Author: A J Bennett
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
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.
Erratum:
p61 "Would you mind giving taking my phone number?" Either 'giving' or 'taking' has to go!
p65 "...retuning safely..." should be "...returning safely..."
This novel deals with a similar theme to two other novels I've reviewed or am about to review: Virgin by Radhika Sanghani, and Before I Die by Jenny Downham. The latter of these two is the closest one to this since they both have a time-line. I would never compare this with the former since that wasn't even close to being in the same league, although this one isn't free from issues either.
I loved the author's dedication:
To anyone willing to give a new author a chance. Thank you!That's a sentiment I can get with whole-heartedly. I also liked the cover. I don't normally talk about covers because authors typically have nothing to do with them, but this one struck me as really sexy, though I can't really say why. Then that's the best kind of sexy, right?!
Despite the potentially disastrous subject matter, I got a good vibe off this from the start and entered it with a positive feeling. Unfortunately that wasn't to last. As I progressed through it, my initial excitement at reading this turned to concern, and then dismay, and finally to rejection.
Initially, I found it was amusing, with interesting characters, and it was - in general terms - technically well written. There was an odd instance of strange here and there. For example, I read on page 32: "Jax put the truck into reverse and headed for his apartment" which makes it sound like he drove the whole way backwards! That, I'm sure, was not what the author intended, but for me it was a source of unintentional amusement from the Unintentional Virgin.
I liked that this novel did not employ first person PoV which is way-the-hell too common in YA novels written by female authors for some inscrutable reason. Instead it's in third person, but it's also told alternately from the PoV of each of the two main characters. So far so good.
There was one more thing about this novel which impressed me, and that was that it was completely color-blind. There were times I felt this could be an African-American couple and other times when I felt it could be a white couple, or a mix of the two, and it really did not matter to anything in the story. Yes, I know the cover rather declares Karma's hue, and whether either of them is white or black or somewhere in between makes no difference on the bottom line, but I felt it was really refreshing to have a novel like this. I loved that.
Karma Points (yes it's her real name!) is a twenty year-old who still lives with her father - a father who apparently separated from his wife when he either decided he was gay, or when he quit fighting a conviction he'd had all along. His "boy toy" (Karma's description), Matt, is living with them, so she has "two dads". Karma is pursuing a second year at community college while awaiting acceptance at one of the universities to which she's applied. Until then, it's her aim to mooch off her father for as long as she can get away with it, but she's very disinclined to contribute anything in return.
Her mother, Isabella, is a deadbeat mom and a royal bitch who is far more of a caricature than a character. I didn't like her - not only for her personality, but also because she was far too cartoonish to be a real character, and her change of heart at the end of the novel was simply ridiculous and completely unbelievable. She's an ex-lingerie model who almost never contacts her daughter or shows up for her birthdays, but who got to name her girl. She should have either been left out of the novel completely or have been brought into it a bit more - and with a lot more subtlety.
I like Karma's friend Eva (but then I tend to prefer the side-kick to the hero). Although she really plays little part in the novel, she shows up in chapter two wearing a "Bring back Firefly" T-shirt. She's also funny. Unfortunately, once she discovers that Karma is a virgin, she has the clueless idea that they should go out that very night and 'fix it' like signifies something in Karma that's broken. I did not appreciate that. Karma isn't broken - at least not because of her virginity. On the contrary, she's whole-some. At least she begins that way.
This is where Virgin went wrong; at this point I was dearly hoping it wouldn't go downhill like that one had, but I was not to be granted that wish. This novel had a lot of charm and far more of a winning plot than did Virgin, but it was let down by several things.
Karma and Eva head out to a dance club, and there Karma meets up with a guy named Jax who subs at the bar as a bouncer and bartender. She tells him she wants a one-night stand, and he's certainly on-board with that. Unfortunately, he shows no concerns about sexual diseases, which would bother the hell out of me, were I either one of these two people. I felt that was a misstep. Young people do make stupid mistakes, but the fact that it wasn't even brought up as an issue or possibility is what bothered me.
