The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden

Rating: WARTY!

This is going to be a wa-ay long review even by my standards, so be prepared! My blog is about more than reviewing - it's about writing and about the language, but even so, this one is longer than usual. You have been warned!

This is a young adult kitchen sink story in that there is pretty much nothing from the paranormal world that isn't in this book. There's horror and voodoo, and vampires, oh my! This was an advance review copy which sounded really intriguing when I read the blurb, but by the time I was ten percent or so into it, I started having reservations about it purely because of the YA clichés which had begun to pervade everything. More on this anon. By the time I was a quarter the way through there was so much that made no sense and so many issues that I honestly started to feel I wouldn't be able to actually finish reading it, which is truly sad, because in many ways it was interesting and from a purely technically PoV, written rather well. At the risk of giving away details, and posting spoilers, let me try to explain.

Adele Le Moyne is fresh back from a disastrous stay with her French mother in Paris. Adele doesn't like mom. Why she went so late in the year that her return would cause her to miss the start of school isn't explained. Obviously the storm had some say in the matter, but it didn't really explain it. The storm is a whole other issue which I'll get to. Adele is returning to New Orleans with her father. They're coming back to see how their home and her dad's bar fared after a truly devastating storm. Adele likes dad, even though he treats her like a child. Actually, given how immature she is, this is probably a wise move on pop's part. Note that this storm both is and isn't Katrina, which gets no mention here, though other storms do. This felt to me, initially, like it was a huge storm in the near future, but I came to understand that it was meant to be Katrina. Why the author had a problem with identifying it as such is a mystery. The problem is that we're told it was the "largest" storm ever to hit the continental USA. That's not Katrina. I'll get into this later.

The city is largely deserted, but is slowly coming back to life. Adele's biggest fear is being sent back to France because the local arts school is closed indefinitely. As she starts to settle in, she finds strange things happening to her. On her first day back in the house, a bird attacks her and scratches her face. Later, she finds a freshly dead body in a car on her way home. It seems there's a rising murder rate, especially over the last twenty four hours. Oddly enough, despite the devastation and the lack of adequate policing, there seems to be no National Guard presence in the city. This struck me as me as absurd, and was one of the things which began chipping away at the credibility of the story for me.

Adele has other things happen, too. She visits a local voodoo store which she has never been in before, and she meets some slightly eccentric people. She experiences a weird event on the way home with a banging shutter and an inexplicably shattering window at a convent, yet despite being a New Orleans resident for her entire life (apart from the last two months), and therefore obviously aware of the voodoo culture, she never once starts to wonder if there's something to it after these odd events. Of course there isn't in real life, but this is a voodoo story inter alia, so you'd think there would be something, somewhere in her mind that starts wondering. The fact that there wasn't - even after all this - made me think that Adele wasn't very bright, which is never a good trait with which to imbue your main character.

There were some odd descriptions, too, such as the non-word 'chainmaille', which should either be 'chainmail' or simply 'maille' (which by itself means the same thing). I know this was an ARC copy, but I can't see this kind of thing being fixed in the final published version unless someone highlights it. On a slightly different issue, at one point Adele almost has an accident with a large nail, which she describes as a "giant nail twice the width of my palm" which struck me as badly described. I may be wrong here, but I think what's meant was that the nail was as long as two widths of her palm, but the way it's written makes it sound like the nail's width (i.e. diameter) is two of her palm widths, which would be a truly humongous nail!

I had an issue with the multi-language use. It may not bother other readers, but for me, it was too pervasive. Indeed, it felt more like the author was showing off her faculty with languages than really contributing to building a strong story. This kind of thing is done often in novels, and unless there's really a good reason for it, it's just annoying to me. It's even more irritating when we get the foreign phrase followed immediately by the English translation, such as in "J'en doute. I seriously doubt it." Although this isn't an exact translation (it would need sérieusement added for that) it makes my point here, and this just kept kicking me out of suspension of disbelief.

I found it hilarious that phones in New Orleans can text in French! One message from "Pépé" read, "Préparer un pot frais de chicorée" Evidently when envoyer des SMS en Français (texting in French), one doesn't use abbreviations! I'm sure there are ways and even apps which allow you to enter accented letters, but why would you bother when texting to people who speak English? Why not just send "make fresh chicory" and be done with it? Rightly or wrongly, this only served to reinforce my feeling that the author had been employing French much more as a pretension than as a legitimate writing tool.

Since this is New Orleans, I could see a French word here and there showing up, but when she meets two Italians, they're doing it too, and it was too much, especially since they also have grammatically perfect English - better than your typical native English speaker! LOL! Amusingly, the first phrase either one of them uttered was, "Well, whom do we have here?" The problem is that no one speaks like that, much less a foreign speaker of English. It's much more likely for the speaker to say, "Well, who is this?" The thing is that few use correct grammar in their everyday speech, so while you can write in your narrative, 'whom', it's just wrong to write it as part of someone's speech unless that particular character actually is a stickler for grammar. Most people are not, especially if English is their second language. It's also worth remembering, in a story like this one - which is told in first person, that the narrative should reflect the speech patterns of the person. Truly correct grammar is unlikely unless the narrator is an English teacher, for example.

I know it's hard for a writer to let that go (although personally, I'd kick 'whom' out of the language altogether), but it has to be done. Some writers, including this one, apparently, can't ignore a compulsion towards good grammar, which in a way is commendable, but it doesn't contribute to a realistic story. I won't get into the employment of the French in and of itself since mine is so rusty, but I'd be curious to know if "Comment a été Paris?" is more accurate than what was used here " Comment était Paris?" for "How was Paris?" - meaning, of course, how did you like Paris - what impression did it leave you with? Everything else seemed in order to my out-of-practice eye, so I guess I'd bow to the author's evidently superior expertise in this case.

The biggest problem for me in the first ten percent though, was when Adele met those Italian twins, Gabriel and Niccolò, who I quickly found to be creepy and obnoxious. Why one had a Jewish name whereas the other had the expected Italian name went unexplained, but it did occur to me that one is the name of an angel, and the other could be the name of the devil - as in 'Old Nick', for example. Actually they were not twins, but they may as well have been. They were brothers: a dark haired leather-clad bad-boy type, and a blond-haired good-guy type. Talk about trope good and evil!

This jumped out at me as a potential beginning of your typical and tiresomely clichéd YA love triangle. I was hoping I was wrong but it had all the hallmarks, and my stomach churned from reading about this "nauseating display of high school flirtation" (you'd have to read the book - or at least 22% of it! - to feel the full weight of that sarcastic comment!). As it turned out, the triangle was not over the two Italians, but it did involve the predictable one of the two. Nothing new there. Everything about these boys was a complete cliché from their height, to their chiseled good looks, to their foreign nature and athletic build. It's truly sad to find YA author after YA author who cannot seem to develop an original character as a love interest, and persists in going down the same tired and over-used macho guy and sad love triangle circuit that's been beaten to death, and which is already way beyond tedious at this juncture.

A real problem came with Niccolò's conduct, bad boy or not. I honestly don't know how an author can write inappropriate or overly familiar contact as though it's right or normal. Yes, some people do behave that way, but let's not make those people heroic or the love interest of the main character, please? This conduct should certainly not be portrayed as something to be meekly tolerated. At one point, one of the brothers, uninvited, gets right into Adele's personal space, and starts touching her and manually examining the medallion she has hanging around her neck (a medallion which is actually there for no good reason). He doesn't even do her the courtesy of asking. It's like she's now his property, and he can do whatever he wants with her, even though they'd never met prior to that very minute. This isn't the only time he abuses her so.

Adele responded (to his effectively fondling her) not by becoming assertive, but by becoming as compliant as a whipped puppy. We read "his fingertips grazed my cheek" as though it's supposed, I assume, to be intimate and romantic, but it's not. It's creepy and overly familiar. It's presumptive and assumptive, suggesting that young women are there for the taking, and it sends entirely the wrong message to both genders. If these two had known each other for years as friends, or were lovers, or married, or even if they were young kids, then yes, this would be fine, or at least expected, but for a complete stranger to effectively own a woman of Adele's age in that manner, and for her to very effectively lie down before him like he's the alpha male and she's just part of his pride or his pack is trashy at best.

The reason I was sad was that this author had drawn me right in and was writing pretty well to this point. She had a great facility with the language and with her descriptive writing, and it was honestly a shock to find myself suddenly suffocating under this worn-out, teen-aged fabric that was being unceremoniously piled on to the pretty decent material she'd been so skillfully working to this point in the story. I don't know why authors, especially female authors, feel they have to validate their female characters with male ones (the same applies to male characters, for that matter) I really don't, but it's never a good thing. The truly odd thing about these two Italians, by the way, is that while they claim that they're here to find missing relatives, they seem to spend absolutely no time whatsoever actually looking. Of course, since this is a first person PoV story, we have no idea what's going on when Adele isn't around.

