2011, Touchstone

Filed Under: Romance, Historical.

Get the book.

The experience of reading Wildflower Hill was similar to watching a Lifetime movie: it has a weak plot and bland characters, but I found myself staying up late to finish it anyway. The novel tells the story of three generations of a Scottish family, the Blaxland-Hunters, as related through alternating narratives by both the matriarchal grandmother, Beattie, and her granddaughter, Emma. There’s plenty of romance (and with it heartbreak), ballet, fashion design–but it does manage to dodge being either your typical romance novel or, worse, chick lit.

The opening pages introduce Emma, an 11-year old consumed by dancing, and her rich and successful grandmother, Beattie. The story looks backward in time to Beattie at 18, then a poor Scottish barmaid struggling with a pregnancy by a married lover, before flashing forward to Emma at 31, by then a prima ballerina, struggling with a break-up and a career-ending injury. Emma returns home to lick her wounds, where she learns from her mother that Beattie, now dead a few years, left her a a sheep ranch (the titular Wildflower Hill).

The trajectory of Beattie’s success unfolds slowly through parallel narrative, while Emma’s physical and emotional recovery occurs at the ranch. Freeman structures the intertwining plots well, revealing secrets and twists along the way that genuinely took me by surprise on a few occasions.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the characters. Emma and Beattie evolve over the course of their respective stories, but lack any depth or nuance. Freeman wants them both to be atypical heroines, but she does it in far too stereotypical a manner: Beattie challenging the mores of the day; Emma starting out insufferably self-involved but ultimately developing an ability to reach out and embrace her community. Character development was there, but it was too obvious to be compelling.

Freeman’s storytelling is strong, but the same can’t be said for her abilities as writer. Nonetheless, it was no struggle to plow through this novel. While the prose is mediocre, transitions from one storyline to the next are seamless and well-timed–I didn’t tire of the two characters’ perspectives or the switching between them. Nor did I feel shorted when each section ended. And while the descriptions didn’t strike me as well-written at the time, I can easily conjure images of scenes and settings. Wildflower Hill doesn’t break any new ground or turn any impressive phrases, but it is engaging. I was surpised by how hard it was to put the book down.

Similar Reads: Plain Pursuit (Wiseman)

[A review was requested and a review copy provided.]

Author: Félix. J. Palma

2011, Atria Books

Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Romance.

Get the book.

There’s very little I can say about this book without spoiling something. So I’m going to try something a little different to start. Let’s do word association. Take a look at this list and see how many things you think could help make for a good story:

Victorian romance. Parasols. Hoodwinks. Murder. Historical figures in fictional situations. Meticulous plotting. Vengeance. Paradoxes. Bawdiness. Secret societies. Blackmail. The Terminator. Drunk British whores. Jack the Ripper slaughtering drunk British whores. Minority Report. Tribal magic. The time machine in H.G. Wells’s attic. Street brawls. Apocalyptic robot battles. Dimensional rifts. Time travel. Henry James and Bram Stoker having a sleepover. Time Cop. Lava guns. Immortal dogs. Naive girls easily coerced into sex. Parallel universes.  Steam powered automatons. Fourth dimensional dragon-like beasts. Sword fights.

Pretty good odds for an entertaining book right? Right. In any case, if that piqued your interest sufficiently, go ahead and skip the rest of the review, pick up this book, and enjoy.  Read on and I’ll try and explain a little more substantively, but be aware that while I’ll try to limit them, there will be spoilers after the break. If you already think you want to read the book, do so, then return to my review in the future (oooooh).

Last chance to avoid SPOILERS. Okay, you’ve been warned.

It’s not perfectly clear that time travel actually exists in this novel. There’s evidence for it, but also evidence against. The reader, much like the 19th century London depicted in Palma’s excellent novel, gets taken in by an elaborate scam. How deep the scam goes remains debatable–perhaps it’s only superficial and H.G. Wells (the primary protagonist) is nothing more than a character embroiled in a twisting murder mystery spanning a multiverse, or perhaps it goes far deeper.

