I Need to Stop Re-reading Teenage Favorites. A Review of "A Rose in Winter"

When I read this as a teenager, I thought it was the best romance EVAH. My little adolescent heart swooned at the idea of a gorgeous man who was kind and intelligent and willing to do anything to win the heart of his chosen fair maiden. (Mostly because the really good-looking guys in my high-school were generally genial, beer-addled horndogs.)

Rereading it as an adult was a study in disenchantment. Erienne is a hopeless, shallow snob without any sense of loyalty. For all of her supposed education she is pretty stupid to fall for the ridiculous ruse perpetrated by the erstwhile hero. The writing also has a marked tendency to veer into purple prose. This would have been a much higher ranking from my teenage self--as it stands, I can only give it 2 stars now. I should have left the damn thing on the shelf and let the teenage me have her adolescent fantasies intact.

Magic and Manners? More Like Magic and Meh.

Don't get me wrong--I didn't hate this book.  The editing in the e-version was all kinds of cattywumpus, but that is not the author's fault. I guess that I just love the original so much that this started to piss me off.  The parts that were directly taken from Austen's novel were lovingly recreated and stayed true to the feel of the original.

This was a mashup work so I expected to have a bit of a giggle at the bizarre mix of Regency manners and fantasy.  There were some great parts--I loved that she incorporated some LGBT characters and had one of the romantic heroes come from African descent. 

That being said, the magic portion of the novel is what made me want to smack the author with a hardback copy of a grimoire.  There was a scene in the library at Darcy/Archer's manse that was frigging endless.  She was obviously trying to set up some kind of belated world building, but it seemed a bit late as more than half the book had already transpired at this point.  I also thought the ending was fairly lame; Elizabeth/Elsabeth is trying to start some kind of feminist/LGBT rights/magic user acceptance in the strictured society of Regency England.  Oh, and everybody is mostly just fine with that.  Really?!  Cause we don't even have that now in 2016, if the furor over the Target bathroom incident is any indicator.

My biggest pet peeve with this book is I felt it didn't deliver on its promise.  As a Jane Austen tribute novel, it worked fairly well.  As a mashup fantasy novel it fell woefully short.  The author is a solid writer and I enjoyed parts of the book a great deal.  Yet the book does leave much to be desired as a literary mashup.  For that reason, I must give it a reluctant 3 stars.

Damn you, Neil Gaiman. A Review of "Mairelon the Magician" by Patricia C. Wrede

I loved the premise of this one, and  I generally adore Patricia C. Wrede's writing.  I loved the Pygmalion-esque feel of Kim's lessons with Mairelon.  I have a soft spot for Regency era novels, which is all Jane Austen's fault, and a marked penchant for fantasy for which I blame C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman. So you can imagine my joy when I stumbled across this one--a Regency-era fantasy.  Unfortunately, the book just fell flat for several reasons.

I liked that Kim came from nothing, but she was such a milquetoast for someone who supposedly grew up an orphan on the mean streets of Regency London.  One would definitely expect her to have more spine. 

The ending just annoyed the bejeezus out of me.  It felt like a French farce except it wasn't that funny.  I half expected someone to pop out of a closet and whack people over the head with a rubber chicken--it was that silly.  It was good enough to lure me into reading the second, but I give this one three stars with some trepidation.

I'm Going to Miss College Football

I always get a little morose this time of year.  Except for a handful of bowl games and the Playoff, college football is wrapped up for another year.  For the seniors on these teams, last Saturday’s rivalry matchups may be the last time any of them will take the field.  It has to be poignant because you leave a bit of your heart on that field on that final game. Your college years are special; and college football is special, because it is about the idealism and passion that we all have before life drags it out of us.  These kids are playing because they love the game and they love their school.  They aren’t playing to get endorsements are a paycheck.  College football just means more.

All of us that went to college know that college is packed with first experiences, and rife with last ones. In that way, the college football season is a microcosm of the college experience as a whole.  You start the football season full of hope.  You get knocked down a few times and you learn some valuable lessons along the way.  Much like the college experience, college football season is short and intense, chock-full of drama and emotion. 

College football coaches have personalities, as odd as some of them might be.  Yet it is the weirdness of Les Miles, the colorful Southern colloquialism of Bobby Bowden, and the snark of Steve Spurrier that make every week a veritable panoply of the bizarre and hilarious.

The live mascots, the bands, the tailgating, the raucous student section, the silly fight songs, and the general rowdy circus of ESPN College GameDay all serve to make college football season a three-month long Bacchanal.  There is nothing like that pageantry in professional football.

College football is unique because there is no money involved.  There are no contracts yet that limit the players.  College fans are loyal; at least those who are alumni of that school.  You will never see a Gator alum abruptly changing allegiance to support Miami, even if the Gators have a losing season.  And I mean never.  That would be tantamount to selling state secrets to the Russians. College football is just more fun, dadgumit, and I am going to miss it fervently until next September.

