherever Jacob and Nate are). He reports him, the police raid the apartment (with Jacob in tow!), and Jacob realizes Nate is just an artist with genius but no self-confidence. Nate breaks up with him (no, really?!), but then the serial killers comes to get them.

This book was…strange. I was never emotionally connected to the characters. They seemed to be doing everything because the story needed them to, not because it was integral to their characters. And there was no relationship tension — they met, were attracted, got together, had sex, everything was great. Which is great in real life, but doesn’t make a good story. All the tension comes halfway through or more from Jacob’s ridiculous assumptions about Nate and Nate kicking him out afterwards (too right!). As a result, the sex was boring as hell (to me), and after Jacob’s betrayal, I didn’t really care whether they got back together. In fact, I thought Nate was right to kick Jacob to the curb and the fact that Nate took Jacob back because of the shared danger when the serial killer attached them both just made me think less of Nate’s self-preservation skills — maybe he should have been killed by the serial killer.

Grade: C-

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“New Tricks” by Kate Sherwood:
After I read this short, I did a bit of research, to find that this is a continuation of the relationship of previous characters. Aaron and Quinn are together, but Aaron was a virgin before they got together, so Quinn doesn’t really trust Aaron to know what he’s talking about when Aaron says that he loves Quinn. Quinn thinks that Aaron will eventually leave to sow his wild oats elsewhere, because he’s never had the opportunity to do that. This is a short little sex scene, in which Aaron takes complete control over Quinn. He ties him, blindfolds him, and effectively gags him so that when Aaron tells Quinn that he loves him, Quinn can’t qualify the statement and has to listen to Aaron, has to really hear what Aaron is saying.

It’s a cute little scene and works well as a stand-alone scene (I hadn’t read the original story). There’s an emotional component to the story, something that the characters need to overcome during or through the sex, an actual plot, with narrative tension, and deftly handled at that. I enjoyed it.

Grade: B-

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The Playwright by Carolyn LeVine Topol
Nick and Ken live together, gay playwrights writing successful plays for Broadway. Ken signs Nick up for The Male Room, an online dating website, because he’s worried that his friend (and they really ARE just friends) never gets out. Nick’s first hit on the website is Mark. Mark’s amazing. They hit it off immediately and fall in love.

So where’s the story? It’s manufactured whole cloth in the middle. Nick has an emotional crisis–literally between one line and the next, he does an about face on the relationship, feels it’s too emotionally risky, an about face that has no foreshadowing, no flicker of angst to warn of its coming. I had to read it three times to figure out what the hell was going on. But then THAT’S dealt with almost immediately and suddenly Nick has to worry about Mark’s job — he’s a hard-news investigative reporter who goes out chasing dangerous stories. But then that’s solved immediately…and you get the idea. I couldn’t tell the two main characters apart. There was nothing to distinguish them, neither of them had a personality to speak of, let alone any differences between them. (And they both had four-letter names, making it impossible.) The story was boring, the sex was forgettable, and the characters cardboard. Yuck.

Grade: D+

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And I gave it the D+ because it wasn’t as bad as the next one:

“Take a Dip” by Lacey Wallace
This one is really short, which is good, because it was really bad. Adam is 23 with a 7 year old daughter he takes to the pool at the weekend. He thinks he’s straight, but one of the lifeguards at the pool convinces him he’s not. The story’s full of emotionless, internal monologue info dumps about Adam’s life that are boring precisely because they’re emotionless:

He had become a teenage father at the age of sixteen; a girl named Cynthia was the mother. Although he didn’t want a kid, he had decided to do the responsible thing and be a real, involved father. Cynthia had brought their daughter to his house for an afternoon. Supposedly, he was only going to watch her for the day so she could look for work.

Cynthia never came back.

Adam later found out that she had moved away with her parents, leaving Denise with Adam. His parents had demanded he take the baby to an orphanage, but Adam refused. They threatened to kick him out of the house. Adam still refused, believing it was only a bluff. They followed through with the threat, leaving Denise and Adam homeless.

Luckily his aunt, who was estranged from the family, stepped in. Aunt Belinda was wonderful. She taught him how to care for Denise properly and baby-sat while Adam worked and finished his high school education, and then earned a B.A. in Business.

Like, really? Can we talk about the terror, the boredom, the resentment, the pain, the panic, the…whatever? That was just…awful. These are PEOPLE! In a ROMANCE NOVEL. Let’s talk about FEELINGS, please. Please? No…?

Anyway, we have to get it this background on Adam from infodumps because Mark the lifeguard isn’t interested in anything other than a quick fuck in the shower room. And that’s what they have, and that’s it, that’s the story. It’s bad writing with an attempt at character depth that just fails (Adam is angsty because he’s figuring out the gay thing, but really, despite having been a teen single father, he doesn’t feel anything deeply and his daughter isn’t even a plot moppet, she’s just a prop). And the sex is boring as hell except for the “ew, in the shower at a public pool, really?” aspect that I felt, not Adam. And there’s NO HEA or HFN. It’s pure stroke fiction and it’s not even really good for that.

Grade: D

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But! OMG, even THAT wasn’t as bad as…

The Godfather’s Lover by Ann T. Ryan
Chris grew up in an orphanage, we find out in a Prologue, and the only person who cared for him is a priest (not like THAT). The second Prologue shows us an 11 year old Jarod at his mother’s funeral, where, apparently, he finds out that A. she’s dead, and B. she committed suicide. Oh, and C. his father’s an asshole and a Mafia don (although not, like, Italian). Seems a promising start. We next find Jarod in the back alley of a club overseeing the execution of someone who betrayed him. Chris shows up and becomes a potential witness, so, to take care of him, Jarod fucks him through the wall. A month later, Jarod finally tracks his anonymous trick down, kicks out his own latest “kept man” (the cousin of a rival family), and starts keeping Chris. Who, we discover is actually an FBI Special Agent looking to take down Jarod because a mob turf war killed the priest. Right. Because FBI agents always get to work on cases their bosses know they’re emotionally connected with. They’re together for a YEAR, Chris never finds out anything worthwhile, he contacts his boss via EMAIL (oh REALLY?!), and he starts getting a conscience about betraying Jarod. In fact, he falls in love, quits his job, quits Jarod, and disappears to go teach math in, I’m not kidding, Saskatchewan. Where Jarod goes to get him. And everyone lives HEA. But back in LA, not in Canada.

And really, that’s all this story is: plot points. A happened, then B happened, then C and D and E. Oh, and someone might have felt something in there, but probably not. Chris does not angst about falling in love with a mob boss. Jarod does not angst about being a gay mob boss, nor does he worry about falling in love with his piece of ass. There’s no indication why these guys fall in love — we’re just told that they do — because, after all, there’s nothing to fall in love WITH. They have no personality. At all.

The prose feels like it’s written by a twelve year old or an ESL writer:

“Where is he?” Jarod asked into the phone, without preamble.

“I will get back to you, boss,” Mike replied.

Five minutes later, Jarod received a text message. Your boy is at Suede. His boy. Jarod liked the sound of that.

“Lee.”

“Yes, boss?”

“Drive me to Suede.”

“All right, boss.”

These guys talk like this ALL THE TIME. Very few contractions (“I will” especially, is NEVER “I’ll”), which is not how people talk. And the book is just full of this witty repartee.

And Chris feels bad about betraying Jarod:

Chrisd listened as Jarod spoke to him. Telling details that Chris had already committed to memory. Jarod wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. But the fact he was opening up made Chris feel guilty about the whole thing. Yes, Jarod was a mafia boss, with his fingers dipping in every illegal pie across the country and around the world. And yet, when he was with Chris, he was just Jarod. The hard walls Jarod put up outside would slowly crumble, revealing to Chris who Jarod Greene truly was, without the responsibility of a whole clan to take on. Chris felt bad, and that was a feeling that had eluded him in all of the cases he had handled. Somehow, Jarod had wormed himself into Chris’s heart, making the conscience Chris thought he had lost wake up.

Jarod’s a MOB BOSS. Who KILLS PEOPLE (although not personally anymore, so that’s okay). And CHRIS has the crisis of conscience?! Not ONCE does Jarod worry if he’s doing the right thing, wonder about what else he could do, have any sort of problem with his inherited position in life. Seriously, what have we come to in this world that an author could think that a man like this deserves the love of a good partner without serious emotional trauma on both their parts and some serious remorse and renegotiations of the mob boss’s life? CHRIS is the one who gives up his job at the end, not Jarod. Chris makes some half-assed protest at the end:

“I still don’t like your job description.”

“But you still like me?” Jarod smiled tentatively at Chris.

“Yeah, seems like I’m a sucker for a handsome man with grey eyes.”

Really?! You were an FBI agent and that’s all you’re gonna say? And really?! You’re an author and that’s the sum total of the consideration you’re gonna give to this issue, as if Jarod DESERVES an HEA?!

And! AND, guys, there was this scene when Jarod’s henchman was outside a cafe, watching Chris meet with his FBI boss (Chris is quitting, actually). Henchman recognizes FBI boss. Then POV goes to Chris, inside the cafe, who is ON THE PHONE with his boss. Then back out to henchman threatening FBI boss’s life in the cafe. SERIOUSLY?! No one noticed this issue?

Grade: F because this one seriously offended me, as well as being suck-ass writing.

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The Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR) for the five stories: one was good, the others were awful. And good here isn’t anything unusual: I’m looking for a story that

• can string a sentence together
• can make characters sound real
• can make characters feel real and make me care about them
• can make characters act in consistent, character-worthy manner, rather than as puppets moved around by the plot without motivational rhyme or reason
• has an emotional conflict present throughout the book with an arc of its own
• has a plot conflict that the characters have to solve, that may or may not be the emotional conflict
• doesn’t have huge gaping plot holes, discrepancies, or flubs
• considers the emotional ramifications of character actions
• considers the moral ramifications of character actions (and yes, that last one is VERY important when dealing with issues like FBI agents falling in love with mob bosses)
• has non-boring sex, which means has sex that MEANS something to the characters, that overcomes something in them, that has some affect on them.

Seriously, writers, it’s not enough to tell us that characters do things. It’s not enough to have a cool hook, a really neat “what-if” to write about. The characters have to FEEL something. They have to have reasons for doing things. They have to be REAL, with faults and foibles and fucked-up motivations that they angst over and that make them act in certain logical ways for logical reasons that are explored. It’s ROMANCE, ffs. It’s all ABOUT the emotions. And if the characters go off the rails, they have to worry about why and how and what it all means. Romance does NOT mean cool “What If?” scenarios without considering the character ramifications. Neither is it Tab A and Slot B. Even good stroke fiction has to have the characters overcoming something emotional in order to have (or even while they have) the hot sex that gets the reader off. It’s precisely the emotional struggle that’s the arousing part.

And publishers, I guess you can publish whatever the writers write, and the writers can write whatever the hell they want, but readers don’t have to like it. In fact, we can despise it. And *I* despise it NOT because it arouses strong feelings in me, but precisely the opposite. I despise it because it’s sloppy and lazy and boring as fuck. (Except the Sherwood, who I have read before, apparently, and liked.)

If I didn’t take chances on authors I hadn’t read before, I’d never have found Heidi Cullinan (at Dreamspinner, btw) or Alex Beecroft or K.A. Mitchell or A.M. Riley or any of the other brilliant authors out there who I adore, or even the ones I enjoy whose books have issues now and then, good books and not so good books, but who at least TRY to write stories about real characters with real feelings and real dilemmas that actually have a narrative arc, angst, and resolution that actually means something. But this right here is why I don’t take that chance more often. These stories were insulting.

I’m off to read Cullinan’s latest again (for review) to cleanse my palette because I just can’t take anymore awful, boring, insulting stories for a while.

January’s review kicked off quite a discussion here and around the web about this book.  I found the review persuasive, but as the arguments dragged on and became increasingly vituperative, I decided I would have to read it for myself in order to render an informed verdict. So I did. But I am [...]]]> Dear Readers,

January’s review kicked off quite a discussion here and around the web about this book.  I found the review persuasive, but as the arguments dragged on and became increasingly vituperative, I decided I would have to read it for myself in order to render an informed verdict. So I did. But I am not an expert on medieval history or Arthurian legends, so I recruited Dhympna to join me in reviewing the book. We’re calling this a Dual Review because we converge to the same grades even though we focus on different issues.

Dhympna:  When I first encountered Spoil of War, I was curious about a book that could arouse so much ire in not just the reviewer, but also her readership. This book also engendered some fierce knight–errants. Out of curiosity, I looked up information about the book and often, when discussing this book, the author touted her degrees, careful research, and a tenuous connection to Marion Zimmer Bradley.  Lately, she has lamented that the Dear Author readership wanted her work to be anachronistic and employ some sort of self-empowered feminist historical revision.  I seek neither to revise history nor to promote anachronistic visions of history.

I am a medieval historian. I am also a lover of old bodice rippers, dark historical fantasy, dark fantasy, and historical fiction in general. So, not only did this book tweak my professional interest, but it also tugged at my book interests.  I also often like books that the Dear Author reviewers have panned or given an F to, so when Sunita asked me to do this review, I agreed.

I am going to look at the book from three perspectives—as a work of historical fiction, as a historical fantasy, and as a historical romance.  Now, before you get your knickers in a twist and tell me that I should not be checking historicism (or what some of you call historical accuracy) because it is fiction, please remember that the author has set herself up as an authoritative source and has stated in her product description that some of the unsavoury events are in keeping with the era in question.

Spoil of War as historical fiction:

The one objective question to ask in this review is: how in keeping with history is this book is (i.e. how strong is its historicism)? It is hard to not write a textbook about how insulting this book is. It reads like a freshman final exam in which the student, who has not studied, has included everything she knows about the Middle Ages in the hope of sounding smart and earning a passing grade. Indeed, if this were an exam on the early Middle Ages (only someone who knows nothing substantive about the history of the era calls it the “Dark Ages”), this student would fail.

