Skinny Bitch in Love by Kim Barnouin

Title: Skinny Bitch in Love
Author: Kim Barnouin
Publisher: Knopf
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, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Skinny Bitch in love is told in the in the flirt person singular! A book critic, Paul Johnson, once wrote an article for the New Statesman reviewing the Ian Fleming novel Dr. No, a James Bond fable. The review slammed Fleming's work, and it was titled, Sex, snobbery and sadism" ("The New Statesman 5 April 1958). I could use the same title for this review, and the only adjustment I’d have to make is that of changing 'sadism' to 'masochism'.

I am the very last fan of pretentiousness, particularly when it comes to food and fashion, so this novel is not a no-brainer for me. I feel nauseated whenever I hear a French words substituted for a perfectly good English ones in those cultures: sous chef instead of under-cook, prêt-à-porter instead of off-the-rack, and so on. I even nauseated myself when I employed that very technique in a novel of my own Waterfall, though it was necessary there, in order to create a certain mood and atmosphere, primarily because that was, after all, an Anglo-French novel.

But when it comes to food, the English language has shown itself to be highly vulnerable to invasion. No one likes to eat dead pigs, but they love to pig out on pork! Butchered sheep is horrible, but mutton and lamb? No one would mind being fleeced for that, would they? Cow corpse is a turn off, but everyone has a steak in bar-B-Q! You see what I mean? Most us feel so guilty for slaughtering animals by the millions that we hide from it behind barricades of euphemism. This very real French disease is endemic.

Skinny Bitch in Love has a few too many tropes and clichés for my taste, and in the first dozen pages, too. There's the gay best friend, the woman who is so perfect but somehow her life is in the toilet, the overweight but canine-loyal and adorable best girlfriend, the injustice and betrayal, etc., but I chose to go with this because I wanted to know just what kind of a salad Barnouin had tossed here.

The protagonist, Clementine, is the under-cook at a vegan eatery which to me betrays everything about veganism by flaunting itself as snottily high class. I was a vegan at one time, when I was younger. I'm still a vegetarian (the only one in my family - immediate and extended), so I know a bit about the culture, its pros and cons, its bulls and bears and have a bit of a feel for how isolated Clementine must have felt as the story unfolded.

A high-class food critic visits the restaurant, and the food Clementine Cooper has worked so hard to prepare is sabotaged (there's another French word! The encroaching French-ism galls! Aargh!). Someone adds butter (a big no-no for vegans: anything derived from the animal kingdom is out, including dairy) to one of the dishes the critic is to sample. Emil, the owner of the restaurant hears immediately about this. Maybe he's psychic. He fires Clementine, and her gay friend Ty quits in sympathetic support. Shortly afterwards, she hears that Emil has fired the entire kitchen staff. Emil is a sadistic moron.

Clementine thinks a rival, Rain (there's a joke in there somewhere along the lines of "It never rains...", but let’s not go there), was the one who betrayed her, but Rain stopped that play, claiming Clementine is all wet. The butter was, after all, found at Clementine's own work station, and Clementine was evidently far too stupid to taste the food before serving it). Now Clementine is out of a job and resigned to the fact that she will never work in this town again - not in the food business, anyway. Now you understand one reason why I detest this food culture. So who sabotaged the meal? If I were writing this, it would be Ty just to break the mold (mold, kitchen? Hmm!), but I somehow doubt that Barnouin is going to diss her leading gay man. Maybe it actually was Clementine in an unconscious self-sabotage, to get her out of her rut. I honestly have no idea, because we spent so little time in the warm-up that it’s impossible to determine who in that kitchen is red-handed!

So Clementine decides to resurrect herself after failing to find work at a dozen snotty eateries where she applied. She decides to promote herself as a vegan personal chef and cooking guide, and she prepares fliers. Now this is all taking place in LA, BTW, so it does fly, but I'm far form convinced that posting this particular kind of flier on light poles was the best choice of venue. She did garner one response. Unfortunately it was from her ex-boyfriend of six months ago, over whom she still has painful feelings. He did pay her over two thousand dollars to teach him how to cook and to prepare a bunch of meals, but she had to put up with seeing him pretty much make out with the woman to whom he was planning on becoming married (yes, I know it’s far quicker to say fiancée, but that necessitates using another...aargh! Too late! I already let another mal mot slip in! Double aargh!

