The Human Agenda by Joe Wenke

Title: The Human Agenda
Author: Joe Wenke
Publisher: Trans-Über
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
"Gchatted" ought really to be rendered "G-chatted" (page 11 Adobe Digital editions page counter - there is no page number on the pages themselves). I had never heard of this and thought it was a simple typo at first. It means to converse using Google chat. A bit of clarification would help to distinguish it from a typo.

Page 35 "Cindy" is rendered with a little box in place of the "i" which means the character never was translated properly from the original.

Joe Wenke's book is sub-titled "Conversations about Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity" so I tried to keep that in mind - conversations, not interviews, but I couldn't help feeling that I wanted to hear more from those he conversed with! I had one or two issues with this book (but then with which book don't I have issues?!); however, the more I read of it the more I was drawn in and in the end I consider it a worthy and educational read.

He interviews a large variety of people, all of whom have their own unique perspective on the topic. The conversation annoyed me a little to begin with, but the more I read through different conversations with different people, the more interesting they became, and the further I got into the book, the more engrossing it was to me, but let me discuss several issues I had so you get the complete picture of my impressions, and decide fro yourself if this is something which intrigues you as much as it did me.

In his first interview, with Kristin Russo, the author observes, "...you call your project 'Everyone is gay' which is a self evident truth. Everybody knows that it's true... what exactly do you mean when you say that 'Everyone is Gay?" I found that an extraordinary thing to say: on the one hand claiming something is universally true and then asking a person what they mean by it. It was especially curious given the comments he makes in this same interview on the use and abuse words which are employed as minority identifiers, both positively and negatively. Besides, if everyone knows it, why do we need to pursue the matter with his last question?! It just struck me as a strange thing to say.

Russo responds that it's about transparency (and in explaining, she actually delivers this transparency!). She states clearly that the name was just a joke for a website. It was never intended to be true (universally or otherwise!), or to offer any deep insight into anything; it was just a joke, which begs the question, what on Earth did the author mean?! maybe he was just carried away with his enthusiasm, but I think someone with a PhD in English ought to be more on top of his use of the language than he appeared to be in this instance - and especially if he wants to win his readers over! But as I said, things improved.

He titled this book The Human Agenda precisely because there is a farcical claim that there's a "homosexual agenda", which itself is nonsensical, unless you define merely asking for fair treatment to be some sort of an agenda. What the author meant is something which isn't explained, but it might make a reader wonder what other agendas might be in play here. Me, I just read on!

Something which is truly self-evident is that this wasn't his first interview for this project because in this one he mentions someone else he's interviewed. Given that reference, it made me wonder why that interview had not been placed before this one instead of seven places after it. He has done this later where Aiden Key's interview follows Andrew Solomon's, which is referenced in Key's interview, so why not here? It gave me a bit of an impression that this was not very well organized, but neither was it completely disorganized either, so it's fine.

With that in mind, however, I decided to read Ian Harvie's interview first (yes, I'm name-prejudiced!) and that was interesting, too. Harvie was born female to all outward appearances, but changed gender to match how he felt inside. Harvie is in his forties, but claims there is no word for what he was. Yes, there was, so I'm guessing he simply didn't know any words for it at that young of an age. Those words have been known for a long time as it happens! Tomboy has been around for half a millennium. Dyke has been around since at least the 1940s, and perhaps even the twenties. The idea of butch and femme lesbians has been around for a century as a concept if not employing those exact words. Transsexual and transgender have been around for half a century. This is nothing new. The shame is that it has taken society so long to acknowledge and accept these facts as a reality.

For me, one of the problems with this book in the early chapters was that more than one person seemed to be making sweeping statements without actually having a good broom with which to sweep! It bothers me because this is an important topic and making statements such as for example, "...every single person in that audience was struggling, on some level with not being enough in relation to their gender..." which is what Harvie says. It felt like a condescending generalization and I found myself hoping for more solid ground as the book progressed.

Fortunately, I found it, but such an all-encompassing statement is not only inaccurate (there's a big difference between saying, "I guess on occasion everyone has issues" and saying "every single person here has issues"), it doesn't help endear people to what you're saying either; it just makes the speaker sound really insecure, and it's exacerbated when the author comes in right behind that statement and makes yet another sweeping statement, again speaking for all of us!

I think my biggest problem with this book was exactly that: the author says confidently that we're all struggling with our identities, as though there is a specific identity which each of us must assume and to which we must adhere. I disagree. I think people don't try to nail themselves to that monolithic cross so rigidly. I think they understand at some level that they are different things to different people. They know, whether they actively acknowledge it or not, that they're not fulfilling the same role as a mom or a dad at home as they are as a boss or an employee at work, or as a fan at a game, or as a role-player in an on-line game, or as a son or daughter, or a grandparent.

I understand that gender roles fly a little more under the radar than these things I've listed, but this doesn't mean everyone is obsessed with them or in trouble with them. I don't doubt that some do struggle. I don't doubt that others give it some thought from time to time, and I don't doubt that others never pay any mind to it, but to suggest that everyone is struggling with it as a routine thing is to misrepresent the situation and worse, maybe marginalize those who don't share this view - or at least make them feel there's maybe something wrong with them if they're not struggling! You can't be expansive and exclusive at the same time when you're talking about he labels we give to people!

Just one person's opinion given in passing in an interview isn't a big deal. Everyone has, and is entitled to their own opinion. It's when those opinions are forced on others, either practically by literally requiring others to hold a certain view, or as it is in this case, representing everyone as holding an opinion or having an issue (which certainly has not been demonstrated) is equally objectionable and worthy only of politicians.

I also found Russo's conversation about the use and reclamation of the word "queer" to be odd. She mentioned that she has a friend who rides freight trains for fun, and seems to be suggesting, even that he and his wife are both hetero people, that he could be labeled queer because there's something inherently queer about the way he lives his life. She doesn't mean this in a pejorative sense, but to me this was nonsensical. If you make a word mean anything, then it actually means nothing! Words change all the time, but you cannot force a meaning upon them, not if you want to make intelligent use of them. Words take on whatever meaning society endows them with and accommodate a given usage at a given time. Trying to bend and stretch words beyond what they normally will bear at any one time is nothing but a way of breaking them and rendering them useless!

I really didn't get part of the conversation with Aiden Key, either, where the author says:

Sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct but also very closely bound together, and what's interesting is that both of these issues seem to be threatening to people, what one's gender identity is, particularly if it's nonconforming, or what one's sexual orientation is if one is not heterosexual if one is gay or lesbian or queer or bisexual even in my own case. I'm very attracted to transgender women.

I think he might have found a better word than 'non-conforming'! It's like on the one hand we have this book about gender agendas, and on the other we're trying to come up with labels for the very people who have been stigmatized and marginalized through the use of such labels. Indeed labels are imposed upon groups and cultures for the very purpose of sanctioning abuse against them. I don't get why we feel we must label people here. isn't it more important to accept than to label? And it takes a lot less effort!