Whatever the truth is, The Map of Time is full of hoaxsters. You will find youself tricked more than once. Yet each time the wool is pulled, you’ll rush to replace it, or begin looking elsewhere for the otherworldy. The twists are never cheap. I continually found myself feeling self-satisfied as I figured out what was going on, just to be wrong again (in fact, I had to rewrite this whole review, because I unwisely began it before finishing the book). Palma sets a meticulous stage, and the readers will see what we want to see, despite any indication to the contrary–I understand how vague that is, but it’s difficult to be spoiler-wary.

The basic plot follows a few main storylines, each twisting from a center plot featuring Wells himself. First there’s Andrew Harrington. He’s a meloncholy rich kid who falls deeply in love with an alcoholic prostitute. On the very night he renounces his family fortune for his love, he finds her skinned and filleted in a Whitechapel boarding room. After despairing for 8 years, Andrew decides to kill himself, but his cousin intervenes with a plan. All of London is talking about Gilliam Murray, who has been leading London’s wealthy elite on expeditions to the year 2000. They turn to him to send Andrew into the past, where he will kill his love’s killer (none other than Jack the Ripper) before her murder can occur.

For complicated reasons, Murray cannot help. But he directs the cousins to the science fiction writer H.G. Wells, who, he surmises, probably has a time machine upon which he based his novel, The Time Machine.

The second storyline features young Claire Haggarty, who falls in love with the savior of the future on one of Murray’s expeditions. After witnessing him destroy the leader of the robot army amongst the ruins of London in an epic sword duel, she swoons. Tom Blunt, a seemingly goodhearted simpleton in Murray’s employ, manages to convince Claire that he’s the savior of the human race, traveled through time to bed her. When this coercion effects life-threatening consequences for the girl, he turns to Wells for help.

Then there’s Inspector Garret of Scotland Yard, who gets a warrant to travel to Murray’s future in order to arrest a suspect for a murder in order to prevent it from occurring in the first place. There are time guardians and pan-dimensional thieves, glimpses into the future and libraries hidden in prehistory. Some of it is real, and perhaps all of it isn’t. Through Wells, everything intertwines brilliantly. And, I should note, the stentorian and somewhat playful narrator–an omnipotent showman of sorts–adds a whole lot of charm to the story.

Palma is not a perfect writer, there are a few smudges on the polish. Occasional bits of dialogue feel stodgy, and the mostly airtight plot has the occasional minor leak in plausibility–namely, characters too often jump to conclusions with too much conviction, a technique that services the plot but hurts the tension and characterization. But as a whole, The Map of Time is an example of a wonderfully planned and crafted novel. Palma keeps a lot of balls in the air, continually adding more; it really is a spectacle.

I was very much looking forward to this book. A steampunk vengeance story about a Victorian time traveler sounds ridiculously awesome to me. Even when I first suspected a hoax, I wasn’t disappointed, not for a moment. I was a sucker spectator eager for what I believed I was being offered. I kept thinking that maybe, just maybe, the illusion was real.

Offering such immersion and such satisfaction is the sign of a top-notch novel. Even when you know its secrets, The Map of Time is very much a Great Read and well worth your time.

Similar Reads: The Time Machine (Wells), The Chess Machine (Löhr), The Resurrectionist (Bradley), The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder)

Author: Nora Roberts

1981, Silhouette Books

Filed under: Romance

Get a copy at Powell’s

Irish Thoroughbred is Nora Robert’s first novel. My book club chose it as a vacation from all the backbreakingly serious books (Townie, Just Kids) we’ve been mucking through. As expected, it’s an easy read, crushable in a single day. And although it’s a vapid book, it offers several steamy moments and a comfortably predictable plotline (much like a Lifetime Original movie).

We follow Adelia, a poor Irish orphan who immigrates to the US to work with her uncle, a hand on a horse ranch. Aside from the uncle, the only other character worth noting is the young boss, a wealthy landowner and horse breeder named Travis. Predictably enough, Travis and Adelia are beautiful, bull-headed, and destined to be together, just as soon as they overcome a few obstacles.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the love story that was predictable. Roberts’s characters embody every old-fashioned romance-novel stereotype possible. Adelia is the quintessential damsel in distress. She’s tiny, feisty, and rather dumb (it’s 1981 and, OK, she’s a country bumpkin, but still, she’s excessively impressed by the airport, a dishwasher, indoor fountains at the mall…).