Clementine's next plan is to start a cooking class. She posts more fliers and gets three responders, including her roommate, at $400 a pop for a six week course (it's actually a six-day course, one per week). One major problem I noticed is that despite her being a chef and talking about preparing food all the time, not one recipe ever shows up in th novel! Not in the ebook, anyway!

So the first night of the class she has a librarian turn up who seems interested in Sara, and a woman who obsesses about her name being Eva, not Eves, not Evie, etc. Nicely done there - forcing us to focus on Eva's first name takes attention away from her last name! The class is interrupted by noises outside and Clementine discovers that someone is opening a steakhouse directly across the street and hanging a huge sign across from her window! Like an idiot, she goes over to complain about the sign and gets nowhere, of course, but the owner, who has the entirely original name of Zach follows her back over and signs up for her class (but never attends). He also hires her to create two vegan meals for his restaurant and pays her whatever she asks for her time.

Here's where this story goes rapidly down hill. The instant Zach arrives, Clementine devolves from a person I was half-way to liking, into a microcephalic teenager, feeling tingles in her extremities which in the real world would actually be an early-warning that some sort of circulatory malfunction is about to ensue. Oh, and I'm now convinced that I'm reading young adult fiction. But it gets worse! It always does when it goes there, doesn't it? Well, not always, but all-too-often.

So Zach is insistent that Clementine visit him at his home in the evening to cook these two meals so he can taste them before he accepts them as fare for his restaurant; then his phone rings and he's talking to someone he refers to as "Baby" on the phone. Clementine, readily led by the nose as she is, goes to his home - the home of this guy who she doesn't even remotely know, and who is well over six feet and probably weighs three times what she does. She starts preparing the meals, and they talk and then completely uninvited, He kisses her and she doesn't even make a deal out of it.

I'm sorry, but Clementine lost my interest and good will right there and then. This isn't a woman who is asking for trouble, this is a woman who is writing a scented invitation on vellum, with calligraphy, begging for a grease-trap full of trouble to come and shave her ass with a large-bladed meat slicer. They kiss again, and then "Baby" shows up - a hawt young woman who immediately and loudly announces that she'll wait for Zach upstairs in the bedroom, and he follows her like a butch in heat not even having the couth to remotely attempt the requisite placation of Clementine! And we know that Clementine will not learn her lesson. This novel isn't Skinny Bitch in Love, it's strutting, red-ass displaying, shameless and concupiscent Skinny Bitch in torrid heat.

I have some issues with Barnouin trying to anglify Alexander. I've never heard anyone refer to a a 12-year-old as a "bloke". But once I get on this kind of kick I can't stop, so let me mention one other writing issue and then move on. Barnouin describes what Clementine and Alexander do on their first date, and she mentions that they sat and "people watched". It was misleading and would have been better as "people-watched", so it actually conveyed that they were watching people as opposed to passers-by staring at them! Just a minor thing, but this is a writing blog as well as a reading blog so I’d be remiss if I didn’t pick up on these things!

I have a problem with Clementine's rejection of Alexander. Yes, you can write your character with whatever quirks you like and it would be insane to make every character the same, and have all of them perfect, but unless Barnouin really wants to render Clementine as one of the shallowest airhead female characters imaginable, is it actually necessary to have her decide that because her toes don’t physically tingle when they kiss, then she should peremptorily ditch Alexander as a prospect even though he's the best guy for her on present showing? If it’s the case that she's going to bow down to Zach the Bastard, as she's consistently doing so far, then I can only conclude that Clementine is a moron who deserves all she gets. Women like her are why other women end up saddled with a bad rep from guys.

It gets worse. The next cooking class descends into the girls giving Duncan the librarian advice about how to stalk his ex. Seriously?! The only way to deal with an ex is to let them go and move on. Most of us learn that the hard way. Clementine has learned it, but seems incapable of passing on that hard-won knowledge. Red roses arrive and they all think it's a gift from Alexander the Gray Area, but even I knew they were from Zach the Bastard - because, of course, every woman is so weak and dumb that she can not only be manipulated with pretty-pretty, but also bought and paid for with it. At least, that's the message Barnouin apparently wants you to take home.

The flowers work, of course, and Clementine is now Zach the Bastard's zombie for life. He dictates to her when, where, and how they will meet again (and he does this routinely) and Clementine she falls right into line and sees no problem with subjecting herself to this dictatorship. It was at this point that I wanted to delete this ebook, and go vomit, but I initially decided to stick with it to the halfway point and if it was no better by then, it would merit a warty! Curiously enough that means I need to read 69 more pages: how deliciously appropriate for Clementine's mentality! I entertained the idea of asking my wife to read this and give me her opinion, but my feeling is that she would reject this novel out of hand without even pretending she wanted to read it.