Now I want pancakes. Review of "Vampires of Manhattan" by Melissa de la Cruz

I need to stop reading books labeled “paranormal”.  The damn things sell like half-price hotcakes at Denny’s, though, so authors and publishers keep churning ‘em out.  Much like the aforementioned hotcakes most of these books are ephemeral and fluffy and make you feel nauseous and shamefaced if you consume too many.

I blame Anne Rice.  It is her fault that I am interested at all in snotty urban vampires.  Granted, the teenage me liked The Vampire Lestat much more than did the adult me. But shoot, as a teenager that book checked ALL of my adolescent, angsty boxes.  Vampire? Check.  Rock star? Double check!  Broody, handsome protagonist?  Triple check with a heart flutter and a girlish scream. It’s true that Anne Rice has gotten an overinflated sense of her own literary pulchritude.  She was one of the first mainstream authors to popularize the genre, however, so Anne gets a pass.

This book gets no such license.  This was my first foray into Melissa de la Cruz’s world—it will also be my last.  I could not finish this book because the writing was abysmal.  Maybe she is trying to sound hip, but to describe your main characters as “ripped” or “badass” just seems indolent.  We can infer these things if the writing is good, thank you very little.  The author exhibits a marked juvenile obsession with wealth--the book contains endless descriptions of pricey food and designer clothing. For those of us for whom a Ford Focus is a major purchase reading about shallow, prosperous douchecanoes makes me get stabby. The main characters make the Kardashians seem like models of depth and moral turpitude.  I got fed up about halfway through—there isn’t enough alcohol on the planet to make this book palatable.  Damn you, Anne Rice.

Dr. Evil Does Event Planning! My Review of the Ridiculous "Party Girl" by Rachel Hollis

Actual rating: 1.5 stars.

I'm not sure why I continually subject myself to the crapfest that is chicklit.  It  could be because when the books are good--a rarity--they are funny, heartwarming and real.  This book was not such an anomaly.  The basic premise of this novel is so cliched. We have all seen the movie or read the book where the sweet, small town girl moves to the big, bad scary city.  She meets the boy of her dreams, gets steamrolled by the mean girl, and ultimately triumphs.  Done right, this plot can be charming.  I  adored Reese Witherspoon's take on it in "Legally Blonde".  Granted, Reese is an Academy-Award winning actress who has made a lucrative career out of being adorable.  (Ironically, her best roles--those of Tracy Flick and June Cash--didn't utilize her awesome powers of cuteness.)

The basic premise is as follows:  Landon Brinkley, a sweet, small-town girl from Texas moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of being an event planner.   The author had a successful career in that arena so those parts of the novel have verisimilitude.  They are also the best parts.  Honestly, I would have loved a novel about all of the funny, ridiculous, and rewarding aspects of event planning.  Throw in a little celebrity tell-all and it would have been an orgiastic medley of guilty pleasures. 

 Unfortunately, the book was a vapid rehashing of  The Devil Wears Prada without any of the humor.  At least Andi in the aforementioned Devil was smart--Landon is like a cartoon Texas girl, complete with pink clothes and big hair.  She is constantly described as smart but continues to do ridiculous things.  She has no spine--she cannot even stand up to one of the assistants; but somehow she manages to defy her evil boss and start HER OWN event planning business.  Every aspect of this novel annoyed the crap out of me.

On a side note, if you plan to utilize Spanish in your book, please make sure it's correct.  There was one scene where Landon helps to placate an angry Hispanic client.  She rushes over speaking horrific Spanish and the guy is supposedly charmed.  Um, no.  Nothing was grammatically correct, the syntax was completely wrong, and the subjunctive wasn't used in two instances where it needed to be.  Hey Ms. Hollis--using a Spanish dictionary does NOT mean you can speak Spanish.  "Viejo" is the correct adjective when describing a person, Ms. Hollis.  But I digress.

Landon starts the job on her first day apparently hoping that being cute and Southern will excuse her lack of planning.  She has done no research on the company, Selah Smith Events, for which she is working as an intern.  She has read about the events in magazines but doesn't seem to know that the person who interviewed her is a male because they have only talked via the interwebs.  Really?!  That is the POINT of LinkedIn, for Cripe's sake.  She doesn't ask about the company dress code so she shows up for her first day in a completely inappropriate outfit. She doesn't think that L.A. traffic might be awful and shows up half an hour late for her first day.  Oh, and she doesn't call/text/e-mail her supposed mentor to let them know that tardiness might be imminent.  In any job I worked, that kind of inconsiderate offense would be subject to termination. 