I don't see that it matters whether a woman started out as female or as male. If they identify now as female what else is there to be said? The same goes for someone who starts a female and now identifies as a male - or anyone in between. Why would we need to even have a word for a person who likes people who are female? it;s not important how they got that way! That struck me as a strange thing to say. Pigeon holes are for pigeons and mail, not people. We need to be focused on integrating, not disintegrating, and seeking to label and categorize people, especially when the topic is gender identity, people seems counter-productive at best, and abusive at worst.

That said, this book did improve. Maybe it was just me getting up to speed with it, or maybe the early interviews were just not my cup of tea, but it's not a big deal because the later ones were a delight to read and I enjoyed nearly all of them. That in mind, I consider this a worthy read. Oops, there I went and labeled it. Sorry!

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.

A Tale of Two Mommies by Vanita Oelschlager

Title: A Tale of Two Mommies
Author: Vanita Oelschlager
Publisher: Vanita Books
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Illustrated by Kristin Blackwood (no website found) and Mike Blanc.

This review is pretty much the same as the one I wrote for A Tale of Two Daddies, but it's different because the two books are not the same. They do cover similar ground, however.

I didn't know who she was a couple of days ago, but I'm rapidly becoming a big fan of author Vanita Oelschlager. She has written many books, but the ones I'll talk about today are aimed at children specifically those aged four to eight years, which is a bit outside the range of my own kids, but no so far away that I don't remember them well at those ages.

The stories are all short and they're aimed at teaching. The lesson may be dealing with a personal problem, or a problem in the family and following the story may help a child see a way through their own dilemma with the help of mom or dad, or a guardian or close relative - whoever is willing to pitch in. The net profit from these books goes straight to a deserving charity, not into an author's pocket, which is an amazingly generous thing to do.

This particular story is becoming more and more important in the US as the nation slowly catches up with the rest of the civilized world and finally starts treating gay couples just ads they've treated hetero couples. The only problem here is that there aren't many of them, so a kid who has two parents of the same gender may well feel a little unusual when friends start talking about mommy and daddy.

It's a serious and important issue, but this book doesn't get bogged down by being grim and preachy. It takes an almost breathless approach to the kinds of questions which other kids might have, and the style and pace is a perfect fit to how incredibly energetic young kids are. You know, if you can invent a way to tap some of that childhood energy and re-distribute it to parents and other older folk, you'll be a guaranteed billionaire and a hero to parents everywhere.

So in this book, which is nicely and colorfully illustrated, a young boy (whose name isn't revealed) has two moms. He also happens to be a different race from either of his moms and I love that this isn't even an issue here. I wait and hope for the day when same-gender parents isn't, either.

As in the other volume, a couple of kids are bugging him with a host of questions about who does what if bothparents are girls. Puleeze! The good-natured boy answers with the same measure of poise and equanimity which the girl employed in the companion volume, and he answers smartly and sensibly.

As I said before, this isn't rocket science after all, it's parenting. Parents have different skills and behaviors regardless of what gender they are. It's no big deal as long as we deal with it like adults! I recommend this book regardless of whether parents are gay, hetero, single, plural or guardians. As I said in the other review, it's all good as long as it's love.

A Tale of Two Daddies by Vanita Oelschlager

Title: A Tale of Two Daddies
Author: Vanita Oelschlager
Publisher: Vanita Books
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Illustrated by Kristin Blackwood (no website found) and Mike Blanc.

This review is pretty much the same as the one I wrote for A Tale of Two Mommies, but it's different because the two books are not the same. They do cover similar ground, however.

I didn't know who she was a couple of days ago, but I'm rapidly becoming a big fan of author Vanita Oelschlager. She has written many books, but the ones I'll talk about today are aimed at children specifically those aged four to eight years, which is a bit outside the range of my own kids, but no so far away that I don't remember them well at those ages.

The stories are all short and they're aimed at teaching. The lesson may be dealing with a personal problem, or a problem in the family and following the story may help a child see a way through their own dilemma with the help of mom or dad, or a guardian or close relative - whoever is willing to pitch in. The net profit from these books goes straight to a deserving charity, not into an author's pocket, which is an amazingly generous thing to do.

This particular story is becoming more and more important in the US as the nation slowly catches up with the rest of the civilized world and finally starts treating gay couples just ads they've treated hetero couples. The only problem here is that there aren't many of them, so a kid who has two parents of the same gender may well feel a little unusual when friends start talking about mommy and daddy.

It's a serious and important issue, but this book doesn't get bogged down by being grim and preachy. It takes an almost breathless approach, with colorful and very active illustrations to the kinds of questions which other kids might have, and the style and pace is a perfect fit to how incredibly energetic young kids are. You know, if you can invent a way to tap some of that childhood energy and re-distribute it to parents and other older folk, you'll be a guaranteed billionaire and a hero to parents everywhere.

So in this book, a young girl (whose name isn't revealed) has two dads, and a kid is bugging her something chronic with question after question about who does what if they're both guys. The charming girl answers with poise and equanimity and answers with neither hesitation nor exaggeration. And her answers are smart and make sense. This isn't rocket science! It's parenting. Parents have different skills and behaviors regardless of what gender they are. It;s no big deal as long as we deal with it like adults! I recommend this book regardless of whether parents are gay, hetero, single, plural or guardians. It's all good as long as it's love.

Lesbianism Made Easy by Helen Eisenbach

Title: Lesbianism Made Easy
Author: Helen Eisenbach (no website found)
Publisher: Open Road Integrate Media
Rating: WORTHY!

If Woody Allen had been a lesbian, he might have written something like this. I'm honestly at something of a loss as to how to review this one usefully except to give you a few quotes and to say that I was laughing out loud on pretty much every other screen.

It's a humorous look at lesbianism, no doubt based on the author's own experiences and stories she's heard, and it's funny as hellions. It does flag a bit here and there (and "fag" a bit in parts, too!), but overall it's exxcellent (yes, that's two X-chromosomes thank you!), well-worth reading if you have any interest at all in sexual preferences and in laughing.

Told with tongue firmly in cheek (or somewhere) this exquisite satire introduces you to lesbianism and how to make (or even mate) the most of it - or at least live with it! Author Eisenbach had me at the opening quiz. Here's one of the multiple choice (and I mean really choice) questions:

When in the presence of Scarlett Johansson, I usually feel:

• a. Warm and/ or tingly
• b. Slightly faint
• c. Hungry
• d. All of the above, not to mention whew!
• e. Other

This is a trick question. Answers (a)—(d) prove nothing except that you’re alive. If you chose (e), you’re not fooling anyone. There are no other answers.

The book is full of off-the-wall commentary and observation:

One of the great rewards of lesbianism, among the many too numerous to elaborate upon, is that it is possible to go to bed with someone and feel more beautiful naked than clothed, more desirable than you had any expectation of feeling after being weaned on a diet of American standards in silicone and femininity.