Adele wasn't very likable for a variety of reasons. One of these is my own bias against the fashion world. I think it's the shallowest, most self-indulgent and least beneficial endeavors in human history. I have no time for fashion designers, fashions or runway models, and unfortunately, Adele wants to be a fashion designer, which as you can now imagine, did nothing to endear her to me. My gut feeling was that she wouldn't end up there, given the way this story was going, but the real question here is: why is she that character - the one who wants to join the fashion world? What does it contribute to this story except to further establish how frivolous she is? Why isn't she wanting to be a doctor, or an engineer, or a software designer? She's from New Orleans, so why doesn't she want to be a chef or a musician, or an architect, or even a merhcant marine for that matter? I didn't get where the fashion thing was coming from. She could have been aiming to be a chef or an architect, and still have justified the trip to Paris, for example.

The other issue with Adele is that she's a whiney, shallow, ungrateful little tyke who behaves inappropriately for her age. What with this and her fashion 'ambition', her age seemed more like twelve then ever it did sixteen. Yeah, I get that she hates her mom, but when her father wants to discuss school with her, she becomes resentful, tearful, and childish. Someone that emotional would never survive vampires let alone be able to stand up to them! She has the option to go back to Paris, which she flatly rejects. Fine! But she also has the option to study fashion design in California at a very prestigious school, and stay with her best friend who, we're told, she misses immensely, yet she rejects all of this in favor of staying in New Orleans where there's nothing to do and her career plans are effectively on hold. This tells me that she's not only a petulant brat, and that she really doesn't care much for her friend - or for her supposed fashion ambitions for that matter, but also that she's clueless and actually has no ambition. These are hardly heroic traits! On the one hand, rejecting fashion would warm me to her somewhat, but on the other, none of this bratty behavior endeared her to me at all. It merely served to render her into someone about whom (see, I can use it!) I cared very little, and whose story I really didn't feel much like following.

You'll note that I didn't mention 'scientist' as a possible career choice above. The reason for this is that Adele doesn't seem to have an even remotely inquiring mind. Even when she finally accepts that supernatural events are taking place around her and she has some influence over them, she still fails to pursue this with any kind of intellect or determination or with any sort of spirit of adventure. Instead, she idly tinkers with it like it's an old Rubik cube she found somewhere. I honestly don't know of anyone - male or female - who would be as lackadaisical as she is over such a series of events!

Adele toys with her new power, yet shows absolutely no motivation whatsoever (and she wants to make it in the cut-throat fashion world?!) to get to its root. She doesn't even think of taking her power out for a real run, or to start seriously investigating what it is or why she has it. Most damning of all, she doesn't even begin to consider ways in which she could use this power to help in putting her supposedly beloved city back on its feet. She's not too smart, either, over figuring out what the extent and limit of the power is, when it seems patently obvious to the reader. This character began as an interesting one, but for me, she became ever more unbelievable the further the story went on. In the end, she wasn't remotely credible. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Adele was really an insult to women with her all-pervasive inertia and her shallowness and lack of any real substance.

At the front of this book is a dedication to the people of New Orleans (the author is evidently a native), but it says nothing about how strong they are. It's all about myth and magic; however, given the story we have here, it would be hypocritical for the dedication to have talked about strength and motivation. This fictional character, as a New Orleans native, was an insult to the real-life people of that city, given what they've been through, and how they rebuilt and moved on afterwards. If Adele had been portrayed as a go-getter, and an industrious young woman who refused to be beaten down, and who worked hard every day, I could have seen a reflection of New Orleans in her, but the fact remains that she isn't a shadow on the real people there, and that was the biggest disappointment in this book for me. I know that some people are actually like Adele in real life - lazy, shiftless, unwilling or incapable of doing a fair day's work, and you could probably get a really good novel about such a character, but this wasn't it, and the character that Adele actually was didn't belong in this kind of a story. Like Adele herself, it didn't work.

This same lack of motivation pervades her whole life. We've been told that she wants to be a fashion designer, but she never works on designs, neither with a sketch pad, nor with a computer. That life she supposedly wants doesn't even pervade her thoughts at all! Pretty much the only thing in her thoughts isn't even her new power! In the first quarter of the novel, her mind is most often on some dude she hung out with in Paris. This is how shallow she is. Her assessment of this guy is: "he's very hot and very French" Seriously? That's the basis of her 'rapport' with him? Pure objectification? Instead of being the heroic figure a novel like this begs for, Adele is reduced to the status of a lovesick tweenie (her actual age notwithstanding), who has an impossible crush on some older kid. Worse than this, despite her assertion that she wants to stay with her dad in New Orleans, she spends virtually no time with him. Every day he's out all hours, working on fixing up his bar (at least this is what we're told, but I didn't believe it), yet never once does she offer to go help him. She'd rather sit on her lazy ass in the coffee bar, doing nothing, evidently, save for her almost ritualistic indulgence in growing paranoia and endless self-pity. That is when she's not lusting after one or another of several boys she encounters.

It seems like she's 'employed' in this coffee bar, but there are no customers, so how are the owners even paying her - and why?! All she does is sit around. At one point she thinks some guy is sketching her, and she resents this, yet she's so inert that she can't even think of changing where she sits, or perhaps moving into the back area where he can't see her. This is how inanimate her brain is. We're told that she's supposed to be attending this exclusive school in lieu of her own school being closed indefinitely, but she hasn't been attending, even though it appears to be open and this is now mid-October! Why she's so tardy goes unexplained. She eventually does attend, but it's only part time, and her overly protective father makes no arrangements for her to be transported to and from the school even when there's a murder spree going on in the city and he's supposed to be so protective of her!

The reason I initially felt that this story was set slightly in the future was that Katrina was never mentioned by name - unless you include a reference in the acknowledgements to a person named Katrina! LOL! The hurricane was described very vaguely as the largest one to hit the US, but 'largest' can mean many different things. By what measure was it the largest? By cost, Katrina was the "largest" by some margin, but every few years the "largest" by cost changes because property values rise, and so more damage (in dollars) is done, even if the hurricane is relatively tame. The problem is that by any other measure, Katrina was not the largest, not even by death toll, by which measure it was third (so far). By largest diameter, Katrina wasn't in the top five. By 'most severe' it barely made the top five and by 'most intense' failed to get into the top five. By highest sustained winds it wasn't even in the top ten. By barometric pressure it was tenth, by most tornadoes spawned, it was sixth, and so on. I wouldn't describe it as the 'largest' and I found it objectionable that cost seemed to be the only measure deemed worthy of measure here. Surely death toll is more important than property damage?

At one point Adel goes with Isaac (the other leg of the triangle and another Biblical name) to her friend's house to find something. Although Isaac has no clue what it is that she's seeking, he says, "I'll go check out the rest of the place" - why? What's he looking for? Evidently it was to give Adele some time alone with her powers, but this part made no sense to me, especially since he was supposed to be keeping an eye on her.

Adele's hypocrisy was annoying at best. This is the girl who is lusting after every trope male she meets in this novel, yet at one point she tells us, "My eyes rolled at the ripple of testosterone" Honestly? Her other faults were numerous and never deemed to be faults by her or anyone else, but perhaps the worst was her chronic indolence. This infests her every neuron, and drags this book out to an unwarranted number of pages. It's ironically reflected in the larger story arc, and is what contributes to the ruin of this story for me. The story felt very much like New Orleans appeared after the storm: a mess, a tragedy, and leaving an all-but hopeless feeling in the gut. Whereas New Orleans had a real human story which grew and heartened, this fiction never did. I know this is the south and the cliché is that it's supposed to be laid back, but there's a huge difference between 'laid back' and 'moribund' and that latter place was where Adele resided.

This business of guys taking advantage of Adele and her having absolutely no negative feelings about this abhorrent behavior, was what finally turned me off (and my stomach over) with this novel. There was another incident where Adele was with Isaac, and she became very emotional over the damage done to her friend's home. Isaac saw her emotionally weakened, and instead of asking if she wanted to leave, or if she wanted to talk, or even just giving her a friendly hug, this jerk-off kisses her. What a louse!