Just as bad: Karma rides off with this complete stranger in his truck, and doesn't think for a second that he might be dangerous, until they arrive at his apartment. Only then does she start thinking of the worst, but she goes inside with him anyway, and pretty soon they're getting hot and heavy on his bed. Here arose another oddity, but what arose was not his penis, it was her breasts! Nipples swell, not breasts! Not unless Karma became miraculously pregnant all of a sudden. You can run your hand over the swell of her breasts, but you can't have them actually swell up in your hands! If they did, it certainly wouldn't be swell!
During their passionate foreplay, it's revealed that she's a virgin and Jax freezes - he refuses to deal. It doesn't feel right to him for her to lose it like this - not that it's actually his business, but he has the same right to back out that she does, and he takes it. When she asks to go home, telling him that she's sure she'll find someone who'll meet her request, he offers her a deal: if she agrees to see him platonically for three weeks, then he will do as she wishes at the end of it. She agrees, and he drives her home.
I did find it strange that she went to bed and went to sleep that night without a thought of masturbation. I found that rather hard to believe for as hot and bothered as she'd been for Jax earlier, but then YA writers are really and strangely shy of writing about masturbation for some reason, aren't they?
Jax calls her the next day for a date, and he insists that she bring along her bucket list. This is a list she lied she had, of things she wanted to do. Number one was 'losing her V-card', of course, but the rest she had hastily cobbled-together from lists she found online. Jax takes it from her and starts insisting that, during their three weeks together, they start doing stuff on it - commencing with giving blood! Now she's for it. She hates needles. She never checked the list before she pursued the pretence that it was hers! God knows what else is on that list....
I think that's plenty of spoilers. So this novel started out really interesting me, but it went off the rails too many times for me to be able to come on-board with it. The first problem was with the two main characters. I really liked Karma to begin with. I felt that she was someone I would like to meet and get to know, despite her being a bit juvenile, irresponsible, and bratty, but over time she started to wear on me with her endless negative and dumb thoughts.
I did like that the author had made her something other than a supermodel who for utterly incredible reasons thought herself plain. All-too-many YA authors do this and it's such a pathetic trope. Karma did have reason to be down on herself, but her reasons were not sufficient to overpower her intelligence to such a great extent, assuming she actually had what we're told she had in the brains department.
It really bothered me, as well, that this supposed intelligence didn't seem to permeate into her life or behavior - or thoughts. She had no ambition, no plan for her future, no interests and only one friend, and she had a really poor self image for no good reason. Yes her mother had been down on her, but her mother had not been a part of her regular family life for the last sixteen years. It doesn't make sense that some random disparaging comments infrequently dispensed, would bring Karma down to such depths.
I also didn't buy, given how Jax described her, that she couldn't find anyone with whom to go to bed. That was a conceit which simply didn't work. If she'd had some disfiguring or awkward feature, or some mental issue or disability which accounted for this, it would have made sense, but for her to be 20 and be interested in being sexual and to be the person she was, and still have found no success, took way too much believing.
If she'd been a guy, it would have had more credence, but a young woman like her - no! It's easy to get sex if you're a girl even if you aren't a supermodel. You can be far from that kind of look and still find a guy who will do it. Whether it's wise, or whether you find the right guy to do it is another issue, but in her case, she really didn't care.
One of my biggest problems with this novel was the repeated talk of "electricity" and pounding pulses and all that passionate stuff. Once in a while I think it's fine, but for me it was excessive in this novel. Maybe some female readers might like that. I don't. I honestly didn't think that this novel needed it, either. It could have done very well with far less. It just became irritating, and in the end, it just wasn't credible because of this endless repetition. It read more like a parody because of this.
