Snotgirl Vol 2 California Screaming by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Leslie Hung, Rachel Cohen

Rating: WORTHY!

This was amusingly subtitled 'California Screaming' and I had to wonder why not 'California Streaming' given the manifold mucus from Snortgirl's allergies, but streaming means a whole other thing these days.

This is the second compendium of comics about this problematic fashion blogger named Lottie Person, who has been nicknamed 'Snottie" by her new 'friend' who Lottie in turn had nicknamed Coolgirl, but who is actually a fellow blogger named Caroline.

One of my early theories about Caroline was that she might be a complete delusion created by Lottie under the influence of a new experimental allergy drug prescribed by her new doctor. Caroline could well be the girl Lottie wishes she were, but since other people see Caroline, then either she's real, or Lottie's delusion is disturbingly larger than even she fears. Could Lottie be imagining this whole world while sleeping off her allergy drug in her apartment? Who knows?

Lottie certainly has some issues. She introduces her new acquaintance to her hater's brunch group which consists of Cutegirl and Normgirl, both fellow bloggers. The four of them decide to go on a desert retreat, but barely has it begun when they change their minds and instead go to a fashion blogger conference in California, where things get really weird.

Talking of, weird Lottie stalker Charlotte was pushed off a roof by Coolgirl (or Lottie under a delusion she's Coolgirl) towards the end of volume 1, but shades of Tricky, she don't, she don't, she don't die! Instead, she's in hospital being visited by Snotgirl's ex, Sunny.

Worse than this, Lottie starts being haunted by a girl who died violently but who can't remember who killed her. Worse than that, Coolgirl elects to room with Cutegirl instead of Snotgirl, and so Lottie is stuck with Normgirl, with whom she seems to be fighting constantly. And now there's a new blogger on the block with very few followers, but who wishes to befriend Lottie and then becomes offended when Lottie spaces-out over her. Will Lottie ever have a day when things don't go disastrously south and park? Oh, and Cutegirl has a twin whom she refuses to acknowledge the existence of! And maybe Normgirl's perfectly ordered life isn't so perfect?

I loved this one and I admire Leslie Hung's drawing. She makes the characters, male and female look real, cute, and even sexy without pumping them up to improbable proportions like the super hero stories do, and Rachel Cohen's coloring is every bit as good in this volume as Mickey Quinn's work in volume one was. I commend this volume as a worthy read.

Snotgirl Vol 1 Green Hair Don't Care by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Leslie Hung, Mickey Quinn

Rating: WORTHY!

I got the two Snotgirl graphic novels from the library. The title was so bizarre that I couldn't help but request them just out of curiosity. I didn't know what to expect, but I was intrigued and I actually enjoyed reading the first one. She gets her name from this weird friendship she strikes up with a girl named Caroline, who sounds like nothing but trouble. Snotgirl's real name is Lottie Person, and she's a fashion blogger who has chronic allergies, hence the Snotgirl nickname that this new friend bestows on her. Lottie was kinder, calling her new friend Coolgirl.

Coolgirl calls her Snottie instead of Lottie, which pisses off Lottie, because she's the one always making up nicknames for fellow bloggers. She refers to one as Cutegirl, and another as Normgirl. Those three get together for Hater's Brunch once a month, which is a little breakfast club they created. Events in Lottie's life are slightly warped and a bit absurdist, so they appealed to me. I had trouble at first in trying to figure out if this other girl actually existed, or was merely a figment of Lottie's imagination - perhaps the Lottie that Lottie herself dreams she could be.

Coolgirl appeared right around the time a new allergy doctor put Lottie on an experimental medication, and from that point on, Lottie's life became even more weird. She believes that her new friend fell over in the bathroom and cracked her head open, but when she wakes up the next morning, there are no police at her door, and no reports of dead girls in bathrooms, and eventually the girl reappears in Lottie's life none the worse for wear. Did she crack her skull? Did Lottie imagine the whole thing? Does this girl even exist, or is Lottie imagining her? Maybe Coolgirl is imagining Lottie?!

The comics are done by the same guy who did "Scott Pilgrim Against the World," or whatever that was called. I never read it, but I read about it. It ended up as a movie, but I can't see something called Snotgirl making it to the movie screen. Not in the USA I'm sorry to say. Because old white men are in control, there's far too much idée fixe about how young girls should appear on movie screens in the USA to have a Snotgirl up there.