While all of that nonsense suspends disbelief for anybody who has ever held a job, Landon's ridiculous naivete and milquetoast personality were so ludicrous and overexaggerated they were laughable.  We are supposed to fall in love with the character's innocence.  I wanted to tie her to a chair, duct tape her eyes open, and force her to watch increasingly shameful pornography until she grew the hell up. I grew up in a very protective family in a small town in Florida; yet I had more gumption and common sense at SEVENTEEN than this Southern-fried idiot has at twenty-fricking-three. 

Then come a series of ever-more improbable events in which our innocent (read: abysmally stupid) heroine [snort] stumbles her way from an internship at the company to a paid position, lands one of L.A.'s wealthiest and hottest bachelors, and defies her evil boss. She also manages to start her own company with NO CAPITAL based on her good relationship with one celebrity client and the aforementioned Hispanic client.  Because powerful Latinos got that way by handing over their business interests to half-witted white girls.

Oh, God--the Satanic boss.  Selah Smith, the eponymous head of SSE, is such a bitch caricature it makes my head hurt.   She might as well try to slay Landon and be done with it.  I mean, she does everything but rub her hands together gleefully and laugh maniacally. At one point, she actually says, "I will ruin you."  What are you, Ultraman?  You can't ruin me, you abominable tart.  I'll call OSHA on your abusive ass.

Landon is such a wuss that she allows this woman to treat her shabbily. Indonesian sweat shop workers would quit after this treatment, but our ridiculous protagonist continues along without a protest. Work on Thanksgiving with no prior notice and after booking a flight? Sure!  Break up with the love interest because you like him too?  Okey dokey.  Allow you to verbally abuse me and take credit for my work?  Yupper.

L.A. is such a tiny, podunk town that there are NO OTHER event-planning companies for which she could work.  And of course, no one else makes a fuss either.  I am not familiar with the vagaries of event planning; I'm sure it is stressful to the extreme.  However, Federal law does have limits on the number of hours one can require their employees to work.  You cannot expect me to believe that AN ENTIRE FRIGGING COMPANY allows this woman to get away with a reign of terror that makes Pablo Escobar look like a jolly uncle.

There was nothing in this book that was original, funny, or redeeming except the party descriptions.  If you like shallow, stupid MCs and trite writing, by all means, pick up a copy.

You'd think by now I would have learned my lesson with Chicklit.  Perhaps I am even more naive than I thought--I keep hoping to find the gem in the dung heap.  This book was not that gem.

Teenage Girls Suck. My Review of "Conversion" by Katherine Howe

There was a great deal to like in this book.  Ms. Howe is an engaging writer.  Her teenaged characters are neither Mary Sues nor stock archetypes.  The main character has normal adolescent angst with all of the accompanying insecurities.  While I was not in prep school like the girls in the book I could definitely relate to their problems.  The main plot of the book centers around a girls' prep school in Danvers (formerly Salem Village) Massachusetts.  During their senior year, a number of girls fall victim to a horrible illness in which they twitch, get uncontrollable verbal tics, lose their ability to walk, and even lose their hair.  The media has a field day with the St. Joan's "Mystery Illness" and theorize causes on everything from environmental toxins to the HPV vaccine.  Of course, because Danvers, Massachusetts is on the site of the former Salem Witch Trials, the implications of witchcraft are omnipresent.  This witchcraft subplot was my main issue with the book and one that prevented me from giving it a higher rating.

The academic pressure for the college-bound student is a very real bugaboo for any student in one's senior year.  The panic over picking the right school, getting good SAT scores, maintaining good grades and getting through the admissions process can cause anybody to go kookoo for Cocoa Puffs.  The book covered these topics admirably, and Colleen Rowley, the book's protagonist, was real and likeable with just the right touch of teenage snark to make her realistic.  The fact that the book was based on real events that transpired in Le Roy, New York also gave the novel a verisimilitude that it might have lacked otherwise. 

The main issue I had with the book was the whole Salem witchcraft red herring.  The historical flashbacks, while interesting, didn't ring true.  The speech of the supposed 18th century characters sounded suspiciously like CNN newscasters.    While I got the author's intended parallels--the author obviously doesn't have much faith in her readers' intelligence and spells it out for you--I thought it superfluous and detracted from the main plot. The only hint one gets of any supernatural hanky-panky comes at the end when the hypochondriac mother of the best friend intimates that, "My Emma's like me, you know..she's prone to spells."  This is after Colleen accuses her best friend, Emma, of causing the whole thing.  I suppose the witchery was inevitable given the setting, but it was distracting and poorly executed.  The ending felt a bit rushed, as well.  I got the feeling that Ms. Howe wanted to ascribe the mystery illness to supernatural factors and then changed her mind.

The novel is a fairly intelligent YA read with enough plot twists to keep mystery fans content.  The characters are realistic, if a bit stilted, but I chose to blame that on their New England WASP upbringing.  In all, Conversion is an enjoyable mystery novel that encompasses adolescent academic angst admirably.