When I first read the description of the book, I guessed that it was set in the late 5^th/early 6^th centuries. Later evidence, however, indicated that the book was set in the early 5^th century. The female protagonist is described as a Briton or a Celt (you hear about the “Old Blood” all too often) and the male protag is a king who grew up in Genoa and has Roman blood (this is never explained and I was not sure what was meant by this). There seems to be a lack of understanding about the different Germanic tribes that were present in England in this time period.

I pinpointed the era from this quote:

“From my Emperor, Theodosius, aye. From my uncle, Ryan, too, if the cause were favorable. From His Eminence Celestine, certainly, if the pope were to command it.” (p. 231, all references are to the nookbook version).

Theodosius II was the Eastern emperor from 408-450. Celestine I was pope from 422-432. So, from this we can gather the events taking place are during the decade in which Celestine was pope.

All the errors made me wonder if the author just pulled in every medieval factoid she found (keeping in mind that the Middle Ages span over one thousand years), but I will limit myself to some of the highlights.

•  Oh, the difference one letter makes. Where Rian may be perfectly acceptable and I would say that name is okay, Ryan is totally a 20^th century name. I googled it and (given the author’s comment on the Dear Author review) it seems the author considers a questionable baby name website as authoritative. By the way, Oxford actually publishes a dictionary for first names.

• In the opening of the book Elsbeth welcomes her father home and is asked by a scullion maid if they are to have a welcome feast. El responds:

“No feast. Steak and squash and bread will suffice. “

• The problem is that squash comes from the New World. Steak is just possible, but roast would be a better word. Steak is from a Norse word and Elsbeth’s family is from a different Germanic language group, not to mention that according to the OED, “steak,” as the author is using it, is from the 16^th century (the Norse version means meat on a stick).

• The idea of Britain as some sort of nascent nation that needs to be united and Leo and El’s constant discussions about Leo uniting Britain. Um. No. There was quite a bit of regionalism in Britain at this time and most of the rhetoric about kings uniting Britain came from later eras. For instance, a writer in the 15^th century may try to label someone the first great British King. Indeed, Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain is guilty of this when he, for reasons of propaganda for his monastery, turns Arthur into the first great Christian king. We see this impetus again in the 19^th century as historians looking for progress look for a clear progenitor. For more information on this tendency, see Patrick Geary, Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe.

• Many people take for granted that theology is an ongoing process and things like Purgatory and Hell need to be created. I doubt very much that Elsbeth would be ruminating on the “Harrowing of Hell,” since it is a concept that first appears in the 8^th century in didactic art and pastoral texts. Nor would she wish Leo would find himself in the ninth circle of hell, because Dante won’t write the Inferno until the 14^th century.

• I found it odd that Elsbeth and Lynette often talked about sexual sin and other aspects of theology but never said boo about the sin of suicide. The era of the great martyrs had just ended, so the Christian populace would know all about that fine line between the virtue of martyrdom and the sin of suicide.

• El also begs God and does a “Hail Mary,” but the confession and penitential structure is not in wide use until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (this is when everyone is required to go to confession).  Mariology is also not popular until the 10^th century. Evidence for “Hail Mary” as a devotional practice does not exist until the 10th and early 11^th centuries. And Marianism is adopted differently in different regions.

• Why is a Briton/Celt praying to Norse deities, especially ones for which we only have textual evidence in the 8^th century?  Now, I get that it is hard to keep all those pesky little Germanic tribes straight, but the Britons/Celts did have their own pantheon(s), and we have information about them. The author seems to think that Celt=Norse or Germanic tribe=Norse, which is not the case.

• Finally, I had a good chuckle when Gareth talked about the longboats coming down the waterways to raid (he says, “I hear there are barbarian invaders to the north who ride about in longships attacking villages as they go.” p. 74). The Norse actually don’t start raiding the Anglo-Saxons regularly until the 700s. While it is probable that some Norsemen moved around in the 5^th century, there seems to be confusion between this era, known as one of the greatest eras of people moving about (the Great Migration Era), and the height of Viking culture as the author is using it. It is dangerous and insulting to conflate differing Germanic groups, Celt, Druid, and Norse theologies. Syncretism did exist, but not like this.

• Castles like the ones described in this book are purely out of the 12^th century. Now, I get that this is an easy mistake to make since most of the well-known Arthurian legends come from this era or later and Camelot is often described as a kingdom out of the High Middle Ages, but still.  Elsbeth’s father would have lived in a long hall and Elsbeth probably wouldn’t have had her own room.

Now, remember that quote I started with? The one where Celestine is pope?  Towards the end of the book, Leo says:

“Pope and Rome have given their consent. Emperor Theodosius put his seal to it at Michaelmas and Constantine blessed it the day after the Feast of St. Luke.” (p. 717, my emphasis)

Normally, in a case like Leo’s, he may seek papal dispensation for his marriage (actually it is more common in the High Middle Ages, but since the author is disregarding what era her characters are in, well…in the 5^th century, I am not sure the Pope or the Eastern Emperor care).  Notice that the pope changed?  The problem is that Constantine I was pope in the late 7^thand early 8^th centuries.

—Grade F 

Spoil of War as historical fantasy:

This book focuses primarily on Elsbeth and her constant wanking over how she feels for Leo. It contains few political machinations and if it had been labeled as such, I would have felt compelled to write a letter of complaint and request my money back because the book is heavily structured as a historical romance.  I felt the “Arthurian Legend” bits were used as window dressing for the angsty wank between Leo and El. Get rid of Uther and Cameliard and the story really has nothing to do with Arthurian legend. I was also confused to comparisons that author made between her work and Mists of Avalon—I just don’t see how they are comparable.

—Grade F

Spoil of War as historical romance:

This is the genre that Spoil fits the best.  It really appears to be a formulaic late 80s/early 90s diet bodice ripper. I say diet because it lacks colour and any sense of the vibrant effervescence that is characteristic of books from that era. El was boring, her internal whining was tiresome, and the continual “big misunderstandings” that kept her and Leo from an ongoing, frenzied bonk-fest (because when they weren’t fighting they were having very boring, very vanilla vaginal sex) threatened to turn me into a drooling narcoleptic. Seriously, the “love” scenes between Leo and El were a steady diet of lackluster “insert tab A into slot B.” If you are going to have your characters going at it like rabbits in early spring—well, rabbits in any season really—then at least shake it up and include some variety. Different locations do not count.

—Grade D-

Overall:

I was very disappointed with this book. From the disjointed, choppy writing style where the author uses faulty descriptions (smoke as thick as cheesecloth?), to the poor use of language—I felt like I was reading an essay where the author desperately wished to convey how smart she was, which meant that not only did the descriptions fail but I was left sincerely wondering about the author’s voice.  I was expecting a dark look into the baser, dank recesses of the human nature, but instead of teeth and grit, I got an old man who forgot his dentures and was gumming on my finger. This book promised a dark and gritty story and it failed to deliver.

And what was up with BDSM Uther? It would have been nice to have seen the political complexities of The Pendragon, crafted into someone who oozed evil (if you wish to go that route), rather than turning him into a comical 8-bit villain. It was all too predictable.

[Note 1: For the purpose of this review, I am defining the Early Middle Ages as 400-1000, High Middle Ages 1000-1315, and Late Middle Ages as 1315-1500. There is much debate among medievalists about how to chronologically define these eras, since eras tend to be cultural constructions that are applied by later generations.]

[Note 2: There are many other examples of word mis-usage and historical mistakes, but to list them all would have made the review even longer. These examples, as well as the primary and secondary sources used in the analysis, are discussed here.]

Sunita: Needless to say, I was prepared for the drumbeat of rape, violence, rape, violence, war, war, rape, violence. What I didn’t expect, given the rape/violence/war emphasis, was that the story would be so. damn. boring. Yes, boring. Even rape, violence and war are dull when the reader is forced to see them through the Elsbeth, the narrator’s, perspective. This is because Elsbeth is an annoying, tedious, immature heroine.

Elsbeth clearly sees herself as an intelligent woman, because she has long conversations with King Leo, the putative hero of the story, about the place of women in her society, how Leo’s Roman society treats women, the prevalence of war, her misery at being a captive, etc. etc. etc. When Leo isn’t around, she talks to anyone else she can find and conducts internal monologues on the same topics. But Elsbeth is one of those unfortunate people who is not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, and as a result these passages read a bit like bad high school history lectures:

Only now did it occur to her that Leo’s victory over her father had had an effect far more insinuating than she had let herself first believe, reaching into generations yet unborn, generations not yet dreamt of. Would even the child of Ruth’s child still be gnashing its teeth in anguish over Leo’s conquest? Or would the world by then have moved on, leaving some history-shaped thing abandoned on the wind-swept moors to bother one no more? Minoa had blossomed for a time, then Egypt and Greece, and no one mourned their passing save for philosophers looking for a Golden Age that had never been and now would never be. Heroes fallen, dynasties tumbled, whole peoples crushed or absorbed into the vast world scheme as the Norns kept spinning fate and weaving life and death out of the very fabric of existence.

This has nothing to do with the story, it just serves to try and convince us that Elsbeth is intelligent and well-read (how she would have come by this knowledge is its own mystery). It would be more effective if we were shown these attributes through Elsbeth’s actions. Alas, we more frequently read musings like this:

The idea of lying with the man who had warred upon her father reviled [sic] her, though reason and logic had softened her repugnance some. War, she reminded herself, was an inevitable part of life.

War may be an inevitable part of life, but getting the hots for the man who killed your beloved father and burned down your home is not. Why is she debating whether or not to lie with Leo when she succumbed to his overwhelming hotness the day after he conquered Olmsbury, when she felt “peculiar sensations through her abdomen and loins?” And a few days later she has similar sensations at Cameliard:

She was trembling again, but this time it was not from shame nor anger nor hatred. Here before the queen, before a hall full of nobility, she suddenly felt a warmth, a tensing in her loins.

There has been considerable debate about whether this book should be classified as historical fiction or historical romance, but I honestly don’t see how it could be categorized as anything but romance. I don’t know of any historical fiction written in third person POV that spends the entire book in the female protagonist’s head; not Penman, not Dunnett, not Heyer’s medievals, not Chadwick, not Pargeter. And historical fiction generally has, you know, stuff happening. In this book, exciting events occur off-page, but we don’t experience them because Elsbeth doesn’t. Almost everything we see is something that happens to Elsbeth, and that’s mostly sitting around, talking to people, having sex with Leo, or getting raped by not-Leo. Toward the end of the book Elsbeth stupidly gets caught in a big battle, but unfortunately she does not die, she just gets captured and raped again (with some gratuitous BDSM-as-perversion scenes to add insult to the tedium).

And yet, despite the utter banality of most of her thoughts and conversations, Elsbeth is seen by everyone in the book as beautiful, intelligent, brave, knowledgeable, articulate, and irresistible, essentially embodying a Mary-Sue level of perfection. Even Patrise the Welsh villain, who supposedly hates her because she sees through his ruses, was smitten from the first:

She’s a prize to turn any man’s eye. How could I resist?

Of course, Leo is the most smitten of them all. A man who loses his intelligence, sense, and backbone when he’s in the presence of the heroine may be some readers’ idea of the perfect hero, but I prefer my ideal man to have a working brain that lives north of his navel.

–Grade D- 

Sunita

Goodreads | Amazon | nook | Smashwords

I had almost forgotten I had read this book until the bull semen news story jogged my memory. I think I was purposely trying to repress it. I understand that this series published by Siren and books like it featuring multiple “heroes” are very popular and are earning you all tons of [...]]]> Dear Ms. Newmar:

I had almost forgotten I had read this book until the bull semen news story jogged my memory. I think I was purposely trying to repress it. I understand that this series published by Siren and books like it featuring multiple “heroes” are very popular and are earning you all tons of money. It is one of the more befuddling things in life much like the origins of the universe theories. Maybe unknowable.

Loving Scarlett is the first in a series of 9 stories, all approximately 20K words and sold for $5+ each. The premise of the series is that these bull shifters have one mate that they search for all their lives, some families of shifters never finding their mate. The seven Lenox brothers find their mate in Scarlett. Why there are 9 stories and not 7 is another of those unknowable mysteries. It is important when reading this book, or indeed, even this review, that readers not get caught up in trivial things like consistency or rationality of thought.

The story begins with Scarlett Rose on the side of a cliff. She wakes up with no memory, her clothing torn and her body bruised. She begins to slowly regain her memory by simple things, such as talking:

“Well, that’s nuttier than a fruitcake,” she voiced aloud.
She gasped and covered her mouth in realization she had spoken in a deep Texan drawl. Texas! I’m Texan!

Sweet Mary Joseph. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

From the cliff she can see a vast ranch and a man on a horse herding four huge longhorn. Three of them red and one white. She can even see, from her position on the cliff, that the man on the horse is shirtless and that he has “chiseled muscles and … massive, broad chest and shoulders.”

The man on the horse is Denzel and he is herding four of his brothers because, well, I’m not sure why shapeshifting bulls need another shapeshifting bull in human form to herd them. The scene is told from Devlin’s point of view and he’s not happy about training for his upcoming stint in the rodeo tour. Early on in the book I asked myself all kinds of questions like why is Devlin training. Why is his brother riding a horse around instead of shifting into a bull himself? Why am I even debating with myself the whys and wherefores of BULL SHIFTERS??

It is explained that the longer the bulls remain in bull form, the stronger that they get and the sharper their minds are. You call this “supply and demand” but that’s not really what supply and demand means. Supply and demand is an economic model for pricing. But even taking pricing out of the equation, the supply and demand model searches for an equilibrium at which supply and demand are equal and thus – oh for god’s sake, just take it as a given that your use of supply and demand in this context is incorrect and I’ll move on:

Their shape-shifting strength was a matter of supply and demand. The more they remained in their bull forms, the stronger their strength and the sharper their minds when they allowed their inner beasts to be unleashed.