I can see it as an animated TV show. It's actually pretty funny. I think Lottie is more cute than Cutegirl. Cutegirl just seems annoying, but she's not the one who gets pushed off a building at the end of volume one!

So I have to say, if you haven't figured it out, that I am a Snotgirl fan now, and I'm very much looking forward to reading volume two already. Fortunately, I have it in hand so I can get to it right away! This comic is beautifully drawn by Leslie Hung, gorgeously colored by Mickey Quinn, and it tells quite an entrancing story. I love it.

Fat Girl on a Plane by Kelly deVos

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I had to quit this novel at only 18% in because of the stark hypocrisy in the writing. The author's bio on her website says, "Kelly is also a passionate advocate for body positivity and fat acceptance" and I am one hundred percent onboard with that, yet the main character in the novel seems to engage in a high level of what might be termed 'skinny-shaming' and also 'fashion-shaming'. Worse than this though, is the objectification by this character of another character, as in when I read, "I glance at his biceps and quickly look away." Her "face heats up" no less than three times over him, and she decides it's not fair that he should look so good. Barf.

These are some of many examples of fashion blogger Cookie Vonn objectifying fashion designer Gareth Miller, who she's supposed to be objectively interviewing. In her author's note, I read, "We are more than just our bodies," yet her main character is ogling this man's body. Body image is not a just two-way street, it's a rat's nest of streets and footpaths and bike trails and overpasses, and for me this author failed to grasp that crucial fact in her writing.

Cookie works for a fashion blog, and I should say right up front that I have no time whatsoever for the fashion world or for Hollywood for that matter. As this author admirably makes clear, fashion is about discrimination, but she doesn't go far enough. It discriminates in favor of the well-off, the young, and the thin, so the problems go way beyond simply fat-shaming. Again, none of this was made clear at least in the early part of this novel, and I was saddened by that because the whole reason I picked it to read was that I thought it would be in interesting take on the industry.

The main character seems to grasp none of this. She comes off very much as an insider: as one of 'them,' not as one of 'us', by which I mean those of us who are not slaves to how a person 'should' look or dress according to the dictates of the shamefully well-off. This did not service the book's PoV well and did not make her look like an outsider by any means. On the one hand it's admirable that this character thinks she can change it from the inside, but on the other hand, she never seems to be cognizant of how self-indulgent, fatuous, and pointless the whole farcical, shallow and abusive edifice of fashion truly is, so I felt like she was doomed to fail before she got started.

I especially wouldn't read a blog where I would see something like this: "Sportswear is where fashion meets Feminism." Really? Has this author never seen a female athlete? Depending on the sport, they don't typically dress in a manner similar to the male athletes. They quite often dress in a manner that too many men would like to see female athletes dress. In track, men typically wear regular running shorts and tank tops. Women wear what are, let's face it, bikinis. That's feminism? Really? If the bikini makes an athlete more streamlined, why don't men wear them? This dichotomy on what male versus female athletes wear is very odd in sports. Female basketball players, for example, wear pretty much what the men do, yet female soccer players wear their shorts distinctly shorter than their male counterparts. Why? Is it really feminism? I think that's a question worth asking in place of tossing out a bon mot like I read here.

Cookie is the daughter of a well-known model of yesteryear (or given that this is the fleeting world of modeling and fashion, perhaps yester-week would be more accurate), and looks like her mom facially, but not bodily. This wasn't explained in the admittedly limited portion I could stand to read. Was her father big bodied? If not, and her mother was a model, then how did Cookie end up with her body? Maybe it was explained in the course of the tennis-match of past and present being knocked back and confusingly forth later in the novel, but it would have been nice if there had been an explanation up front for this.

I'm evidently not the only reviewer who found this see-sawing between 'fat' Cookie and relatively thin Cookie serving to undermine the author's stated purpose. And if that is cookie on the cover of the book, she's not what I'd describe as fat by any means. But then my perspective on a women's body isn't informed by unhealthily-thin fashion models and Hollywood celebrities. It's informed by real, everyday people which is the only sane perspective in my opinion.

The other thing that was missing for me was any talk about health. There is abusive fat-shaming, which is to be fought tooth and nail, but there is also a health factor here for a certain portion of the population (overweight or not), and it's not a shaming, but a caring. It doesn't matter (objectively) if people consider you overweight as long as you're healthily and getting some exercise, yet this wasn't touched on. Again, I quit this novel early, so maybe this was addressed later, but even so, it would have been nice had there been a statement right up front about this, because it's important. People can go to hell with their fat remarks and abuses, but if a person is healthy, it's not even a concern, so maybe they should go further to hell?