Travis, of course, is her hero; which dictates, as per romance novel law, that he’s mean, unpredictable, lazy, and also (paradoxically) generous, loving, and trustworthy. He’s all these things, but without sections told from his perspective (a romance novel staple), he’s just, kind of… there, acting all brooding and/or charming but never justifying his weird behavior. I would have expected more from an author who describes herself as an expert on the male species. From her bio:

Through the years, Nora has always been surrounded by men. Not only was she the youngest in her family, but she was also the only girl. She has raised two sons. Having spent her life surrounded by men, Ms. Roberts has a fairly good view of the workings of the male mind, which is a constant delight to her readers.

Her hero’s lifeless existence isn’t the fault of a gap in her expertise on men, however: Irish Throughbred lacks realistic characters of any gender. Travis’s sister, Trish; the doting housekeeper; the stable hands; Travis’s evil ex-fiancé—they all lack that certain something that transforms a character from words on a page to someone I can connect with and believe in.

The exception is Adelia’s uncle Paddy, whose role carries more complexity, albeit in the form of disturbing, possibly incestuous creepiness. There are at least 5 Post-Its stuck in my copy of the novel that read “Sexy uncle?!” I mean, I can see hugging my uncle hello, but I rarely “embrace” him and I never make out with my boyfriend in front of him (Adelia frequently does both). Here’s one of the best examples of their strange relationship:

He touched her cheek, giving her a wistful smile. “Aye, lass, that I did but she [Adele’s mother] chose your father.” Deep green eyes filled with surprise that melted into sympathy. “Oh, Uncle Paddy!” she flung her arms around him and Travis turned from the door and walked silently down the stairs.

The uncle’s most important role is as a catalyst for the surprise plot twist: marriage between the unrequited lovers. See, as the hero, Travis “rescues” Adelia not only by giving her a job, but also by eventually marrying her, because their getting married is the only way Uncle Paddy, who suddenly falls ill, can rest easy in his hospital bed. It’s thin.

Why marry them before the epic happy ending, just to have them muck about for a couple more chapters? I would guess Roberts is trying to protect conservative readers who are horrified by sex before marriage, while simultaneously trying to churn out a few more nail-biting, will-they-or-won’t-they moments before ending with the fireworks of a mutual love confession.

At the point in the story when Adelia and Travis marry, they have had several hot make-out sessions—always right after a heated argument over the horses, or some other farm related matter—but they still act as though they can’t stand each other and are only marrying to appease Adelia’s uncle. Plots like this drive me insane.

And the make-out sessions. Travis is borderline abusive. For example, the first kiss:

“I’ve been wanting to do this since the first time you slashed me with your sharp Irish tongue.” He crushed her mouth with his, cutting off a heated retort. Too surprised by his action to resist immediately, Adelia began to experience unfamiliar and disturbing sensations, a heat and weakness that she might feel on a day spent working in the field. His hands were like steel around her small waist, holding her body suspended in the air while his lips assaulted hers…

These pushy, rage-filled kisses might not even have caught my attention—they’re prevalent in the genre—if they didn’t occur in the same fifty pages as a scene in which Adelia is nearly raped by a stable hand:

He grabbed her shoulders and closed his mouth over hers, the strong smell of whiskey assaulting her senses as she pushed against him … His hand clamped over her mouth and he pushed her down roughly in the straw-filled stall.

Of course this excerpt ends with Travis rescuing our heroine, protecting her from unwanted advances. It begs the question: in Roberts’s world how can a girl tell the difference between a good assault and a bad one? Is it all about how hot the dude is? Throw in the uncle’s long embraces and you’ve got… well I don’t even know. But I certainly don’t feel like I’m reading an expert’s guide to men.

Overall, of course, this book is exactly what I expected it to be: a guilty-pleasure romance novel with championship horses. It’s only when I started examining the themes and characters that I got lost in a maze of “Why’s the uncle groping her?” and “Why can’t Travis just say I love you?” and “Why is Adelia so surprised by appliances?” Read it, possibly even enjoy it (other members of my book club liked it better than I did), and immediately forget it. That’s the rule of thumb for romance novels.