Clementine's dad gets sick, so her cooking session with Zach, which is about to devolve into her laying down for him, no questions asked, is over. Zach the Bastard offers to drive her to the hospital! Nicely calculated move. He sure has the vegan wool substitute pulled squarely over Clementine's eyes. So Clementine's dad is lying sick in the hospital bed, he might be slowly dying, yet the first thought Clementine has is to leave him and go find Zach, and then hang out at a bar with him instead of being with her sick father, lending moral support to her mom and her sister. I'm wondering who is more sick - Clementine or her father? I definitely do not like this woman now.

This scene actually made me acutely aware that Clementine is always in the servile position of going to find Zach; he's never looking for her. He merely sits and waits on her running after him, like he's the King of Siam. Don't worry, you'll bringer....

Well, now the only topic of conversation at Clementine's cooking classes is endless endless ENDLESS tales of Zach the Bastard. I'm sorry but this is nauseating. I sincerely hope that women in general have far going for them than disporting themselves like adolescent fangirls of wretched lechers, but that's the message Barnouin seems to be so desperately and dedicatedly endeavoring to implant within our minds: women have no existence outside of how they can serve and worship men, and they should not expect any such existence because really, they don’t have any right to one, do they?

Clementine flips off Alexander - now they're just good friends and Alexander apparently has so little self-esteem that he's fine with that. How many women have put how many guys through that? And how many guys return the favor? The short answer to those questions is: too many. Meanwhile at cooking class, the 75% of the class which has two X chromosomes agrees to stalk Duncan's ex girlfriend on his behalf. How sick is that? They complete their mission and determine that Duncan is SoL, but on their way out of the bar, they espy Zach the Bastard with his arm comfortably around a woman he's escorting somewhere.

Clementine agonizes over Zach the Bastard, expends not one single thought on her sick father. She has to learn from her sister Elizabeth that her father is on the mend! But of course that's not important because she has a plan for a new restaurant just a few doors down from where she lives. She focuses on how pretty it will look when it’s cleaned (by Sara) and decorated (by Ty). She evidently doesn’t plan on doing a thing herself save directing the others on what to do, and she gives not one ounce of thought to parking.

At least Barnouin has the cultural class to bring in Doctor Who! Props for that! It did perk up my interest briefly. Alexander calls her asking if she’ll bake and decorate some four dozen Doctor Who cupcakes for his sister's wedding. His sister is called Sabine. Really. After watching an ep of Nikita (3.2) last night in which Seymour unexpectedly impersonates a Dalek, I'm again amazed by how deeply this show has penetrated the psyche in the US.

Anyway, moving right along here! Sara is a fan of Doctor Who, so now I'm thinking: who really cares about Skinny Bitch? I want to read a novel about Normally-Proportioned Sara! How many times have you read a novel where the main character has a best friend and you find yourself wanting to read about the best friend rather than the main character? I find I'm doing that a bit more than I might have imagined I would since I've been reading YA novels lately. And after reading the disastrous Insurgent and now this, both in the first person, I have to reaffirm my decision to never read another first person YA or romance novel. Although I’ll probably be forced to break that resolution when something really cool pops up. If it ever pops up.

Clementine inexplicably resorts to avoiding Zach the Bastard. Not that she shouldn't avoid him in the long run, but after all that crap about stalking Duncan's ex, and advising her to close with Duncan, she now avoids closing with Zach the Bastard? What level of hypocrite is Clementine? She needs to tell him to drop dead, and then avoid him. Zach the Bastard is an expert at womanipulation though: he now resorts to employing Clementine's sick dad in order to force a response from her! And of course she comes to heel like a good dog.

A serious problem I have with Clementine is that she's so shallow that she lets that first kiss with Alexander dictate her whole attitude towards him. How pathetic is this woman? She acts like she's half her own age, and she's only 26. If Barnouin was actually going to get Clementine and Alexander together, then I’d have more respect for this novel, but having read what I've read so far, I have no faith in Barnouin's ability or intent to make that happen.