The observations are not confined solely to women. Gay guys come in for a butt-load of ribbing, and to Eisenbach's comedian, heteros get to play the straight man:

Nature has given men erections to make sure they never forget that nothing lasts.

Nothing is excluded from the humor or escapes attention:

The telephone, to get back to where we started, is an instrument that is frequently misused in interpersonal relationships; indeed, it is sometimes the root of intercouple trauma. Remember, if you can, that the phone should be wielded like a vibrator: 1. Gently, paying particular attention to the responses of the phonee, 2. Only when absolutely necessary, so as not to become too dependent on its usage, and 3. Never as a substitute for the real thing face-to-face. Well, almost never.

One sour word on the formatting side: in the Kindle app on my Smart phone, some of the text that was intended to appear in two separate columns wasn't very well separated as you can see from the image below.

I thoroughly recommend this even if you don't have your dreams swimmin' in women.

Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin

Title: Cycler
Author: Lauren McLaughlin
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WARTY!

This is a story about Jill and Jack, and yes, I know I said I'd sworn off novels which feature a main character named Jack because it's such an abysmally clichéd name, this one was different enough that I let it under the wire.

The deal is that Jill and Jack are the same person, and no, it's not what you think. Jill McTeague isn't transgendered - not in the way you normally think of it. Whereas most females eventually begin undergoing an inconvenience, or a highly troublesome, or even a downright painful "time of the month", none of them have anything on Jill. Once a month, for four days, she literally turns into a male - who has taken the name Jack.

Yes, I hadn't read anything quite like this before, either, which is why I took it on, despite it being both first person PoV, usually a no-no for me, and had a main character named Jack, also a no-no for me.

I have to say, though, that I had some really mixed feelings about this novel, loving some of it and hating other parts. The book hasn't been a particularly big seller, but it has already been optioned for a movie, believe it or not. It just goes to show that you never really know where your novel may end up no matter how oddball or idiosyncratic you might think it is. WRITE IT ANYWAY!

Even though I didn't like Jack, I felt bad for him because he's confined to the house for the four days he shows up, and he lives in fear of being somehow erased by Jill, so his initial unsavory character softens slightly over time, especially when he realizes he's fallen for Jill's best friend. The problem is that he turns out to be precisely the kind of 'Jack' I detest in novels, particularly YA novels.

The hope I had for how this novel might play was quickly dashed. It went in a different, although initially interesting direction. On that score - on having a very rare bisexual character in a YA novel - major kudos to the author. The problem was that the author really blew it on handling how this character was dealt with - and she blew it in several different directions. More like vomited it really.

Jill and her friend Daria Benedetti, and best friend Ramie Boulieaux (yeah, I know) are working on Jill's plan to get Tommy Knutson (or Tommy Knutsack as Jack refers to him - Jack can access Jill memories, but not the other way around) to ask her to the prom. Her plan is completely stupid, so this was a bit of a downer for me. I don't like female main characters to be dumb-asses or shallow - unless, of course, they rise above it as the novel progresses. Nor do I like stories which repeatedly tell us how smart the female character is, yet consistently depict her as being boning-fido stupid! Jill obsessed more and more on the shallow as the story went along instead of wise-ing-up, unfortunately.

I really like the author's writing style, so it was hard to actually drop the novel. Usually when something starts going downhill like this, I have no problem dropping it and moving on to something else, but the more this went on, the more curious I became about where the author thought she was trying to take it. The writing itself wasn't god-awful, only the main characters, and since it was short and I could already see some changes dawning in Jack's personality, I decided to run with it, but in doing so, I really felt betrayed by the author.

My first really big problem (other than how stereotypically gross Jack was depicted as being), was when Jill and Tommy had their first real conversation. Right up front, Tommy brought up the fact that he is bi. Yes, you can argue that it's commendable he wanted her to know the truth and was being up front with her, but it was out of place and for more than one reason.

First of all, it's not like they were in imminent danger of having sex at that moment - far from it, so it didn't seem like his honesty fit the requirement. They were not even dating, nor was it certain that they would, so sexual history was hardly on the cards. Jill wasn't even looking for a date per se, only for an escort to the prom.

Let's look at it this way for a moment: suppose instead of telling her he was bisexual, he had told her that he liked girls with different colored hair from Jill. Suppose he said, "I usually like brunettes, but a lot of the time I like blondes, too!"? See how nonsensical that sounds? Who cares? And why raise this?

The way it was brought up here was that it made it sound like Tommy was going to date Jill, but he also wanted to be free to date guys at the same time. Who would countenance that? Well, some people might, but typically not. If he was going to be faithful to her during the time they dated, then who gives a shit who he liked to date before, or who he might date afterwards?

This whole thing made it sound like, yeah, I really want to go steady with you, but occasionally I plan on popping out and having a guy on the side. Seriously? It was just so badly-handled, which actually made it stand out like a sore thumb given that the rest of the writing was entertaining (if a bit dumb here and a bit gross there).

In some ways this made the whole thing homophobic: like, hey, I'm bi, so I might have aids. Well guess what, anyone might have aids, straight, gay or bi. It's irrelevant in and of itself! And it would remain irrelevant until and unless they planned on having sex, in which case their sexual history is important regardless of whether they're gay, straight, or anywhere in between.

So I did not get this approach at all. It was rendered in an especially bad light when Jill was grossed out by Tommy's revelation! If Jill had been a prudish, closed-minded person, then I could see her reacting like this, but she was not, and this Jill, recall, was someone who changed into a horny guy for four days a month - a guy for whom she had talked her mother into procuring porn. Why wouldn't she be completely thrilled to find a potential partner who was bi?! It made no sense at all.

One other issue with the writing was the aggravating over-use of two words: "deeply", and "mal". It was like at least one appeared on every page, and sometimes the same one would appear two or three times in as many lines. It was really annoying. Please don't try to be hip unless you're cool!

Jack, as I mentioned, was a disappointment. At first I thought he couldn't be as bad as Jill painted him. The novel opens as she "returns" from a four-day spell as Jack, and she makes him sound atrociously bad. He was actually worse than she makes him sound. Once he decides he has the hots for her best friend, he sneaks out of the house and stalks Ramie, spying on her in her room (from up on the roof, through her dormer window), and at one point is preparing to masturbate while spying on her, until he falls off the roof. He gets rewarded for this by Ramie inviting him into her room soon after, for a kissing and feel-up session on her bed. This was not acceptable to me. I had the hope, initially, that he would really turn himself around, but he just got worse, and he was obnoxious to begin with.

So what the heck was it that appealed to me about the writing, if I found so much to dislike? I'm glad you asked, but I'm not sure I can give you a satisfactory answer! The writing style was just my kind of style. It was a comfortable an easy read for me, with some amusing situations and some hilarious observations scattered through it, all of which really hit my funny bone, but that was canceled out, I'm sorry to say, by the extreme dumb-assery going on.