Similar reads: Any of Nora Roberts’s other books—Google says there are nearly two hundred novels to choose from! Our club is going to read Roberts’s most recent book, Chasing Fire, sometime in the near future so we can compare what she wrote in the late seventies and what she’s churning out today. For a different author with a similar storyline, try anything with Fabio on the cover.

2008, St. Martin’s Press

Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Romance.

Yes, this is the same Gene Wilder who played Willy Wonka and Young Frankenstein. (Note to Gene Wilder:  I love you and Young Frankenstein is perhaps my favorite movie ever. Thanks. You can stop reading here.) And yes, he should probably have stayed with acting rather than becoming a novelist. That’s not to say he’s a bad writer by any means. He’s just not a great novelist.

I very much enjoyed Wilder’s last book, My French Whore. It wasn’t deep literature with lasting staying power, but rather a cute, short, at times funny, period romance. The Woman Who Wouldn’t, his second novel, is a cute, short, at times funny, period romance. Both books are worth the read, and you could easily read both in one  afternoon. They really are novellas–which is fine, I like novellas–so it’s hard to judge them as novels.

All told, The Woman Who Wouldn’t is a good read. It takes up 180 small pages, and is a great option for a short flight or to kill some time in the sun. It’s a mostly cheery and fun book, but forgettable. Jeremy Webb is a violinist in 1903 Cleveland. He plays in an orchestra and is quite good, but a critical review sends him into a breakdown of sorts–he dumps water down a tuba, claiming it was thirsty–and leaves for a spa in Badenweiler, Germany, to clear his head.

There he meets a beautiful, young Belgian named Clara Mulpas. He takes to her right away, though she is not as quick to warm to him. Eventually she does, they share a romance. Oh also, Clara has terminal stomach cancer.

Wilder is a good writer. His prose moves quickly and is pleasant on the eye/ear. He is, unfortunately, not as deft with plotting and characterization as he is with syntax, and often times is too blunt with the narration. Take this for instance:

I brushed away a fly that looked like it was about to land on Clara’s eyelid. What an angel face she has. I don’t want her to die. And I don’t want her to fall in love with me me on the rebound from that asshole she was married to, or out of vulnerability because of her thoughts of death and cancer. I just want her to be happy, for as many weeks or months or days that she has. The pain is going to come later, Dr. Gross said. Well, watch over her, Jeremy. But I’ll be glad when I’m healthy enough to return to my work and my home, without responsibility for Clara’s happiness.

Most of the italics (they’re his, not mine), are stuff we either know already or can very easily infer. We learn more though the first sentence about the fly than through the entire paragraph that follows it.

Perhaps the oddest inclusion in this book is the companionship Webb finds in Anton Chekhov. Chekhov stayed in Baldenweiler in 1904–he suffered tuberculosis–so Wilder clearly chose his setting in order to include him. His Chekhov is an interesting character, even if he doesn’t bring much to the table. He more or less works as a foil, or an author-imposed external conscience, for Webb. He helps Jeremy get over the damage to his ego and seek emotionality for his work. It’s not an altogether a bad thing, but feels a little shallow for the size and scope of the book. That is, rather than an interesting plot mechanic, it feels here like a semi-formulaic plot crutch, and a period-piece indicator.

I really do like this book (as I do My French Whore, for similar reasons), and happily recommend it. But it must be approached for what it is. These books are nice little diversions, light fare for a quick and pleasant read. If you see them on a shelf at a bookstore or library, pick them up and give them a shot. But if they pass you by, you’ll survive just fine.

Similar Reads: My French Whore (Wilder)

2008, The Dial Press

Filed Under: Literary, Historical, Romance

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (I’m going to call it GLAPPPS from here) is an epistolary novel occurring immediately post World War II. At its heart, it’s a subdued romance, though on the surface it’s a tale of community and friendship and bravery and belonging. Not really my kind of book. Still, I liked it.