The author is a graduate of a creative writing program, which frankly tends to put me off reading a novel, because I've read too many such novels which have turned out to be so bland as to be indistinguishable from one another, and all-too-often pretentious to a sickening degree. This author had some moments of excellence and some appreciated humor, but what got to me, and this is what caused me to finally quit the book, was that it was so disgustingly trope YA that it was almost literally nauseating. Take this as an example:

"It's your eyes," he decides. "They're blue."
"Wow. They're not wrong when they say how observant you are."
Gareth chuckles. "The gold flecks. They make all the difference."

Gold flecks make her eyes pretty? I feel bad for the millions of women who have no gold flecks! How awfully ugly they must be with those fleckless eyes! Body positivity? I have read this 'gold flecks' quote so many times in so many YA books that it is way beyond a joke at this point. If this is all you get when you graduate from a creative writing course more than likely taught by someone who can't make a living from their own writing then it's a self-evident waste of time. Do they not teach originality? Do they not teach participants to read a lot so they can learn both what to do and what not to do? No self-respecting YA author who wants to be taken seriously should use the words 'gold flecks' or even 'biceps' in a novel ever again, but at least this author wrote 'biceps' rather than 'bicep' so I should credit her that much!

On one technical matter, I have to give this ebook file an 'f':

Piper f lips open
I f lop back onto

In the space of a couple of sentences and in many other places too, we see words which begin with an 'f' having a space after them. Amazon's Kindle process mangles files. It's an all-too-common feature of the ebook review copies I see. It does not well-handle files that are anything other than plain vanilla with regard to formatting. I suspect that's what happened here. Additionally, there was a confused mix up of notes and text:

There's nothing wrong with being the fat girl on the plane. soScottsdale [[New Post>Title: We're SoReady for an Early Look at GM Creator: Cookie Vonn [contributor] Okay Scottsdale,
"remember Fairy Falls?" FAT GIRL ON A PLANE 31 I snort. Of course I do."

The book title and page number from the page header is embedded in the text there. The impression I had was that this book was designed for a print version without a thought being given to how the ebook looked. I know ebooks often sell at rock-bottom prices thanks to Amazon, which seems to share the public's view that books ought to be valued by weight, not quality, and ebooks, being the lightest of all should be also the cheapest of all. It evidently also likes its overseas contract workers to get rock-bottom pay, but that doesn't mean readers want rock-bottom quality! Another example is that conversations which should have been separated by a line feed and a carriage return are run together on one line: "What kind of questions?" he says, his eyes narrowing. "I plan to have them ready for you on Sunday at 2:00 p.m."
Hopefully those issues will be resolved before this book hits final publication.

Final there's the cover and the book blurb. These are not on the author (unless they self-publish and design their own covers), but they don't help a book when they're profoundly dumb. The blurb is predictably idiotic, as far too many of them are. I have no time for book blurbs that end with a question so numbingly dumb that only a complete, utter, and lifelong dedicated moron could not get the right answer: "Will she realize that she's always had the power to make her own dreams come true?"

Now just what, I wonder, is the answer to that question? Do book publishers want us to think they believe readers are idiots? Because that's what they do when they ask brain-dead questions like that in the blurb and far too many books, especially ones aimed at female readers it would seem, do this. Do publishers think female readers are dumber than male readers? I sure don't, but maybe the only way to prove that would be for women to boycott all books where the blurb asks a dumb question at the end?!

I don't normally talk about book covers, except on occasion to point out how, as is the case here, the cover designer clearly has no clue what's in the novel - or is simply clueless period. The silhouetted girl on the cover isn't remotely fat. She's not even what might be uncharitably called "big boned" - she's normal and ordinary - that is, she looks at first glance to be a healthy height and weight (healthy that is by realistic standards not by asinine anorexic standards of Hollywood and the fashion industry). So is this supposed to be Cookie after she lost weight, and why do we see only that rather than both, or just the Cookie of the past? Doesn't this make the book's very cover a form of fat-shaming?

I wish the author all the best with her writing career, but it's for the reasons outlined that I cannot recommend this book.

Model Undercover: London by Carina Axelson

Rating: WARTY!