It was at that point that I decided I was done with this nonsense. It wouldn't have been so bad had she pushed him away and read him the riot act about taking advantage of emotional weakness and painful upset, but she never did. This is one of the two guys who both abused her like this, and instead of being outraged and repelled, she's falling for the two of them, not even caring that someone is going to get hurt through her irresponsible ambivalent behavior. Adele is obviously also a jerk and I feel no compulsion to read any more about a person like that, who quite evidently has no redeeming value, and is as clueless as they come. So no, I never made it to sixty percent because I didn't care if it improved. There is no improvement a writer can make which can ever fill a hole that's been dug this deep!

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Rating: WARTY!

I think it's time to take a vow never to read another novel which has a character's name in the title, and never to read another novel with the word 'saving' in the title! This means that Saving Francesca is a double no, or a no-no for short!

Initially, I thought that all the women in Francesca's family carried the 'a' suffix to pigeon-hole them as female: her mom is Mia, her kid sister Luca. Only the male has a rugged name: Bob. I was right about that last one, but wrong about Luca. It turned out hat she was a he! The thing is though, that the alpha (there's that 'a' again) male in the family is Mia. She's evidently maintained this position until she has a break-down at the start of this story, which sets the family adrift for reason which aren't well explained.

There was nothing in this story, no in the portion that I managed to stomach, to place it time-wise. It seemed like it was from last century as judged by the attitudes and schooling system, but other than that it could have been set today. Francesca attended St. Stella's, but that school has no year eleven or twelve, so she had to transfer to St Sebastian's, and thus we have the trope of a new kid in school. The trope of her being alone is enhanced by the fact that this is a boys school which has just opened itself up to co-ed. The level of misogyny here is truly startling, and the fact that no one seems to find it appalling is what made me think that the story is historical. I'd hate to think that Australian education system is this anachronistic; then again, maybe it's a sly comment on the Catholic church, which has been misogynistic since its inception, what with Eve being the downfall of mankind, you know.

All Francesca's friends now attend a school to which Mia refused to send Francesca under the belief that the other school would limit her options. As is typical with this kind of blinkered story, not only have her friends gone to a different school, they've also apparently gone to a different planet, or been expunged from history because there seems to be no way she can maintain contact with them - neither by text nor by phone call, neither by email nor by taking a walk over to their house. This is truly a blind and pathetic way to start a story. It's not remotely realistic.

But then this novel was one of caricatures. The boys are all stereotypical obnoxious boys no matter who they are or what their age. Francesca's friends are caricatures, too; one of them, Tina, is a 'feminist' so we're told, but she sounds far more like a radical communist than ever she does a feminist, and completely anachronistic to boot. Francesca herself is so emotional that she comes across more as a twelve-year-old than ever she does as someone in the latter half of her teens. She has a male love interest who she naturally detests at first sight, which confirms with a crystal clarity that she will be in love with him in short order an that this novel would be hide-bound by cliché and trope. Barf. Trite? They name is Melina Marchetta (there are those suffixes again!).

I couldn't continue reading this and I can't recommend it based on what I did read. This novel merely conformed my growing conviction that traditional publishers (like book award committees) pin the names of novel submissions (or nominations) to a large wall, blindfold themselves, and randomly toss darts at the wall. The novel titles which managed to garner for themselves a dart which sticks are the ones which are published (or awarded a medal) and the rest are recycled as material with which to stuff dartboards.

Darkness of Light by Stacey Marie Brown

Rating: WARTY!

This volume had two potential strikes against it as I began reading: firstly it was book one of a series, and secondly, it was first person PoV, which is normally a horrible voice to tell a story in, full of self-importance and self-promotion. The all-important I did this! Hey lookit me! Now lookit me again! Imagine that for a whole series! However, there are some people who can carry that voice, just as there are some people who can carry a series so my hope going into this was that here was an author who can carry both.

The title is a bit trite. There are very many volumes out there with variations on this contradiction, most of them, it seems, series, so it's not a good title to have chosen if you're looking to make your work stand out from the pack, as most authors are, so having buried your novel deeply in the pack with your choice of title, we now have to look solely to the writing, and this is what my blog is all about.

That did start our too well, because on the second screen I read this: ""

His eyes ran over my body. "You look good... I mean beautiful."

Ember's immediate response is to thank him for objectifying her, except that she doesn't frame it in those objective terms

Judged by the first two screens, this book is all about shallow. Ember's assessment of her best female friend, Kennedy, is that she "...could see the true beauty in her porcelain skin." That's her true beauty. It's not in her wisdom, or in her integrity, or in her smarts, or in her skill with something, or in her reliability - not even in her steadfast friendship over many years. It's not even, for goodness sakes, in the commonly-cited abuse: that she would make a good wife and mother! It's in her beauty, because let's face it, if you're a girl and you ain't got that, you ain't got nothing. No wonder she's going to grow up dreading wrinkles and blemishes, and spend a fortune on snake oil 'remedies' for them.

Why do female writers insist up demeaning their gender like this? Can we not get a YA novel that's not about skin-depth? Can we not, for that matter, get a novel about a "hot cheerleader" who turns out to have smarts, courage, decency, or anything that's more than skin and (good) bone (structure)? In this novel, Ember's brief interlude with Ben is rudely interrupted by this very thing (the hot cheerleader part, not the rest of it). Kallie is "tall, blonde, and beautiful." That's how she's categorized and pigeon-holed, and I'm only in the fourth screen in on my smart phone!

Every female who has appeared in this story to this point has been completely and solely defined by her looks. This is, quite frankly, disgusting. You think pornography is degrading to women? Well that's obvious. How much worse then, is this culture of stealth degradation which puts the value of a woman on her looks alone? The fact that this has been done through history is no excuse to continue it. What is this doing to young girls, subject to this barrage of objectification, story after story after story, in a subtle and not-so-subtle undermining of their value, being told relentlessly, that if they're not beautiful they have nothing else to offer? How many depressions and suicides has this relentless assault on girlhood and womanhood caused, do you suppose? Do you dare to try to calculate that carnage?

Don't think for a minute that guys avoid this objectification: "Ben was gorgeous and at the top of the food chain in our school. He was the basketball star and every girl's wet-dream." That's a verbatim quote cut and pasted directly from the Kindle app on my phone. I love that Kindle app despite various issues it has. You can't copy text from the Bluefire Reader app on the iPad for quoting.

The characters don't speak realistically. At one point Ember says, "Hide me from whom? What are you talking about?" No one talks like that unless they're nobility, pretentious, or caricatured. Ryan says at one point shortly after this, "There you are. Kennedy and I have been looking for you." Kennedy and I, instead of "We've"? it doesn't happen. The "from whom" comes from an author's knee-jerk desire to try to be taken seriously by offering correct English, but forgetting that this isn't the narrative part, this is character speech, and no one speaks like that. 'Whom' needs to be retired completely from the English language in my opinion, although there are occasional instances where even to me it sounds wrong not to use it, but never in someone's speech. Not unless the character in question is Queen Elizabeth or someone like that.

The story continued to become more clichéd as trope was piled upon trope: Ember has odd eyes, and is tall, long haired, willowy, and no doubt "beautiful", but she's detested by the entire school except for her two trope friends, the guy portion of which is of course, gay. Despite her being reviled, the hottest guy in school falls for her. Despite him falling for her, and his enjoying a god-like status in school, he lifts not one finger to bring an end to the buying she endures. The bullying is torrential, and not a single teacher lifts a single finger to try to stop it. Ember doesn't feel the slightest bit depressed ir suicidal despite this bullying. She doesn't care about the insults to herself but won't have her friends insulted. The hottest cheerleader is her worst enemy and delivers verbal assaults on her worthy of the most moustache-twirling villain in melodrama.

This latter item brings a crisis at the Halloween dance, where Ember has a Carrie moment. The lights break in their tubes. The disco ball crashes to the ground, the decorations go up in flame, the students panic and flee. Ember awakes to find she's alone in the trashed gym, and despite there being EMTs and fire-fighters galore out there, evidently not a single one of them came inside to check for injured, trapped or dead students? I'm sorry but this is bullshit and an insult to emergency services personnel. Le Stupide doesn't end there however.

When Ember wanders outside, determined to find her friends and tell them she's all right (why were they not panicked for her and trying to get back into the gym or urging the emergency response teams to find her?), an EMT immediately takes charge of her to address her 'deep cuts', but as soon as the principal comes up and harasses Ember, the EMT melts away despite not having attended to her injuries? Seriously? Way to demean and insult the EMT. The sheriff is there and both he and the principal blame Ember for this, despite having zero evidence, let alone proof. Ember runs away like a little child (forgetting about meeting up with her friends) and encounters a man with electric blue eyes who speaks in riddles and offers her no explanations for her witchy powers. She's interrupted by Ryan, and Electric Blue Eye Guy disappears like magic.