There's also an underlying issue here which is what bothered me the most: all that physical lust detracted abominably from what should have been a striking romance. The romance could have stood alone. With some re-writing, it had the strength. It had the legs. Yes, lust is part of a romance, but there's no romance in lust alone. That's not all there is; far from it. This repeated referencing of heat and passion smothered the actual love story far too much for my taste.
For example, on page 64, we read, "Jax wanted to wrap her in his arms and show her just how incredible she was, but instead he pulled back onto the road...." Rightly or wrongly, but because of the way this novel was written, the impression I had here was that he thought he could show her how incredible he was by sating his ever-present lust upon her. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I am the reader, and that is the impression I was left with.
I found myself wondering exactly how his having sex with her would show her how incredible she was since his desire was all about him - all about his pleasure and his satisfaction, and his urgent need. None of it was about her. Would his lying on top of her, penetrating her, dominating or controlling her in this way really show her that she was incredible, or merely show her that she was, on the bottom line, simply an object of his lust?
I felt that it needed a lot more here than it gave me, and all it seemed willing to give was the carnal. Jax's every thought about her is sex. With very few exceptions, he never thinks what good company she is. He never thinks how interesting she is. He never thinks of how much fun she is or how sweet she is. While we read too frequently of the physical here, we get far too little of the mental, and the real romance is the mental, not the physical. I find it as sad as it's disturbing that far too many YA authors simply don't get this. It's the mind that's the major sex organ, not the body. I wanted this novel to recognize that, and while it commendably did in small ways, those things were completely overpowered by the physical, like garish graffiti slathered all over a beautiful new building. That didn't appeal to me at all.
In a classic example of this, Jax shows up at her house for her birthday (she turns twenty a few days after meeting him), and he is so focused on her body that he has to "force his eyes back to her face". That was just wrong for me, and I felt it was wrong for the tone which this novel was seemed like it was trying to set. But enough said.
What really took this right off the rails for me was the ridiculous ending. Here I completely lost all affection for Karma, who turned into a total jerk. Yes, maybe she thought she had a good reason for what she did, but no, she went about it in the most cruel and abusive manner possible. She had the opportunity to talk to her partner beforehand and explain her thinking. She failed. Talking about things like this is one sign of a really true and mature relationship, and she betrayed all of that.
This was a complete rejection of everything she supposedly stood for, including being a caring and intelligent human being. Instead, it turned her into the female version of the jerk who stood her up at the prom. I didn't get how she could behave in such a despicable manner. It seemed both unnecessary and stupid.
Character betrayal is one thing I will not tolerate. You can't lead your reader on to believe your character is a certain kind of person, and then suddenly have him or her behave completely out of the character which you've established. It's even less acceptable when it's done for invalid reasons, and especially so when it's done without a hint of foreshadowing to rationalize it as something that character might do. It's bad writing, period. For these and the other reasons I've outlined, I cannot recommend this novel in good conscience.
Since this blog is about writing, I have a writing issue to raise. These aren't comments on the author's competence or ability, though. These are not mistakes, they're purely matters of preference - of how we writers actually say what we want to convey to the reader. I thought it would be fun to use a couple of examples here which struck me as interesting.
Here's how the author worded two small portions of the novel:
Jax was surprised at how at ease he was in her company.
...pressing her leg firmer against his...
I would have written both of these differently. That doesn't mean mine is right and the original is wrong. There's no right and wrong here, there's just preference, and how you feel about how what you write: does it flow well? How is it going to feel to your reader? Does it conform to what you've so far revealed about your character?
For me, anal as I am, I don't like the repeated use of 'at' in the first sample. In place of that, I would have written: "Jax was surprised at how at easy it was to be in her company" or something along those lines. For the second example, I didn't like the use of 'firmer'. It just seemed odd to me. I would have written "...pressing her leg more firmly against his...." Maybe that seems odd to everyone but me?! Is it better? It's your call. You're the one who's reading it. You're the one who writes it. You can write it however you want. I just like to keep in mind that there are many ways to write the same thing. How would you have written these?