It was this, the general tone and pace, and the banter and dialog, which appealed to me and made me continue with this much longer than I would have done had this same story had a poorer way with words. Plus, as I mentioned, I was really curious to know how this author was going to handle this story, especially given where she'd taken it so far. Maybe I just wanted to know how she would dig herself out of the holes she had so blithely opened up! The problem is that the author didn't go anywhere with it. It turns out this is just the prologue. The second act comes in volume two. I felt robbed at that point.

In the end, it was the stark gender segregation and utterly insensitive stereotyping which killed this for me: that Jill is the ultimate in mindless, girlie-girl femininity, whereas Jack is the sex-crazed closet rapist, and neither has the first clue about the other despite quite literally sharing mind and body. I cannot in good conscience recommend this, and I shall not be reading the sequel, 'hilariously' titled (re) cycler.

There Will Be Phlogiston by Alexis Hall

Title: There Will Be Phlogiston
Author: Alexis Hall
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Erratum:
41% in "sexually amphibious man"? Makes no sense! "sexually ambiguous man" perhaps?
48% in "with admirably calm"?!

This is a LGBTQ steam-punk novel with elements of fantasy, which is a novelty kind of a novel for me. It's about Lady Rosamond Wolfram, debutante in search of a marquess, about Anstruther Jones, the Phlogiston Baron, about his lover, Lord Mercury, and about the desire of Rosamond and Anstruther for each other. It's not your usual love triangle.

I have to confess that I fell in love with the title of this novel from the start. It's my considered opinion that you honestly need something deliciously warped running through your transom to even begin to invent a title like that; however, it makes a lot more sense when you realize that phlogiston is merely a synonym for fire in this context.

"There will be fire" wouldn't have caught my attention - except perhaps dismissively - and I'd be willing to bet that there are endless other novels out there already with such a title, but I'd be equally willing to bet that this novel is the only one with this title! Phlogiston "theory" held sway for a century, but the obsessive-compulsive drumbeat of scientists' search for comprehensive explanations eventually drove it out of favor. This novel pretends that it never did lose favor.

As I read the story, I found myself initially in alternation between moments both of liking it and of being quite unsure of it. I liked Lady Rosamond. I didn't like how weak she was when confronted with Anstruther's flaming desire, but then I didn't like the baron initially; however, he grew on me, as did Lord Mercury, in his sad and confused half-hearted passion. All three grew on me and I fell in love with all of them at the Copper Ball - one the like of which no society has ever seen. That joy was entirely due to the resolve, the bravery, and the civility of these three.

The baron is a self-made man - coming from a rough, common background, his control of phlogiston made him rich, but still unacceptable to society, hence his alliance with Lord Mercury, which commenced solely as a convenience for both of them. The baron's money alleviated Mercury's debt, whereas Mercury's position in society and his comprehensive knowledge of etiquette and the finer things in life repaid the baron capitally. This granted him an entrée into social circles from which he would have been disbarred otherwise, but Mercury never imagined they would become lovers, nor could he envisage a time when he would be comfortable with what they had, despite the baron's evident passion for him - an ardor which might have led to marriage had the two not been of the same gender and living in that era.

How complicated does it become then, when the baron discovers within himself a powerful passion for Lady Rosamond, whilst still harboring every lumen of his light for Mercury? Well, as it happens, not at all. You have to read the Copper ball scene to honestly appreciate how wonderful it is. Suddenly the Lady's engagement is shattered beyond repair - if not reproach - and the three leave the ball arm-in-arm, never looking back.

The novel is beautifully written, full of charm, exquisitely entertaining, but this is no mere romance, not even with a twist. If it were, Rosamond would not have a cyborg horse, rescued for her from the circus by Anstruther. There would not be phlogiston lamps lighting homes.

I was surprised that this came to an abrupt end when the novel-o-meter read only 49%. There was a second story, set int he same world, but about different characters (at least to begin with). I did not like this story and could not get into it, so I didn't finish it, but the first half of the novel makes it a very worthy read, especially since it's free (as of this review date) for both Nook on B&N, and Kindle on Amazon. If you're at all interested in this kind of novel, I urge you to read this one.

Of Anime and the Baeci by Alessandra Ebulu

Title: Of Anime and the Baeci (I found no reference to this on B&N or Amazon)
Author: Alessandra Ebulu
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

The last novel I read from Less Than Three Press I rated positively, but this one I was not able to enjoy in the same way at all. It's one novel where the cover was actually better than what was between it! There was a prologue to this story which I skipped, as I do all prologues. If the author doesn’t think it worth including in chapter one or beyond, I don’t think it worth time reading it. I went straight into the story, but unfortunately it read more like fanfic than an actual story. I read about three-quarters of the way through and skimmed the last 25%.

This is a very short novel - only some 80 pages - but unfortunately, the story made no sense whatsoever to me. Superficially, it begins with two apartment dwellers. One of them is Ray Zielke, and he's disturbed by the loud music and TV show noise from his across-the-hall neighbor. When he goes to complain, he meets Cata Nanuq, a very feminine-looking guy who despises either label, who dresses Asian, and is into anime and manga. It turns out that Cata owns the apartment block, and a physical attraction quickly develops between the two of them, but it’s not a romance - it’s all lust and sex.

There's a twist to this story, however, since the story itself has anime elements to it. Ray isn’t human and is there to protect Cata, who is a Baeci (which describes a person who is externally one gender, but internally of mixed gender). Cata and other baeci are being hunted by another non-human who bathes in and drinks their blood, but Cata knows nothing of this, and Ray has not told him the truth despite being sexually intimate with him.

This is where the story makes no sense. We're told that Ray is specifically there to protect Cata, yet he evidently has no idea who Cata is when he goes over to complain about the loud music as the story begins. He's supposed to be watching over Cata yet he's working a job which occupies a heck of a lot of his time, so he isn't actually free to stand watch, which adequately explains how Cata is apparently abducted from his apartment while Ray is otherwise occupied.

Even then it makes no sense. There is blood on the walls of Cata's apartment, but when advised to seek Cata's 'flame' inside himself, Ray has no problem picking it out and determining that Cata is still alive - yet they still insist upon matching the blood in the apartment with DNA from Cata's toothbrush. Why? If Ray can see he's alive, then why does the blood even matter, and how come he cannot simply track Cata down to his location by his "flame" and save him?

Worse than that, Ray spends the next week not doing a thing to find Cata, but instead, sitting around in Cata's apartment hugging Cata's pillow, and watching anime on Cata's 72 inch TV! If this has been a longer novel, I would have quit reading it right there. Cata then shows up out of the blue with no explanation for his absence and no sign of any abduction or injury.

I cannot recommend this novel at all. It made no sense and had no rationale to it. The relationship between the two main characters had no chemistry at all and was purely sexual, so where was the story? I couldn’t find one to enjoy.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M Danforth

Title: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Author: Emily M Danforth
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WORTHY!