Ember Brycin and her friends Ryan, and Kennedy. No one in this book has a first name unless it's also a last name - except for Ben - or something weird like Eli Dragen, the hot bad boy. Trope much?

I'm sorry, but this isn't an original novel, not even close. Yes, the minor details are different, the character names are different, but this is essentially the same story that's been told a thousand times before and it's not worthy of being read. Some authors can take cliché and trope and make something truly new out of it, but that's not what's delivered here. I cannot recommend this one.

Death Before Decaf by Caroline Fardig

Rating: WARTY!

It’s my personal belief that first person PoV (worst person PoV!) novels ought to have a warning on them like the cigarette cartons do. Few authors can do them well, and when they’re not done well, they suck. The problem is that while you can leaf through a book in the library or in a bookstore, you can’t do that same thing with an ebook or an audio book. Sometimes you get to read a sample, but not always. All you usually have to go by is the blurb, and like The Doctor, blurbs lie! They certainly don’t warn you of voice.

That voice and a few plot problems aside, this book started out annoying me before I began warming to it. I guess means this author can carry that voice, which is amusing to me, because the story is, in part, about a character not being able to carry a voice – not in public that is. She also has an allergy, which is not nice in reality, but is a nice thing to read about in fiction, where we see so many flawless characters that it’s laughable. The problem with the main character for me, though, is that while she was commendably flawed and realistic in some respects, in others, she was also too stupid to live.

Juliet Langley has returned, almost decade later, to manage the not-exactly-originally-named coffee shop and diner that she worked in during her college years in Nashville, Tennessee. We don’t immediately learn what it was she studied in college, but if it was business management, then she evidently failed the course. The last place she managed went under after her partner/lover absconded with all the cash, and she evidently didn’t have the requisite skills to keep it afloat. Despite this disaster, her supposed best friend, who is amusingly named Peter, but behaves more like a dick, has drafted her in to help at the Java Jive after the death of his father.

I don’t get this best friend thing. This, for me, was one of the plot holes. Maybe they were besties in college, but it’s apparently been nearly a decade since they last saw each other, and Juliet evidently didn’t even attend the funeral, so the besties thing fell a bit flat for me. On top of this, Peter pretty much leaves Juliet hanging out to dry on her first day. Even though he’s around, he fails to overtly support her with the issues she has with the staff. Worse, Pete himself has apparently let this eatery go downhill as judged by the disgusting and irresponsible behavior of the day-staff, and their disrespectful attitude towards their new manager. I know he needs to let her establish her own chops, but he’s not going to do that by ostensibly distancing himself from her, and by being completely unapologetic for the awful conditions Juliet finds in the restaurant he’s supposedly been managing.

On her first day there, which is also her thirtieth birthday, Juliet finds herself administering an epi shot to a customer who is allergic to onions, who was served onion in his sandwich despite specifically requesting none. Yes, you can argue this idiot needed to check himself to be sure, but that doesn’t excuse the restaurant’s irresponsible serving of it, nor the hostility of the staff as Juliet tries to track down how this happened and prevent it happening again. Juliet definitely has her work cut out for her.

That same evening is open mike night and Pete further embarrasses Juliet, who he knows isn’t good with feeling exposed in public, by singing the first song, dedicating it to her and reminding her of her failure when she was in a band and forgot the words to a song she herself wrote. She’s never been on stage since (this is how limp she is - more on this anon) and here’s Peter, being a dick again, embarrassing her and reminding her of it. At this point I sincerely hoped she wasn't going to get involved with him. Which leads to the other plot hole – how come she never did get involved with him? These two had four years together and I'm sorry but it just beggars belief – except for Nora Ephon-style movie where this is a routine occurrence – that neither of them would have made a move on the other in that time.

Things go further downhill for Juliet when the body of the chief cook, Dave, is found in the dumpster outside the restaurant shortly after Juliet had balled him out (again) for sitting on the prep table. Now she’s a person of interest in his murder! Obviously she didn’t do it. It’s rare – and bad form - to write a first person PoV where the narrator is the murderer, but it can be done. Juliet is going to get with Peter despite his having a girlfriend, so obviously she’s not guilty. That much is a given. Personally, I think hunky customer Seth Davis did it, but since I usually get these guesses wrong, that’s not even a spoiler!

I have one question, though: why would a restaurant have voice mail? LOL!

Perhaps the biggest problem with this novel, for me, however, was complete lack of authenticity when Juliet takes up the detective baton and runs with it. She's not been accused of a thing, much less charged with anything, but she decides she's the best person to figure this out and starts taking all kinds of risky actions, and worse, forcing Peter to partner up with her in her crazy quest. There was absolutely no motivation for this. Yes, the detective had given her some straight talk and told her she was a person of interest, but she'd hardly been handcuffed and hauled in for questioning.

Worse, everything we had learned about Juliet to this point showed her to be a shy, retiring, wilting violet kind of a girl who would never do anything like this. Yes, she was a stereotypical redhead whom we're told - not shown, but told - has a fiery temper, but we had been given nowhere near enough cause to believe that this wimp would behave like she suddenly does, or that she had been given sufficient motivation to change her personality and behave like she does. To me, this abrupt switch was simply not credible.

As dissuaded as I was becoming from reading this, I was intent upon continuing, and I didn't decide enough was enough until Juliet, helping out in the kitchen, uncovered a tub hidden in the freezer that should never have been there. When she examined it, it had all kinds of odd things in it, including something she quickly learned belonged to Dave. Instead of immediately turning it over to the police, she started going through it, getting her fingerprints all over it. Never once did she think of calling the detective she'd met, and handing it over to him. Never once did Peter, who knew about all this, ever tell her she needed to turn it over to the police, either!

This is a woman who's smart enough to know you don't keep cornstarch in the freezer, yet too stupid to know that you don't conceal information from the police? I'm sorry but I don't read novels that make women look stupid unless that 'stupid women' is shown in process of wising up and getting her act together. This was just too larded-up with Le Stupide and far too far-fetched to take seriously, so I quit reading it right then and there. I guess I don't understand how a female author can write a demeaning novel about a female character like this. It's sad. I cannot rate this as a worthy read based on the portion I did read, which is about a third of the novel.

Academy Girls by Nora Carroll

Rating: WARTY!

I ditched this book at 90% in because there was one-the-hell-way-too many stanzas of over-rated Emily Dick and some for my taste. I honestly could not stand to read one more obscure-to-the-point-of-vacuous line from her. On top of that, I felt this was a bait and switch on two levels. I requested to read an advance review copy of this novel precisely because it wasn't (according to the blurb) a teen high school melodrama. It was, so I was led to believe, about an adult!

I've sworn off reading any more YA novels with "Academy" in the title, and this promised to turn that on its head by being adult-oriented, and focusing on a teacher at the purportedly prestigious Grove Academy instead of on the bitchy, air-headed girls who usually infest such stories. It wasn't. It was the latter going under the guise of the former. Worse than this even, was that this was really nothing more than an overblown attempt at explicating Dickinson drivel in place of telling a real story. I didn't even get the obsession with that poet; any such poetry would have served the same purpose hers did in this context.

On top of that, what story there was, was all over the place. It was flashing back on several levels and with such obsessive-compulsive dedication that I was at one point considering filing a lawsuit for whiplash. Even in the sections that were not dedicated flashbacks, there was an ostensibly plagiarized novel in play which was telling exactly the same story we were also being told in the annoyingly extensive flashbacks, if you can get your mind around that, and in annoyingly extensive detail. It was tedious, and I started routinely skipping these sections.

On top of that, the supposedly mature teacher was behaving like a teen herself around a certain other teacher who I highly suspected (rightly or wrongly, I can't say) was ankle-deep in whatever it was that happened during those flashbacks - which themselves flashed back to an even earlier generation where there was yet another murder. How this Academy managed to maintain its prestigious veneer with all of this going on was really the only unexplained mystery here for me.

Jane Milton - yes, that's really her name - was a student at Grove, left without a diploma, tried writing, failed, got married, failed, and now was forced to come back to her old school, cap in hand, begging for a job as a teacher, for which she was wholly unqualified. Her story is what interested me, but we never got that story except in passing, and in a way that felt like it was completely incidental to the other story/ies. Instead, and pretty much from day one, we got the mystery of what happened when she was in high school investigating, with her two "friends", what happened when her own mother would have been in high school. Convoluted doesn't begin to describe it adequately.

I think if maybe I'd had the time and patience - and sufficient Promethazine to get me through the dick poetry which slathered these pages with all the delicacy of a bull in a book store (and was in the final analysis, utterly irrelevant to the story except in the most pretentious way imaginable), I might have made it through this in one day and been able to actually keep track of the plethora of potential villains who were randomly popping up and ducking down like whack-a-mole characters, but to try and keep a handle on the endless names over multiple readings over many days was impossible, which robbed the story of any potential it might have had to retain my attention and favor.