In this outing, teen model Axelle Anderson is in London. This is the second of these that I've read, and though normally - and thoroughly - disdain the fashion industry and fashion consciousness as the most self-absorbed, self-indulgent, abusive and wasteful activities ever devised, I found myself curiously liking the character and enjoying the story in the first volume, even though the title 'undercover model' is really wrong. She's actually an overt model and an undercover detective! There are three volumes published so far. I missed the second volume, so this is only my second outing. it didn't work out very well for me this time. It became obvious pretty quickly what the mystery was (hint: twins), yet the "detective' didn't even consider this forever, which spoke badly to her smarts.

The hardest thing for me to read in this series is the frequent mention of fashions, but I found in the first volume that if I ignored that, I enjoyed the rest of the story. This one didn't start out well, and the sad YA tropes started thick and fast, such as flecks of gold in the male's eyes: "...eyes (brown, with flecks of greengold..." Yes, 'greengold' is now a word! But seriously, can we get away from this flecks of gold nonsense? It's so tired now that it needs to be retired. I think maybe the 'greengold' was an accident because in the kindle app edition I read on my phone, I noticed there were quite a few such pairs of words run together. It seemed to be primarily where the word pair would normally have a hyphen between, and perhaps the conversion process to the Kindle format had missed a hyphen here and there? An example of this was in " state-of-theart", and this same phrase was used just a few paragraphs later with the hyphenation correct, so exactly what the problem here was, I can't pinpoint. The greengold eye disease revisits later: " I could see flecks of gold flickering in his eyes."

The chaptering was also messed up. I don't know if the original had dropped caps, but in the Kindle app version it had dropped lines! For example, if the sentence at the start of the chapter began, say, "As we quickly hurried for the train...", the Kindle app version would have the first letter 'A' on one line, the second letter (s) on the next line, and then the rest of the sentence on the third line. There were no screen-breaks between chapters, either; they just followed pell-mell after one another on the same screen as the previous chapter. It looked messy. This was an advance review copy which doesn't excuse shoddy presentation in this electronic age, but hopefully these flaws will be fixed before the final edition is released.

Some of the gaffes were amusing. This phrase belongs in the glossary of misheard song lyrics: " Thorough route aside," I think the author may have meant to write "Though that aside." How you would get what we did get from that, I don't know unless the word processor is doing automatic correction, or the text was being dictated, which in this case wouldn't surprise me.

In a similar vein, I read, "...a small pavilion in the far left corner of the Palace of Westminster caught my eye. I hadn't seen it before- it was small and whimsical..." Small is repeated, and repeating is, well, repetitive! Since it had already been described as small, then the second 'small' should have been left out. Something like, "... a small, whimsical pavilion in the far left corner of the Palace of Westminster now caught my eye. I hadn't seen it before..." would have worked a treat.

There were some plot problems. The beginning of this story is that photographer Gavin, the boyfriend of a friend of Axelle's, is apparently "mugged" when he was down by the River Thames investigating something. He's in a coma. Later his apartment is ransacked as though someone was trying to find or recover something. Axelle is brought in to see if she can discover what is going on. The mystery involves celebrity fashion designer Johnny Vane, and seems to center around a picture of Vane as a boy, arms around his twin brother Julian, who evidently died in a drowning accident in the Thames at the very spot the picture was taken. It was at this point that most of the plot became quite obvious even to me who usually gets these things wrong.

Despite the fact that Gavin is mugged, has his apartment ransacked, and is later discovered with the life-support unplugged in his hospital room, no one seems to think it's necessary to mount a guard on his room, not even the police! That's really insulting to the Greater London Metropolitan Police Service based at Scotland Yard (which is actually now New Scotland Yard!). The author appears not to appreciate that there's a distinction between that and the City of London Police Force which covers the City of London. The action centers around an area in the City of Westminster, however, so she is correct in specifying Scotland Yard.

One thing I didn't like was that Axelle doesn't come off as very smart in this story, and dumb main characters is not something I can abide. I don't mind if they start out dumb and wise up, but when they start out in a series as reasonably sharp, but become painfully, obstinately dumb by volume three, it's pretty clear that the series has lost its fire. The very first thing you should wonder, if you're dealing with one dead identical twin, is: "Is the surviving twin who he claims to be?" Is it Johnny who is still alive, or Julian, posing as Johnny for some reason - and how can you tell? This never crosses her mind - which made me suspicious! Whether this is the solution or not, it's not a good thing for the "detective' to have failed to even consider it.