In other reviews where I've railed against the use of first person PoV, I've always said that once in a while it works, because the writer knows what she's doing and can carry it off. This is one of those rare and welcome exceptions. I'm not saying that it couldn't have been done in third person. It could, but whether that would have been a different novel or pretty much the same, we'll never know. Just let me leave it here: that I'm grateful that this writer didn't screw-up a great story like this one turned out to be.

The other trick to successful novel-writing (aside from figuring out how to get the word out about your own effort when you've chosen not to sell-out your work to the mega-bucks of Big Publishing™) is how to grab your readers on page one. Unless you're a comfortably established writer, you usually cannot afford the risk of asking them to bear with you for a page or two, much less a chapter or two. You have to corral them fiercely on page one, and Emily Danforth did that with a vengeance with me. I don't know what it was. I wish I knew, but she did it and I was hooked.

A quick note on the cover: it has nothing to do with the novel, but this isn't the author's fault. It's one of those Big Publishing™ covers where the artist evidently either never read the novel, or simply didn't have any interest in truly representing it with any degree of industriousness or integrity. Don't judge this (or any book) by the cover. Judge it by the brilliance of the interior. On that score, also please note that this YA novel has mild drug and alcohol use, moderately explicit sexual situations, and bad language. It doesn't bother me because that's how people actually are, but it may bother those who like their stories sanitized.

Cameron Post is your every-day young teen on the threshold of entering high-school, finding her way in the world, enjoying her summer, when there's this almost-accidental-but-perhaps-not kiss between her and her best friend Irene. Since Irene is leaving town that fall, it never really goes anywhere other than another peck or two, but even though Irene isn't sure what she really wants at that point and later evidently decides to travel a different path in life, along comes Lyndsey shortly afterwards. She's a fellow competitive swimmer, but at a different school. This new relationship goes somewhat further, but not much beyond second base.

Living in a small Montana town, and having lost her parents to a motor vehicle accident, Cameron, Cammie, Cam falls under the wing of her religiously-deluded aunt Ruth. Ruth isn't a bad person. She's rather nice and decent, and obviously cares for Cam, but she's been cruelly blinded by theistic zealotry and evidently isn't smart enough to see through it, so Cam has every reason to hide her predilections from everyone, particularly those who can harm her or who control her life at that point, and she does fine at this until along comes Coley Taylor.

Unlike With Irene and Lyndsey, Coley makes no overt moves, so Cam is never sure if what's going on is all in her own mind, or if there's something in Coley that wants to express itself to Cam on a very personal and intimate level. Coley has a boyfriend and she makes Cam get one - her best friend Jamie - for the school prom. It's at the prom where Jamie confronts Cam about her attraction to Coley. There's an minor altercation, tears, and then Jamie kisses Cam and she responds, but as this pseudo-relationship continues, she learns that she's not deluding herself about her orientation at least, or about where her heart and mind is at.

This is where things really start to move, because Coley isn't shy about experimentation even as she appears to be freaked out about what her true orientation might just be. And all around them, the cold, small, lonely, distant, religiously-warped town is watching. Salvation/Damnation is at hand, however, when Coley gets her own apartment so she doesn't have a forty mile commute to school each day from her parents' ranch, and the two plan to spend the evening there.

This novel wasn't all plain sailing. I know! Aren't I cruel to say not a word about what went on in that apartment that night?! You gotta get the book to find out. I promise you that if you like this kind of novel at all, then you'll likely love this particular work. One of the great things about a story like this is that it's truly my idea of a romance - not necessarily a gay one, but a romance between two people - the gender is irrelevant. This kind of novel is far, far better and more deeply romantic than almost any novel which actually bills itself as a romance.

But I digress. As I mentioned, I had a couple of issues, which were really varieties of the same issue when you get down to it. I was reading this on my smart phone because Apple is doing its damnedest to keep me from reading anything that I actually want to read on its iPad! Until I figured it out with some timely help from a good friend (thanks, LL!), the so-called ease-of-use corporation was making me work my tail off to creatively get around something which Apple claims is designed to facilitate creativity. Trust me they LIED! The smart phone, huge as the screen is, is still quite small. Even at 12cm by 7cm (~4.75in by ~2.75in), it's too small to read some things which authors include in their books, and from a writing perspective in this multi-device, multi-media era, this is worth keeping in mind.

In this case, the things were: a letter written by Jamie to Cam and left in her room, a post card sent by Lyndsey from Alaska, and a tri-fold church leaflet which plays a part about half-way through the story. These things were included in the book in the form of images. The post card was just large enough to be legible, but neither the letter nor the tri-fold were, and they didn't really lend themselves to enlarging by the old finger-split maneuver wither, which is normally a really cool thing to be able to do. The letter enlarged some, but the tri-fold not at all. The issue was that the author assumed that both of these would be readable, and so never reproduced the text in the body of the novel.

This is one case where you need something the size of a pad (I checked the images on an iPad and they look good and are quite legible), or you need the actual print book in order to get everything there is from this novel. I've noticed this "image problem" in other things I've read on my phone and I find myself wondering how these images would look in another format. I'm not in a position to check that, but it's a pity our technology isn't quite where it needs to be, even after all these years.

I digress. Again. As you will know from the blurb, things come crashing down - in an interesting way, too - and Cam is sentenced to the gulag - a Christian fundie school where she will serve two terms at least, getting a brief parole only for the hols.

Despite my love for this story and many of the characters, there were still parts of it which I felt lacked oomph, or which in one way or another betrayed a character, or which were not as I'd thought they'd be (and don't confuse that with what sometimes I felt they ought to have been!). I was surprised, for instance, that it took fifty percent of the novel for Cam to get inducted into the "de-gaying" school (or is that gay-bashing school?). I'd thought that would swing by much earlier. This isn't a problem as it turned out, because the first fifty percent of the novel was really engrossing for me. This erroneous idea was something which I'd evidently derived from the blurb, but which wasn't actually in there to begin with.

In contrast, the part where she was in the deluded Christian cult induction facility, which is where I was expecting fireworks and fun, or at least some determined subversion going on, turned out to be completely flat. This was where the oomph was lacking for me. It was, however, interesting, and I can understand (and I support - for what it's worth!) the author's decision not to paint this story in broad sloppy strokes of black and white. That was way smart, but for her to tame Cammie, to effectively neuter her in fact, at this point was wrong. I didn't like that the school got to preach medieval and clueless diatribes about the gay community without any honest push-back at all.

The author tried to get around this by portraying the teens at the school as 'normal teens', very much aware of what was going on and what was supposed to be going on. They were depicted as feisty, smart-mouthed, joking, making sly remarks about the program, smoking pot once in a while when they were not being observed, making friends, having fun, and so on. There was even one unexpected and fun instance of a night-time rebellious interaction.