Devlin, in bull form, is distracted by a “glimmer” in the wooded cliffs and somehow is able to not only see Scarlett picking her way down the cliff, but also that the glimmer came from her “silver necklace.”^FN1 Worse, his “inner beast” rockets to the surface at the long bright red streak on her arm.^FN2 As he is racing toward Scarlett, he is brought up abruptly once he catches her scent. It is the scent of their mate.

Scarlett and the bulls exist in a state of near constant arousal when near one another. Or are thinking of each other, even from the very beginning (although the beginning is a misnomer as this entire story takes place in one day). Her pussy is constantly clenching or creaming and usually from just getting her hand touched.

Concern crossed his features, creasing his prominent forehead as he pressed his fingers softly against the pulse on the side of her neck. It was obvious the move was only meant to check if she was doing okay, but she felt the channel of her pussy begin to subtly contract from that single innocent touch.

….

Levi reached across the table and grabbed her hand snuggly.

Scarlett was shocked at how she had to squeeze her thighs together for fear of staining the cushioned chair with the juices that had now begun to creep from her pussy.

But when Dr. Leo, the oldest, starts kissing her after she has been examined and showered, she protests when he puts a stop to it yet she is horrified by the idea of someone washing her underthings:

He grabbed her arms and gently tugged them down. “We can’t do this right now,” he whispered.

A stubborn, offended look came over her features, and she lifted her hands right back to the back of his neck. “Why, of course we can. It’s okay, Leo. I know I’m young and probably inexperienced, but I’m not afraid—

…

And, here, Rhett washed your bra and panties—”

“He what!”

Ruh-roh.

“Who the hell is this Rhett, and why in the hell is he handling my underwear?” Her eyes widened in horror, and her chest heaved with anger. But all Leo could pay attention to was the way her full tits moved up and down with each breath. They were such a delicious contrast to her tiny little waist.

The book has one crazy scene after the other. From Leo kissing her, to Scarlett nearly orgasming from getting her hand held, to Leo spanking her in front of his 6 brothers later that evening because she had the audacity to overhear their conversation about her when she was in the bedroom and they were in the kitchen. (Leo had to spank her in front of his brothers just hours after they all first meet because he needed the color red on his mate to make his shift easier. Of course, he couldn’t ask her to run and get the red bookmark that caused him to assault her with his lips earlier in the day.)

But time is a just a mundane, human concept. This is the world of fiction, of bull shifter fiction, so it all makes perfect sense that a virgin girl, never exposed to any paranormal creatures, would choose to lose her ALL of her virginity in an orgy with 7 brothers she had never met before on the very same day she awoke with amnesia on the side of a cliff, injured and alone. It makes as much sense as sentences like these:

She wasn’t an unattractive girl, much to her relief, but she scrunched her nose at the pale, ashy complexion she wore as if she hadn’t eaten in a long time.

and it’s as beautiful as sentences like these:

She could already feel small waves of her juices fall from her newly-broken pussy, making a damp spot under her ass.

In all, I guess it’s a mastery of consistency of the inconsistent. I will admit I was never bored. In 26,000 words, there is so much crazy that the digital format can barely contain it. Like Scarlett’s pussy, the crazy is bursting at the seams.

Let me end with this note. The Lenox have a cattle ranch. Not a diary operation but a cattle ranch. They are bull shifters running a business that ends up with their non shifting brethen being slaughtered for food and shoes, amongst other things. Perfect synchronicity. F

Best regards,

Jane

Cattle have shitty long range vision. Return to text.

Mythbusters busted this myth in 2007 but bringing up facts is probably akin to throwing red paint in front of a bull. No one is going to notice or react. Return to text.

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

When Jane put out the call for site improvements, I saw several people suggest more ‘Indie’ reviews. And I was inspired. I’ve been suffering from some lackluster reading, and I thought that reading and reviewing some Indie books would be an interesting challenge. So I started with yours.

You might want to [...]]]> Dear Ms. Sullivan,

When Jane put out the call for site improvements, I saw several people suggest more ‘Indie’ reviews. And I was inspired. I’ve been suffering from some lackluster reading, and I thought that reading and reviewing some Indie books would be an interesting challenge. So I started with yours.

You might want to stop reading right about here, because this is not going to be pretty.

(Also to anyone else: if you are easily triggered by rape discussion, you might also want to stop reading.)

I don’t know how I happened upon your book, but I do remember being struck by the cover (and the dead-eyed stare of the couple).  I was intrigued when I skimmed the blurb and saw that this seemed to be historical fiction mixed with romance, and the hero was King Leodegrance of Arthurian legend (Guinevere’s father). An Arthurian prequel. Interesting. The reviews were universally positive on both Goodreads and Amazon, and I skimmed the pages and it started out in an interesting manner and you seemed like you could write, so I purchased. There was a warning about adult situations, but I don’t expect historical fiction to be all sunshine and puppies, so I was fine with that. Perhaps this would be one of those ‘Indie treasures’ everyone keeps talking about.

I was wrong.

Before I get into the story itself, I did want to comment that editing always comes up in conversations about Indies. Upon reading this, I felt it was obvious you had not hired an editor. There were commas in places that should not have commas, random capitalization, and misspelled words like “probbing” instead of ‘probing’ and an egregious “fagging courage”, which should have been “flagging”. The errors aren’t ugly enough to make one stop reading, but they did jar me from my reading on a regular basis. Luckily, the grammatical errors were overshadowed by the terrible history this ‘historical novel’ has, and the awful, awful storyline.

This book is the story of Elsbeth, and set in the preceding years before King Arthur unites Britain. Sort of. I’ll get into the historical timeline later. For now, go along with it. Elsbeth is the daughter of a duke who is at war with the new king, Leodegrance. King Leo lays siege to Elsbeth’s castle and kills or enslaves everyone there, and Elsbeth herself is taken as a ‘spoil of war’, hence the title.

This story starts out with a heroine that I thought would be strong and likable, and quickly descends into “what the fuck did I just read” territory. This book was so bad I emailed friends and told them what I was reading, just because I had to share the sheer insanity of what was on the page.  There are so many things wrong with this storyline I don’t even know where to begin. When the castle is being conquered, Leodegrance’s men (and Leo is the hero, mind you), murder people left and right, and the ones that are left are ‘enslaved’ to take back to Cameliard  aka Camelot. Her nursemaid’s dead body is defiled by a soldier, and our hero tells her:

“It’s the nature of war, my Lady.” He laughed, and the sound was not pleasant. “Truly you can’t be so naïve?”

“But she was old and – and – “

“Dead? She’s also still warm. Some men prefer women with the fight taken out of them. And some men will use whatever’s available to quench the passions aroused in them by the fighting. Get used to it, Lady. It’s the way of war.”

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

It gets worse – there is an eleven year old girl in the castle named Ruth. Ruth is raped by someone in Leo’s army when they enter the castle (I guess all the dead old ladies were taken), and the king sees that she is pure up until that first rape, so he decides to save her as a gift for his true friend, Ector. Ector, you see, likes them young and “before their womanhood” so Leo saved her for him.

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Despite these charming qualities, Elsbeth is attracted to King Leo and they share a few smoldering glances over dinner, even as she is torn over what is to happen to her. They are heading to her chambers when Leo is called away. He sends her back to her rooms with one of his guardsmen, who is drunk. The drunk guardsman then proceeds to throw Elsbeth down on her father’s bed and rapes the hell out of her. Leodegrance returns while the guard is raping Elsbeth. And when he sees this, he is annoyed.

“The Duke’s daughter is mine,” Leodegrance told him. “Go find a scullery wench to sate your appetite.”

While Elsbeth is still sitting on the floor, sprawled, Leo notices her virgin blood staining her thigh and then he gets mad.

“Trystan, get this traitor out of my sight. Take him anywhere, I don’t care. And know that he’s no longer welcome in Cameliard.”

So to recap: rape is just annoying, unless you took her virginity before the king could. Then it is a real offense.

At this point, I’d like for the heroine to stab the hero’s eyes out with a hot poker. But instead, he gets into bed, and lays his sword down between them. Instead of taking this and carving out his liver, she lays down into bed next to him and tells him her name.

I would say this is spoilery, but we are only in Chapter Two.

From here, the “what the fuck” continues to get worse. King Leo is smitten by Elsbeth, and vows not to sleep with her until she won’t fight him. She doesn’t have to be excited about it, just not fighting him. Elsbeth declares she will never sleep with him because he killed her father and enslaved her. I rally, thinking she is going to show some sense.  The next morning, our heroine is out in the courtyard and views what is left of her people.

Today, the sun looked down on the tattered remnants of a conquered people. Miserable as her night had been, theirs would have been far worse. At least she had slept on a bed beneath a warm fur. At least she hadn’t been hurt – not physically anyway. And what had happened to her had no doubt happened to every female above the age of ten. Every male, too, if the rumors she’d heard were true.

You will recall she was raped savagely the night before. I guess that does not count as being hurt.

As they ride away from the now-destroyed castle of her father, Leo puts Elsbeth on the horse in front of him and as they bounce along…she gets turned on.

Elsbeth, sitting sidesaddle, grabbed at [the horse’s] mane to steady herself. Found herself steadied instead by Leodegrance’s strong arm which circled her chest. Circled her so that the full swell of her breasts rested against his forearm.

She gritted her teeth, hating the king even more. Knowing he could have asked his horse to change to a smoother gait. Knowing why he didn’t. Hating him because the rising and falling of the horse’s stride, coupled with the jouncing of her breasts against his arm, sent peculiar sensations through her abdomen and loins. Sensations so powerful that she had to press her thighs together to keep from crying out.

Nor was Leodegrance indifferent to those same sensations that burned through her. She felt himself clutch at her, drawing her against his iron strength, matching himself to the rhythm of the horse.

You will recall she was just raped the night before. And before that, she was a virgin. And now she is dry humping her captor on horseback.

They make it to Cameliard and Leodegrance introduces Elsbeth to his wife. I’m going to let that sink in for a moment. His wife. He makes it painfully obvious that Elsbeth is going to be his mistress, and the wife is okay with it, because she doesn’t want the attentions of her husband. She’d rather sit up in her rooms and read Sapphic poetry.  Elsbeth is moved into posh quarters of her own, and 11-year-old Ruth (remember her?) is moved into the room next to her. This is critical to remember, because as the mental will-they-wont-they continues between Elsbeth and Leo, every night, Ector the guardsman goes to 11-year-old Ruth’s room and rapes her. Every night. And Elsbeth can hear it, since their rooms are adjacent. Her reaction?

Invariably, each night before he left, Ector would call out, “God grant you a good evening, Lady.” And invariably, Elsbeth, hidden behind her door, would blush, knowing that Ector knew she could hear.

Part of the blush was infuration, too. Knowing that she could hear every groan, every slap of flesh on flesh, nearly every drawn breath, still he came and still he went as if he were but a doting grandsire visiting his grandchild. No decency, no modesty, no Christian humility.

And she hated him, too, because no matter how hard she tried to ignore what was going on each night in her antechamber, her body wouldn’t let her. It yearned for the feel of another’s flesh on hers. Yearned for the breaching that made Ruth gasp each time it happened.

Recap: our heroine gets off on hearing a man rape a child.

We are only on Chapter Three at this point.

I won’t go line by line through the rest of the book, though the insanity never stops. Instead, I’ll give you a brief recap of the rest of the story because I would not wish this book on anyone.

You will be relieved to hear that the 11 year old gets pregnant by the much older Ector, tried to stab her uterus with a hot poker to kill the baby (but was prevented from doing it), and then a month later dies of a miscarriage. So now Elsbeth, who was having feelings for the king, no longer loves the king because of Ruth’s death. He then whines to her that his wife is less to him than a jaded whore, and can’t Elsbeth just sleep with him? He has needs.

Eventually they kiss and make up. Later in the story, a young, handsome knight named Patrise shows up while the king is gone away doing war things. The queen falls in love with him, but he wants Elsbeth. And when he gets his first chance, Patrise rapes Elsbeth.

The queen walks in mid-rape and Patrise says Elsbeth came on to him. The queen blames Elsbeth and they are no longer friends. When the king goes off to war, Elsbeth is scared to be left in the castle with evil Patrise, so she asks to stay with the camp followers and tag along in the war party. Patrise goes with the war party as well, finds her with the camp followers and rapes her again, and this time, Leo finds them mid rape. Elsbeth declares that the hero should not be mad at her, because it’s not what it looks like.

Leo is, of course, mad at her and ignores her for days. Elsbeth decides to leave the camp, so she steals a guy’s armor and dresses up like a boy, and gets caught up in the battle, since there is a war going on. She is discovered by the enemy, so they capture her and drag her to their leader, Uther Pendragon, who is an old and crusty man who is into BDSM. At this point, her newest captor holds her down so crusty old Uther can rape her. Repeatedly.

And then Uther ties her to a mattress in his tower and whips her and rapes her for several days, sometimes in front of his men. She is left tied to the mattress at all times. After days of this, the castle is taken by King Leo’s men and Leo walks in with his new best friend, Patrise. They kill Uther and discover Elsbeth still tied to the BDSM bed. Leo realizes when Patrise grabs her boob that Patrise is not his buddy after all, and maybe he should not have blamed Elsbeth for all the rapes.

So THEN they fight, Elsbeth helps the king kill Patrise, and they all return to Camelot. The queen hears about her love Patrise’s death, flings herself from the castle wall, which leaves Leo and Elsbeth free to marry.  Epilogue is her pregnant with Guinevere, the future queen of Camelot.

The end.

Despite this horrible, horrible storyline, there were two other major things that bothered me. One – the rapes. Not only is she raped by every primary male character in the story except for the pedophile and the hero, she is dismissive of it, thinking it happens to everyone. Or when it does happen, she shows no reaction. For all that she cares, they might have sneezed on her. I kept reading, waiting for her to show reaction of any kind – anger, violation, sadness – but she never seems to register any sort of emotion until the hero blames her for it, and then she gets mad at him.  If anything, the multiple rapings seem to make her more turned on, which totally baffles me. After she is raped, she gets turned on every time she hears someone having sex. At one point, after she has been raped twice and is following the war party with the camp followers, she is turned on yet again.