I quickly lost interest in Jane, since she consistently proved herself to be a spineless idiot with nothing interesting to offer me. The only thing which prevented me from wishing she would be bumped-off was the fact that she was a single mom, but she wasn't even very good at that, either! Her relationship with her son was virtually non-existent and what did exist was almost completely unrealistic. I'm tempted to say that the story was disorganized, but that would involve using the word 'organized' in connection with this novel, and that would be too generous in describing this patchy mashup. I cannot recommend this at all.

Any Way The Wind Blows by E Lynn Harris

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audio book from the library, and it was read amateurishly by Dominic Hoffman, Bahni Turpin, and Mirron Willis.

Singer Yancey Harrington Braxton, aka Yancey B is in LA, her New York wedding to John "Basil" Henderson having been killed off at the last minute. Her first single "Any Way the Wind Blows" contains secrets about Basil, and Bart Dunbar might know what they are.

That's the sad plot of this absurd and pathetic effort at drama. First person PoV is the worst voice choice for most stories, and it's made much worse when its multiplied by three. It's worst still when it's read by people who don't even remotely capture the characters they're reading for, and instead make them irritating to listen to instead of interesting.

Yancey was one of the most boring and self-centered characters I've ever encountered. It was a actually a pleasure when someone else took over the narrative, but he was worse than Yancey. After listening to one disk of this audio book I had had more than enough. It was awful and I cannot recommend it. Twenty years ago, bisexuality might have been a big secret, but today you need more than that to be your novel's pivot point. Add unsafe sex proudly championed, and these characters are really nothing more than trash and not even recyclable trash.

Words of Silk by Sandra Brown

Rating: WARTY!

This novel creeped me out. It was bad enough that the story was unbelievably stupid and amateurish, but the sleazy voice of the male narrator (Richard Ferrone) - while it definitely fit the low-life main male character Deke (pronounced "Dick") - was completely inappropriate to the story. This was originally published in 1984 (that ought to tell you something!) and was re-published on April 1st, 2005 (that ought to tell you something, too!).

Wilting violet wet-rag Laney McLeod gets stuck briefly in an elevator with stalker, control-freak, sleaze-bag Deke Sargent. He should have been named Drill Sergeant because all he wants to do is own and punish her privates, and she lets him! The author sees not a single thing wrong with this. When the lights go briefly out, Dick moves in on Laney and starts talking off her coat and she has no problem with this jerk manhandling her without warning or permission, in a confined space where she can't escape, and in the dark.

Afterwards, and evidently overcome with a severe bout of Stockholm syndrome, Laney goes back to his place as soon as the elevator starts working and they spend the night together going at it like bunnies. She gets pregnant and runs like a chicken instead of telling him. He tracks her down and claims he's her husband and moves in on her and in with her, controlling her every thought and deed. And this is a romance? HORSE SHIT!

This dreck would be shame-worthy had it been written by a male author or as fan fiction, but for a female author to publish appalling trash like this, call it Words of Silk and do this not only once, but to republish it and dishonestly pretend it's romance is disgusting. Sandra Brown should be thoroughly ashamed of herself. I'm boycotting her.

Garden Princess by Kristin Kladstrup

Rating: WARTY!

This book seems like it's written for middle-graders (9-12 years) but the main character is seventeen. I'm not sure how well that will go down, but the protagonist, Adela, is one who made me feel, at least at first blush, was well-worth reading about - or in this case, listening to - but although there were amusing and interesting moments, overall, I can't rate this as a worthy read.

Her mom, Queen Cecile, was a commoner who caught the king's eye, but who has evidently learned her 'royal' to a T and has become rather condescending, elite, and arrogant - character flaws of which Adela is well aware. Adela doesn't take after her mom; she's a princess, but it appeared, originally that she was not your usual Disney version. Later this version was revised. Adela at first appeared to be somewhat overweight, but later this was clarified to mean she was tall. She was supposedly not considered to be that great looking, but in the end all of this was practically retracted, and she turned out to be very much a Disney princess.

She had little time for fluff and fancy, but that was all she really had to set her apart, but that's all been done before. She's self-possessed, self-motivated, a bit of a rebel, and her interest is not in attracting a handsome prince in the bloom of youth to her bed, but in the flowers in her own royal garden beds. Sadly though, she ends up being your standard maiden in distress who has to be rescued by a man, and I rather lost interest in it at that point.

Given her horticultural interests - which are actually not that special in the end, it's no surprise that when she learns of a garden party being thrown by the Lady Hortensia, who is rumored to have the most beautiful plants in the kingdom, Adela is determined to go even though she has had no invitation. Garth, the son of the palace gardener, did receive an invitation even though he's never met Hortensia. Curiouser and curiouser! Adela invites herself, and is accompanied by her aunt Marguerite and by Garth.

Lady Hortensia, it turns out, is a witch who is still practicing in a kingdom where magic was supposedly either stamped out or simply died out, if it ever existed. Maybe it was just myth and legend? Adela is about to find out the truth, and it's really rather disconcerting to say the least. All of Hortensia's flowers are bloom though fall is well advanced. More curiously, there is a talking magpie named Krazo, which has an irresistible bird's eye view of the guests' jewels.

If the secret of the magpie is disturbing, then the secret of the flowers is horrifying, but in this world of secrets, maybe Krazo knows one of which Adela an avail herself, because there is no other help for her. If she's to resolve what's gone wrong here, she must do it on her own initiative so we;re told, but in the end she doesn't, and it's this failing - this starting out like this will be a different and female-empowering story and then ending up just another sappy love story that turned me off . I can't recommend this one.

First Love by Ivan Turgenev

Rating: WARTY!

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian author who was born 18 years into the nineteenth century (two years after Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus and died almost exactly the same number of years from its end. This novella, Первая любовь (Pervaia Liubov - First Love) was written in 1860. And this is yet another of my forlorn attempts at reading classics, I'm sorry to report.

The novel features three men who agree to tell each other of their first love. We get only one of these stories - one which was evidently rooted in Turgenev's own experience with his first love Catherine Shakovskoy which was, according to Wikipedia, "...an infatuation that lasted until his discovery that Catherine was in fact his own father's mistress."

The man who tells this story, Vladimir Petrovich, who is only sixteen when he meets twenty-one-year old Zinaïda Alexandrovna Zasyekina, an impoverished princess who is staying in rather lowly circumstances with her mother. The poor circumstances of the princess, and the quite well-to-do circumstances of Petrovich put them on something of a par with each other, but the arrogant, self-obsessed, narcissistic young princess sees him merely as one more moth drawn to her flame. Petrovich is too dumb in his youth to see through her games.

As in Turgenev's own life, Petrovich eventually learns Zinaïda 's interest is only in his own dad, Pyotr. The story was tedious and pointless. It wasn't even very well written, but to be fair, with a translation, it's hard to say how much of this is the original author's and how much the translator's. Here’s a writing issue to consider, however: the following struck me as an oddly-written sentence. I don’t know if this was in the original, or if it arose out of the translation from the Russian, but this is what I read: “I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.” I can see how the second clause follows from the "I could" of the first, but adding "and" might have made it less of a jarring read. It took me a second to figure out what the author was trying to do. Isn’t "I could have stayed in that room for ever and have never left that place." A bit more clear?!

Some sentences ran on and on and on to paragraph length, such as this one: "Upon this my father informed my mother that he remembered now who this lady was; that he had in his youth known the deceased Prince Zasyekin, a very well-bred, but frivolous and absurd person; that he had been nicknamed in society ‘le Parisien,’ from having lived a long while in Paris; that he had been very rich, but had gambled away all his property; and for some unknown reason, probably for money, though indeed he might have chosen better, if so, my father added with a cold smile, he had married the daughter of an agent, and after his marriage had entered upon speculations and ruined himself utterly.". I cannot recommend this novel./p>

Best Lesbian Romance 2011 Various Authors

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a collection of assorted very short stories which are all focused on lesbian relationships. A tiny few were very good which is why I am recommending this. Some of them were awful. I refuse to believe that these stories constitute the best lesbian romance for a whole year! Either that or the editor (who wrote the last story) doesn't have the first clue as to the difference between romance and adolescent lust. With very, very few exceptions, this book seemingly set out to prove that lesbianism is nothing more than cheap and shallow lust. I can't imagine why it's referred to as romance since there's so little romance in evidence here.