This didn't get it done for me though, because what happened was that the author came across almost as though she approved of these programs (pogroms?!). I don't believe that she does so approve which was why I was so surprised that there was so much smug and arrogant preaching going on with so little corrective action in return, especially when these ignorant myths and blind platitudes are so easily exposed and refuted.

The worst character at the school was the co-director, Lydia. She was a control-freak who was very nearly the only person there who was actually in need of sustained psychoanalysis and perhaps medication. She wouldn't even let Cam take off her sweater at one point, for example. Cam was too hot in the room where she was in a one-on-one with Lydia, and there was nothing wrong at all with what she was doing, but Lydia forbade it because, she asserted, Cam was acting-out and being disruptive! Good Lawd A'mighty! I thoroughly detested Lydia. No one like that should ever be in charge of children or teens. Or anyone. Having said that, it sure would have been interesting to learn what her back-story was.

One major betrayal for me was Cameron, who starts out as a rebel, but one who flies under the radar. She presents to the world as "normal" - the "normal" her closed-mind community expects from its teens - but underneath, she was up to all kinds of things, and she was steadfastly and resolutely pursuing her natural impulses. I know that the fundie Christian lie is that homosexuality is not natural, but the truth is that it's found throughout nature, not just in humans, so yes, it's perfectly natural and normal. That doesn't mean everyone should be gay, just like it doesn't mean that no one should be gay. It's a part of nature like everything else out there, and pursued with integrity and compassion, it harms no one. Some people seriously need to internalize that.

To see Cam become so subdued then, was a betrayal of her very core, to me. It's not like she became brainwashed. The author commendably showed her as rejecting some aspects of what she was taught, even as she appreciated the value of some of the other things, but she offered no real resistance! In my opinion, this was out-of-keeping with what we'd been learning about her for fifty percent of the novel thus far! Worse than this, not one of the teens who were in this school showed any real push-back. It was like all of them passively accepted the school's deluded premise that they were indeed sinful, abnormal, deviant, broken children in need of fixing. This complete passivity was hard to take and it was unrealistic, especially since none of them were there voluntarily.

I've seen some reviewers negatively rate this novel for this very reason, but I think they're just as guilty of misrepresenting what happens as are some Christian readers who've accused the author of universally bad-mouthing the Christian community - again, something which never happens. Yes, there should have been more push-back, but no, there wasn't a complete absence of it. Yes, Christian cluelessness over the nature of homosexuality is inexcusable, but the author doesn't bad-mouth Christians per se.

Instead, the author tells it like it is - some black and white and a heck of a lot of grey. She should know, having actually grown-up in the town in which she sets this novel. She authentically portrays the ignorant and misguided attitude which some people - real people in the real world - do have about gays. The fact that one person or even one group worships a god for which there's no evidence whatsoever doesn't give that person or group any right at all to dictate to every other law-abiding citizen how they should live their personal life, what they should think and believe, or what their morality must be. Period. They are quite entitled to practice their religion. They're not entitled to try to force it upon others.

In the end, I can do no other than rate this highly, despite a misgiving or two here and there. It was beautifully written and for a debut novel (or even one way beyond debut for that matter), expertly done. I loved Cameron, Lindsey, Jane, and Adam, and despite some problems I had with Coley's behavior, I really liked her, too, and I wished we could have heard her story. I really thought that we would. I felt strongly that there was unresolved material between the two of them that needed exploring, but realistically, real life doesn't always have a happy ending or offer closure either!

Some reviewers, I note, have chided this for its ending, but I thought it was perfect. It was not your standard trope romantic finale, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) it was perfect; however, it does leave the way open for a sequel, and whether there is one to come or not, I would love to read it. I volunteer right now as a beta reader!

The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan

Title: The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood
Author: Diana McLellan
Publisher: Libertary Co.
Rating: WORTHY!

This book is a deeply-researched look at the sometimes very (and sometimes not so) private lives of actors, directors, producers, screen writers and others throughout the 20th century, but focused quite tightly on a limited few in any detail, with a host of other names drifting in and out as the years pass. I highly recommend it because it is full of information about events and activities which too many people may not realize were taking place - even as early as the first decade of last century.

The dramas unfold around a select few well-known names, such as Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo, all of whom were bisexual with a marked preference for female companionship, and around the people closely associated with them, some of whose names are not well known at all. This list includes Josephine Baker, Joan Crawford, Mercedes De Acosta, Dolores Del Rio, Eva Le Gallienne, Katharine Hepburn, Billie Holiday, Ona Munson, Alla Nazimova, Natacha Rambova, Barbara Stanwyck, and Lilyan Tashman. Men aren't absent either, with names like Douglas Fairbanks, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Rudolph Valentino, and even John Wayne being dropped into the mix.

Don’t expect it to be a titillating detailed erotica-fest. It’s not. It tells, artfully, humorously, perspicaciously, and unashamedly of the lives of women and men who were free to live the life which felt perfectly natural to them in a time which was far more closed than is ours today. But note that those times were not always tightly-closed. Indeed, some periods were surprisingly (at least to me!) liberal, but overall, it was a roller-coaster during which the lives of these people were easier, then harder, then easier, but never as free of condemnation and as free to live as they are today. It all depended upon which way the wind was blowing and what religiously-motivated government legislation sought to hand-cuff (and not in a nice way!) people at any given time.

In the earliest part of the century, and through the twenties, things were quite liberal, but legislation came down, and it sent people into hiding or certainly into two lives: their public and their private. Thus arose what are known as "lavender marriages" where a lesbian and a gay guy would marry to present a 'normal' public persona, from behind the somewhat precarious safety of which, they could live their separate natural lives without so much worry.

But the novel is far more than just that. There are spy stories here, fear of communism, intrigue over jewelry (specifically that of which Marlene Dietrich came into possession. There are stories of physical and emotional cruelty, of nyphomaniacal behavior, of stage politics, and of manipulative "friends" such as Sasha Viertel, who controlled Greta Garbo almost like a glove puppet, and became her sole voice to the world for years. There are also images, which look a lot better on an iPad than they do on a smartphone!

The stories are funny and sad, scary and heart-warming, easy and brutal. There are stories of German-born Dietrich offering to shoot Hitler, and of winning the Medal of Honor, of Swedish-born Garbo leading-on men while seducing and then casting off women, of those two women refusing to acknowledge they'd ever met when in fact they'd been in a film together in which they'd shared scenes (and perhaps more?), of devotion to the stars from subordinates and underlings, of life-long romances and disastrous break-ups. There are hilarious observations both from personalities like Noel Coward and from the author herself, and scary stories of obsessive pursuits and seductions.

The amount of almost incestuous interaction and partner-swapping amongst these stars, activities which over time tie all of them together in one way or another is quite dizzying! It’s a warning in some ways, that power corrupts, but it’s also sobering to know that these people are no different from anyone else except in that they had the money and freedom to be able to live the life they chose (or in the case of Garbo, as she evidently decided at the end, to live the life she wasted!), but still managed to be unhappy and frustrated a lot of the time. In the end, money can’t buy you love! Who knew?!