The smell of sweat and lust assailed her, wove its way into the symphony of passion that surrounded her, infiltrated her, touched her very core. She rode the crescendo as it swelled around her – eyes, ears, nose overwhelmed by the insistent, rising tide of a magic as old as life itself. Then by touch, too – her own – was she overwhelmed, plunging her into a sweet pleasure, relieved only when the wings of sleep at last closed over her.

Nothing makes me want to touch myself quite like camp followers, after all.

The rape in this book is bad enough, but there is blatant victim blaming as well. When Leo discovers Elsbeth being raped by Patrise for the second time, he turns and leaves in a fury. Elsbeth follows him to try and explain that she didn’t want Patrise’s attentions, and Leo slaps her across the face.

(Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.)

The other thing that bothered me with Spoil of War was the awful historical accuracy. You tout this book as a historical novel. Your website mentions you have a minor in history. And yet…there is nothing even remotely accurate about the history in this book. Most Arthurian history is fairly ambiguous due to the different versions of the legend, so I let the references to dukes and kings and pageantry slide. I blame Malory for that, not the author. I do blame you for the attempts at historical accuracy that have nothing to do with Malory, however.

I had a terrible time trying to place the history of this book.  I felt like I came closest when Elsbeth and the queen are discussing Dido, the legendary founder of Carthage. One character states that Dido lived 1800 years prior to them. I did a quick wiki check and learned that Carthage was founded approximately 825 BC. Fast forward 1800 years and that places us around 1000 AD.

This is about 500 years later than most ‘true’ Arthurian legend is thought to be, but let’s roll with that.

Very late in the book, Leo states:

Leo’s eyes blazed into hers. “Just so, my Lady. Now I will bend my blade and sweep all of Britain before me. Then I will lay a land of wealth and greatness at Theodosius’s feet.”

There are three Theodosius (Theodosii?) mentioned in history. Wikipedia shows me:

• Theodosius I (347–395; “Theodosius the Great”), son of Count Theodosius
• Theodosius II (408–450)
• Theodosius III (715–717)

Okay. I still don’t know which one it is. Throughout the book, though, Leo and his people are referred to as Romans. They have darker skin and black hair. They follow the edicts of Rome. Rome fell around 400 AD, remember? There is no ‘consul’ to report back to, as the book references, if they are in medieval times.

Elsbeth is stated to be of ‘old blood’. She has red hair and pale skin and her mother was Celtic. Often in this book, Celtic is confused with Norse, and both are referred to as if they no longer exist. She follows a mishmash of Celtic and Norse gods, referring to Loki and the Norns repeatedly. She curses and rails against the ‘new’ religion of Christianity.

The heroine also dresses in houppelandes, which are late medieval dresses that appeared in about 1380. When the castle is taken, the king calls for his “Carthaginian skald” to sing him a lay.

Carthage fell in 146BC and was razed again in 698AD. A ‘skald’ is a Norse bard (nowhere close to Carthage, I’m afraid) and the Norse were prominent around 800-1100 AD.

‘Roman’ king Leodegrance  has a wife from Constantinople in the Byzantine empire. At one point the queen is reading Sapphic poems. In a book. Actually several people have books in this tale. Books would not have been commonly available until after the printing press (~1450).

This feels like historical nit-picking but all the time period confusion had me googling to try and determine when and where this ‘historical novel’ was occurring.

My best guess is that you were attempting to set the story around 1000 AD, but that makes the heavy, heavy use of Romans as the enemy (and your reference to Londinium) as grossly incorrect. I finished the book and frankly, I’m still baffled as to what time frame you wanted this to be in.

I’m sad to say that this book was a failure on all angles for me. Your writing was easy to follow and the story flowed, but I found myself reading more from sheer horror and disgust at the trainwreck unfolding rather than any real desire to find out how the story ended up for the hero and heroine.

I really wanted to give this a better grade, lest all the January reviews seem like endless hate. But I can’t give a higher grade, sorry. If anything, it should be lower. Can you give a grade lower than an F? I am leaning toward F——-.

All best,

January

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Dear Ms. Suzuma,

This has been a really difficult review to write.

When Jane sent an email indicating that this book [...]]]> NOTE: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS – BIG, HUGE SPOILERS – FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK. PLEASE DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK AND DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED ON THE PLOT.

Dear Ms. Suzuma,

This has been a really difficult review to write.

When Jane sent an email indicating that this book was available for review to the reviewer group, and Janine chimed in to say that Forbidden was apparently about an incestuous brother/sister relationship, I was instantly intrigued. I was curious about how a YA book would tackle such a taboo subject. What I found was a book that troubled me, because (in part due to the first person narrative) the gulf between the way the characters’ motivations and actions are presented, and how I as the reader viewed them, was simply huge.

Maya and Lochan are brother and sister, living in London with their mother (nominally, at first) and their three younger siblings. Their mother is an irresponsible alcoholic who is usually either working or with her boyfriend (as the story goes on, the mother becomes even less of a presence in the family home). Lochan is the oldest, at 17; Maya is just 13 months younger. They have been taking care of their younger siblings for a while now; at least since their father left their mother. (The father eventually remarried and moved to Australia, and the children now have no contact with him.) Both Maya and Lochan are good surrogate parents and work well together, but obviously the responsibility is a burden to them, especially as the next oldest child, Kit, is entering his teenage years and beginning to act out.

How exactly the family got to this point was not well explained. The youngest child, Willa, is only five years old, so presumably the family was intact not that long ago. But there’s never a sense given of what Maya and Lochan’s early years were like, whether they have any good memories of their parents when the whole family was together. What little memories are shown indicate that the parents had an acrimonious relationship, but it’s not clear if that’s just during the breakup or for the entirety of their childhoods. This mattered to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to have an idea of how dysfunctional their entire lives had been; I mean, things had obviously been dysfunctional for at least the past several years since the father had left (and the fact that the father abandoned the family without compunction pretty much indicates that he wasn’t probably the best father to start with).

The other reason I wanted to understand the childrens’ earlier lives better relates to the first issue: Maya and Lochan are pretty damn saintly (Lochan has some emotional issues; more on that later). They are smart, responsible and more patient than a lot of 30-year-old biological parents would be with their sometimes challenging younger siblings. They (rather understandably) have little use for their feckless mother, but on the whole they don’t evince too much anger towards her or towards their absent father.

In general I believe one’s personality is usually formed by a combination of nature and nurture. Sure, there are cases of people who were raised horribly but go on to be wonderful, productive and healthy people. But more often than not, the sort of blows that Maya and Lochan have been dealt in their young lives are damaging. Yet in the book there doesn’t seem to be a connection made between these damaging events and either Lochan’s problems or the eventual incestuous relationship. This lack of connection became a real problem for me as the book went on.

Since the story is told in first person, by both Maya and Lochan, maybe we’re meant to understand that their perspectives are skewed. But that wasn’t the sense I got at all. Their points of view are presented in a very straightforward manner. It led to a real disconnect for me from the characters and the story. The best way I can explain it is this: both Maya and Lochan have narrative voices that do not feel authentic for children in their late teens, even ones who are bright and self-aware. Further, the self-awareness was an issue for me, because the way they present their relationship and the choices they make show a huge lack of self-awareness. Each of them (Lochan particularly) make really, really bad decisions in the course of the book, yet these actions are presented as reasonable, even noble. Further, their justifications for their relationship lacked real awareness that their screwed-up family dynamics might play a part in them falling in love.

In their internal musings and discussions with each other on the nature of their relationship, both Lochan and Maya say that they’ve never “felt” like brother and sister, but rather like “best friends.” I’m not sure what that even means. You can be both sibling and best friend, first of all; my sister is my best friend. I would think their closeness would make them feel more like siblings, not less. The only circumstances I can imagine saying that a sibling didn’t feel like a sibling would be if I really felt no connection to him/her (and I know that’s the case in some families, for various reasons). It just made no sense to me for the opposite to be true.

Maybe what they meant was that they didn’t relate to each other as they did to their younger siblings. But this is where the lack of sense and self-awareness comes in: of course they wouldn’t. They’re a year apart from each other but about 4 years from their younger brother and even more from the other two. They’ve parented all three. Of course the relationships are not going to be the same. To use that as evidence that the incestuous relationship is somehow more legitimate was just cuckoo to me. They try to further justify the taboo relationship by discussing the various types of unhealthy, abusive relationships that society accepts while condemning incest.

This sort of rationalization would’ve worked for me if it was clear that it was supposed to be a rationalization of an unhealthy relationship that was influenced to a great degree by their unusual and dysfunctional upbringing. But again, there was nothing beyond the first person voice that indicated that Maya and Lochan were wrong in their feelings and actions.

Even the tag line on the cover of my copy of the book, “Sometimes love chooses you” suggests that Maya and Lochan are a brother and sister who just happen to fall in love. I just don’t find that notion credible. It’s made less credible by their circumstances, which seem almost tailored to foster unhealthy relationships. As a reader, I try not to focus on the author, but to accept the characters at face value. In certain circumstances, I find that hard to do. It’s believable that Maya and Lochan don’t see the role that their family dysfunction plays in their relationship. But I needed some sense from the author that the reader was supposed to understand differently, and I never got that.

This is not to say that I didn’t have sympathy for the couple. I felt compassion for them and did not feel disgusted or judgmental about the relationship. I actually would’ve been okay with an HEA for the two of them. But simply from a rational point of view, I couldn’t get behind the romanticizing and whitewashing of the relationship that seemed to go beyond the narrative voices to the authorial one.

I also found it not credible that the characters’ sexual attraction came about at such a late age. This goes back to my belief that the relationship had to be the result of inappropriate channeling of emotions. Lochan is 17, a bit late for a boy to experience some sort of sexual awakening, but there’s no sense of him as a sexual creature; in fact, his attraction to Maya seems to be very much the by-product of his non-platonic love for her (in other words, he doesn’t love her because he lusts after her; he lusts after her because he loves her). Which I guess fits in with the narrative, but again doesn’t fit in with my perception of how such a relationship could or would come about. It would be much more realistic to me (if distasteful to some readers) if Lochan and Maya turned to each other when they were each a few years younger – as they begin to feel and explore their sexuality, the unusual intensity of their bond would manifest itself in a sexual way. Instead, it just sort of appears one day – Lochan realizes that he’s jealous after another boy asks Maya out; Maya comes to realize that however nice the other boy is, she doesn’t want him because he isn’t Lochan.

Characterization is really a weak point in Forbidden. Maya has no real personality that I could discern – she’s mostly just a collection of virtues. The mother is a central casting Bad Mother. The only character who shows any real depth is the troubled middle brother Kit, who seesaws between being an awful juvenile delinquent and showing flashes of the needy child he still is.

And then there is Lochan. Lochan operates well within the family, being responsible, patient, caring and articulate. Outside of the family unit, aside from being a good student, Lochan is a mess. He suffers from severe social anxiety to the point that he’s friendless, incapable of talking to his peers, and terrified of speaking in class. He has panic attacks. He appears to have a stutter, which I thought was going to be a bigger plot point but never  materialized into one. His internal monologues are disturbing – he often thinks in terms of coming apart, of essentially losing his mind. The parts narrated by Lochan can be difficult to read because from his own perspective, he is almost always teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I didn’t know if I should be disturbed by his feelings or annoyed because at times it comes off like melodramatic teenage angst.

The book begins with this internal monologue from Lochan:

I gaze at the small, crisp, burned-out black husks scattered  across the chipped white paint of the windowsills. It is hard to believe that they were ever alive. I wonder what it would be like to be shut up in this airless glass box, slowly baked for two long months by the relentless sun, able to see the outdoors—the wind shaking the green trees right there in front of you—hurling yourself again and again at the invisible wall that seals you off from everything that is real and alive and necessary, until eventually you succumb: scorched, exhausted, overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task. At what instincts keep it going until it is physically capable of no more, or does it eventually learn after one crash too many that there is no way out? At what point do you decide that enough is enough?

Lochan’s voice is like that through much of the book: depressed, tormented and exhausted. Yet his mental health issues are not ever clearly delineated or even addressed beyond the acknowledgment that his school forced him to see a counselor at one point.

What frustrated me most about Lochan’s character was that again, I wasn’t clear if he had always been like this, or if his problems manifested themselves later in his childhood after the trauma of his parents’ breakup and his mother’s descent into complete irresponsibility. It felt disconnected from his family problems and disconnected from his attraction to Maya (except to the degree that this attraction gave Lochan more of an opportunity to feel tortured and miserable).

The issues I had with Forbidden really came to a head in the last quarter of the book. Again, I will warn the  reader – huge, huge spoilers ahead.

Lochan and Maya are caught in the midst of consummating their relationship fully by their mother. The mother somehow assumes that Lochan is raping Maya and calls the police; while they are waiting for the cops to arrive Lochan hurriedly tries to convince Maya that she must claim that he was forcing her to have sex. His reasoning is that one of them needs to be around to take care of the children, or they will only have their irresponsible mother to care for them, which will mostly likely result in them quickly becoming wards of the state. If they admit the relationship is consensual, they’ll both be in legal trouble and likely neither will be allowed anywhere near the younger three siblings. Maya finally agrees, and Lochan is taken away. He’s interviewed by the police, an interview that is vividly painful and humiliating to read (I will give credit for making it feel real, at least; I cringed to read it). Eventually, during a second interview, the police tell Lochan that Maya has broken and signed a document admitting that the relationship was consensual. This sinks Lochan even further into despair, especially after the police investigators (who seem to think Maya’s statement is made out of fear of Lochan, in spite of the fact that everything Lochan says and does clearly telegraphs his concern for Maya and his desire to take complete responsibility for the relationship) tell him that Maya could be put behind bars for two years for consensual incest with a male relative. Back in his cell, Lochan decides that the best solution is for him to commit suicide. If he kills himself, Maya won’t have any reason to continue to tell the truth.