Only the twins and their nanny were present at the drowning, so unless she could tell them apart, the surviving twin could have been either brother. Or if she could tell them apart, was she in on a murder or a cover-up? Or was it really just an accident and Julian really was the one who died - in which case, what's the significance of the photograph, if any? One twin is inevitably older than the other. Was one of them favored over the other? Did the older one stand to inherit? Was the older one Julian? Axelle never asks any of these questions, and while this may serve the author's plot, it doesn't serve her flagship character if it makes her look clueless. She looks especially so when we're told time after time about Johnny's love of wearing gloves - how he's never seen without them, and we get heavily pointed smack-you-hard-on-your-head hints about close ups and the photo of where both boys hands are visible. it just makes the main character look stupid and sad.

Talking of which there was some dumb text, such as this example: "... often find that looking at a person's house... can give away a lot about a person's preferences and lifestyle." Nope, always looking at a person's house gives these things away, and it's not something which takes a keen eye or a detective to figure out.

At one point Axelle is trying to find out information from the twins' nanny, but is called away by her boyfriend, who's helping her on this case. The reason he calls her away is that someone is coming to the house, but instead of sneaking into the yard after the visitor goes inside, to see if they could overhear what takes place, the two hurry away, thereby failing to avail themselves of a golden opportunity to find out something more. This tells me Axelle really isn't much of a detective after all.

There's your cliché teen love triangle here, too, with a new guy on the block, a rock star who starts coming on to Axelle. Never once does she ever clearly, unequivocally tell him she's in a committed relationship which is pretty pathetic on her part. Failing to do this means she is actively encouraging his attention. Then she acts surprised by the media attention she's garnering because she's photographed with this guy! If I were boyfriend Sebastian I'd think twice about allying myself with a woman who encourages male attention and invites trouble by failing to set clear boundaries.

This is another example of how dumb Axelle behaves in this story, and it's not remotely endearing. By continuing to effectively flirt with rock star Josh, she is, in a real way, being unfaithful to Sebastian. He doesn't strike me as the sharpest knife in the box, and he's rather immature, too, but he's a decent faithful guy and he deserves better than this. None of this made me warm-up to this story, and it made me actively dislike Axelle. At about sixty percent in I was ready to quit, since I pretty much knew the ending. I read to the end to make sure I was right about what I thought I was, and consequently this novel left me feeling tired and bored. It felt way too long and too much of a drag - in short, very different from the first one. I can't recommend it.

Model Undercover: New York by Carina Axelsson

Title: Model Undercover: New York
Author: Carina Axelsson
Publisher: Sourcebooks
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 reward aplenty!

I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of fashion stories or modeling stories because I detest the fashion and modeling world. Never has there been - not even including Hollywood and TV, a more self-centered, self-obsessed, pretentious and shallow enterprise as these. I despise those who spend thousands upon clothes and accessories when there are sick and starving children throughout the world, but fiction is not the same as the real world, and once in a while I've found a story that's interesting, and which doesn't take itself too seriously. It's those rare few which keep me cautiously coming back looking for another one! This novel turned out to be such a one.

The premise here is that Axelle, a sixteen-year-old girl, is both a model and a "sleuth" - but primarily (so she keeps limply protesting) the latter. Why anyone thinks grown-ups will respond positively - or even politely - to a relentlessly inquisitive sixteen-year-old goes completely unexplained, but let's let that slide right on by: this is fiction, after all!

Having solved a puzzle in Paris (presumably in an earlier volume which I have not read), Axelle now believes she's a brilliant detective and can solve anything, which is why she's just arrived in New York City. An extremely valuable black diamond has been stolen during a modeling shoot, and she's supposed to discover who took it. Carbonado diamonds are rare, and are thought to be formed - unlike other diamonds - in stellar explosions, so they are really intriguing - to me at least.

In amongst slurs aimed at London (referenced constantly in a rather snobbish way, but paradoxically run-down in comparisons with NYC) and at vegan cuisine, we discover that Carbonado (black) diamonds (which do actually exist)are supposedly almost impossible to cut without incurring serious damage. They are harder than other diamonds, but this doesn't necessarily mean they will shatter if you cut them. Since this particular one - the Black Amelia (named after one of its owners, who was Amelia - not black!) - is so very distinctive, the thief is going to have a hard time getting rid of it, so perhaps the theft wasn't because of the value per se of the diamond, but because the thief had a grudge against the owner, or was intent upon blackmail.