If this kind of thing had been written with one of the protagonists being a guy, it would be considered a superficial overdose of juvenile hormones. I don't think lesbians should get a free pass. Is it not possible to write a romantic short stories? I know that part of romance is great physical attraction, but that's not all it is by any means. I thought a lesbian perspective would appreciate the mental as being superior to the physical, but I evidently thought wrong! Either that or I'm reading the wrong authors.

The thing about the best lesbian romances is that there really wasn't any sex either, which is the other reason for which something like this might have been written - as soft-core porn. All of the stories were pretty much about some woman who was not up for a relationship, or who hadn't had one in a while, or who was sour on them, meeting someone brand new and pretty much launching herself at her new acquaintance's lips, or her new acquaintance launching herself at her lips.

It was pretty much all about new relationships, almost instant kissing (just add warm lips) and lustful thoughts about bodies. Only one story was about an existing relationship, and that was just plain odd. Fortunately, only one or two stories actually depicted sex, though. The saddest thing is that very nearly all of these tales were essentially the same trite story with only the character's names and ages, and the setting being changed. It was romance by numbers, where the template was pre-drawn and all you had to do as an author was color between the lines. Boring.

For some reason I had the idea that lesbian romances would not be as cheap, shallow, juvenile, and tawdry as hetero romances. I thought there might be a different perspective on it with some deeper insights. I'm sorry to say that I was so wrong! Anyway, here we go with a few or fewer) words about each one.

Hearts and Flowers by Theda Hudson
There's a somewhat dysfunctional relationship between Gina and Jen. To me it didn't feel realistic. That is to say it began feeling like it was real, but it grew increasingly fake to me. I found it hard to see that a girl who likes to be on the receiving end of (some mild) BDSM ends up rather cruelly punishing the woman who likes to give it, and without a really good reason.

The best way to pursue a relationship in which both parties are evidently seriously invested is to be open about I - not to walk out in a huff, offer neither solace nor information, and hope your partner figures it all out before it's too late. On the good side, this was technically well-written and had some nice moments, but it had a fake feeling - like I was reading fiction, which is exactly what it was, but it shouldn't feel like that to a reader.

Mother Knows Best by Rachel Kramer Bussel
This is a Very short story about how Stacy met Tanya, the love of her life. Stacy is 38 and her Mother is trying to match-make her not with a guy but with a girl. Stacy likes a girl whose ass she can smack?! This is too stories in a row where one partner likes to inflict pain (even if only mildly) on the other. This was not a great introduction to a series purportedly about love in my opinion!

There was also a lot of objectifying, which is curious form female authors, yet here it is! That said, this story did have a certain sweetness to it, and Tanya definitely came out of this looking as hot as she was purported to be when Stacy's mom told her about this new girl she wanted her daughter to meet.

Twelfth Night by Catherine Lundhoff
The unfortunately named BJ is in lust with Tasha, a fellow player in their production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night which turns out to be more like As You Dyke It turning into The Comedy of Eros or Amid Sappho's Night Dream. Nadine has the hots for BJ, who has the hots for Tasha. Sara, BJ's supposed best friend is pissy. At the last minute BJ decides to relinquish her role as Viola and take the Duke Orsino's role instead so that the more suitable Tasha can take the starring role in order to impress the critic who will be at opening night.

It's pretty obvious from the start how this is going to play out. It's one of those YA stories where the guy (or less frequently the girl) doesn't realize that the best friend is actually also the ideal partner. You'd have to be pretty stupid not to realize this, and you'd have to be a moron to go that long without sharing your feelings or without them becoming obvious from numerous hints and circumstances along the way, so I wasn't impressed with this one.

Boiled Peas by Clifford Henderson

This one is about Penny and Lil a couple in their mid-twenties, who aren't even a couple when the story begins but you know for a fact they will be one when it ends. For me it felt just a wee bit too convenient and fairy-tale-like, but maybe twee was what the author was aiming for in translating this into another language, so to speak. It is very convenient Lil happens to come over on the very night when Penny, feeling annoyingly sorry for herself on her birthday, is about to eat boiled peas with her champagne. Lil is the apartment's new maintenance person, and Penny is about to celebrate her birthday and remind herself that her mother was right when she compared her daughter to the princess who was obsessed with the pea.

It's also a bit too convenient that Penny, as a self-diagnosed ice queen, suddenly thaws after knowing this girl for all of a hour. I could only buy this one as a fairy tale.

I think I will Love You by Rebecca S Buck
"She was beautiful in a striking sense"! In what way, I found myself wondering, is something beautiful yet not in a striking sense? This story - the story of how wounded Carolyn, and dominant, shameless Karmen pair up, marked three out of four stories so far here where physical appearance is held up as a positive trait! It also, disturbingly, marked two out of four stories wherein the prospective partners leapt into depth (if not bed) on the first date (in one case literally, and in the other, for all practical purposes). Is this what we want to represent lesbians as being - half the time they're committed in one way or another, the other half they ought to be committed for being as loose as the gravel on Carolyn's driveway?

Camellias by Anna Meadows
This is yet another example of a rush to sex

The Panacea by Colette Moody
Simone and no, not Nina, but Hope - a crashing personification - meet in a coffee bar, except that Hope is serving the brews and Simone comes in feeling bruised after being laid off. All Hope has in mind is getting laid on Simone.

Lost and Found by Andrea Dale
We couldn't get two screens into this one before lust raised its ugly head. Lara, in Hawaii for god knows what reason since she isn't attending the sessions at the conference, wants to drag Evie into bed the moment she lays eyes on her. So here am I, half way through this romance book and there's been zero romance, not so much as a spell of magic, no hint of subtle seduction, in fact, nothing but lust raising its ugly head. Do lesbians really need this rap laid at their door?

If this one had been written about a guy picking up a woman, it would rightly be pilloried. Do lesbians get a bye where guys don't when it comes to objectifying women? I think not. We're supposed to be treating genders equally are we not? Does romance, when it comes to lesbian relationships mean nothing but the shallow and superficial? I hope not.

A Witchy Woman Called My Name by Merina Canyon
I don't know if Merina Canyon is really this author's name, but it's a pretty cool name regardless. This was a good story with an ending I totally expected, so no surprises except at how clueless the main protagonist was. Still a decent read and more romantic than most stories here.

Rebound by Charlotte Dare
Is a story of a mature woman who falls for an even more mature one, and while in some ways it's charming and has an element of realism to it, it still focuses purely on lust and physical attraction (and is a bit more graphic than most stories here). Despite a happy ending - marriage, it has disturbing overtones of stalking in it.

Things I Missed by Kathleen Warnock
This was one of the most enjoyable stories, if tinged with sadness. It's about regrets and brushing off regrets, and it's about cruel injustice and faded friendships. It's very different on tone form many of the others. There's no room here for the shallow and superficial, for the lust and hormonal rampages of so many other stories in this collection. It's a mature and serious story and was very much appreciated.

Dirty Laundry by Cheyenne Blue
Another author with a cool name! Set in Eire, this truly appropriately-titled story is about the appalling cruelties organized religion is capable of perpetrating, in this case upon "wayward girls" in an evil convent where "Love thy neighbor" never did get any air-play evidently. Maura is the new girl dumped in the convent, torn from her baby and is fortunate that Eileen chooses to befriend her without thought for anything she would get out of it. Eileen's sin was to be unwillingly molested by a priest. What she does get out of it is a lifelong friendship and the love she was starved of for nineteen years before she met Maura. This was a brilliant, sweetly-written, though hard-to-read-at-times story and made this collection worth enjoying, all by itself.

The Game by Elaine Burns
This one was also one of the best. Short and to the point, perfectly titled, beautifully written. What looks like a first encounter over a pool table has much more going on than you'd imagine! Who's going to break first?!

The Gift by Sacchi Green
I was starting to wonder at this point whether giving your daughter a cool name means she will grow up to be an author of lesbian romance stories! This one was excellent if rather fantastical. Unlike the other stories, this one had an element of the magical to it - and I don't mean purely the magic of romance! The question of this Christmas night was: how are Lou - stuck on an unexpected tour of duty in Afghanistan, and Meg - urged by Lou to go enjoy their planned vacation in Switzerland anyway - going to get through this family night without each other, their own family, to hold hands and hug? Maybe the odd gift box Lou was handed by an Afghani woman she helped can help Lou in turn? Or is that just too ridiculous?

Rock Palace by Miel Rose
This story is about Taylor and Lilly (not Lilly Taylor) - a late twenties early thirties couple. Taylor grew up on a farm and feels a need to get back to her roots, but she's never had a girl she could take back to those roots with her. Finally Lilly came along and Now Taylor thinks that there's a possibility that she can have the best of both worlds. The story was gorgeous - just gorgeous.

