Author: Sonia Koso
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
Not to be confused with Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller (which I have not read), this is fiction and set partly in Austin, Texas. I like to read novels set in places I know or have known. That said, it actually didn't seem like my kind of novel except that the blurb did its job and lured me in. I was intrigued by the idea of main character Carrie Pryce coming home unexpectedly from her spa weekend, finding her husband going at it with a youthful French girl, and shooting him in the ass (accidentally, of course). These things happen.
After that it went downhill for me, with Carrie retreating to her home town where she hangs with a wildly varied bunch of older women, including one who is ninety and a "pair of twins". I found that description hilarious. Do twins come in any other issue than a pair? I know one twin can die and thereby leave the other on their own, but he or she is still a twin right, even though the other isn't extant? Or is it possible to get twins in numbers higher than two?!
The author also made a faux pas with the French term joie de vivre, rendering it inaccurately as joie de vie. The line would have been funnier if, instead of reading "...his joie de vivre turned green" it had read, "...his joie de vivre became joie de vert" or something along those lines (or those airlines! LOL!).
Some critics have viewed this novel as 'strong Texas women' taking care of their own, but I don't buy into this strong /INSERT STATE NAME HERE/ women nonsense. Women in general are strong, it doesn't matter what state or even nation they hail from. Not all of them are strong, of course but probably a lot more of them than you might guess, so I didn't see anything unusual, noteworthy or surprising about their behavior.
That said, this was not a novel about strong women, but about rich, idle women with little to do but gossip and get into each other's business. Included with these women was gay guy who was so stereotypical he wasn't even remotely real, and a couple of husbands who were so thinly-painted that they were nothing more than screen-printed T-shirts sported by two of the women. Other than fashion and home décor, the descriptive portion of the book was non-existent, and so all that we were left with was smart-mouth and smart-ass, which quickly became tedious.
What I did notice was that all of these women were very well-off, so they had the time, freedom, and resources to help, something which far too few women have even today. It would have made for a more interesting story had they been impoverished and faced this same domestic problem in Carrie's life. I don't know this author, but I got the strong feeling that this novel was very much autobiographical - not necessarily down to the fine details, or to shooting of anyone, but in terms of the characters and how they interact - but it made me wonder what she would write next, having blown all of this in her first novel.
The problem, of course, with having these purportedly strong women take over Carrie's life is that it did nothing more strongly than it did highlight how thoroughly weak, helpless, and needy Carrie was. There's nothing wrong with having friends of course, and especially supportive friends who rally round at a time like this, but this still leaves an impression that Carrie is somehow inept, or handicapped in some way. That's not a good way to portray her. There's no doubt that someone going through what she did would feel betrayed, hurt, lost, and adrift, but The fact that she takes no steps to move out of that, and towards a towards a divorce (in the fifty percent or so of this novel that that I read) isn't constructive or interesting. What it shows is how utterly shows how paralyzed and inactive she is and that's not remotely flattering or endearing. The fact that none of the other women even broached divorce (in the part I read) shows how lacking in pro-active measures these supposedly strong women truly were.
Thus the 'strong women' aspect of the story was undermined to a disturbing degree, Indeed, it seemed to suggest that Carrie's real 'handicap' was that she's female! This impression was further exacerbated by the fact that Carrie's problem is evidently completely solved by her falling for the most stereotypical studly male imaginable. This isn't something you want to do in the novel that this was supposed to be, but it's what we got, unfortunately, and it's one of the reasons why I'm rating this negatively. The other I'll discuss shortly. Admittedly I didn't finish this, so I may have read this wrong, but by the half-way mark I had read enough to have serious déjà vu (or perhaps in this case déjà lu) and not want to read any more.
The author jumps around a lot in her story-telling and she puts in a lot of back story, which to me was annoying because it bogged the whole story down. I found myself skipping the large swathes of info-dump simply to get back to the action. Unfortunately, there was far too little that might be termed action. Although it was nice and a bit unexpected to get Jake's PoV, this really contributed nothing to the story, which I viewed as Carrie's, yet even she appeared to be merely along for the ride instead of moving and shaking.