There were no security guards at the shoot (idiots!) because the owner is a friend of the editor of the fashion magazine, and the editor is evidently too stupid to hire her own security. The shoot was closed and limited to only a handful of people, all of whom were really successful in their fields, so the motive looks a lot less like petty theft, as it were, and a lot more like revenge or blackmail. Cassandra, aka Cazzie, the British editor of Chic fashion magazine, idiotically fails to notify the police (they don't want bad publicity!) and she's the only one who knows that Axelle is here primarily as a detective, not as a model.

So the author seems to have everything locked-up to explain these oddball circumstances, but there's one problem: Cassandra, aka Cazzie, is receiving texts from someone who appears to have the diamond. So why all the cogitating on Axelle's part about motive? Clearly this is the motive - to taunt and embarrass Cazzie for some reason. What makes less sense right here is that they now have someone the police could conceivably track down yet not once do they consider bringing them in. This made no sense to me. It's also weird that the texts don't start rolling in until Axelle is on the scene, isn't it?

The text-taunter tells Cazzie that there will be three riddles which she must solve or she won't see the diamond again. Interestingly, Cazzie is able to respond this time - she wasn't before - and the taunter tells her that she's pissed him/her off, so the first riddle will be delayed. The taunter never used the word 'diamond' to begin with, instead talking about 'treasure', so I began to suspect that it was entirely possible that this was unconnected with the theft of the diamond. That would have been a nice red-herring, but no - the text-taunter uses it later - after Cazzie has used it. It was at that point that I wondered: is Cazzie doing this all by herself?

Axelle gets an email which she thinks is from the same source as the texting - this warns her to butt out. I suspected that this came from Sebastian, an insufferably over-protective out-of-favor boyfriend of Axelle's, but that was just a wild guess, and it was wrong. Sebastian is a jerk and I didn't like him, even given that Axelle is flying-off-the-handle over him. The fact that she's cluelessly wrong about him is another irony. The detective - clueless?!

I have to say I find all foreign characters annoying when they're depicted as speaking perfect English yet nonetheless are reduced to interspersing it with words or phrases from their native tongue. Thus we get Miriam the maid peppering her dialog with French, which is not only pretentious, it was really annoying. If you can't depict a foreign character without being forced to make them spew a brew of Franglish or whatever language combo, then make your character English. Otherwise find a way to depict their foreign nature by doing work on the character-building instead of taking the lazy way out. Please? Just a thought.

The weird thing is that while Axelle wisely tries to get Cazzie to stir-up the text-taunter in an effort to have him/her to give themselves away, when this is going on, Axelle fails completely to station herself next to one of the suspects to see if they're texting when the taunter responds. That's just plainly stupid. If she thinks it's one of a small group, then all she has to do is be close to each one in turn during one of these exchanges. In this manner, she could at least eliminate some - those who were not texting - even if she can't necessarily zero in on the actual perp right away. This doesn't speak strongly to her smarts, but then Axelle is only sixteen and not the most worldly of people despite all her claims to being widely traveled.

Without wanting to give anything away, I chose two people as the prime suspects quite early on in this story, and one of them soon seemed unlikely. The other one, it turned out, actually was the thief! If I can get it right when I'm typically lousy at that kind of thing, I suspect the villain was way too obvious!

Aside from that, the writing in general was not bad. There were one or two exceptions, such as where I read, "...the studio was shaped like an L. A curtain..." which was misleading, because it initially read - to me - like "LA curtain - as in Los Angeles curtain! It took me a second to realize what it actually was. It would have been nice had the author put the 'L' in single quotes, like I did just then, to clarify this.

The novel moved at a decent pace and was - refreshingly - very light on fashion and make-up, which I really appreciated! It was also pretty decently plotted (in general) with a nice twist here and there. It had rather shallow, but otherwise reasonably realistic characters, so despite some early misgivings about this I was, by the end, convinced that it was a worthy read. I can't pretend that I'm waiting breathlessly for a sequel, but you might be after you've read this one!

The Prelude by KaSonndra Leigh

Title: The Prelude: A Musical Interlude Novel
Author: KaSonndra Leigh
Publisher: KaSonndra Leigh 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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story.

Errata
P12 is missing a close quote after "Do we have a deal?"
P34 "She prances right up to where Luca Martuccio's sits."? "...where Luca Martuccio's party sits" maybe?
P71 "respond back" tautology.

I didn't like this novel at all, which makes me feel bad because I want to support independent publishers. I was put off it very quickly, and while I did try hard to read all the way through it, I found myself skipping sections because they were simply uninteresting.