The book is long and detailed, so you might want to keep it to hand and dip into it periodically, with a visit to some other book in between, but it is very readable and entertaining. One thing I found most peculiar in perusing this is how private these people managed to keep their real lives, in an era when revelations about them would have been truly sensational and ruinous. Contrast that with today, when leading that same kind of life causes few eyebrows to be raised, yet the media is more obsessed than ever with pursuing "scandal". How huge of a Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot is that?! And what more will we learn when Dietrich's secret papers are finally released in 2022? I recommend this history for anyone who's interested in having their mind opened as wide as their jaw might drop!

White Like She by Bob Fingerman

Title: White Like She
Author: Bob Fingerman
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a black & white line-drawing graphic novel about Luther Joyce, a middle-aged black guy who happens to be working as a janitor at a nuclear power plant when there's an incident, and he's exposed to radiation. The clean-up crew erases all his employment records from the computer, and essentially flushes him down the toilet, but Luther doesn’t die. Now having no employment history, and looking like The Thing (with a curiously Dr Manhattan-style symbol on his forehead), he resorts to begging on the streets, but he has little success.

Due to a really fortunate series of events (for him) Luther finds himself with the opportunity to have his brain transplanted into the teenage white-girl's body, that of Louella Schwartz. After he's recovered (which takes a remarkably short time) he heads "home" to Lou's place with her ID in his purse - and has to deal with her parents, and her lesbian best friend.

This novel is warped, but it was warped in a way which really appealed to me. It was out there enough that despite the rather lackluster artwork, I got into this right away and read it right through, in one sitting. There's some so-called 'bonus' material at the end, evidently covering a different aspect of this same story, but I didn’t bother reading that, so I won't comment on it.

I liked this story and the characters. It was engrossing and had some interesting things to say. The artwork, as I mentioned before, was really curious to me. All of the females (I say 'all', but there were really only three, not counting Lou's mom) looked preferentially masculine, and I'm still wondering why that was. This is the only Fingerman I've read, so I can't tell if he just routinely draws women that way, or if he had some purpose in depicting them in this manner on this occasion. It was also interesting that he showed the main female character completely nude or semi nude on several occasions, but never her best friend - she always had something restricting the view of her more personal parts, rather like those wispy gauze pieces in renaissance paintings! Neither were any guys depicted in the same way Lou was. I have no idea why this was.

There's no reason at all why all women (or any one of them) needs to look outstandingly feminine, by any means. Real live women (as opposed to fictionalized women!), look all kinds of different ways, and there's nothing remarkable about that, so maybe this was a reflection of real life (as opposed to a comic book version of real life). Perhaps it was in protest against comics which 'feminize' women to extremes - as superhero comics typically do. Maybe it was some sort of "butch lesbian" representation or commentary, or maybe it just means that this writer/artist simply can’t draw (or hates to draw) female characters. I don’t know. I couldn’t get a good impression of why this was the way it was, so I guess I'll just have to wonder about it - and maybe that's what the author wanted!

But overall, I have to report that I really enjoyed this comic and found it intriguing and entertaining, so I recommend it.

Venus in Love by Tina Michele

Title: Venus in Love
Author: Tina Michele
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

There was a prologue for this novel, which I skipped as I always do. I've never regretted not reading a prologue! If the author doesn’t deem it important enough to put right there in chapter one, it’s not important enough for me to expend time in reading it.

This novel is about Ainsley ("Lee") Rae Dencourt and Morgan Blake, and their "romance". Frankly I wasn't impressed by Lee right from the first page. At least she wasn't telling us this story in first person, for which I thank the author whole-heartedly, but the way that Lee comes off towards the bottom of the first page (which is actually page 16, not page one) of chapter one, she seems to me like she's irritatingly weak and needy.

Lee's father died eighteen months previously, so there's an understandable raw-ness to her feelings, but the way the narrative goes on about how he was always there for her, even when she rudely interrupted his meetings, and she was always seeking his advice, made her look like a really spineless, inconsiderate, and whiny brat! As I turned the page and saw that she then became angry at her father for his making her feel dependent, I sincerely I hoped she wasn't going to continue in this vain vein…! Unfortunately, she did.

When we meet her, Lee is heading to her favorite place in the world, which is the Louvre in Paris. In college, she met a girl whose name she never knew, and whom she simply thought of as Venus. This person is Morgan, and the two of them of course meet up later, but the meetings and interactions are so artificial and stilted that they were not even remotely natural and they were not entertaining, either. There's also a massive chasm between what we're told that the characters are feeling in this novel, and how they behave, and we’re offered nothing to explain why there's such a huge discrepancy.

It so happens that Lee's fantasy girl is employed at the Louvre, but instead of Lee seizing the moment and immediately going over to her to re-introduce herself as soon as she spots her, Lee hides behind a statue! It's nonsensical. Shortly after this, Lee once again proves how selfish and self-centered she is by using her privileged status as a gallery big-wig to talk a senior staff member at the museum into forcing Morgan to give her a tour.

Morgan is temporarily employed at the Louvre and is working on setting up an art exhibition, so Lee's selfishness and stupidity here drags Morgan away from something which is very important to her. That's the message I kept on getting - that it's all about Lee and her manipulative behavior, and the hell with Morgan's needs. By this point I really did not like Lee in the slightest. Morgan deserves better than someone who thinks that money can buy anyone and privilege can get you anything.

In contrast with that cynical perspective, we're also treated to the stupid perspective whereby, and despite the fact that both of them (we're repeatedly told, not shown) have flutter,s and weak knees, and throbbing hearts, they fail to pursue the relationship with any of the passion they purportedly feel! that night! We keep on having it drilled into us what passion they have for each other, but they never pursue it! Instead, they go to dinner together the next evening and though they kiss, they still take it no further.

The next night is the opening of the exhibition, and the two are supposed to attend together, but Lee finds a way to screw even that up for Morgan. Lee's mom becomes ill, and even though her mom is nowhere near at death's door, Lee immediately charters a private jet and goes home. Never once does she make any effort whatsoever to contact poor Morgan and tell her what’s happened, or to leave her a message. The two of them are also apparently phone-shy in the extreme, because they evidently don't trade phone numbers. Morgan never even got Lee's last name. This was way too artificial for me.

Once back in the US, Lee discovers that her mom has decided to retire from running the Dencourt gallery, so Lee is put in charge, and she cooks up a scheme to get Morgan working there - again manipulating her without even trying to talk to her. Their whole interaction is completely brain-dead.