Jake is Carrie's husband, and although he has a PoV, he doesn't have a leg to stand on, being the stereotypical philanderer. Indeed, there were too many stereotypes. With a name like Carrie it would have been hilarious had she gone all Carrie White on Jake's juvenile, mid-life-crisis, unfaithful ass instead of ricocheting a 32 caliber bullet into it, but this isn't that kind of story unfortunately.
Here is Jake's problem (aside from being a moron): "Jake momentarily thought about how beautiful Carrie had been" He didn't think what a good friend she was, what a great companion, how strong, how intelligent, how easy to be with, how wonderful, how pro-active, how independent, what a good mother, what a fine person. None of the above. It was all about beauty. But the truth is that this wasn't really Jake's problem, it was the author's problem. I'll get back to this.
We're told in the blurb that "Carrie meets Rhett Richards. He's an attractive oil field worker who can make women think un-Christian thoughts by the mere act of wearing a pair of tight wranglers." Once again this made Carrie look like a weak women in need of a manly man to give her some spine. It was insulting and clichéd in the extreme. Rhett, seriously? Pathetic.
The blurb said that these women are known as the "Presbyterian Mafia". We're told that they "have a book club that never reads, a garden club that doesn't garden, and a bible study class that gossips about the Methodists." They're also evidently "known around town for antics including cat-fights, car chases and Voodoo rituals." None of this suggests strong women, and it isn't even evident in the fifty percent or so of the novel I read before I quit in disgust. What that felt like to me was a cheap bait and switch and I didn't appreciate it.
The problem for me by that point is that there was no evidence whatsoever that Carrie was ever actually going to do anything. She's completely passive and the only things which happen are those which happen to her, not because of anything she initiated. She doesn't make things happen, and frankly she became totally boring after her initial shooting to stardom, as it were. The way her character was written was insulting to women, dishonest to the blurb (which wasn't at all a surprise let's face it) and boring to read. I know she was going through a lot, but she didn't remotely look like she would ever take the reins, not even when she got to ride the horse!
What really made me quit this book though, was reading the word "beautiful" one time too many. This author is obsessed with describing every main female character as beautiful, and even some who were not really main characters. Consequently, these were not remotely real women, and I cannot abide reading about female characters who are rendered patently false by poor writing. Yes there are beautiful women even if you define beautiful by popular, skin-deep acclaim as this author does, but they do not usually make for interesting stories. You need people who are beautiful inside for that. Here's the shallow litany:
"Deane was still beautiful"
"with beautiful young Gloria"
"Carrie was still beautiful"
"her parents were still beautiful as could be"
"Katie Dell was still a beautiful woman"
"Serving the most beautiful and popular girl"
"but you are just so beautiful" (this from "Rhett" not because she's beautiful, trust me, but because Carrie's putting out for him. To some men, that's all beauty really is.)
"beautiful she was. Rhett’s callused hands met tender skin" (I told you!)
"with their beautiful baby girl"
Even hair didn't escape this metronomic appellation (or should I describe it as an appall-ation?): "their natural hair color was a beautiful auburn"
It was just sickening to read this time after time after time. The blurb should have said this was about rich beautiful women, not strong women. In the world we've created for women, strength isn't beauty, It's making a go of things when there is no beauty, and this author either just doesn't get it, or doesn't care for it. Why female authors consistently do this to other women is a mystery to me.
Male authors do it too, let's not forget, and this blind obsession with shallow meaningless "beauty" as opposed to just writing about real, regular people, warts and all as it were, is what was truly sickening. Regular everyday women need not apply - only beautiful ones. I reject that and invite you to do so too.
In the end this book wasn't about strong women, and it betrayed the title by making those women who were featured nothing more than stereotypical blondes, not smart blondes at all. Never was there a novel more mis-titled than this one. I cannot recommend it.