Zach the Bastard tells Clementine that the redhead he had his arm around is his fraternal twin sister. Okay. Again with the fraternal. Why is she his brotherly sister?! This isn't a fault of Barnouin's, of course, but it is a serious problem with our heavily gender-biased language. Note that I say gender-biased, not sex-biased, because sex has a host of baggage associated with it, which is also highly gender-biased. Pet peeve - what can I say?!

So Clementine goes to eat on the beach with Zach the Bastard and she dresses sexily, and pretty much wants to drop her panties right there in the sand. This reminds me of that old cartoon where a woman is buried in the sand and some enterprising guy asks her, "What's in it for me if I dig you out?", and her response is "Sand!" (and no, I'm not going to explain that for you!). On the beach, Clementine pretty much lets Zach the Bastard poke and prod her like he;s tenderizing meat, which, I guess, he is. She lets him get away with the most inappropriate things, given how young and tenuous their relationship is at this point. This is after she's had the hypocrisy to get on her friend Sara's case for jumping Duncan's bones! This is Duncan the Librarian who evidently read her like an open book and who might well be planning on returning her to the shelf now that they've had sex! How bad is it that I'm far more interested in how Clementine's business plans turn out, than ever I could be in what happens to that waste of a relationship called Zach the Bastard?

Unfortunately, Barnouin is trying to win me over by showing what a wonderful half-brother Zach the Bastard is. They go indoors, and as he and Clementine (who is all but down on her hands and knees, head buried in the couch, butt in the air for him like a Skinny Bitch in heat), there comes another knock at the door. It’s his punk half-sister Jolie, and her punk boyfriend Rufus, who have been cut off without a cent (I almost wrote scent there, but I figured most people wouldn’t get it) by their father, who's on his third wife (not literally, I assume, but in this novel who knows?), because she won't go to college - she wants to be an actor instead, and Rufus is in a band, of course.

So the night ends right there because Zach the Bastard, who instantaneously paid for three hotel rooms without asking, and Clem, who acquiesces to every whim he has, could not possibly, no way, no how, go to a hotel for the night - or part of it - and her reputation as easy is pretty much painted on her forehead by now, so why not? Without even showing her the respect of asking, Zach the Bastard dumps his 18 year old half-sister completely on Clementine and Sara for the next day, and Clementine meekly tugs her forelock and acquiesces. And so does Sara, but she makes Clementine come along on her audition that next morning because, since this is first person, we can’t really see what’s going on unless Clementine inexplicably goes along. So now I'm wondering who will get the job in the commercial: Clementine, Jolie, or both? I know where my money is.

I won the bet for once! Sara failed, Jolie got a call-back! And Zach the Bastard's cheap-ass attempt to dissuade her from getting married, getting her own apartment, and going into acting was a 100% failure on all fronts. So Zach the Bastard comes over and dumps on Clementine. He makes it clear that he thought that her crappy hovel of an apartment and her slow-lingering-death of a 'business', together with her lifestyle in general would completely turn Jolie off, but it had the opposite effect! Despite this insulting, rude and callous behavior, Clementine doesn’t even have the self-respect to throw him out of her apartment! He leaves in a childish fit of anger. Will she now dump this low-life jerk-off? I wouldn’t put Monopoly money on it. He'll apologize, send flowers or something, and she'll come running back to him, lay down, and spread her legs. This is an abusive relationship, and normally I’d feel bad for Clementine, but she's such a dumb, clueless, and shallow Skinny Bitch that I can’t find a lick of compassion for her. I can't. I honestly can't.

And this leaves me with a dilemma, because I really like Sara and Jolie and want to see what happens to them. So do I finish this or erase it now? Only Time will tell! Or maybe Newsweek! Hey: Fascinating idiom of the day: "...I waste fuel emissions." What the heck does that mean?!

I find it of note that Barnouin can embrace the French tongue when it comes to 'sous chef', but not when it comes to 'chaise longue'. She writes the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard 'chaise lounge'. Interesting. And so Clementine and Zach the Bastard finally leap into bed together without a thought or a word for STDs and condoms, because, of course, then it wouldn’t be smart fiction, would it now?

I decided to read this novel to the bitter end, not because of any merit intrinsic to the work itself, but because it would be unfair to Barnouin to reject this out of hand when I read all the way through the utterly detestable Insurgent (and especially since I specifically identified an ABBA song in that review, "Fernando", and that same song is identified in Barnouin's novel; what a weird coincidence!). This novel is much better written than Insurgent could ever hope to be, so props to Barnouin for her writing style, but it is equally dissatisfying in one respect: the female protagonist. I could neither root for her, nor wish her well when this vegan so willingly lays her neck on the butcher's block of an abusive romance which itself smells like rancid meat.