This wasn't even the worst part, believe it or not. Never once during their entire interaction during the portion which I read, was there any indication of any real feeling here or the remotest hint of developing respect and consideration for one another. The entire relationship was nothing but pure, unadulterated adolescent lust. That's all we got. If the novel had been about domination, then it would have fit the bill a lot better, because nothing here spoke of love at all. It wasn't a friendship. Friends do not treat people like Lee treated Morgan. It wasn't even erotic - it was just trivial, artificial, and ultimately boring.

So after some seventy pages of this novel I couldn't help but conclude that it was thoroughly ridiculous, with patently phony scenarios set-up to create fake excuses in place of naturally developed tension. It was entirely unrealistic, and what we got wasn't at all well done. Most of the writing was conversation or long expository paragraphs. There was no real attempt to create any kind of atmosphere or warmth, or chemistry between the characters.

Neither was there any attempt to create any sense of place and life. This began in Paris, and it was centered around art, but there was no feeling of atmosphere, of an exotic locale, or of scents, or sounds or joie de vivre. Despite the art premise for the story, even the art was given short shrift. It felt far more like stage props, literally littered around the place to fake a background than ever it did real live art.

I honestly cannot recommend this novel. Morgan deserved better and so did the readers.

Season's Meetings by Amy Dunne

Title: Season's Meetings
Author: Amy Dunne
Publisher: Bold Strokes
Rating: WORTHY!

This novel is not to be confused with Season's Meetings by Catherine Winchester, which I haven't read.

Errata:
P209 "...batter an eyelid..." should be "...bat an eyelid..." unless they're really going to be coating eyelids with flour and eggs...!

P213 "...whatever funny antidote Sky was reeling off..." should be "...whatever funny anecdote Sky was reeling off..." unless relations between Cat and Holly have really become so bad that they're poisoning each other!

Author Amy Dunne (not the same one as the one in Amy Dunn Quits School) is from my own home county of Derbyshire in England, so yes, I'm completely biased, but since I didn't learn this until after I'd finished this novel and concluded it an excellent and highly worthy read, I don't care about bias! I'd thought this was Amy Dunne's debut novel when I read it, but it isn't. It turns out that she has another one Secret Lies which, despite the bizarre title, I'm now looking for. Hopefully there will be more after this one, too.

This is my Xmas novel review for today (I can't promise an Xmas novel every day this month, but I will be doing more). This one is a romance, but it's a little bit different from your usual affair: it’s a lesbian romance. That helped me to forgive the author for making the beginner's mistake of having a character look in a mirror so we can get a description of them. The author also impressed me by not writing in the first person, which is a voice I typically detest. On top of all that, the novel is set in Britain, so worth a look there, too. Yes, America, there are places east of the Atlantic, and west of the Pacific, and south of Texas, and north of Minnesota. And the main character is an atheist! How often do we get that? So we're off to a good start thinks I.

Cat Birch is still stinging over the demise of her live-in relationship with a girl called Paula which ended very unhappily and she's not dealing with it very well at all. She has no interest in life save for work, which isn’t exactly going brilliantly, and she isn’t eating well. She apparently has a drinking problem as well if we’re to judge her by the fact that she pours herself the dregs of a bottle of wine and "gulps" it down, followed by opening yet another bottle and pouring herself a "large glass". On the bright side, she does volunteer work for children's literacy, so it’s not all downhill.

Cat is looking at another Xmas alone until her secretary and her close friend trick her into going to spend Xmas with a goddaughter to whom she can’t say no, but even that seems like it’s falling apart when her flight has to be canceled so Cat can get some last minute work caught up. But at least she doesn’t have to go visiting over Xmas, does she? Well, Beth took care of even that. Now Cat has to travel with someone who's driving up to Scotland. The last traveling companion she expects is Holly - young, feisty, confident, playful, and as optimistic and positive as Cat is the opposite.

The drive in the car (which has a bonnet, a boot, and tyres!) was written well and was quite entertaining. Not that it would do me any good, but I fell in love with Holly during the trip! They're not making the journey in one run because of the weather, so they stop at a hotel half-way through the journey - and the weather goes sour on them. This bit really didn't make sense! It would have been smarter to keep driving, but Holly was tired and Cat doesn't drive, so we can let that slide.

The descriptive prose went a bit sour here. Cat notes that Holly has gold flecks in her eyes. Seriously? The number of times I've read that exact description in YA literature (not that this is YA) is nauseating. It would honestly be a really nice surprise to read a story where the love interest actually doesn’t have gold flecks. Plus Cat is a bit like a cat in heat by this point, which is also not very endearing. I would have preferred it if her responsiveness was more in keeping with what we'd read about her earlier.

I have to say that there were parts of this story that came off as rather false, too. I know it's important to put some chop in the waves so the relationship isn't a plain-sailing Mary Sue boring story, but if it's not done well, then it simply takes the reader out of the story and reminds then that they are, in fact, reading a story. One such instance was Cat's intransigence over telling her friend Beth about her blossoming relationship with Holly.

Cat does have reason to avoid this revelation: long ago she and Beth had vowed to each other that they would never get involved with each other's close friends or family, so now she doesn't want to tell Beth that she fell in love with a cousin. As a result, she and Holly have a fight and it looks like everything is in trouble. Then Beth decides she should bring blind dates to dinner one each for Cat and Holly! Eek!

The thing which immediately crossed my mind was that Holly had set-up Cat, or the both of them were set up by Beth with these blind dates, both of whom seemed too much like caricatures to be taken seriously. Whether this is true or not isn't something I'm going to tell you, because I've given way more spoilers than I like to for a new novel. The reason for doing that is of course that there were some issues I felt needed addressing.

The only other real problem was with the ease of travel. The two of them had been stranded in two feet of snow, with more falling. In those circumstances, I would have expected power lines to be down, and travel to be all but impossible except on major roads, yet there were no power outages, and within a day or two, travel was apparently completely unrestricted, even out in the middle of nowhere. This seemed unrealistic to me! The two travelers had no trouble getting out to Beth and Katie's completely-out-in-the-wilds residence, and there seemed to be no problem in not only finding blind dates, but also in the dates getting there too. It made little logical sense, but I was willing to forgive it because the story, overall, was really entertaining.

It also made little sense that Holly, who had presented as impressively mature, suddenly had a childish hissy fit and viciously announced that "It's over" at one point in the story. This seemed to come completely out of the blue, to say nothing about it being out of character, and turned me off her somewhat, although she won me around again later! OTOH, Holly had been given a heck of lot of provocation (and not in a good way!) by Cat's cowardice, dithering, indecision, a sorry lack of support, and general absence of backbone, but again, she had her reasons, too.

But it's time to be done with all this rambling and conclude the review. My conclusion is that this novel is excellent! It made my eyes water because of the ending. No, I wasn't crying...my eyes were just watering, okay? OKAY? It happens. Deal with it! In short I loved this novel and really became as engrossed as I was enamored by it. This is a couple I would be honored to know in real life. It's rather sad that they're only fictional. This is a wonderful Christmas read which I whole-heartedly recommend.