Okay, here's a new thing I'm going to be doing for 2021. There are some 'non-reviews' that I'm going to be posting. They're called non-reviews because the assessment of the novel in question is based on the book description and cover, and I can tell you up front that they'll more than likely all be negative because the only ones I'm going to cover are the ones that I think are quite simply idiotic - too moronic to ever want to read the novel the blurb describes. They'll be indentified in the labels by the 'Non-Review' marker.
Maybe once in a while I'll post a positive one - if I find a description that's particularly good, or intriguing, or elegant, but for the most part, these blurbs (at least the ones I typically see in a couple of trade flyers I receive regularly) are stupid and evidently quite often written by someone who's never even read the novel they're dishonestly describing. It's like Donald Trump wrote the review. I used to gripe privately about these to friends, but now's the time to go public!
So this first one is a somewhat bizarre story titled Looking for Leon by Shirley Benton, and in this case, I avoid it purely because of the title. I never want to read a story titled "looking for" especially if it's looking for a person. It's so Greene that it's in the John. Barf.
As it happens, the description is sort of creepy, too: "After making a passionate connection in Las Vegas, strangers Andie and Leon are accidentally separated. Determined to find him again, Andie uses her skills as a journalist to launch a publicized, nationwide search for the man she knows is the one. But does Leon want to be found?" In reality the answer would be 'no', but in this novel, my guess is that he does.
Personally, I sure wouldn't want to be embarrassed by having my privacy invaded, uninvited like that. You fail to get a number, then you graciously let it go. You don't hound this person, stalker-style! You sure as hell don't put out an APB on their ass! And what does it say that these two dickheads apparently leapt into bed together knowing so little about each other? Yuk! Warty from the get-go.