For five heart-wrenching pages, Lochan works out a way to hang himself from some bars in the corner of his cell. Then he does so.

I can’t convey how upsetting I found this. Again, I’ll give the author credit for moving me, but it was simply horrific. I’m not sure that I’ve ever read a first person suicide scene…I seriously have no desire to do so again. The fact that the suicide was completely wrongheaded and a horrible, horrible solution to the problem that Maya and Lochan had created made it 1,000 times worse. Lochan somehow couldn’t bear the thought of Maya spending two years in prison? (Not that that was even likely to happen.) How about depriving her of her brother and the person she loved most in the world? How about leaving her with the guilt of realizing (if she does realize) that it was her inability to keep up the lie that lead to this fatal step? What about what Lochan is doing to Kit (who will have his own incredible burden of guilt to bear; it’s Kit who in a fit of pique sets up the mother to catch Maya and Lochan), Tiffin and Willa?

Look, I understand that suicide is (almost) always an irrational act. But once again, and in this case most disturbingly, it’s not presented that way at all. Ultimately, Lochan’s suicide is presented as a romantic act, a sacrifice to save Maya and his other  siblings. It’s an interpretation that I think is asinine, offensive and actually, dangerous. I could see teenage girls loving this book. I’m not saying it’ll make them have sex with their brothers or kill themselves, but I will say that I would not want my child to read it, even if she were an older teenager. Not because of the incest, but because of the romanticizing of suicide and the lack of acknowledgment of how twisted Lochan’s and Maya’s (especially Lochan’s) world views are.

The ending is bizarrely and inappropriately hopeful. The epilogue opens on Maya on the day of Lochan’s memorial service, and it quickly becomes clear that after the service Maya plans to kill herself, leaving notes for her younger siblings explaining that she just can’t go on anymore. I was torn between feeling the same about her killing herself as I did about Lochan – that it was a selfish and irrational act, and that she should think about what it would do to the children, the children she and Lochan had supposedly tried so hard to keep out of foster care – and thinking that she actually probably should just kill herself, because, boy, her life was pretty much entirely ruined. Maya ultimately decides that she’ll try to go on – for Lochan – and they head off to the church.

The book ends thusly:

We walk down the middle of the road holding hands, the sidewalk far too narrow for all four of us together. A warm breeze brushes across our faces, carrying the smell of honey­suckle from a front garden. The midday sun beams down from a bright blue sky, the light shimmering between the leaves, scattering us with golden confetti.

“Hey!” Tiffin exclaims, his voice ringing with surprise. “It’s nearly summer!”

What the fucking hell?

I mean, really? Really? You’re going to try to end this book on a note of hope, rebirth, etc. after everything that came before? A story about an unhappy, dysfunctional family whose oldest sibling appears to be at minimum deeply clinically depressed, about two siblings who develop an unhealthy incestuous bond without ever acknowledging the reasons the bond is formed, about a teenager who commits suicide for no good reason, leaving his younger siblings, including the one who was in love with him scarred for life and probably significantly more fucked up than they were already going to be by being raised in semi-poverty by two teenagers and abandoned by their birth parents?

Seriously? I just can’t even…the ending genuinely felt offensive to me. I really have no idea how to grade this book (I feel like I say that a lot, but it’s especially true in this case), but in the end, based on the multiplicity of the problems I had with it and the depth of those problems, I feel like I have no choice but to give Forbidden an F.

Best regards,

Jennie

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It used to be that I would never read a book containing infidelity but lately it seems that I can’t get away from it. Books containing infidelity that is, not infidelity itself. When it turned out that this book was going to be a book about infidelity, I decided I [...]]]> Dear Mr & Mrs. Carrington:

It used to be that I would never read a book containing infidelity but lately it seems that I can’t get away from it. Books containing infidelity that is, not infidelity itself. When it turned out that this book was going to be a book about infidelity, I decided I wanted to finish it out. Could you save this book, I wondered? The answer is no but it wasn’t so much because the book contained a character who cheated but rather in the way in which the infidelity storyline was carried out.

Much of this review will contain spoilers. To sum up: A soldier is off on deployment returns home injured with nightmares about the war to find out the love of his life and his best friend slept together.  He comes home and has to learn how to forgive them.

Megan McGowan, Darius Folsom, Jason Savage and a few other Marines that fought together formed a security company called Lazarus Security. Megan and Darius (Dari) were a couple but Megan had accepted an honorable discharge after her last tour and Darius remained a reservist.

The story begins with Dari and Megan in bed, enjoying each other’s bodies before Dari is deployed again. Dari and Jason have been best friends since the age of five and Dari asks Jason to keep an eye out for Megan while Dari is deployed. The prologue sets this unhappy triangle up and emphasizes a) that Dari is a honest and honorable man; b) that Jason sleeps with anything that moves; and c) Megan and Dari will be separated for 18 months.

She knew he wouldn’t stray. It wasn’t the way he was made. They didn’t come any truer than Darius Folsom. It was the second thing she loved about him.

We then get 6 chapters of Jason and Megan making googly eyes at each other. At the end of the book, I kept wondering at this six chapter excursion into the mind of Jason (whose POV we never see again after chapter 7) and the romance that seemed to be brewing between Jason and Megan. In fact, I was so confused as to who the hero was after reading how the electricity sizzled between the two and how when their eyes made contact, they couldn’t look away that I had to flip to the end. Darius. Okay. Really?

“Shall I ask what just happened?” she said. Jason narrowed his eyes at her; they glinted dangerously in the dim light.
“Ask all you want.”

“Mmm. Just don’t expect to get any answers: is that what you’re saying?”

His grin was slow but ultimately complete. “I always knew there was a reason I liked you.” For a moment, one, brief, irrefutable moment, Megan’s gaze fused with his and a thrill of recognition swept through her—awareness, sexual, full and strong. She caught her breath.

and

Jason suddenly realized that his gaze was glued to Megan’s ass under the khaki of her pants. Damn, but the girl had a body on her.

He swallowed thickly and got out of the truck. While it wasn’t the first time he’d appreciated her curves—sometimes even in front of Dari—for some reason, his attention seemed inappropriate now.

and

He stopped short of adding “Sweet dreams.” Truth was he was afraid his dreams tonight were
going to be too sweet. And chances were high they were going to feature her.

What was the point of Jason’s point of view? What was I supposed to glean from it? If this was a story about how deployment and separation can wreak havoc on one’s relationship, shouldn’t I be in Megan and Darius’ point of view? If Jason wasn’t going to be anything but an impediment that the two would have to overcome then what did Jason’s POV provide? It may have made sense if this was supposed to be some tragic love triangle but it wasn’t. Out of every WTF thing in this book, giving us pages of Jason’s POV up to chapter 7 was the biggest anomaly. Because who the eff cares whether Jason is fantasizing about Megan? Who cares that he is admiring her curves in an inappropriate manner? What does it matter? This is a romance, ultimately as you wrote it, about Megan and Darius and thus Jason’s thoughts, politics, desires, wants are a complete and utter waste of space.

Let’s turn to Megan. Apparently Megan is a slave to her physical desires. Not only is she such incapable of turning away from a building attraction to Jason, she knows it exists and does nothing to avert it.

To say she hadn’t known this might happen would make her a liar. She and Jason had been working too closely together over the past ten days for some attraction not to develop.

They probably should have been a little more careful, though.

Of course, she had no way of knowing her power to deny her own fundamental needs would hover somewhere around zero when the moment did occur.

Instead of trying to avoid it, Megan kisses Jason. And instead of stopping at kissing, she and Jason decide that they will just have sex, but no kissing because kissing is too intimate.  The build up for Megan to come to the point of cheating is her missing Dari, lusting after Jason, and having unsatisfying masturbation sessions.  In other words, there is very little emotional thought given to the cheating by Megan.

I stopped at this point to flip to the end of the story again. Is Darius the hero in this book? Because Megan seems to be building feelings for Jason. These feelings are not described as a need to be fulfilled because her body misses Darius because if that were the case, any man would do.  Instead, it’s a need that Megan has for Jason, a specific need that has built up over time.

Then the two of them try to justify their actions in a weird way. They are Marines, and thus capable of separating emotion from physical act:

He prided himself on being a man who called ‘em as he saw me. And now that he understood that his physical need for Megan was returned, well, there was no reason for them to pretend it didn’t.

“Jason, I…”

He could sense her withdrawing. “What, Megan? We’re both adults. Marines, even. We know the difference between real emotion and physical need. Just like a wound that requires attention, there are other…needs that have to be met.”

Her blue eyes sparkled. “Yes, but unlike a wound, this can go without treatment.”

He grinned. “Can it?”

She faltered. “Look, I know the kiss bothered you. Hell, it bothered me, too.” He grimaced, thinking her mouth had felt all too good pressed against his. “I’m not that guy. You know, the one that screws around with his best friend’s girl.”

As long as they don’t kiss, this act is nothing more than…pissing I guess.

“So,” she said. “If this is, not that, then what is it?”

“Sex. Pure and simple.” The dubious expression returned.

“Look. We don’t have to kiss,” he said. “Actually, I’d prefer it if we didn’t.”

“And how do you propose we…have sex without it?”

He couldn’t help grinning in purely carnal desire. “Simple—you turn around…”

And afterwards, Megan feels great. I wondered at this point whether the book was going to make the case that sex without an emotional attachment was nothing more than a physical act. In a later section, Jason accuses Dari of acting like a fifteen year old girl for being upset that Jason had sex with Dari’s girlfriend.   The chapters leading up to the sex (and it is an explicit sex scene between Jason and Megan) intimated more than just a physical attraction between Jason and Megan. Was the book going to explore Megan’s conflicted feelings? No.

Again, nothing that happens in the first third of the book has actual bearing on the last two thirds of the story. I’m still baffled as to its inclusion. The only thing that is of any import is the infidelity. Why it took 7 chapters to get there and why it was an explicit sex scene are baffling. It was purposeless filler designed to … what, confuse the reader as to who the hero was? Provide setup for Jason’s book? I mean, all I got from that section is that he had no trouble nailing his best friend’s girlfriend.

Would the story be one about Megan’s need for physical companionship and how unrealistic it is for even women to spend 18 months without the touch of another human in a sexual way? No, the story isn’t about Megan’s actions but it’s about whether Darius can forgive both Megan and Jason. That’s right. Darius comes home to find out he has been emotionally and physically betrayed by two people closest to him and the story doesn’t revolve around their actions but whether he is big enough to forgive them.

I kept repeating “no” throughout the latter third of the book. Like when Jason repeated his “it was just sex” argument:

“You know, never mind. Don’t answer that.” She pushed from the table and paced.

“This…you and I just talking like this feels like a betrayal.” “We didn’t betray him.”

“How can you say that? Of course we betrayed him!”

“Now you’re just talking stupid.” She’d never seen Jason so upset before. At least not with her.

“He and I are a couple,” she said. “Any relations outside that sphere is a betrayal. It doesn’t matter that we didn’t kiss. Or that we made a point of not looking at each other. It was infidelity, pure and simple.”

“It was sex. Nothing more.”

and then Megan:

“We, um, decided not to say anything. To ride it out. Treat it like the nonevent it really was.”

“Did you enjoy it?” Of all the questions he could have asked, she would never have expected that one.

She had no answer for him. She couldn’t tell him that, yes, she had enjoyed it. Needed it. On a strictly physical level that had nothing to do with her heart.

If the argument that you were trying to make with your characters is that sex is just a physical act, no different than dining out with a friend or going jogging, then it doesn’t make sense that the character arc is about forgiveness. In order to make the argument convincing, then you would have had all the characters come to the conclusion and acceptance that sex is not an intimate act. Instead you have Darius learning forgiveness, Megan wracked with guilt, and Jason drinking away his sorrows.

Perhaps I was supposed to see Megan and Jason weak, weaker than Darius. But if that is true, then shouldn’t Megan’s character arc involved some challenge to the weakness that she then overcomes? Because there wasn’t anything in the story for Megan to do but wait for Darius to forgive her. There wasn’t anything that was done to try to convince the reader that Megan wouldn’t be rushing off to grab some other friend of Darius’s to fuck the next time he was deployed or gone.

There wasn’t any internal consistency to your argument and thus your story didn’t seem innovative and courageous but instead it was weak.  If you were going to make the argument, through the characters, that sex was a physical act, then you wimped out.  Megan’s character arc should have been about convincing Darius of the rightness of her actions and Darius’ character arc should have been about acceptance, not forgiveness.

Finally, Megan and Dari and Jason are searching for a lost girl down in Florida. This storyline, again, had nothing to do with the emotional drama and was so detached from the overarching plot that it could have been removed completely and not changed the feel of the story one iota. Again, it was pure filler and not very interesting filler at that. There was nothing about the search for the lost girl that dealt with the issues of infidelity, trust, companionship or loss. It was completely non essential. At first, I wasn’t going to give this book an F because I wondered if I was giving it a poor grade simply because it was a book about infidelity but no, I am giving it an F because it failed on every level, particularly the romance one.

Best regards,

Jane

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Three to Tango is a collection of four novellas all featuring m/f/m ménages and the tag-line on the cover says “sex is best when it’s one-on-one [...]]]> Oh dear. Yes, that’s what I said when I finished reading this book. During the various stories I also said the following: WTF!?, Shut UP!, No way…, and Huh?

Three to Tango is a collection of four novellas all featuring m/f/m ménages and the tag-line on the cover says “sex is best when it’s one-on-one … plus one”; this is a little misleading because while two of these stories are about ménage relationships, two are more love triangles where the third person causes angst and discord.

