REVIEW: Grumpy Fake Boyfriend by Jackie Lau
Book Reviews / C ReviewsCanada / Contemporary / grumpy hero16 Comments
Dear Jackie Lau,
I am a fan of grumpy heroes in general and I also enjoy the fake relationship trope so this book sounded like my catnip. While there were definitely things I liked about it, it didn’t quite knock my socks off either and it took me a while to put my finger on exactly why that might be – because on the face of it, everything I love was right there.
Naomi Kwan had been dating a guy named Jordan for two years but they broke up six months before. Jordan had introduced Naomi to two other couples who all stay at a beach house every Canada Day weekend together. Even though they’ve split up and Jordan has a new girlfriend, Naomi has been invited this year. She doesn’t want to go alone and be the seventh wheel. She prevails upon her brother Jeremy to ask his friend Will to help her out.
Will Stafford is an introverted science fiction writer with few friends. One of his two not-online friends is Jeremy Kwan. Will is reluctant. Socialising is loathsome to him, particularly with strangers and particularly for long periods of time. Spending three whole days with a group of seven other people, only one of which he actually knows sounds like his idea of torture. However, Jeremy is his only local friend and Will owes him so he reluctantly agrees. He expects to be miserable the entire weekend.
Naomi had a crush on Will when she was 12 years old but has long since got over it. Still, when she was thinking about who could be a good fake boyfriend, her mind went straight away to Will. It’s fair to say she wouldn’t mind doing a bit exploring on the weekend if the opportunity arises but she’s not banking on it either.
Will has a poor track record with relationships. His experience is that women want to change him and he is pretty comfortable with who he is. His experience with family is the same actually – they are always on at him to be more social and less introverted. Will is still scarred from his parents’ efforts to try and build extroversion in him as a child.
Initially, Will came across as a bit of a jerk. He and Naomi bicker all the way to the beach house and Will’s grumpiness scooched over into jerk territory there. However, after they arrive at the beach house, things settle down and he’s just grumpy. I think the bickering about the driving and the crumbs on the car seats and the later “argument” about taking up too much room in the bed was supposed to be more humorous than I found it. There were things I chuckled about in the book, but unfortunately, these sections felt not so much funny as… kind of annoying. At times I felt for Naomi as she had to navigate Will’s tetchiness.
That said, he does come through for her when it counts and there were a lot of sweetly charming encounters too.
I did smirk at Will’s introduction to one of the couples and Ian in particular:
“I’m Ridhi.” She’s a little bigger than Naomi, with light brown skin and black hair that ends at her lower back. South Asian, I think. “And this is Ian.” She tilts her head toward the door, where a tall man—maybe Chinese or Korean—is standing. We nod at each other, and that’s that.
Seems like the women will do the talking.
“Ian has read your books,” Ridhi says. “He’s very excited to meet you.”
Um. Yeah. Ian sure looks excited. He smiles at me and nods again.
I think the two of us will get along okay. I’m already planning our bromance. Maybe we can go fishing together in silence, leaving everyone else to lounge on the beach and catch up.
One of the problems I have when a main character is an author is that the story can get a little meta. I don’t know if this is something other readers experience, but when I read about an author reading reviews for amusement and mocking them however gently, it feels a little uncomfortable for me.
I’m not in the mood to read a fantasy novel, so I go to Goodreads and look up reviews for my books. This is probably not the healthiest thing for an author to do, but it can be entertaining. The bad reviews in particular.
I was enjoying this book until page 45. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the F-word appeared three times in three pages. DNF.
People who trash novels because they contain swear words confuse me. I don’t fucking understand them.
Another reviewer describes me as a heathen. I don’t bother reading how he came to that conclusion, though he happens to be correct.
Then there’s this one: This book epitomizes everything that is wrong with science fiction today. Isaac Asimov would be rolling in his grave. It was a bore from start to finish. Six hours of my life I will never get back. The author seems to fancy himself a comedian, but the book is not funny. At all.
The review goes on and on, describing my many failures as a writer. I can’t help but wonder why the reader finished the book if he hated it so much, and why he wasted even more of his time writing such a tedious review.
Here I think it was one of those times where the humour of the story was a bit lost on me.
The main thing that kept me from completely loving the story though was something about the writing style. Both Naomi’s and Will’s sections were a little sparse on adjectives and the transitions felt a little abrupt.
I lower my chest to hers and bury my head against her shoulder as I finish inside her. She cries out again, trembling beneath me.
We separate a moment later, and she gives me a lazy smile of satisfaction.
I can’t imagine asking for anything more.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a bit more ‘seduction’. That probably says something about me. [insert joke about me playing ‘hard to get’ here]
There were some fabulous things about the book. I loved the sections where the friends were describing traditional wedding games relevant to their various cultures. In one, the couple sit back to back each holding one of their shoes and one of their partner’s shoes. They play a kind of “dating game” where they signal their answers by holding up the shoe of the person to whom the answer applies most (such as “who is messier?” for example). Naomi and Will play their own version of it with socks in their room later and I particularly liked this bit:
“Who’s had more sex partners?”
