Rating: WORTHY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I agreed very nearly 100% with everything this author said, and where I disagreed, it was merely a matter of nuance. This is a short, but forceful book by a strong female author, and I commend it fully. The only real issue I had with it was that Amazon's crappy Kindle-creation process will, guaranteed, mangle anything that's not plain vanilla text. This is one reason I flatly refuse to do business with Amazon. I encountered similar issues in several Net Galley advance review copies I downloaded yesterday. More on this anon.
Subtitled, "Dispelling The Top 10 Myths Of The Single Woman" I would heartily recommend this to every young-adult novel author, and every romance author, and many adult novel authors along with a good many movie and TV show writers because they simply don't seem to get it and in the vanguard when it comes to promoting the myth extolled in the seriously-misguided Neil Diamond song where he sings, "Girl, you'll be a woman soon; soon, you'll need a man." Um, no! Doesn't work that way and there's nothing wrong with that!
Don't get me (or the author!) wrong! This book isn't about eschewing men or hating them, or deliberately living life without them. It's about choice: a conscious and informed choice not to need one. It's about being fine with one or without one, and that there's nothing at all wrong with women who get along fine without men as readily as they get along with them. It's not about celibacy or asexuality. It's not about past trauma or being shy or domineering. It's not about taking a vow.
Someone who has been fine without a permanent man by her side for years may well find one she's perfectly happy to settle down with, and marry. or she may not ever feel a need to do that. But the fact is that it's her choice and none of anyone else's business. We're all human, but we're not clones. This is simply about choice and individuality. It's about being the designer, architect, engineer, maintenance staff, and captain of your own life. Anyone who thinks there's something wrong with those who desires such agency is a moron. Period.
The author covers these topics:
- Single
- That does not mean Desperate
- That does not mean Lonely
- That does not mean Jealous
- That does not mean Sexually Frustrated
- That does not mean Unrealistic
- That does not mean High Maintenance
- That does not mean Bitter
- That does not mean Crazy
- That does not mean Hard to Love
- That does not mean Broken
The author does a great job of explicating these thorny issues. When she wrote, “To be admired only for my appearance is not admiration at all. It’s objectification.” I almost cheered out loud. I can't for the life of me think why she didn't actually mention books, comic books, movies, TV shows, and advertising that routinely treat women this way, but this was her book, not mine.
Sometimes her wording was a bit obscure to me, but I was rarely left in doubt about what she meant. Sometimes there were sentences that to me were nonsense not because I disagreed with what was being said, but because the sentence literally made no sense such as:
“There are no probably won’t like what’s absolutes.” I think something got mangled there! This also raised a frequent formatting issues. The word 'absolutes' in that sentence was on the next line. This is one of many examples I found where the formatting of the book was lacking. For that sentence, I have to blame the author - or editor! For the formatting, I have to blame Amazon. And maybe the author/editor! But it's no huge deal. As writers, we've all been there! Presumably the final print edition will have these wrinkles ironed out.
There were several cases of missing hyphens, such as “all-handson-deck” and “onenight-stand." There were some oddball cases, such as the use of “Cadillac’s” where no apostrophe needed since it was merely a plural and not a possessive. Apostrophes like that are way over used! One sentence read, “This is far from a state reserved for scorn women.” Scorn was wrong. I wasn't sure if she meant scorned or scornful, or something else. Another sentence read, “But it’s easier to designate this a female trait and slap it on to any woman....” I think 'onto' was called for there.
There were times when I felt the author was too kind to her critics! At one point I read, “Since I don’t really know this guy I can’t say if he’s good or bad.” On that I had to disagree! Any guy who would post to a chat group: “Camey . . . you need some good DICK . . . which will inspire you to write a different kinda book.” Is a bad person period - and potentially dangerous too. I'm not a huge fan of pet names. Maybe the author likes to go by Camey, but personally I'd prefer the full glory of Acamea. It's a strong name, reminiscent of Academia!
This book is obviously aimed at a US audience, and I confess I don't have her take on Thanksgiving: “Thanksgiving dinner can be tough.” I didn't grow up in the USA, so the annual holiday is meaningless to me, although the four-day weekend is great! But I don't even experience that at Christmas, not even when I was single. Maybe I'm selfish with my time, but I always have things I want to do that don't require company. It does mean I fully understood her because when I was single, I had times when friends would all-but beg me to join them for Thanksgiving dinner evidently out of fear I would die of loneliness if I were by myself, and so I allowed myself to be brow-beaten into it, and then spent the whole occasion trying to gauge how soon I could leave and get back to what I really wanted to do (writing, or maybe a movie, most likely!) without seeming to be rude.
On the topic of formatting, there were many instances where the text would jump to the next line, mid-sentence, or where the next paragraph wouldn't be indented like all the others were. There were too many of these to track, but like I said, these are relatively minor formatting issues, and do not detract from the force of the author's important and powerful message. Overall, I loved this book, felt it deeply, and I commend it highly.