Erin Angelo is the female protagonist who narrates the opening section, and she had lost my support by p13 when an "Adonis" walks in: Aleksandr Dostovsky. His mouth is "a heart-shaped ode to sex". Honestly? I just cannot picture a guy with a heart-shaped mouth in a frame designed to hold a picture of a great lover! It just doesn't work. I can picture a "French fop" from an historical romance with a heart-shaped mouth. I can picture an adorable infant with a heart-shaped mouth. But a leading man? No. I'm not sure what I expected with this novel, but I did expect more maturity and class than this, especially given the Italian opera angle. Are we being told an actual story here or are we merely the uncomfortable audience for an author's 222 page wet dream? Perhaps it would have been better titled Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Porn?

"Adonis" tells us that he likes to be called Alek Dostov, although that sounds more like something an American would say than a Russian, and we're offered no real reason to believe that a man like him would shorten his name for the convenience of others. But his "god-like" accent turns Angelo on, apparently stirring things she hasn’t felt in ages. Unfortunately, stirring things like that tends to bring a lot of murk and pollutants to the surface. This does bring on a full-blown asthma attack in Angelo, but she still manages to speak in complete sentences! Yes, she's that amazing!

He gets her inhaler, she gets to suck, and she's finally able to obsesses on his eyes, telling him they're unusual; then she checks herself and apologizes saying that it was inappropriate! This is after this stranger has been stroking his thumb along her cheek and she saw nothing untoward about that! Talk about double standards. And why make Dostov Russian, but then refer to him in terms of Greek gods? Why not just make him Greek? Unemployment is sky-high in Greece right now. A Greek guy looking for work abroad is not an uncommon thing at all.

Angelo is in love with his accent. He says "Did I not?" and she hears it as "Deed I knot?" Maybe it's just me, but I don't see how 'not' is different from 'knot' in pronunciation. You can argue that those three particular words actually mean something else and this is what Angelo sees, but that's not how Leigh conveys it to us. Or if that's what she intended, she ties herself in knots trying to do it! Neither is Dostov a 'maestro' as he's referred to all-too-often. No one at 23 gets that appellation. Maestro means something. It's an insult to music to toss an honor like that away, and it's a betrayal of what Leigh is supposedly trying to do with this novel.

'Maestro' doesn't mean stud, or tough guy, or sex god, or even heart-shaped mouth; it has a real meaning related to music (usually) and Dostov has no cred whatsoever in that regard. What's he done? In 23 years he has not put in anywhere near sufficient time to earn such a title. Nor are we ever treated to any kind of explanation from Leigh as to why he should carry such an honorific, or what he could possibly have done to merit it at so youthful an age.

Bear in mind (or given 'deed I knot' above, perhaps 'baring mined' might be more accurate?!) that this is obviously the guy who's being introduced as the instadore du jour, yet never once does Angelo consider being completely honest with him at their first encounter. She could have explained to him that the supplier had sent the wrong color fabric, and he could have found it refreshing that here was someone who was willing to be completely honest with him given the life he's led. This would have been the perfect opportunity to remove this novel from the "Twilight" zone and put it somewhere these tall tales seem to have an insurmoutable problem in going: into honesty and authenticity, but Leigh doesn't take us there. If Angelo had been completely honest with Dostov right there and then, that would have offered the possibility of a bond, shameless bond(!), being forged between them: something which might have led to a love rooted in something other than developmentally-retarded adolescent fantasy. As it is, Leigh looks like she's writing young-adult chest-pounding romance, betraying the entire genre in the xiphoid process.

When Leigh introduces us to the reason for titling her novel the way she did, I can see where she's going, and it’s admirable, but she fails to convince me that she's chosen the right title or knows how to play this piece. I see no respect accorded to the careers which are assigned to either actor in this drama. I found that very sad; it had me distracted from the story because I was wondering why someone would make their main characters a fashion designer and a musician if they're not then going to go somewhere with it - especially in a novel which supposedly has music at its core.

On that score, I'm not sure that 'prelude' is a proper fit, either. It seemed to me that what Leigh was really looking for was more along the lines of an overture; however, given that both parties had been in relationships before, perhaps prelude - the beginning of a new movement - is better than overture, which to me signifies the start of something brand new. The two are probably interchangeable at least to some degree, but this relationship was supposed to be the start of something brand new, yet neither party to it seemed to be making any original overtures.