The last story, by the editor, I'm not even going to talk about because it was so awful. So most of them turned my stomach, but a precious few, a happy few, a band of sisters; for she to-day that shares her story with me
shall be my sister; be she ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle her condition. I recommend this for those few.

Nickel Mountain by John Gardner

Rating: WARTY!

I simply could not get into this. It was a story - perhaps a form of authorial wish fulfillment - about a 42 year old guy who marries a 17 year old girl who has become pregnant from her no-account boyfriend. I didn't get that far actually because I gave up on it around chapter seven. The story was immensely tedious and chronically boring and did nothing to draw me in, or to make me like a single one of the characters who were introduced. I very quickly lost interest in the characters, the setting, and whatever it was that the future held for these tedious people. I can't recommend it.

Those Girls by Lauren Saft

Title: Those Girls
Author: Lauren Saft
Publisher: Hachette
Rating: WARTY!

Those Girls isn't a very original title; there are several others with this title or a variation on it, so make sure you check for authorship before you pick one of those girls to buy. For me, I won't be buying, because it failed to entertain me at all and I can't recommend it. I expected better from a master of fine arts, but what I got was more like something written by a mistress than a master. It was published by Little, Brown Books for young readers (now owned by Hachette), but I in no way would ever recommend a book like this for a young reader - or anyone else.

One good indicator of whether you liked a novel or not is that it stays with you when you've read it - or it fails to. It wasn't very long ago at all that I read this, yet I barely remember it as I write this review. I do recall a lot of words which came to mind as I read it, though: words like "disappointment" and "poor" and "incredible" - that last one unfortunately in a very negative sense. It's never a good sign if a novel is so lacking in distinction that it floats away as soon as you've closed the cover, and this one floated more like the Titanic.

From a purely technical PoV the writing was not bad, and by that I mean that there were no gross spelling or grammatical errors, so if you set your sights low enough you might enjoy this. There were some amusingly mis-worded sentences, however, such as when one of the three main characters is purty-ing herself up in the car as her friend drives, and we read, "She pulled her silky blonde hair into a ponytail, opened her mouth and applied eye-liner in my rear view mirror..."!

There are at least two kinds of wrong here. She's applying eye-liner to her mouth? Interesting! Who knows? Teens do crazy stuff, so maybe she was. It just sounded wrong to me, but then I'm neither teen nor female. I just play one on TV. No, of course I'm kidding! My only other question is did she apply the eye-liner to the rear-view mirror or to her mouth? Or did she actually apply it around her eyes and the sentence was just badly written?

But those faux pas are no big deal. They're amusing, and we've all written something like that and read it back later and wondered what the heck we were thinking! It's what makes writing fun no matter which side of the page you're on.

The problem wasn't with the technical writing, it was with the entire story itself. I can forgive some poor grammar and spelling, and even some poor writing if I get a really good story, but I can't forgive a really poor story. If this author "masterfully conveys what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl," then I'd hate to read one which tosses it on your table without even wiping the Formica first, because that's what this felt like.

I do believe there are some people like those girls, but I cannot honestly believe that sixteen year old girls in general are anything like this. If they are, then I despair for them and for our future.

The story is of three rather clueless and vacuous teens. At first I thought they were seventeen; now I think they were sixteen, but even so, their behavior was juvenile, and all three of them needed to seriously get a life. Even at sixteen you need to be looking at what the heck you're going to do after graduation. Hopefully it's college but if not, you still need a career plan.

Not a single one of these girls had a single thing go through their mind that wasn't either a bitchy thought or an obsessive thought about boys or sex. I am not kidding. Not a one of them had any interests, hobbies, or pastimes - not even relatively frivolous ones like dancing in clubs. I mean they literally had zero interests - they were that shallow. Not a one of them had any occupation - and yes, I know they were spoiled-brat rich kids, but you'd think that one or two of them might like to get some job experience and an independent source of income. The sole exception was Alex's joining a band. More about that anon.

Now I know that too many teenagers are very narrowly-focused for the most part, but no teen worth reading about is as narrowly-focused as these three were. Amy Heckerling made a very amusing and successful movie about a clueless teenage girl, but this novel wasn't that movie by a long script. The novel wasn't funny at all. It was sad, and not in a happy way. I charge the girls with multiple counts of gross cluelessness - about their lives, about their families, about their boyfriends, but worst of all, about each other.

They were tunnel-vision, seeing everything through a telescope turned on themselves blinkered. And it was boring. Not a single one of them showed any sign, throughout the entire novel, of growing up, or of realizing how shallow they were, or of changing for the better, or of even thinking that anything was really wrong. I can't empathize with people like that. I can't like them. I sure don't want to read about them, but I actually read this to the end hoping something good would come out of it. It didn't. It needs to be re-titled Those Clowns.

Why did I pick it up?

I picked it up for the sole reason that the blurb mentioned that Alex was secretly in a band, That's what I was interested in - a sixteen year old girl with something to say and a voice to say it with. I got none of that. The thing with the band was for all practical purposes irrelevant and immaterial to the story. It went nowhere. It played no meaningful part in the story. I felt robbed with this bait-and-switch in the blurb, but this is what happens when you let Big Publishing&Trade; effectively own your work. You get misleading blurbs, and a cover which says - and very loudly too - don't worry what's in this girl's head, just take a look at her hot bod. That's all she's worth. Ironically, it's the perfect cover for this story. We're told of Alex that she's "...secretly in love with the boy next door.." but she's too clueless to know she's in love. That's how dumb she is, and she never wises-up.

None of the girls is smart enough to realize that all they know is a tiny insignificant part of the world, and until they get out there and really explore it, they will remain clueless, ignorant and unadventurous as they are. Alex is clueless, Mollie is ignorant of the fact that she's in a co-dependent relationship, and Veronica, the one who appears most adventurous of all, is held fast in her lifestyle by a cheap and gaudy leash of her own making. They act far more like thirteen than ever they do sixteen, and they have the mentality to match. Spin the bottle? Truth or dare? seriously?

Why I think it should be put down.

All of "those girls" are painfully stupid. The are borderline alcoholics, and they routinely have unprotected sex without a thought for the sexual history of their partner. They have a pedophile teacher in their school which not a one of them even considers reporting to the authorities. All of them smoke heavily and indulge regularly in drugs, like those lifestyles are completely risk-free. And none of their behavior has any real consequences or teaches them a single thing. On addition to this, there's chronic slut-shaming going on throughout the novel even between the three supposed friends. There is nothing appealing about any of these characters and nothing interesting about their loser life story. I cannot recommend this at all.

Ms Conception by Jen Cumming

Title: Ms Conception
Author: Jen Cumming
Publisher: Colborne Communications
Rating: WARTY!

This novel is not to be confused with Ms Conception by Pamela Power, which I have not read, although that name, wonderful as it is, I think is beaten by 'Jen Cumming', as the author of a novel about pregnancy! This story details (and I do mean details) a woman's desperate (and I do mean desperate) effort to get pregnant.

You would think, with all we hear from our religious overlords, that pregnancy is something that happens as soon as two people from complementary genders look at each other, and especially so if they're teenagers, but the truth is that even a fertile couple has only about a one in five chance of conceiving during any given month (assuming average sexual activity).

Infertility affects about one in ten couples, and it has been rising of late, but this may be due to the fact that more and more couples are choosing to have children later in life, whereas peak fertility occurs between about eighteen and twenty-five. Women over forty have about a one in ten chance of becoming pregnant even with assisted fertility treatments, whereas men are the scalawags who can successfully father children much later in life, but, as Woody Allen remarked, they're too old and frail by then to pick them up....

It turns out that about 40% of cases of infertility are due the male partner and the same for the female, with the final 20% due to both partners equally. It can be devastating, even marriage-wrecking, but that very much depends upon the individuals. The author evidently underwent these treatments, which in turn no doubt provided the raw material for this story, but this doesn't tell us how much of the story she tells is personal to her and her partner as opposed to being completely made-up from scratch.

I hope it wasn't too personal, because I have to say that I neither liked nor warmed-up to either main character in this novel - or to any of the other characters for that matter. I did not like Abigail Nichols or Jack, her husband (yes, another tedious novel with a main character named Jack!). The two of them bordered dangerously on alcoholism and were so one-dimensional that I almost couldn't see them at all. The entire novel is focused on getting pregnant and then being pregnant. It's like this is the only raison d'être for either of these people, and particularly for Abigail. Jack was notably neglectful and even dysfunctional at times. They literally had no life beyond conception, which makes them completely uninteresting as characters or people and rather scary as potential parents.