Juliet wrote a column for a London newspaper during the war. When she hears of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society, she becomes intrigued by the name alone–as, I admit, I was with the title of this book. She writes letters to a number of the inhabitants of the small British island, and slowly begins to cultivate fondness for, then relationships with, many of them. Most especially the kind and quiet Dawsey Adams (who, I should note, reached out to Juliet and informed her of the society in the first place).

The society originated on the occupied Channel Island as an excuse to have dinner parties under the noses of the Germans. As the occupation stretched, and with it the lack of news from the mainland, the false literary pretense of the group became real, a connection to culture and community. Eventually the pigs they were eating in secret ran out, along with much of the rest of the island’s food. The society continued, with the dinners replaced with the best they could come up with: most creatively, potato peel pie.

This is a sound little love story. I took some gripe with it mainly because I didn’t really like Juliet that much. She is relatively clueless, and for an author, she’s terrible at reading and evaluating the people around her. My sense was that this was supposed to be a nod to the old romances by the likes of Austen and Brönte, where passion roiled under a surface that required things be muted for decorum’s sake. (I understand that is a gross generalization, but you get my drift.) Here that is not really the case. Yes, much of the story takes place during the German occupation and control of a British community, but Juliet’s story comes after. So her reactionary letters concerning her feelings for the different suitors in her life come across at times as naïve, sometimes to the point of stupid.

This occurs outside of her romantic interests too. Perhaps the most interesting character in the book is Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a transplant to Guernsey, who quickly became a central figure in the community, she even founded the society that so captured everyone. Despite giving birth to a German soldier’s child, she was sent to a concentration camp, not to return. For the meat of the book, the letters Juliet shares with the Guernseymen piece together Elizabeth’s story, and through her the story of the island during wartime. Even once Juliet begins supplanting Elizabeth’s life–she stays in her cottage, cares for her orphaned child, all the while sharing stories about her daily–Juliet can’t pin what her book should be structured around. Eventually, her editor figures it out for her, and Juliet’s reaction is effectively a facepalm.

My frustrations with Juliet aside, this is a pleasant read and a nice romance. This book practically screams bookclub (I didn’t check, but I bet Oprah’s picked it). There’s a lot of feel-goodery here, even with some of the darker themes and events it touches upon. But while it’s not exactly my type of book, I can’t fault it for that. Fans of Austen and her kind will find something to enjoy with GLAPPPS, especially if those who are in search of an unstrenuous beach read for August.

Similar Reads: The Book Thief (Zusak), The Lover (Duras)

[This review is of the unabridged audiobook edition]

Author:

2007, Mira

Filed Under: Horror, Romance, Chick Lit, Thrillers, Young Adult

I’m not sure I can say that I liked Stray. I wouldn’t read it again and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else (unless they were a werecat enthusiast, in which case I’m sure it would come to mind, and I would bring it up, and I would say, check this shit out). But I did read it in one week. Which says something.

First, a few fun facts about werecats:

1. Werecats have this amazing sense of smell. Lines including descriptions such as: “my citrus-scented pants” and “wholesome femininity layered with Herbal Essences and cherry Bubble Yum” really clue the reader in.  Over and over and over again
2. Werecats do not have nine lives. As the protagonist puts it, “that would be cool, though.” Maybe her werebabies will have that gene?
3. Good werecats don’t eat human flesh. Bad “strays” do.

Did I mention that I trash-picked this book from the trash? Yep. Found this gem on the side of the road. Look at the cover: You would have picked it up, too. There’s a sex kitten right on the cover and you wonder, is that a tattoo on her lower back, or a scratch mark?

I’m not always a fast reader. Sometimes I forget my book at home and end up spending the day with the Metro. Or I switch around, hopping from story to story.

One week says something. It says that I opted to read about werecat love triangles when I could have been out at the bar or catching up on my new favorite British teen drama, “Skins” or, you know, going to the library for a better book. It says that I remembered to bring it with me to work everyday so that I could read it on the train and on the elliptical machine at the gym. It says that I maybe hunted around my room for it late one night when it was hiding under my blankets and I really wanted to know whether or not the protagonist was going to be raped by the bad guy.