I picked this volume up because I’ve read and enjoyed Emma Holly’s books–this winter I went on an Emma Holly read-a-thon after a conversation with Dear Author’s Janet; I’ve also read Lauren Dane’s Inside Out, which I loved. I had never read anything by Megan Hart, though I’ve been meaning to, and Bethany Kane is a new-to-me author; I love reading collections of short stories, they are great during my short commute to work or for a quick read on an evening when I don’t have the energy to read for hours.

I was sitting in the airport, waiting to board a connecting flight on the way home from a short business trip and reading an advanced reading copy of Three to Tango when I emailed Jane to comment that this read a lot like a draft. Particularly Lauren Dane’s and Emma Holly’s stories struck me as less polished than other of their work that I’ve read.

Three to Tango suffers from two main problems:

1. Unpolished writing.
2. Absurd scenarios.

dirty/bad/wrong by Lauren Dane

This is the story of Ava, who returns to her hometown upon her mother’s death and comes face to face with men from her past, Luca and Angelo. Ava has mommy issues (her mother was a selfish alcoholic who slept with married men). Angelo has being gay issues. Luca’s issue is that Ava and Angelo have issues that keep them all from being together.

Of the four, this story has the most flow problems. Sometimes I was confused about the activity going on, and that distracted from the emotional arc of the story. Other times the writing felt unpolished. The story itself is has great emotional potential, but the writing kept dragging me out of it. Here are two examples (the story is full of other examples):

She hesitated as past and present swam in her vision, disorienting her with a wave of memory so very strong and sweet. Her first days there when Maryellen had ever so gently tapped her shoulder each time she found her looking at the floor.

The first sentence is overwritten. The second is confusing. In the context of the story flow we understand that in the second sentence Ava is remembering how Maryellen helped Ava during a difficult time in her life by showing her kindness and caring.

Here’s another example:

The downy trail of hair leading from his navel inside the waistband of his jeans led to places she’d never forget.

I understand this sentence. And in my opinion it’s overwritten. In the sentence before this one we learn that Luca is in jeans, so delete “inside the waistband of his jeans”. The trail of hair shouldn’t have “led” in the same sentence that it’s “leading”. How about this:

”The downy trail of hair led to places she’d never forget.”

The writing in dirty/bad/wrong feels rushed and it was examples like these that made me comment to Jane about draft-like quality of this book. I don’t recall the same feeling of rushed writing in Inside Out, which as I recall was an emotional, tight book with characters that I loved.

In the end, I found the story less than compelling because the overwritten, rushed writing kept grabbing my attention away from the emotional drama of the three characters. F.

Just for One Night by Megan Hart

This story is the bright spot in the anthology. In Just for One Night Kerry and Jeremy have been dating for a long time and live together, they’re happy and comfortable together, except that Kerry still fantasizes about her high school best friend Brian. Jeremy encourages her to sleep with Brian because the thought of his girlfriend having sex with another man turns him on.

What follows is a satisfying emotional journey where Brian and Kerry have their one-night stand, then realize they want more. While Brian and Kerry each sort out what they really want, Jeremy gets hot imagining them together in bed. Of the characters, Jeremy is the least interesting and I found his actions were thoughtless and short-sighted. This story engaged me, the writing was tight. B

Flipping for Chelsea by Emma Holly

What I like best about Emma Holly’s books is that she creates memorable characters that she treats with respect and care. But I absolutely did not buy into this story because I don’t for a minute believe Liam’s acceptance of being part of a ménage with his BROTHER and the love-of-his-life.

Shay (Seamus) isn’t Liam’s blood brother; however, they were raised together and both called the same people Mom and Dad, and ‘brother’ is how they think of each other throughout the story.

I understand why Liam loves Chelsea. I understand why Shay loves Chelsea. I understand why Chelsea loves Liam. I understand why Chelsea emotionally loves Shay, but I do not understand why Chelsea needs Shay in a sexual relationship. And I absolutely do not believe that Liam would agree to include Shay in the romantic and sexual relationship that might develop between him and Chelsea.

In the end this story didn’t work for me because it felt contrived, and I didn’t believe the characters actions. What really killed this story was when Liam made a revelation about a past relationship/encounter. I  absolutely did not believe it fit with the character I’d come to know throughout the story—this particular moment crashed the entire thing and reduced it in my mind to a gratuitous set up solely for the reader’s titillation rather than a true emotional journey of the characters. F.

On the Job by Bethany Kane

This story is tightly woven story with polished writing. In fact, if not for the ménage I’d probably have rated it a B, even with Walker’s crazy dominating wacko-ness. However, the occurrence of the ménage was such an absurd set up for a spanking (you messed with another dude? I’m going to punish you…even though I told you to do it) that it ruined all credibility of Walker’s character.

Walker and Madeline were in love until Walker joined the Secret Service in an effort to pull himself out of poverty and make something of his life. He comes back into Madeline’s life as her bodyguard, hired by her friend Tony to keep her safe. Tony has pissed off the Russian Mafia and thinks Madeline might be killed because he’s convinced everyone (except Madeline, who considers Tony a good friend and occasional fuck-buddy) that he’s Madeline’s finance.

Are you still with me?

Madeline and Walker come back together and have hot sexual encounters with Walker dominating Madeline and getting all possessive and telling her she’s his. Fast forward and they’re all on Tony’s yacht when Walker decides to spank Madeline for touching another man, then does an about face and tells Madeline to give Tony a blow job because he’s going to prison.

WTF?! Seriously. W. T. F.

Thankfully this was the last story. I am done with Three to Tango and just want to erase this book from my brain. F.

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Your two self published books were recommended to me as examples of how the new romance author is taking advantage of the self publishing system. My understanding is that these two books are selling quite well.   Indeed, Copping to It and Cop Appeal average near 4 stars or more at Amazon. The [...]]]> Dear Ms. Meyers:

Your two self published books were recommended to me as examples of how the new romance author is taking advantage of the self publishing system. My understanding is that these two books are selling quite well.   Indeed, Copping to It and Cop Appeal average near 4 stars or more at Amazon. The good thing is that these two books have good length for the price of $.99 and the covers look professional. The bad thing is that the plots were so ridiculous (if you could call them plots) that the sex became uninteresting to the point that I was slogging through each sex scene wondering when, if ever, it was going to end.

Copping to It features Claire Fullerton a “respected journalist” and undercover cop Ty Williamson.   I put “respected journalist” in scare quotes because there isn’t anything in the story that would give a reader the idea that Claire is a) a journalist or b) respected.     The story opens with Claire spying on a gang known as the Guardians.   She’s been staking out a warehouse for a couple of days attired in “patent leather flats”and slacks.

While she is supposed to be gathering material against this terrible gang that “every other cop in the city were trying to bring down”, Claire begins to get turned on.   She sees no crime except for the exchange of illicit drugs.   Instead, the gang members engage in pleasuring one woman after another.   Despite this place supposedly being a secret gang hideout and this gang being “city's biggest, baddest and most elusive gangs”, the warehouse has more traffic than the office of the bachelor preacher on Sunday afternoon. It’s a gang of pleasure, really, and who doesn’t want to be dragged amongst their midst?   Claire can’t even think of their criminal activities after she’s seen their tight white asses in action.   Every woman would feel this way, thinks Claire:

She told herself her response was to be expected.   That any woman would have trouble remembering a man's criminal history when she'd just observed him, naked ass clenching, pumping into a woman and making her come so hard her legs had buckled.

Oh Claire, have you never heard of the term prostitute? Anyhoo, the Guardians are apparently a gang who like to get together for orgies. Even as she is dragged away, Claire is excited and she becomes even more excited when she is presented with a tableau featuring her crush, Ty, getting a blowjob from one of those women.   This is the initiation for a brother!

As soon as the man spewed his seed into the woman's mouth and she swallowed it, he'd officially be a member of the Demon Guardians.   A brother.   One of them.

This was Ty Williams' initiation into the state's most feared biker gang.

I guess the entire fraternity of Kappa Sigma are part of the “state’s most feared biker gang.” Seriously? Getting a chick to swallow instead of spit is the way to prove yourself to a bunch of violent, drug addled criminals?   Okay, they are drug addled so maybe this does make sense.   Fortunately, Claire knows that when Ty is spilling his seed inside the chick’s mouth, he’s fantazing about Claire.

She knew without a shadow of a doubt that when he’d closed his eyes and made the sound, he’d been feeling the pleasure given to him by another woman, but he’d been thinking of Claire.

All of this is supposed to seem romantic to us because this is what turns Claire on–”Voyeurism. Danger. Kink.”   And by positioning it in this fashion, the reader who disapproves is the “good girl” that Claire pretends to be but really isn’t.   Really what it says to me is that Claire would like to sit outside the prison trailer videotaping the conjugal visits of felons.

The story continues in this incredibly inauthentic fashion with Claire blowing Ty in front of everyone and Claire and Ty engaging in a private tryst in the gangster’s hideout as punishment for Claire and a furtherance of Ty’s initiation.   (cue Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise as the soundtrack to the video (video but no sound) that Claire and Ty make). They even manage to fit in a menage after another undercover cop informs Ty that it is safe for Claire, the superstar journalist, to leave the premises.   I’m not sure what the point of the attempted suspense plot was given that it was so obviously there to string a few sex scenes together. But as much as I thought this was ridiculous, it was no match for Cop Appeal. D.

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Cop Appeal doesn’t even have the thin veneer of respectability that Copping to It attempts to maintain.   Sarah Larson has always wanted Luke (the undercover cop in the preceding book who participated in the menage with Ty and Claire.   At the gangster’s hideaway) but she ends up married to his co-worker, Richard.   Richard turned out to be an abusive, violent husband.   Sarah runs from Richard and dreams of a new life with Luke but initially has to satisfy herself with a vibrator until Luke shows up at her apartment one day after the divorce. Despite the horrible things that Sarah said to him when she married Richard, Luke is ready to forgive, forget, and most importantly, fuck.   The two reacquaint themselves and then the detective to whom Sarah reported her ex husband (a co worker of said detective) calls to inform Sarah that the police have confronted the ex husband who denies everything.   Sarah is reassured that everyone believes her and not the co worker/police officer.

When the detective shows up on her doorstep the next morning, Luke greets him with a friendly acknowledgment and then the three engage in a menage.   Because she needs them both. Because Luke could tell by how Sarah talked on the phone with the detective that she wanted the detective.   So Luke is going to make sure that Sarah is protected from both sides (innuendo intended by me).   At this point, why not just admit that you are writing dirty menage in hopes to make the filthy lucre instead of trying to sell us readers on this idea that there really is an emotional reason for the menage?   Lord, I hope Sarah doesn’t make eyes with the butcher at the grocery store or maybe smile at the local barista.   Who knows who might await her when she comes home.   She’ll have to keep her smiles to herself and her eyes downcast lest these friendly overtures be viewed by Luke as a request for more menage.   F

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Dear Ms. Black,

I will admit front and center that I never read  Decadent, but I definitely did read the reviews and comments on both this site and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I was intrigued by the reviews and comments, similar to how one is intrigued watching the slow-motion replays of [...]]]> SPOILER ALERT: THIS  REVIEW HAS ‘EM!

Dear Ms. Black,

I will admit front and center that I never read  Decadent, but I definitely did read the reviews and comments on both this site and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I was intrigued by the reviews and comments, similar to how one is intrigued watching the slow-motion replays of the crashes during the Women’s Olympic Downhill ski race. The hits just kept on coming. But for some reason, I never picked up the book, and after readingDelicious, I am very happy that I didn’t bother.

It took me  quite a while  to get through this book, not because there were big words or complicated plot twists, but because I had to keep collecting my jaw from the ground and re-reading to make sure I’d read what I thought I had. I laughed…I cried…I nearly barfed. I can’t say it was better than  CATS, but that’s probably because none of the  characters were weres.

Luc Traverson (cousin of Deke from  Decadent) spent an incredible, unforgettable night with Alyssa Deveraux,  but it’s a night he’s never going to repeat. Alyssa is a stripper and very unsuitable mother material, and Luc is looking to marry his mommy. Don’t believe me? Straight from the horse’s mouth:

A perfect wife. A perfect stay-at-home mother, just like his own. That's what he wanted.

Why, you ask, is Luc looking for this paragon of virtue? Well, Luc has some sperm issues, and his biological clock is  TICKING! He wants babies, and he wants ‘em now, and he’ll do anything to get ‘em, be it adoption, insemination…he didn’t go as far as stealing, but it sounded damn close. This guy has baby fever…lord knows why. Luc thinks Alyssa is totally unsuitable as a mother because she’s a stripper. And, in Luc’s vernacular, stripper also equates to stupid, sex-crazed, gold digging whore. Without asking, knowing or having any sort of proof, Luc assumes that all of Alyssa’s interactions with the male population involve her trading sex for just about everything.

So why is  Luc back in Alyssa’s neck of the woods? Well, remember that special night they spent together? As an exchange for sleeping with him and Deke (Deke chickened out at the last minute), Luc promised Alyssa he’d cook for her restaurant opening week.  One wonders why Luc thinks Alyssa uses sex as currency.

Alyssa knows deep in her bones that Luc is the man for her. Anyone that gives a rogering that amazing and sends you flowers days later, but won’t return phone calls,  is your one twew  wuve. Alyssa has Luc cooking  at her restaurant  for one whole week, so she has seven days and nights to  work her wiles on him. Oh, and she hasn’t had sex with anyone since she hooked up with Luc in  Decadent, and before  that  encounter was  celibate for 3 years.  I bet that re-virginized her.

Alyssa’s restaurant, Bonheur, is an  expensive,  upscale  endeavor that is blocks from her original business venture, the strip club Sexy Sirens.  I don’t find it strange that Alyssa would want to be the proprietor of a hip, upscale business venture and  shed her stripper image. However, it’s hard to do that  when you’re still stripping. You read that right. Alyssa owns Sexy Sirens (and apparently has for five years) but still strips at her own club to make ends meet…or something.  Oh, the humanity. Luckily, Alyssa’s bouncer (and giant, Goldberg-sized slab ‘o meat) is there to keep the riffraff away:

[...] Tyler lifted Alyssa, sat in her chair, and set her on his lap. His hand rested high on her thigh, the other on her waist. And the bouncer's fingers weren't still. They roamed, his thumb brushing the curve of her breast, his other palm disappearing under her skirt, over her hip.