I was intrigued by how Leigh introduced the music motif, but disappointed that it then goes nowhere, since it was the only thing which was holding my attention! The main characters are far too one-dimensional to inspire loyalty and too predictable to generate any interest. The setting was no better. I was not at all moved by this story supposedly taking place in Milan, because I felt none of the atmosphere of that city. Everyone in the story acts exactly like they're American, with American speech patterns and even their thought processes are as American as you can get.

Not only is there nothing to make us believe we're in Milan, there isn't anything to make us believe Angelo was ever in Austin, Texas, either. Take this example: "A road that ran along the swamp lands." In Austin, Texas? Texas which is in a three-year drought? Texas which had its driest year ever in 2011? What swamp? Does Leigh not understand that there's a difference between Texas and Louisiana? Or does she think Austin is on the coast with a salt marsh next door? That was suspension of disbelief out the door again.

Why was I uninspired by the two protagonists? We have Angelo, who is supposedly a fashion prodigy at 23. That I could just about buy, but even if I swallowed that unquestioningly, what does Leigh offer me in return, to validate my trust in her? Nothing! I'm sorry, but I can't buy that a fashion meteor like Angelo goes through life thinking of nothing - quite literally nothing whatsoever - save how hot Dostov is. She goes through the entire novel and never honestly contemplates fashion. She never dwells on her work, or ruminates other than briefly in passing on her ideas for designs. She never becomes engrossed in what needs to be done to get her opera project where it needs to be. There is no fashion in her head and that makes this character a complete fraud for me. Romy and Michele were more convincing as fashion designers than Angelo is.

Yeah, we get one evening where she sits and roughs out some sketches of things she wants to make, but that's it, and it's over far too quickly. We get to share none of her thought processes during this time: there's nothing about how she's viewing what she does, nothing about how she gets an idea and translates it onto the page; nothing about how she can see fabric giving a three-dimensional life to her drawings, nothing about the fit, flow and feel of the material. Remember this is told from her first person PoV (alternating with Dostov's), yet we almost never find a fashionable thought drifting anywhere in her mind! The young-Earth creationists have more intelligent design than she does, and I can't buy that she would be even remotely like that were she a real person - not even were she hopelessly in love as well. It's a betrayal of her entire life's choices to depict her this way.

Even Dostov agrees that Erin Angelo is simply uninteresting and has nothing to offer. I know this because when we get into his mind all he has going on is lust for her body. All he wants is her "boobs" under his hands, and honestly, given the way this story is told, who can blame him when she evidently has nothing else on display? We're reminded ad nauseam that he's a maestro, yet never once does a real musical thought enter his brain. He never thinks about his opera. He never thinks about the musical direction in which he's taking it. He never thinks about any piece of music he would compose or play. He never relates music to what's happening in the real world, or sees music in the everyday events of the real world. Not once. Not ever. And he's a "maestro", so we're expected to believe. Well I don't believe it; I've been offered no reason to do so, unless you count him raising and waving his baton all over the place. And yes, do rest assured that he's tapped a few podia with it. His name ought to be Do-stiff, not Dostov.

An example of how inappropriate he is to his position is clarified starkly when he asks Erin to perform in the opera in an important solo role. This made me laugh out loud because it was so brain-dead. Some maestro. An important opera is opening and some untried, untested girl off the street with zero training is thought appropriate? We can tell what an aria-head Dostov is by the fact that his narration runs like this: "I only make it as far as the door to my Aston Martin...". Since we already know the make of car he owns, was there something wrong with merely saying "the door to my car", or are we intended to understand that the nipple-devouring Dostov is a pretentious parvenu?

The entire novel shows that this pair of one-note people don't know the score, let alone how to write or sing along with one. Their entire repertoire consists of nothing more than lusting after the other. Now I can buy that someone is hot, and would be strongly in your thoughts, but for that to be the sole subject of pretty much their entire mental process is patent nonsense. If there are truly people like that, they need competent medical attention rather urgently, and if they fail to get that, then they need law enforcement attention even more urgently before someone gets hurt.

I looked forward to reading this and would have liked to have loved it (or even loved to liked it), but I could not. This novel was not about real people with real careers, hopes, and dreams. It was merely a story of how two sets of repressed genitals got their rocks off. This novel ought to have been titled Tragédie en Musique but that one is already taken, so might I suggest Catastrophe de Mode played at tempo di licenziosità?