Was there a lot of character development? Not really.

There’s the main girl – you know the one. You want to be her when you grow up because she’s super tough, and clever, and all the mistakes she makes are adorable. Her name is Faith, but spelled, awkwardly, as “Faythe”. While the book is written from Faythe’s perspective, the reader never really knows what she’s going to do next. All this insight into her mind and still you’re surprised when she suddenly goes from hating her home life to leading the pack.

She also dresses like an uber-slut, but this is not exactly because she’s a whore. It’s because werecats are so used to seeing other werecats naked that halter tops are actually sexier to their kind than straight up nudity.

Faythe’s intelligence is illustrated in several scenes, but her depth is best summed up in the following passage:

Time was the great constant, eternally measuring my life in the ticks of a hundred second hands, the tocks of a thousand pendulums. It portioned my life into good times and bad times, the former too short, and the latter too long.

Other than the main girl, there are several guys she fucks/wants to fuck:  her college boyfriend, her high school sweetheart, this sexy guy named Jace. Plus the bad foreign guys (who are mostly “strays,” or cats that are not born into the weredom). Along with the were-boys, there are about a dozen family members and an even more extended werecat network (in wereworld, they refer to these extended pods as “Prides”). I got a little lost trying to keep track of who belonged to what family, but I did scan the pages trying to figure out who Faythe would finally choose to love.

Even with Faythe’s indecision regarding her next boyfriend, Stray is predictable. I mean, it’s a book about a mythological creature living among us and trying to save her people from the evil plans of similar creatures who are not as pure bred or morally strident. Guess what happens? Despite the predictability, it’s an entertaining, light read. It’s also a great for people who are interested in reading about things like disembowelment, intestines, and throat-ripping.

And there are moments in the book where some of the lines make no sense. For instance, someone, anyone, please explain the following excerpt to me:

Our eyes met. I have no idea what mine looked like, but his would have comfortably seated several little green men apiece.

I’m sure this book has spawned a series. The author left the ending nice and open for a sequel, or a prequel, or an entire series of similar ejaculations if she should chooses. However, unlike the Harry Potter books or the Twilight series, I don’t feel compelled to immediately go out and buy the next book. Because I don’t care what happens to Faythe next. Even worse, I bet a second book would follow the same plot lines and love choices. Yawn.

But then again, if I see it in another recycling bin outside, I’ll grab that shit right up.

Similar (But Better) Reads: The Twilight Saga (Meyer) & the Sookie Stackhouse series (Harris). For worse: http://paranormalromanceblog.com (“a harelquin romance blog devoted to paranormal love”).

Author: David Cristofano

Grand Central Publishing, 2009

Filed under: Mystery, Romance

I’ve seen almost nothing but adoring reviews for The Girl Used to Be. Do not be fooled by them.

Girl is a novel about the Witness Protection Program, and a girl named Melody who feels very sorry for herself because she’s in it. She feels so sorry for herself and so bored that she runs off with the son of the mafia don who had her parents killed. Charitably, that’s a difficult premise to pull off. Uncharitably, Girl is the worst book I’ve read in a long time.

I don’t think anybody should read this book, and all the glowing reviews out there are cause for concern. If you’re thinking of reading Girl, first allow me to lay out exactly why this “eloquent, haunting,” “humorous, poignant, and compelling” novel is actually none of those things.

In fact, it’s not really a mystery or a thriller, either—I’m only filing this review under “Mystery” because Girl‘s up for an Edgar Award. No, friends, this is a romance. And it’s a romance of the very worst kind.

To start with, we’ve got Melody. It seems like Cristofano wanted to portray her as a smart, traumatized juvenile (though she’s 26). He wants her to be defensive and rebellious and independent, but simultaneously dying to be noticed and loved for how smart and awesome she is. The problem is that Melody is neither smart nor awesome, she’s petulant, superficial, incompetent, weak-willed, and desperately dependent on men.

She’s always thinking about her looks (and hating them), and about whether or not this or that man is interested in her. She has no will or ambition, only a generalized resentment toward the world for her lot in life. She whines and moans constantly, and sometimes literally falls exhausted into a man’s strong arms.

