Author: Lizzy Ford
Publisher: Indie Inked
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!
Broken Beauty was a bad choice for the title of this novel. There are at least two other books with precisely that title, at least seven novels titled "Beautifully Broken" and one called "The Beauty of Broken...", as well as one called "A Broken Kind of Beautiful...", and so on! Let this be a lesson to authors to research not only your subject, but also your title! I have to question why the "Beauty" part was even relevant. Would this be less of a horrifying story if the woman to whom it happened had been a "plain jane"? I don't think so. The other bad news is that this isn't a complete novel. It's "Broken Beauty Novellas #1", and so is short, but not en suite. Wikipedia defines a novella as at least 17,500 words:
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500
Short story under 7,500
I don't have a word count to see where this technically falls on that scale, but I'm fine with taking the author's word for it! This time!
This series is in a way an emulation of Stephen King's The Green Mile which was published in six installments in 1996. For me personally, I'd rather get the whole thing at once, but who knows, maybe Ford is onto something here? I mean, who knows what ebooks are going to do in the long-run? I think it's far too early to call. Maybe going backwards to go forwards is where it will lead, and we'll see more novels published like this, ultimately emulating serials like Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories which were published in installments in The Strand magazine.
There's something weird going on with the text in this egalley. There are sections of the text where it changes randomly from black to grey. I have no idea what's causing that. That is to say, it's not like it's flashing or changing as I read it, it's just that some paragraphs are dark and some not, some screens have it, some don't, and it nearly always starts at the commencement of a paragraph, very rarely in the middle of one, but it doesn't appear to be tied to anything like an internal monologue, or to where maybe there should have been italics. Weird! It's a bit annoying, but this is a short novel, so it's not a big deal. My Kindle says I have a little over 90 minutes of reading in total.
The title page and cover both list this as written by 'Lizzy Ford writing as Chloe Adams'. I do not get this 'writing as' crap. This was written by Lizzy Ford as far as I'm concerned. There's a limit to how far I'm willing to allow the fiction to extend beyond the boundaries of chapter one (going towards the front cover), and the last chapter (going towards the back)! I think it's an insult to readers for a writer to change their name in order to sell other books or write in other genres. I don't want to be a party to that, but that's not going to influence my review of the story itself.
This novel is about the aftermath of the rape of Mia Abbot-Renou, the young-adult daughter of a Southern US politician - the self-same politician who has claimed that pregnancy cannot result from rape because the woman's body shuts it down. A similar asinine and clueless claim was actually made in real life by Republican congressman Todd Akin, so kudos to Ford for slipping that in. Akin asserted "...If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down..." - implying that anyone who gets pregnant from rape really wasn't raped since they consented, even if they think they didn't! The pregnancy proves it! What an asshole. If he'd said that in front of me, he'd likely end up with a name-change to Tod Akin-Balls...!
The story begins with Mia being picked up by the cops and taken to a hospital where the relevant examinations are carried out. Mia is scared and only feels safe if she can see one of the two cops, Keisha and Dom, who initially responded to the crime report. Just in passing, do you know there apparently isn't a police 10-xx code for rape - or for assault or GBH?! Go figure. OTOH, they have at least four codes for motor vehicle issues - just in case you're not crystally clear on where our priorities lie as a society in the USA. But then car dealerships are always better lit than are residential neighborhoods, so why am I even surprised by this?! In a really disturbing WTF moment, neither Mia's mother, who is in rehab, nor her father, who is at a fundraiser, can be bothered to visit their daughter in the hospital - and her father is bothered about spinning this event?!
We learn from internal monologue that Mia was a virgin, and from her examination that she was injured rather badly physically (as well as mentally), as a result of this assault, and she's really confused, her mind wandering, flashes of the attack mingling with non-sequitur memories (triggered by the resemblance - in small ways - of one of the cops to her grandfather). Why the virginity issue is raised I do not know. Does Ford want me to believe that the rape was worse solely because the victim was a virgin as opposed to her being a hooker or a "housewife", for example? Bullshit! Rape is rape. It doesn't get any worse.
The opening sequence was in some ways annoying because it was so discontinuous, so if Ford was trying to make me uncomfortable, she succeeded, but I'm not sure she succeeded in making me discomfited about the right things or in the right way! However, it is, in general, well written and it drew me in, so despite some nit-picking issues, one of which I'm about to launch into, that was a good start.
Once Mia has had all her medical attention, it's the next day before the two cops get to sit down with her and she eventually identifies one Robert Connor and his friend as her two rapists. There's a suggestion of the possible use of Flunitrazepam or a similar substance employed in her drink to help perpetrate this rape, but before their investigation can get very far, the family lawyer (who is also Mia's uncle) and a PR guy show up trying to spin this "event" (they really don't seem to want to call it a rape, much less identify the son of one of their leading financial contributors as the rapist). They also plan to whisk her out of the hospital and put her under the care of another family friend who is a therapist. This is horrible, but it's a disturbingly fascinating story.
I had my biggest issue with this "whisking-out" of Mia. We're told she has to be sneaked out of the hospital via a side-door because the press is flocking to the front entrance. Why? Not why is she sneaked out, why is the press there? This happened just the night before, so unless the police have deliberately and purposefully broadcast the gut-churning details of this rape, including the victim's name, and also the crime-scene and hospital photographs of her battered body, how in hell did anyone find out about it? I was jerked bodily out of suspension of disbelief by that because I cannot find it even remotely plausible that this information would get out so fast, much less be deliberately released by the police or the hospital. There would be serious lawsuits flying in formation if information like this was released.
I suspect that Ford did this to further put Mia on the hot-spot, but I could not see that happening realistically. What happened was horrific enough without piling on events which stretch credibility beyond breaking point. But given that clunker, the story improves from there on out. It does lead to Mia being isolated from the police while her father's people try to spin this, which in turn leads to Mia having to read "her" prepared statement to the press where she's passing on not her own words but those of her father's lawyer.
Mia becomes completely isolated from real life as she's forced repeatedly to retreat to her bedroom closet to escape panic attacks and flashbacks as everyone tries to manage, contain, and control this "unfortunate event". Even her therapist is a distant relative. Her best friend comes over to support her and pretty much moves in. Somehow Mia is prosecuted for her unknowing use of a stolen ID, and via a plea-bargain she conveniently gets to do 100 hours of community service in a women's shelter helpfully run by the sister of the cop who, I'm guessing, is going to be the trope love interest, as disgusting as that seems at this point. It's at the shelter that Mia learns that she's pregnant (her father had denied her the morning-after pill because, you know, rape victims cannot possibly become pregnant...).
So it looks like I'm going to rate this warty, doesn't it? Actually I'm not. I had some real issues with it, but those parts which were not issue-ridden were actually engrossing, and did keep my interest. Like I said, I would prefer it if this were just one complete novel instead of installments, but that's the author's choice. Maybe I'll wait to read the rest when it all comes between one pair of covers, though? I rate this one worthy because people need to read about this, and they need to be made so uncomfortable by stories like these that something is done about this unconscionable crime and the even more horrific frequency of it.