But I've written more than enough spoilers for this review, so no more of those! It’s Barnouin's story to tell, not mine after all. I did press on nails-on-chalkboard notwithstanding, and finished it despite having very little faith that I would really get any more about Sara or Jolie, but I had hope - which of course was dashed. What I didn’t know was if I could stand was to read even one more page about how big of a flimsy, threadbare doormat Clementine is for Zach the Bastard and how unrelentingly ineducable he truly is to her needs. Yes, it’s said that true love is work, but if it’s this much work you need to find a new career while your self respect is salvageable. I could never comport Clementine's self-respect in wanting to succeed on her own in her business with the complete absence of any self-respect in her relationship with Zach the Bastard. But you know what I really didn’t get? Why did Zach the Bastard even need a dog when he had a Skinny Bitch who would come to heel at his every whistle?

In summary, let me suffice to say that Zach the Bastard maintains his reputation, and Clementine is so stupid that she thinks Zach the Bastard is "complicated"! She has a perfect in with Alexander but treats him like he's a large portion of nothing, whilst simultaneously lying to herself that nothing about Zach the Bastard is easy! Her co-dependent relationship with this jerk is like a friendship between two spoiled thirteen year olds. It’s not remotely mature, but worse than that, it’s not even interesting; neither is it entertaining because it’s entirely predictable from the start, no matter how much of a nauseating roller-coaster ride is included in the fee. The relationship between Jolie and her fiancé Rufus is much more mature and far more engrossing. Even Sara's non-relationship held more raw entertainment value than anything that was written about Clementine's interactions with Zach the Bastard.

I cannot recommend this novel. It's an insult to thinking, self-respecting women.

Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey

Title: Haunting Violet
Author: Alyxandra Harvey
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: WORTHY!

I have no belief in any of the paranormal or fringe nonsense: ghosts, vampires, UFOs, angels, demons, etc. I do not believe because there is no evidence that any of that is real, and there's much to argue rather strongly against it. What is a well-known fact is that people have very over-active and self-delusive imaginations. Having said that, I do enjoy science-fiction, or a good paranormal story, although it’s hard to find the latter! That's why I was thrilled to discover Haunting Violet.

I've just started this one and while I found it a bit pretentious of Harvey to change her name (Alexandra) to Alyxandra for the book covers, she can call herself whatever she wants if she writes like this. I wish I knew what it was that draws me in to one book after barely a sniff of chapter one, and yet another book repels me after only one paragraph, but whatever it is, if you bottle it, it was my idea! I hope that Harvey ensures that the thrill from the first page is maintained.

The female protagonist in this novel reminds me a lot of Gwen in Ruby Red, although the novels cover very different subject matter; however, if you liked that one and its sequel, Sapphire Blue, you'll very likely enjoy this one, too, but note that this is early days!

Violet Willoughby (last name straight out of Sense & Sensibility!) and her mother are socially-climbing frauds. Violet's mother (her father is nowhere in sight - she doesn’t even know who he is) defrauds people by posing as a medium and preying cruelly on the emotions of the bereaved. In appealing to the aristocracy with her shams, Violet's mother hopes to garner social rewards for herself and a beneficial match for her daughter. Violet, OTOH, is much more sanguine about these things, and has a great sense of humor.

They travel to the estate of Lord Jasper (seriously? Jasper?) with their maid, Marji and their 'manservant' Colin, an old childhood friend of Violet's from when their circumstances were a lot less elevated. Violet and Colin sneak down to the parlour late at night, and prep the room for their séance the next day. The only problem is that of the bellows, which they employ to send "spirit" drafts of cool air across the room. Violet ends up with them strapped to her leg! As the affair is about to begin, she hobbles cautiously over to take her seat at the table, but finds no empty chair. The one her mother has indicated is occupied by a dripping wet girl.

It turns out that this girl is a ghost, and for the first time, Violet, who doesn’t believe in ghosts either, is forced to accept that they believe in her, she can see and smell them. She later shocks that particular ghost's twin by revealing that she knows of her twin's murder, which was by drowning in a pond. It’s strongly hinted that the living twin stood to gain rather significantly from her sister's death, but whether this is merely a red herring remains to be seen.

So how amusing is it that I'm blogging this story featuring the drowned Rowena, and outside we're having a huge deluge (which is most welcome)?