Interesting that this is the question she wants to ask.
I hold up my sock. She holds up hers.
“This is a question with a right and wrong answer,” I say.
“It is. So let’s find out who’s right. What’s your number?”
“Ten.”
“And you think that beats mine? How cute.”
My eyes widen slightly. “What’s yours?”
“Twenty-three.” She says it proudly, which makes me smile.
I hold up my hand for a high-five. “Good job.”
How often does that happen in romance? Brava!
Also, Naomi is an an axe-throwing competition and I give many points to a heroine who throws an axe, particularly with accuracy. I’d have liked even more of it in the story actually.
I did believe the HEA. I did buy their relationship at the end. I believed they’d be happy together in the long term and their differences (which are legion) wouldn’t tear them apart. Both Naomi and Will appreciated what the other needed to be happy and didn’t begrudge those things to the other. I’d have liked to have seen Naomi interacting with Will’s family to see how that would go. I have a feeling she’d protect him from the worst of their badgering.
Grade: C
Regards,
Kaetrin
I’d heard about this book on Twitter, but had somehow missed that the hero is an author.
So, yeah, I totally second your cringing at Will’s reactions to the Goodreads reviews. The sections you quoted were the opposite of fun snark It’s bad nera gone terribly wrong. #PASS
*I meant it’s bad meta
@Ariadna: It’s a pet peeve of mine I’m afraid!
I don’t really understand why as readers/reviewers you’re cringing at Will reading his reviews? Is it because you think reviewers as a group are being made fun of? Or you don’t like the curtain being pulled aside? I don’t mean to be snarky or critical – but clearly some readers/reviewers were bugged by this and as an author, I thought it was charming, so …. ?
I know you’re calling it “meta” and maybe I don’t really understand what that means — but to me, I thought meta indicated that the actual author was heavy-handedly inserting a commentary via a character’s mouth/deed that isn’t realistic for the character but somehow echoes the author, about whatever topic. Sort of the author directly talking to the reader while pretending not to, by doubling down on something, and that’s why it’s meta? I could have this totally wrong — and maybe this thread is going to go deep into explanations of “meta”!!!!
To me this passage feels like a realistic and deepening expression of Will’s personality, and also reveals something about the tone and style of the SF he writes, which is a part of the story. I haven’t started GFB yet — but does it contain actual passages of his writing? (That would feel more meta to me than the back door way of showing his writing by the review commentary/his reaction – I usually get annoyed at cutting between the storyline and the author character’s writing, looking at YOU Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin).
I’m an author and those snippets of Will reading his reviews made me smile (in the coffee shop where I am not writing this morning). It’s realistic — exceedingly so, I fear. Well-behaved authors don’t ever publicly comment on reviews of their books, or reply, but we do read them more than we should. And snark in our heads just like this (defensive mechanism) or to our partners, seeking support and affirmation because it was okay to use profanity, wasn’t it and Asimov isn’t really twenty-first century anyway (and so on). Sometimes certain review phrases turn into family jokes.
I guess for me, reading that excerpt of Will reading his reviews, made me totally connect with his squishy vulnerable insides that try to project detachment. Because by definition if you’re reading your reviews, you’re not detached.
(And I’m facebook friends with the author and I’ve met her in person at RWA, but that’s not why I wrote here – I guess I want to understand why showing this aspect of real author’s lives — realistically — didn’t work for you when it totally worked for me?)
@Anna I agree with you. It might be “meta”, but certainly seemed fairly realistic–I am not an author but have done this sort of harmless stickiness in other parts of my life (professor’s comments and performance reviews). Haven’t read the book, “grumpy” is a little too cutesy for me, and I have never heard of the author enforce, but I don’t see that this is too over the top? Maybe because I am not an author? What’s the expression? “YMMV”.
@Kathy:
Not Kaetrin, but as a reviewer wanted to offer my two cents. I would definitely be bothered by the real author of the book I read and reviewed mocking mine ( or anyone else’s) reviews anywhere. Their right, etc, but if I see it, I am going to exercise my right to never review their books again. Author as a character reading and mocking reviews? For me ( once again I am not Kaetrin so can’t and won’t speak for her ), “bothered” will be a huge overstatement.
The thought that the author is living vicariously through their character and writes about what they would have wanted to do in real life, but afraid to do so *may*, I repeat *may* enter my mind, but I also think that as much as author puts part of themselves in all their characters, the relationship between author and their characters is usually not the direct reflection. So the author may want to write about something they have no desire to do in real life and even disapprove of.
So for me, “bothered” is definitely not the right word to use in this situation. JMO.
Okay, I get that as much as we authors are putting ourselves in the characters (especially if a character is a writer!) (I mean, I have a character who is a female army officer … hmm.) then readers are of course putting themselves in characters too. So maybe based on Sirius’s comment, this is making some readers stop being in the H/h “head” and instead pull back to being in the reader/reviewer head? For a reader who is a reviewer, maybe that is a stronger pull out of the character’s mind and into the “reviewer” hat?