The man often happens to be Jonathan Bovaro, son of Tony Bovaro. Tony is the mafioso whose crime Melody and her family witnessed, and who later had Melody’s parents killed. Knowing that, Melody promptly—and I mean promptly—takes off on a cross-country joyride with Jonathan. He woos her with an expensive, ugly sweater, and they fall in love immediately.

Let me just repeat that, because it’s such a stupid premise. Melody runs off—for no good reason—with the son of the man who killed her parents, and they fall in love after two days on the lam. Jonathan’s idiotic plan is to take Melody to see his father, the man who’s been trying to kill her for twenty years. That’s almost the entire plot of the novel. There is absolutely no mystery (except for why this book is up for an Edgar).

Jonathan, as a character, brings a whole host of problems with him. He’s a very gentle man who introduces himself to her by holding a pen to her throat and letting her think it’s a knife (then he says he won’t hurt her). He’s never killed anybody—only laundered money. He doesn’t want anything to do with his family’s crimes, but he has no problem spending their profits on lavish hotels and spa treatments. He’s nonviolent but threatens anybody who’s not Melody, and sometimes beats the ever-living bejeezus out of them. Basically, Jonathan doesn’t make a lick of sense.

It finally clicked for me after Melody kept getting turned on by Jonathan’s mean attitude toward the rest of the world. Jonathan is supposed to be perfect. Toward Melody, he’s the consummate gentleman: attractive, polite, generous, and gentle most of all. But toward the rest of the world, he’s strong and assertive to the point of assholishness, willing to do whatever it takes for Melody to be safe and comfortable, including being a huge jerk to everybody they come across for absolutely no reason. Melody falls for it, even though he’s the kind of guy any normal person would be embarrassed to go to dinner with.

As for why they’re suddenly in love (and, uh, why they ran off together, risking their lives), Cristofano hamfists half a rationale: they’re from different worlds but they’re oh so similar (except for every aspect of their personalities).

OK. I know I’m being harsh. Even with novels I don’t like, I try to find something about them that the author does well. I try to give credit where credit’s due, even when a book, on the whole, isn’t great. But that’s simply not going to happen this time. The Girl She Used to Be starts with an excruciatingly stupid premise, and manages to fail at every single stage of its execution. The dialogue is atrocious and obvious, the jokes are lame, the plot is boring and ridiculous, and all the scenes are ludicrous.

For instance, here’s an example of the kind of inane time-wasting that fills this book. In this scene, Melody—speaking first—is surprised that Jonathan suddenly pulls out a pack of gum instead of a cigarette.

“Is that Nicorette?”

He noshes it like a dog chewing a bone and he gets this sad look on his face, like he recently buried a close friend. “What can I say? You make me want to be a better man.”

I lose my smile. “Are you serious? You stopped smoking f0r me? But … I never asked.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to.”

The surrender of an addiction might be the noblest of all gifts.

Ugh. Bear in mind they’ve known each other for two days at this point, and those two days have consisted of driving in a car and staying at a hotel.

Basically, this novel is a wish-fulfillment fantasy for teenage girls: all the men are super hot, and a man who is supposedly perfect thinks Melody is “flawless.” There’s even a five-page spa treatment scene, after which Melody becomes irresistibly attractive to all men (before the treatment, she was so ugly that men at bars dared each other to hit on her as a joke), and it’s all paid for by Jonathan. That’s right, Melody’s perfect man literally buys her beauty with money from the mafia family that killed her parents. But she loves it because she’s pretty now, and isn’t that what all girls want?

I guess that kind of insipid wish fulfillment is why Girl got such great reviews. It’s actually remarkably similar to the Twilight books, or, at least, to The Oatmeal’s analysis of the Twilight books. (Also see NPR’s thorough dismantling of Twilight‘s prose.) Why a middle-aged man with a wife and kids found it necessary to write a less nuanced version of Twilight, I do not know.

If you’re the kind of masochistic reader that likes to laugh at bad writing, Girl is a gold mine. If you’re looking for a well-written book with some hint of suspense (and you’re not a teenage girl), look somewhere else.