Harvey has made a brave attempt to write a Victorian ghost story in an English setting, but I have to say she slips up here and there with terminology. There's also the occasional clunky statement such as: "...have tread the boards..." when it should be "...have trod the boards..." and even then I doubt that's a phrase which would have been used. OTOH, Violet is from a rather different culture from that of the people with whom she typically spends her time, so perhaps there's some wiggle room there!

Britain does have hornets, but I've never seen one there, nor heard the term used there. It’s always 'wasp', not 'hornet', and I've never heard crickets chirping in England. That's not to say they don’t, but I grew up in a relatively rural setting and I cannot recall ever hearing them at night. It always made me wonder what the heck that ubiquitous nocturnal chirping was in American films and TV shows precisely because I was unfamiliar with it! Oh, and we don't have 'stoops' in England (except as in She stoops to Conquer. That's an Americanism. But who knows, maybe in Victorian times that was the term they used? I find that hard to swallow though, because it comes from a Dutch term as I recall, so there was no reason for it to enter England in the way it entered the USA.

Violet is determined to find out what happened to the drowned girl, Rowena despite opposition, if only to get Rowena out of her life. She considers pretty much everyone a suspect, and is frustrated that Rowena doesn’t deign to point out who amongst the guests the murderer is, but one thing Violet fails to consider is that another ghost might be behind the large urn which nearly fell on her, and the chandelier which she avoids because Rowena got in her face. It doesn't help that Rowena seems unable to speak, but perhaps she doesn't speak because the guilty party isn’t present amongst the living?

Violet is preparing for her mother's next séance, so it would seem that a show-down is in the offing, and I have a three-day weekend coming up! And it's a rainy one! We've had a really unusual 4.4" of rain, almost all of it in the last 24 hours! Really weird, but highly appropriate to this novel!

You know, there's a lot to be said for the portability of ebooks and for the convenience of having a search function, but I could never write 'Ode to a Kindle' or 'Elegy in a Nook' because nothing kindles the urge to find a comfortable reading nook than does a hardback book. Haunting Violet is such a book, not only because it tells a great story (at least so far!), but also because it has a smell, and a feel, and a look, and a heft to it which ebook readers do not. By that, I mean that once you have your iPad or your Nook, you're stuck with the same thing no matter what book you read on it. It feels the same and it smells the same, and that will never change until you buy a new one, no matter which novel you're reading on it. And who really wants to be glued to a screen-swiper? Wouldn't you much rather be addicted to a great page-turner?!

Haunting Violet has a different look and feel to any previous book I've read. And it has added qualities that are impossible to get in an ebook. It has one of those weird and wonderful new covers that has a cool, slightly matte feeling to it, which imbues me with a compulsion to buy a book even when the book is utterly repugnant to me! Fortunately, I resist those impulses fiercely! When this book is opened, and I press my fingers to the cover and my thumb to the pages and spread the book a little more, it has an oddly addictive noise which results from the friction of the pages rubbing against one another. No ebook can do offer you this. And no ebook can give me the thrill that I felt when each of my own novels arrived in the mail, and I had a real physical thing to hold and examine, and which now accumulate side-by-side in shameless familiarity on one of my many book shelves. Yes, I'm a dinosaur, but dinosaurs are cool!

Anyway, on to Violet. The séance was quite a show-down, but I didn't guess what Harvey was going to do. What happened is that Violet's mother was exposed as a charlatan by the evil Caroline, governess of Tabitha, sister of the drowned Rowena. Whatever Carline's plan was, it worked, because Violet's mother insisted that they all leave in the middle of the night, returning home to London. Here's where the story lost suspension of disbelief (the SoD!) for me, because Harvey has the locals throwing rotten fruit and vegetables at the Willoughby's front door. I honestly could not believe that this would realistically happen. I honestly couldn't credit that this news could have spread so rapidly that it reached "the commoners" the very next day, or that people would even care that much.

But I was willing to let that pass because Harvey's writing has built up a significant level of goodwill within me, and indeed, it's fortunate for her that she has, because the relationship between Violet and Colin is taking off, and it has far too much YA cliché for my taste, including the 'hair falling into eyes' bullshit which frankly makes my stomach turn. There's many a slip twixt trope and trick, but to her credit, at least Harvey doesn't harp on the romance to an appalling level.