Alyssa didn't blink, much less fight him off.

What? In addition to this,  Luc has caught  Tyler ogling Alyssa naked…in her  own home.  Alyssa’s reaction? Not much of a reaction at all, in fact they had a conversation as he helped her out of the tub. Hell, I’d assume the same as Luc; she’s fucking the bouncer.

Happily, the stripper prejudice goes both ways. Alyssa is the target of a crazed lunatic and is on the receiving end of threatening notes and  break-ins, in other words, the usual. Rather than doing things  to protect  her own well being, she’s TSTL (as are all the characters in this book) and  ducks away from  Tyler and Luc to check in at Sexy Sirens. She’s talking to an employee and there’s this:

Though it was hard to take someone seriously wearing a thong and pasties, Alyssa couldn’t discount the dancer’s observation.

Yep, you read that right. She just knocked her own employee for doing something she does on a regular basis. You may think I’m nit picking here, but I promise you, there is a gem on nearly every page of this book.  At this point, I’m sure  you realize that the back-and-forth  between Luc and Alyssa consists of  Luc hating that he wants  Alyssa  and punishing her for it, Alyssa wanting  Luc but hating that he doesn’t want her, respect her or seem to give a rat’s ass about her:

"What I really wanted to hear was that you believed I didn't have sex with Tyler today."

Luc shrugged. "You don't owe me explanations."

"I don't," she agreed. "But I want to know what you really think."

It was probably pointless, but she couldn't stand him thinking she was the kind of woman who slept around.

He paused, seemingly lost in his thoughts, sorting through them. "You're too dedicated to your future to fuck away the afternoon the day

your happiness opens its doors."

Tears hit her instantly. He got it. He got her! It was a start.

Trust me, for much of the book, we don’t get beyond “start”. Luc’s jealous of any interaction she has with any other man, and backs it up with his crazy assertion that  <sarcasm> relationships  are difficult and  take work </sarcasm>.

No matter what route he took to fatherhood, he couldn't achieve it without a woman in the picture. Even if Alyssa supported his decision to adopt or undergo surgery or visit a sperm bank, she'd have to agree to go through the process with him, perhaps carry a child. And they'd have to find a way to make their passionate, difficult relationship work.

What kind of mother would she be? Certainly not like his own.

I nearly cried when I read the above, and this is the point the wheels fell off the bus for me. There are so many things wrong with it that I think any commentary would send me into rantsville, and I don’t want to go there.  In addition to all of the relationship angst, sexxoring and fighting,  there’s  a  buttload of  non-communication, miscommunication, intentional miscommunication,  oversharing (by secondary characters)  and an annoying background threat to Alyssa’s well-being that could be resolved/avoided if she’d just discuss her past with someone…anyone. This book is written in all seriousness, but the characters, plot and dialogue  are so unbelievable that I kept thinking my brain was going to spontaneously combust from the  absurdity. F.

~ Shuzluva

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I was very excited to see that you had a new release out. You are one of my favorite Harlequin Presents authors. Sure, you have some rape books in your past, but this is 2010, and those are a thing of the past, right? Apparently not. The Innocent’s Surrender started out innocuously. [...]]]> Dear Ms. Craven:

I was very excited to see that you had a new release out. You are one of my favorite Harlequin Presents authors. Sure, you have some rape books in your past, but this is 2010, and those are a thing of the past, right? Apparently not. The Innocent’s Surrender started out innocuously. The heroine, Natasha Kirby, is summoned to meet with her foster brothers regarding the failing family business. Her brothers want her to promise to marry Alex Mandrakis, their chief rival. The promise will somehow allow her family to gain enough time and confidence with bankers to allow them to gain financing to support the efforts to revitalize the family business.

While Natasha initially resists, she is assured that it is just a verbal promise and that Alex, a pursued bachelor, would not even be interested in her proposal. She signs the agreement and returns to London thinking nothing more of the situation.

Natasha is summoned yet again and when she arrives in Athens, she is whisked away by a car service. Natasha believes she is headed to her brothers’ homes but instead she is taken to a stranger’s home and marched into his bedroom. There she finds Alex Mandrakis, nude from the waist up, in bed and covered only by a sheet. He orders her to strip and get in bed with him. Apparently another letter was sent, ostensibly by Natasha, filled with lewd suggestions of what she can do for Alex and he wants her to fulfill those promises.

Natasha refuses. She attempts to leave and finds the door locked. She contemplates climbing through a bathroom window. Alex warns her that his guards will only bring her back to his room if she manages to escape. The only way out, according to Alex, is to have sex with him. She begs him to allow her to leave, debasing herself. He is unmoved. Natasha is left with little option. To worsen the matter, Natasha was dating someone and she realizes that this event will negatively impact her relationship with the man in her life.

UP TO that moment Natasha had only really thought about the outrage to her feelings, and the nightmare effect on her life of this unbearable, shameful indignity that was being inflicted on her. It had not occurred to her that her first experience of sex might cause her actual physical pain.

Her taut muscles shocked into resistance, she wanted to cry out to him that he was hurting her, and beg him to stop. To give her unaccustomed body at least a little time to adjust to the stark reality of his penetration of her.

Yet she did nothing, said nothing, determined not to grant him the satisfaction of knowing that anything he did could affect her in any way-’pleasure or pain

Despite this event, Alex never really apologizes or acknowledges that he has essentially raped Natasha and she herself does not treat this as rape. Alex excuses himself by telling Natasha that he wanted her badly. Alex does treat Natasha better after this incident and somehow Natasha finds herself in love with him, but she believes Alex only sees her as a whore, a prostitute and not someone worthy of making his partner.

I think if that scene had been omitted, I would have enjoyed this story but I found the rape to be offensive particularly when it was, at best, excused, and at worst, unacknowledged. F

Best regards

Jane
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Dear Ms. Gregory:

When I saw Karen Scott post about this book, I thought it was a joke. Surely no one was writing Gingerbread man porn, right? Right? Because what is the point of taking a Mother Goose nursery rhyme and [...]]]> This isn’t really a review so much as book summary so spoilers ahoy.

Dear Ms. Gregory:

When I saw Karen Scott post about this book, I thought it was a joke. Surely no one was writing Gingerbread man porn, right? Right? Because what is the point of taking a Mother Goose nursery rhyme and pornogriphying it (made up word, I know)? What’s next? The menage a quatre with the three blind mice? I’ve really always wondered what happened when the Dish ran away with the Spoon…

Marisa is a lonely suburban housewife. She has three main pleasures: masturbation, baking and magic. Her husband Don is a good provider, but he’s often gone away on business and while some nights he can pleasure her until dawn other nights he’s tired. Don always brings her to orgasm, but he doesn’t do it enough. Marisa needs to get off once a day:

On good nights they’d make love for hours and on the nights he fell asleep too tired to have sex, Marisa would sulk. She wanted to make love all the time and her day wasn’t complete unless she had achieved an orgasm.

Marisa has a tough life. She has enough discretionary money to buy whatever she likes. She doesn’t work. Instead she spends most of her day masturbating:

Marisa considered masturbation an art form. She could spend hours playing with her pussy until she achieved the perfect climax . . . or two. She loved creating the mood for her me-fuck-me sessions and always took special care to set up before pussy play.

She’s so into her own pleasure that she gives head to a dildo in one scene. At one point, I wondered if I was reading a play by play of some porn video on xtube, Lonely Housewife Gets Dirty. When she is not masturbating for hours, she bakes or dabbles in magic. The three pleasures in her life coalesce one day when she is rolling out gingerbread dough. Without first baking said Gingerbread Man, she proceeds to frost and decorate the cookie. She places red hots for the mouth, raisins for the hair, a cinnamon stick for a cock and raisins for balls. Then she takes a book of incantations she found in some store and wishes for the gingerbread man to come to life so it will fuck her.

And he does. The dough rolls off the counter and pops up a fully formed man. His muscles are huge! His hair is soft and gorgeous molasses. (I assume that makes his raisin balls soft and molasses-y too, right?). Mr. Gingerbread advances and then says:

“Run, run, run as fast as you can; I’m going to catch you . . . I’m your gingerbread man!” He called after her as she raced around the island.

When he kisses her, “She let him control her with a deep, tongue-melding kisses that tasted like . . . red hots!” His lips had a hot sensation. I worry for her and his cinnamon stick cock but apparently the burn is turning her on. After she gets a good rogering from cookie man, she falls asleep

In an almost dreamlike state, Marisa slipped from her straddled position and into his arms. With her cheek pressed against his chest, she could hear his heart beating rapidly and distantly marveled at how a cookie could have a heart before she fell fast asleep.

Right, because after she just had sex with a cookie, the fact that he has a heartbeat is what fills a person with wonder. Fortunately for Marisa, the cookie has incredible stamina. Unfortunately for Marisa, Don comes home and finds her fucking the cookie, only it looks like a man to him. Marisa tries to explain that it’s not really a man, but some thing she conjured up but the fact is that she is having sex with another person. Don is suitably enraged and is angry at Marisa. His response is…something I never anticipated. Maybe I should have.

Don drops trou and after accusing Marisa of being a cheating whore, proceeds to force her to have the best sex of her life with him and the Gingerbread man. That’s right. Marisa’s punishment for cheating on Don is to have a threesome. My eyes are like Oreos at this point, in keeping with the food theme. But poor Marisa might have met her match in cookie because he is insatiable and continues to chase Marisa around crying “Run, run, run as fast as you can; I’m going to catch you . . . I’m the gingerbread man!”

What is there to say other than there are things seen that cannot be unseen and this story is one of those things that is burned into my brain, destroying my fond memories of gingerbread cookies, red hots and cinnamon sticks. It’s an F for romance and sexiness but probably an A in destroying my childhood innocence. Bravo.

Best regards,

Jane

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After reading this book, I am vowing not to read another book with “Knight” in the title. Knight of My Dreams was suggested to me by a friend and I had heard that you appeared on several ebook bestseller lists. From the opening chapter, I knew I had found a book that [...]]]> Dear Ms. Devlin:

After reading this book, I am vowing not to read another book with “Knight” in the title. Knight of My Dreams was suggested to me by a friend and I had heard that you appeared on several ebook bestseller lists. From the opening chapter, I knew I had found a book that might rival my other favorite Knight story.

Quentin Albermarle’s wife is in a coma. If she ever awakens, she will turn into a werewolf and may die because of it. The only person who might save her is an old witch who had seduced Quentin as a human and turned him into a vampire. Quentin travels to the Cayman Islands where Kamaria, the witch, lives to beg for help. Kamaria requires that Quentin have sex with her multiple times before she will attempt to save Quentin’s wife, Darcy. Who lays in a coma. I just need to emphasize this. While the wife of the purported hero of the romance novel is in a COMA, he is off shagging some witch in the Caymans.

Of course, Quentin is reluctant. He recognizes in some part of his brain that having sex with Kamaria might really hurt Darcy but this is his only option. Why this is the only option, I’m not sure. Is Kamaria the only witch in the entire paranormal world? How did all the other werewolves in this world survive the turning? Who cares, right? It’s conflict! It’s sex + conflict. It’s sexflict!

Quentin’s reluctance doesn’t stop him from having non stop erections around Kamaria. In fact, the second sentence of the book is this:

Quentin Albermarle steeled himself against the sudden thrill that quickened his heartbeat and heated his sex.

Quentin is forced to pleasure Kamaria and in doing so becomes aroused to the point of pain. Over the course of the first twenty pages or so we see Quentin in a nearly nonstop state of arousal from being near Kamaria, remembering his time with her, but agonizing over his in-a-coma wife.

Quentin wished like hell he and his cock shared the same heart. The same mind. He hated how his body betrayed him, again, in her presence. Just a whiff of her unique scent wafting in the air was enough to tug his arousal into full bloom. Like Pavlov’s stupid dog, his cock filled, poking at the sheet.

Quentin tries to retaliate against Kamaria by refusing to bring her to completion. Quentin’s punishment for failing to pleasure Kamaria completely is to get magically induced blue balls when Kamaria’s snake bites him in the sac.

Later, Quentin is in a dreamspace and having sex with Kamaria and she transforms into a winged creature with a tail. In this story, no appendage or orifice goes unused.

But he didn’t know how to manipulate this realm, couldn’t fight the beast sitting on his body, raping his ass while she used his cock to milk him of seed.

While Quentin was sporting the non stop woody, I was in a constant state of confusion about who he was actually in love with:

A part of him, the dark beast he kept leashed deep inside, howled for her. She’d given him his first bite, his first taste of blood. She’d introduced him to endless carnal delights. When he made love to any other woman, even Darcy, he recalled her tutelage to bring the fire to the surface.

As a reader, we have the choice to view the sex scenes with Kamaria (and they are numerous) as rapes because Quentin is unwilling at heart, although not in body, or we view them as advancing his relationship with the villainness while his wife is in a coma – either way, the sex scenes are a grotesquery.

Outside of the insane storyline that is completely unromantic (in fact, this is what I call #romfail), is the writing.

Kamaria is apparently snakelike so she always refers to Quentin as “husss-band”. And she talks like Yoda:

“All alone, we are,” she said, lifting her hand to trail a long finger along the crest of his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to ask me, husss-band?”

…

“Husband,” she enunciated slowly, closer this time. “Husss-band,” she whispered into his ear.

…

Her gaze swept sideways and her lips curved in a close-lipped, feline smile. “You know what I will demand, husss-band.”

…

“I see you are awake, husss-band.” Damn, or was she a goddamn snake?

…

“This is to clear your mind and waken your body. Then you may begin to please me, husss-band.”