And you know that we do read and occasionally mock – but that writers who are decent human beings (or at least career focused) keep that mockery extremely deeply private. Like behind locked doors, not even in writer forums, type of private. But we’re just human and no matter how protective you are about the sanctity of the review space, you have to admit that some reviews are so classic it is IRRESISTIBLE. (One stars with “too much sex!!!” being the best). Like someone else’s bag of Halloween candy temptation. But yes, if an author mocked a review publicly you absolutely shouldn’t review them again! (**I’ve listened to an author do this in a very public place, and it was deeply unsettling to many in the audience of writers, even though the review was anonymized. It was demeaning to all readers to mock any one publicly, I thought). But to the extent this is in the hero’s head, it is a very real look at how writers do think.
@Anna Richland: I don’t know that it would bother most readers, but it might bother me. I’m only slightly discomfited when I see authors on Twitter do this IRL, because as a writer myself I know firsthand that criticism stings. I totally get you may need to vent to your friends about it, though it may be better to do in private than publicly. But in the head or mouth of a character in a novel, this sentiment does bother me more. Because then it can feel like the author is reaching through the pages of the book to the reader, to give the reader the message that critical reviews are not okay because they may hurt the author’s feelings. And this notion I disagree with.
Strangely, the thing you mention in Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assasssin doesn’t bother me a bit. The story-within-a-story is a trope in the time-honored tradition of epistolary novels! A.S Byatt does that all over the place in Possession, which is one of my favorite books—possibly my favorite novel period.
I once wrote a novella where the main character’s writings featured. it’s unpublished, and will probably remain so, but that’s how much I love that trope. I do think, though, that if a writer is going to write a story-within-a-story, then it had better have some themes and conflicts that echo the themes and conflicts of that novel.
Have any of you read one of Sarah Morgan’s Christmas books where her hero is a super, super grumpy author. One of his grumpy characteristics is making fun of the readers who write him letters. He also puts the heroine into his book as a serial killer. Just curious as to your reaction to that one.
I’m just responding to everyone here. When I read about an author character mocking reviews and reviewers it makes me think about the real life actual author doing so. There is a kind of “fourth wall” for me between reviewing and interacting with authors online, a polite fiction if you will. I know in my head that of course it is entirely human for an author to perhaps mock a review or a reviewer but I don’t want to be hit in the face with it. And of course, I was reading that book *to write a review*. It’s not about Jackie Lau at all. We follow each other online and my interactions with her have all been lovely. It’s just a thing for me. It “feels” like the real life author is trying to tell me something through the author character and I dislike it. It’s not like that for everyone but it is for me. It’s about my perception and not necessarily anything to do with the author’s intention.
@Kaetrin:
Well said. That’s what it can be like for me as well.
@Janine: Thank you. I don’t want to be thinking about the author at all when I’m reading – just the characters and the story.
@Kathy: That’s an interesting comparison. I read the Morgan book last year and enjoyed it, and I remember the grumpy author but I don’t remember being bothered by the comments about readers. Part of it is that I’m a huge fan of Morgan’s novels and so I would probably give her the benefit of the doubt, but I think it’s not just that. If an author-character talks generally about readers and how they react to the books, that fits within a long tradition in literature (genre and otherwise). But there’s something so specific about talking about GR and Amazon reviews in today’s climate. It feels like a reference to ongoing and often fraught issues within a number of genre fiction communities. It’s the specific evocation of Goodreads here rather than just the “letters, I get letters” insertion.
If anyone feels like going down a fascinating rabbit hole, Janet/Robin had a review/rant about breaking the 4th wall in a romance novel a few years ago, and the comment thread was fantastic. Lots of discussion about 4th wall, meta-fiction, and reader-author interpretation issues.
I just wanted to clarify that I completely understand the need to vent about the negative reviews , I mean I won’t ever understand the need to *read* negative review in the first place knowing that one may get upset about it, but sure of course any kind of criticism stings I know that . I just don’t want to see it that’s all. It is not as if I set a foot in the writers’ spaces. I don’t go to the most of author’s blogs. Obviously I am not a writer so I won’t ever seek out writers’ group. I signed out of Twitter months ago and didn’t ever sign back although occasionally I do read very few Twitter feeds without signing in to read anything else, so it is not very likely I will see it on Twitter either. i mean I do consider Twitter a very public space, but I don’t visit it often. Pretty much as long as the author can restrain themselves and not vent on my review , I am good. I don’t think that’s asking for much. Anyways sorry for venturing from the original point, author in the story , just wanted to clarify and going to read Robin’s article now. Thanks Sunita and sorry Kaetrin just wanted to clarify.
@Sunita: That’s a good point Sunita. Amazon and Goodreads reviews feel a little close, especially in today’s climate.
I have thought of another reason why it bothers me. It’s because when I read, I’m opening up my imagination in a different way than in the rest of my life. I let down my guard and relax, open my imagination to the author’s own, and if a character I’m engaging with mocks reviewers, it can feel like “Wait a minute, I didn’t sign up for this!” because I’m a reviewer myself. Reading is so interior and intimate that the character’s thoughts are then in my head, and with these particular thoughts, I don’t want them there.