As I said, I don't know how autobiographical this novel was, if at all, so this may or may not have been what life was like, but it if was at all autobiographical, it's very sad. I don't doubt that there actually are people where the "need" to get pregnant overrides everything else in their life, but this doesn't mean it makes for either an engrossing or an edifying story.

What this actually felt like was the Bill Murray movie Groundhog day, where we kept going through the same things over and over again, with only minor changes, but unlike the movie, this was not amusing, it was simply boring. Instead of being moving or empathy-inducing, Abigail was merely irritating. I kept wanting someone to grab her by the shoulders, look her in the eye and say, "Abby, grow a pair before you fizzle out like a balloon farting around the room until it collapses, shriveled and flat."

It was pretty obvious that pregnancy was going to result sooner or later, so it's no spoiler to say it, but it means that this novel really had nothing new or different to offer, and the fact that Abigail was a chronic whiner was off-putting. I know that people in her position are entitled to some self-pity, but it seemed endless with Abigail, and it didn't help that it was told from her first person PoV, which magnified and amplified this and made it far worse than it could have been.

The book blurb assures us: "One thing she knows for sure: a healthy sense of humor (and the occasional glass of red wine) is the best coping strategy," but this was not true at all. There was nothing healthy about Abigail, and there certainly wasn't "the occasional glass of red wine." There was copious amounts of drink, and times when she and her husband got outright drunk. What is this couple, nineteen years old?The sense of humor was almost completely absent. Once in a while there would be a remark or observation that was actually funny, but for the most part any attempt at humor was washed out by the endless and tedious whining and self-pity. The funniest thing about it was, as another reviewer has pointed out, that the clichéd image on the front cover looks more like someone's butt than ever it does a pregnant abdomen! But random covers are what you get when you don't self publish.

One of the saddest things is that Abigail seriously needed some psychiatric treatment or therapy, and she wasn't getting it, and no one - not even the many medical personnel she encountered - noticed how bad her condition was. Her mental state and her drinking problem were not normal and not healthy. Her work was being affected, although god only knows why she persisted in working in such a hostile and genderist environment. Her place of employment was as politically incorrect and inappropriate as you can get, yet never once was it ever hinted that there was anything wrong here, or that serious change was called for.

In many ways Abigail was her own worst enemy. She never told her employers what she was up to, and so was seen as taking endless, 'frivolous' time off work. Her obsession with getting pregnant was actually interfering with her work because of her repeated absences, and then she has the hypocrisy to complain that the new hire is stealing all her resources? The new hire actually had all the hallmarks of a corporate spy, but since I didn't finish this novel, I can't say if she actually was.

The thing is that Abigail never actually seemed to work. She was all about delegation and the writing made it seem like she spent the bulk of her time doing activities related to getting pregnant and the hell with her work beyond a sporadic catch-up blitz. She tells us how much time she spends waiting around in medical clinics, but instead of taking her laptop and working from where-ever she was, she sat around doing nothing, or she took a book to read. Great work ethic, Abigail. This woman is neither smart nor organized, nor is she a responsible employee.

This wasn't even the worst part of Abigail's behavior. Before she even considered approaching reliable and scientifically-proven medical treatment, she ran around trying all manner of bullshit woo 'remedies', which of course failed. When she did return to reality, she didn't like the medical doctor she had - or at least not his abusive time-keeping, yet she was evidently too timid or lacking in motivation to change and find a better one.

She whined constantly about her mother in law, who was, I confess and royal pain in the ass, but then she also whined about her sister who accidentally became pregnant, and her husband's ex-girlfriend who also became pregnant. I don't know who raised Abigail to think it's all about Abigail, and that there's something wrong with other people having a life independently of hers, but it was really quite sickening to repeatedly read of the lavish pity parties to which she treated herself on these occasions. Abigail was not remotely likable at all.

Another issue was money. We were told so many things in this novel and shown very little, and one of the worst things was the money question. We were told time and time again how expensive these treatments would be, and how it would have to be put-off because of the cost, and yet suddenly we're doing all these supposedly expensive things and money isn't an object. Her husband magically gets yet another bonus whenever they need cash for something. It was farcical. Never once was any thought spared for the more than forty million Americans who live in poverty, some of whom are no doubt infertile and who have no access to the resources which Abigail did, and no resources to raise a child even if they had one.

Abigail and Jack were both high-end professionals, evidently paid handsomely for their "work" and yet they appeared to appreciate none of it. They had everything they wanted, never went asking for food or clothes (or anything), and yet Abigail still selfishly wallowed in how badly-done-to she was. Anyone is entitled to feel bad about their circumstances once in a while, but Abigail made an art-form out of it. Like I said, she was not a likable person.

Likewise there was hardly a word spoken about adoption. I don't recall seeing where this story was set, but I may have missed that. I assume it was Canada since the author is Canadian, and Canada has some 45,000 orphaned children. The US has over twice that number and a further 400,000 living without permanent families, yet adoption was barely mentioned in this novel. A really good educational opportunity as squandered there.

So, in short, I did not like this novel. I found it obnoxious at times and pitiful (in the wrong way) at other times. There was nothing to get me interested, let alone keep my interest, and it quickly became too tedious to read when there are other authors with better conceptions awaiting. Life's too short and too pregnant with opportunity to live there with your legs in the air waiting for the story to finish anesthetizing you.

Memories and Marco by Hollis Shiloh

Title: Memories and Marco
Author: Hollis Shiloh
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
pub.

This novel sounded really interesting from the blurb (but then don't they all?!). The premise is quite odd. It's a retired boxer telling his story of his encounters with a younger man, Marco, who provides physical therapy, but who does it by magic, not by science. Clearly this is a premise ripe for erotica, and that would be fine if that's what you're into, but I was hoping for more than that, otherwise why introduce magic? The problem was that I didn't get more, I got less. And I'm not into erotica. Nor am I into first person PoV stories which present the narrator as any more self-obsessed than first person PoV already implies.

I should have known this was going south when I read the names of the two main characters: Jace and Marco. Honestly? Why not just name them Trope and Cliché? But you know I could have managed even that had there been something worth reading. There wasn't. The entire text, for the portion that I read, consisted of Jace's internal monologue as he went back and forth to his magical therapy with Marco. There was absolutely nothing whatsoever to build any atmosphere. There was no description of the surroundings - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel of the place. Even when Marco made physical contact while applying his magical remedy, there was nothing - no spark - nothing! It was just conversation and internalizing, and even that had problems.

Jace was constantly aware of everything which Marco did and said, almost to the point of monitoring his heartbeat, and the signals of Marco's interest in Jace were crystal clear to anyone who wasn't a moron, yet for no reason whatsoever (at least none that was made plain to this reader), this moron was dismissing it all, almost with a sense of desperate panic, like this interest would sully him somehow. Oh, look at his wide eyes when he looks at me. No he's not interested. Oh, he touched me again! No this could never happen. He's smiling at me in that special way. He must not like me at all. He's so very attentive to me. He obviously can't stand me. I am not kidding, it was like that all the way though and it was tedious reading.

Here's an example of the author striving for erotic content, describing the two of them sitting in the park eating soft pretzels they just bought:

I took one last bite slowly, and then looked down at my salty, sticky fingers and brushed them on the edges of my trousers. It would just be cruel to suck them one by one, in front of him.

Self-obsess much? You know, if it has been just the one thing, in a decent context, or said in fun or self-deprecatingly, it would have been fine, but it wasn't. This was one of many such comments very early in the story, and it makes no sense, since they had pretty much just met. How much self-adoration in a main character can a reader stand?! Whatever the limit is, it was exceeded astronomically here, and clearly what the author is telling us is that this isn't a romance at all - it's just lust and sex and there's nothing else to it. It was at that point, at the quote above, that I quit reading this.

Rather than take the road less traveled, the author went by mass transit, and I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in the path most trampled, but that wasn't the worst offense believe it or not! Note that these are two adult guys, but there is a large age difference between them. That wouldn't have been a problem except that every time Jace thinks about Marco, it's in terms of Marco being a child: large eyes, soft lips, smooth skin, small buttocks. He's infantilizing this guy continually, and it's all physical.

There are homophobic morons out there who are so stupid that they cannot even begin to grasp the quantum gap between pedophilia and male homosexuality. Intriguingly, these same people never conflate pedophilia and lesbianism - that ought to tell you all you need to know about what ignorant bigots they are. That said though, I honestly don't think it's a good idea to risk handing these jerks any more ammunition - through writing poorly - than they've already invented for themselves, when it's just as easy to go the extra mile and produce original and inventive ways of describing love in fiction.

I can't recommend this.