These references all occur within the first 20 pages. It got to be so ridiculous that I started laughing with each consecutive mention. Maybe it was an intentional comic relief to serve as a palliative for the sex scenes that included phrases like this:

“Good.” He rooted with his cock, still pressing down his chest to keep hers deflated, and then curled his belly to stroke inside her.

He rooted with his cock? I don’t even know. Or what about this imagery:

He didn’t relent, even after she’d collapsed against the mattress, moaning, her head thrashing because it was too much. He’d kill her with this one. Suck the life force out of her like a giant alien leech attached to her cunt.

and

and her womb clenched, cramping hard, almost painfully, and she couldn’t do anything, just lie like a suffocating fish on the banks for a roaring river while he continued to plow her depths.

and

His cock spent, but still turgid, returned to a meaty human size, filling, but not too many calories.

I could quote this book non stop. But wait, there’s more. While a disjointed, nonsensical storyline, no consistent worldbuilding, stomach churning sex scenes, cringe inducing descriptions of coitus (alien leech attached to cunts? a cock that is measured by caloric intake?) might be enough for most authors, this one had to have all the dark skinned people all being evil.

Fierce. Fucking like animals. Once, long ago, he’d thought he found his soul mate in a dark-skinned woman. Instead he’d surrendered his soul to a demon.

and

“Quentin’s memories, huh?” Joe said softly. “Damn, I knew he gave me more than just fangs. He had a hard-on for a witch–”a dark-skinned woman”–a long time ago. I’ve been dreaming of her too.” He shot a glare at Dylan. “Don’t mention it to Lily. She’d skin me.”

Yes, how horrible that Quentin had a hard on for a dark -skinned woman.   Why is mentioning her skin color relevant or important? When I was hoping for more people of color to appear in romance novels, this wasn’t quite what I anticipated.   Do I have to put a grade on this? F.

Best regards,

Jane

This book can be purchased at Ellora’s Cave.

If you will excuse a personal history, you will see its relevance to my review. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. I became a US citizen and commissioned (became an officer) in 2003. I accepted a medical retirement in May of this year, at the rank of Captain, [...]]]> Dear Authors and Readers.

If you will excuse a personal history, you will see its relevance to my review. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. I became a US citizen and commissioned (became an officer) in 2003. I accepted a medical retirement in May of this year, at the rank of Captain, after 7  ½ years of service. I never went overseas, but I served in the Katrina response in Louisiana. I was a soldier and damn proud to be so.

But I am also bisexual (with some extra kinks outside the Kinsey continuum). This is the first time I’ve been able to admit this in public (well, I came out on Twitter on National Coming Out Day) since figuring it out because of the US military’s destructive Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. My sexuality in no way affected my service. All outward appearances show a happily married, monogamous, heterosexual soldier, which is mostly what I am. But every now and then the issue came up and I had to bite my tongue. I could have been kicked out of the service if anyone had dug too deep, for a reason that didn’t affect my service or that of others around me.

At a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is destroying the careers of loyal, hard-working, supremely competent soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen of the American Armed Forces, this fictionalized retrospective of men who serve together and love each other is never more necessary and welcome. I was thrilled to receive it (free) from the publisher (through Jane) and while it did a great job of showing the soul-destroying problem of homophobia in general, I could have wished that it had focused more specifically on the subtle differences of the problem of being gay in the military, rather than just showing gay military men.

“Blessed Isle” by Alex Beecroft
I don’t know what it is about Beecroft’s writing that ravishes me so. Maybe it’s that her prose is like Keats’ poetry to me: redolent with scent, aching with color, and beautiful with taste and sound. Maybe it’s how she scours me inside with the deeply-felt emotions of her characters. But this story manages to do in 58 pages what False Colors did to me in more than 300.

Set in the late eighteenth century, Captain Harry Thompson, late of her Majesty’s Navy, safely ensconced in Rio, begins a journal of his relationship with his Lieutenant, Garnet Littleton. They met when Harry took his first command of the Banshee with orders to escort three transport ships to Australia. Buffeted by storms, typhus, mutinous convicts, and his own yearning for the free-spirited Garnet, Harry only finds happiness when he and Garnet are marooned for months on their own small Pacific island. The actual sexual activity is minimally detailed, but you feel every prick and rush of longing and satisfaction, the abject fear and bone-deep rightness when the men fall in love. See how much Beecroft can do with so few words:

When we woke, that first morning, we made love. Nothing needed to be said; we both understood it would happen as soon as we had the physical resources to allow it. It was sweet and weary and gentle, and afterwards I held Harry tight and mourned for all the things he had had to lose to make this possible. I wished I might give his prudishness and his confidence and his career back to him. And in a petty part of myself I wished he might have come to me despite them, instead of needing to be ruined first. But I will say that holding on to him afterwards, in the warm glow and satisfaction of coitus, I entertained the inexcusable thought that the past months had been worth it.

Harry and Garnet find their happy ending and record it for posterity, for a time when their love might be celebrated rather than reviled, for a time after their death when they don’t have to pretend. The story is told in journal form, with Harry’s memories interspersed with Garnet’s as they reveal to each other, even after years together, their feelings and motivations in the past, as they reveal them to their reader, who also becomes a character in the story. So even the journaling has a place in their relationship. Brilliantly, perfectly done. Grade: A+

“Not to Reason Why” by Mark B. Probst
This is a narrative — a very boring narrative – of Custer’s last campaign, told from the perspective of a corporal (I think? Too bored to go back and look). Brett has the hots for Dermot. Dermot is married to Sarah. Dermot loves Sarah very much, and Brett is jealous of Sarah. There’s absolutely NO indication that Dermot feels anything at all for Brett beyond deep friendship and besides one kiss Brett almost (but not quite) forces on Dermot a few days before the big battle, there’s nothing overtly romantic about this story at all. In fact, there’s nothing covertly romantic either. This is not a romance (especially since it does not end happily); this is a narrative representation of a campaign: They saddled up, then they stopped here, then had dinner, then dicked around in the evening as soldiers tend to do, then slept, then had breakfast, then saddled back up for another grueling day of chasing Indians, then stopped for lunch, then-. Seriously, with a little more detail to prove that Probst had done his research (They stopped under overhanging cliffs. They crossed the stream eight times.), that’s what the story is like. Every now and then Brett will think something emotional for a sentence or two, but then he’ll ignore it and move on. I hate to play to stereotypes, but this read like it was a "romance" written by a man, and hey, look! It was written by a man. Okay, dude, you did your research; now tell me a fucking story.

And seriously, someone please proofread: "Dermot was in line looking none the worse for wear, though Brett could see his eyes were still vacuous from lack of sleep." Really? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

And if we’re going to have a story about a man who runs away from battle, who deserts his troops, then lines like "The heat was stifling and there were times Brett would have welcomed a warrior arrow straight into his heart just to end it all" are not only not helpful, they’re patently wrong.

After Brett does desert, the level of his thought processes about his actions are symptomatic of the level of emotion and characterization in the rest of the book:

The wind and his body heat had dried his clothing and he began to warm up. His thoughts were a jumble of images and confusion. He couldn"t sort it out enough to put together a plan of action. A piercing accusation kept surfacing-’You are a coward and a deserter. Was he? What good would it have done to have stayed and died with the rest? Perhaps a couple more Sioux and Cheyenne may have been wounded or killed, but it would not have saved a single soldier"s life. He longed to be unconscious so he didn"t have to think. After the celebrating quieted and morning drew near, he got his wish and fell asleep, lying on his side on the creek-bank.

Oh! Coward! Deserter! Right, check. Let’s move on, folks, nothing to see here.

The author didn’t seem to be aware of the weight of his words, and coming after Beecroft’s clarity and precision, it was almost painful. At one point, Brett engages Dermot in deep conversation:

"Wrong side?" Dermot frowned. "How can you say that? There is no wrong side against the Indians."

"I mean wrong side, in that it may not be the victorious side."

"There"s nothing wrong with dying to protect your country."

"Dermot, haven"t you ever noticed how these things are reported in the newspapers? When we win they say it"s a victory, but when they win they say it"s a massacre."

Then after the Brett escapes/deserts, he listens to the Indian victory drums: "It went on for hours. The chanting haunted him. He wanted it to stop. It tormented him by constantly reminding him of the massacre. He sat huddled on the riverbank; the drums felt like his own heartbeat." Completely, utterly without irony, Probst uses the word he’d previously questioned.

Dermot was cardboard, Brett was an unlikable, whiny, cowardly turd, there was no romance, no emotion, no connection. What there was was wishy-washiness. Was this deep, thoughtful commentary or just campaign details? Neither. Sorry. Grade: F

“No Darkness” by Jordan Taylor

Okay, so when the book starts like this:

"Lieutenant Darnell!"

"Sir?"

"Oh, there you are. Why are you skulking, man?" The red-faced, broad-shouldered platoon sergeant did not wait for an answer but plowed on before Darnell could even open his mouth, “Find someone to take with you down to the cellar. There should be half a ton of supplies in this bloody shack and no one seems able to find so much as a tin of jam.”

Private Morgan stepped forward and saluted the sergeant. He had large front teeth and matching ears that reminded Darnell of a corgi.

“Sir,” the private said. “Me and Stokes searched the cellar already. Nothing, sir. No sign anything"s been in there for some time, sir.”

The sergeant walked right past him as if he had neither seen nor heard the private. “Well, Lieutenant? What are you waiting for?”

I’m confused. Unless things are very different in the British army in World War I from the US Army now, lieutenants don’t call platoon sergeants "sir" and platoon sergeants don’t call lieutenants "man" and give them orders. And no one salutes NCOs. So I don’t think much of your research abilities if that’s how the book starts. I mean, seriously. And my father (British AND British history buff) also confirmed for me that the officer corps in 1915 was still very much of and from the upper classes and Darnell is not upper class. He’s almost the opposite of upper class.

Inaccuracies aside, this has to be one of the most depressing stories I’ve ever read. This is precisely why I don’t read stories that aren’t romances with HEAs. Yes, I understand that World War One was a desperately horrible war. Yes, I understand that being gay in the military is terrible. AND, I understand that the purpose of this anthology was not all about the happy endings. But can we have ANY bright points of light? Can we have ANY happiness in the story? Apparently not.

LT Darnell and PVT Fisher get shelled into a cellar with no way out. Fisher’s broken so many ribs he can’t do anything to help get them out. Darnell literally ruins his hands digging them out, but even when they get out, it takes days to find anyone else and of course when they do, disaster strikes. There’s only a relationship between these men on the level of two men who find themselves stuck in a cellar together, trying to get out. The fact that they’re both gay doesn’t really factor into it at all.

What I do think is interesting is that both this story and the last both conform to the melodramatic abjection of the married gay man being the one to bite it. Think Brokeback Mountain, right? Sure, Jack’s more out, more comfortable with himself than Ennis, but he’s the one who marries first and stays married so he’s the one who has to die. Ditto these two stories.

This story isn’t a romance. Not in the slightest. Not that it’s trying to be — and that’s fine, of course. But it isn’t really even a story about being gay in the military. It’s just a depressing story about a horrific war. I don’t know how to grade it. It’s not badly written like the previous story (research abilities aside). It’s just-not something I choose to read. So, I guess…Grade: C-

“Our One and Only” by E.N. Holland
This is the only story that truly deals with the problems that being gay specifically in the military can produce. Philip is Eddie’s lover, but when Eddie dies in France in 1944, Philip is left feeling invisible, able only to admit to being Eddie’s best friend, not able to fully express his grief over his beloved’s death. The story is told over 40 years, at intervals of a decade. We see Philip deal (or not) with Eddie’s death, even though every now and then you want to hit him over the head and say "Get OVER yourself already!" The story shows the expected and unexpected repercussions the life and death of one soldier have on his friends, fellow soldiers, and family. While not amazing, this story is thoughtful, interesting, and eventually has a hopeful ending (not with Eddie, obviously).

One thing pulled me out of the story. In 1954, Philip thinks, "he always thought war was sort of pointless and his feelings only sharpened after Eddie"s death." Maybe this is just me overthinking things, but if there was one “just” war, one necessary war, it was World War Two and I don’t think very many people can disagree with that. Yes, war is devastating and horrible, but with Hitler as an aggressor, there’s not much else that the Allies COULD have done besides what they did. WW2 was not a pointless war; of any war in history, it was the least pointless. The mindset Philip expresses is very much a post-Vietnam mindset and I found it jarring in this story.

Other than that, I enjoyed watching this man through 40 years of his life and I was very happy that he had a hopeful ending "blessed" by his long-lost partner. Grade: B

Overall, while I think that an anthology against DADT, showing the emotional devastation it causes, is a wonderful idea, it was only the last story that really dealt with the peculiar problem of being gay specifically in the military. Because in 1790, 1876, 1915, and 1944, being gay was a problem NO MATTER WHAT. So being gay in the military was no more or less difficult that being gay anywhere else (it might have been easier, perhaps, considering close proximity). I would really like to have seen the awful Custer-era story or the depressing WW1 story dropped, and a story about the Gulf War or even Iraq or Afghanistan added, to make the point that “being gay in the US military” specifically IS an issue NOW, because being gay now is much more accepted than in 1876 and it’s the military that’s ridiculously behind the times.

I once had someone ask me why a gay person would join the US military when they know they’re not wanted, and the question made me shake with rage. Gay and bisexual men and women want to join the military for the same reasons as everyone else: we love our country and want to defend it, we like the opportunities and benefits, we’re loyal and hard-working and honorable people. Just like everyone else. Why should we not be able to serve? We have just as much to offer — more, perhaps, since we’re joining knowing we’re not wanted, joining knowing we’re going to have to hide who we are in order to serve.

Anyway. Overall, I’d give the entire anthology a high C+ or a low B-, but the whole thing is completely and utterly worth buying just for the sublime Beecroft story, "Blessed Isle," with a nice added bonus of the gentle "Our One and Only."

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

This book can be purchased at Amazon. No ebook version that I could find.