OK, I take that back. It’s not a good book for 13-year-old girls either; Melody is a terrible role model for young women.

For more specifics about the terrible writing in The Girl She Used to Be, check out my other post coming out today, What Makes a Bad Book Bad?

Similar reads: Girl is most similar, as I mentioned, to Twilight. For a slightly funnier comic mystery, try The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston. For a very, very funny crime/caper novel, read Lighthouse, by William Monahan (screenwriter of The Departed). It’s not in print anymore, but it’s worth the effort to find.

Edgar impact: I don’t know why this book is up for an Edgar. It certainly shouldn’t win.

Author: Beth Wiseman

2009, Thomas Nelson

Filed under: Romance

Is your idea of a happy ending a sexless marriage between a submissive yet nosy woman and a rich, pushy doctor in which they adopt a child before their third kiss? Oh it is? Well boy, do I have the book for you. Plain Pursuit is full of flat characters and boring, predictable events. It was clear from the beginning how it would end, and Beth Wiseman, picking up the Daughters of Promise series where some other author wisely she left off, writes competantly, but as if she’s on auto-pilot, merely filling in the blanks between mandatory plot points.

To be fair, I am clearly not the ideal reader for this book. To be honest, if not as fair, I find it hard to believe there is an ideal reader for this book. Judging from the jacket copy, Amish-centric stories are a burgeoning sub-genre in the Christian romance section of whatever bookstores have Christian romance sections. But I’m hard pressed to buy that even the most vacuous readers (if there are such things) will find something to enjoy in reading multiple versions of drek like this. I got this book for free from the somewhat dubious Booksneeze.com. They offer free copies of their faux-religious books if you agree to post your review on a commercial site like Amazon. So I’ll be posting this review there as well; I hope it drives sales up.

Here’s the premise. Carley’s a newspaper reporter in Texas. Her mom dies in a car accident and this makes her so sad she needs a change of scenery. So she takes a month vacation to Lancaster County, to stay with her old friend Lillian, who has converted and married Amish. Lillian’s stepson, David, falls ill and has to visit an Englisch doctor, who happens to be his shunned uncle, Noah. Noah’s shunning turns out to be a main point of contention in the novel. Carley has a crush on Noah, and he tries to use her to get back in with his family. Carley eventually begins to champion Noah, and meddles with his family in the hopes they will break their religious rules. She spends much of the book gushing about their pastoral way of life, yet she displays little respect for their ways or wishes. Most of the book concerns the just-the-tip reconciliation of Noah and his family as it builds toward an obvious reunion that piggybacks on the obvious union of Carley and Noah.

That’s a boring plot, but it’s passable at least. The same can be said about Wiseman’s writing. (I understand that romance novels do not often rely on intricate plotting or writing full of flourish.) Where things really collapse irreparably is just how vapid the whole thing is. There’s a lot of talk about God, and how important he is to the lives of all the characters. But none of the characters express any sort of intelligence when it comes to whatever religion they subscribe too. It’s like listening to a sermon from someone who goes to church twice a year and feels righteous about it. Even if you’re a Born Again, that’s got to be annoying. Like this:

Almost instantly, Lillian’s explanation about the light switch and God game into her mind. Carley knew she had been guilty of an on-again, off-again relationship with God. She pondered if she had also been guilty of convenient love, only turning to God during times of trouble. Or just the opposite–turning her back on Him because she felt betrayed by Him when events became too difficult to bear. Who was she to judge anyone? Only God could do that.

That is seriously the deepest moment of introspection or reflection in the entire book, and it’s pretty shallow. If you disagree and find that moving, then this is definitely a book for you. If, like me, you saw the cover picture (there are no young Amish lovers in this book, despite what the picture implies) and scoffed, then follow your gut and don’t read it or even go near it or anything like it. The fact that so many colorless, unimaginative books like this are being published, when even the slightest effort on the part of a competent editor or writer could make them at least unique and, well, good rather than facile, says a lot about the grim state of publishing today.

(Oh. There’s a bunch of yummy Amish recipes printed at the end of the book. That is by far the best thing about Plain Pursuit.)