Xavier, Violet's putative fiancé, shows up to tell her that it's all off on account of his mother, but really on his own account, snotty spineless trash that they are. But this comes as a relief to Violet, although Violet's mother gives her a black eye over it, abusive bitch that she is. I don't think I've mentioned Xavier in this review because it was obvious that he was a nonentity in the grand scheme. Lord Thornhill, whom Violet discovered (on the night of her mother's ignominy) is actually her father, comes to visit, but only to tell her she's not wanted.

Violet finds that she is now seeing spirits regularly, including a charming schnauzer ghost dog which adopts her and hangs with her wherever she goes. That might prove significant for later plotting. Violet eventually and angrily reveals to her mother that she really can see spirits, and her mom then trapes her around town buying stuff and having a 'spirit photograph' taken which shows Violet surround by fuzzy spirits (and her little dog, too!), but in the background, clearly showing, is Rowena. Violet's mom sends a copy of the photo to Lord Jasper, and Violet is invited back to his estate - without her disgraced mother.

Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway, Violet returns in triumph and despite meanness, succeeds in convincing everyone that she is truly a medium. Not that this puts an end to the meanness and rejection, unaccountably. I have to say that some of this story borders on the ridiculous, especially the things which Violet gets away with and which are done to her given her position and circumstances, and the time-period in which this is set. For example, she's frequently left in a room with a guy and no one to chaperon her, as happens after the séance, when Peter (yes: the male organ of generation) is mean to her. It makes me wonder why Harvey chose the later nineteenth (or is that nine teeth?) century rather than today. There's a huge difference between having someone be a rebel in Victorian times and completely dispensing with suspension of disbelief.

But Violet finds out - more through luck than judgment - who the villain is. It wasn't one I'd overtly suspected, but it was a fairly obvious one. There were too many read herrings for my taste, and I found it inexplicable that Rowena became so powerful at the end of the novel but couldn't even tell Violet who the villain was when they first met?! There was no explanation offered for this, which means, of course, that it was pure desus ex machina rather than an integral part of a better plot. Harvey could have done a lot better there, but having said all that, I still really liked this story and I saw Violet especially as a worthy female protagonist, so I recommend this one.

Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

Title: Far Far Away
Author: Tom McNeal
Publisher: Knopf
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 shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

ebook galley proof errata provided in case the author hasn't caught them yet!
P118 "...because he asked me not to tell you." has the word 'he' split between two lines!
P120 "...cinnamon gun" should be "...cinnamon gum..." (presumably!).

Here's a nice song of the same title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel, but which might get you in the mood to be transported far away even if only from the song!

This novel is amazing. I've never read anything by Tom McNeal before but he's definitely on my radar now. I'm going to buy this book and force my kids to read it on pain of merciless tickling if they don't. The story centers on two high-school kids, Jeremy Johnson Johnson and a girl who becomes an increasingly closer friend, Ginger Boultinghouse. The story is narrated by the ghost of Jacob Grimm. The writing is outstanding - perfect in tone, measure and content.

Jeremy lives with his father in a bookstore which his grandfather opened to sell nothing but the two volumes of his grandfather's autobiography! Jeremy's father married Zyla Johnson, but Zyla left them a while after Jeremy's birth. While this seems callous and mean on the face of it, to attentive readers of the story it will be obvious that she had no choice in her action. She had no choice because choice was subtracted from her (by The Finder of Occasions, perhaps - an evil presence who does nothing but stir up trouble, and appears to be occupying the form of a police officer?) Zyla isn’t the only one who went missing - lots of children are going missing, and disturbingly, the police don't seem particularly interested in doing anything about it.

Ginger one day talks Jeremy into going to the town's fabulous bakery where "Prince Cakes" are available. They're not available often, and Jeremy can't afford one even when they are, but Ginger tells him that they might get lucky, and indeed they do. The kindly baker, Mr Blix, produces coffee and cakes in return for an IOU. Ginger and Jeremy begin spending more time together, innocently growing closer until one evening, Ginger and her two girlfriends lure Jeremy out to conduct a mild prank on the baker.

The story offers insufficient motivation for me in this instance, for Jeremy to involve himself in something like this. It’s not in his character, but I'm willing to let that slide since it's the only bump in a very smooth tale. However, the consequences of this incident run deep. Jeremy loses a shoe and his house key on the baker's property, and he's rapidly picked up by the police; however, when Blix himself insists it was not Jeremy he saw on his property that night, he's released. Jeremy's reputation is nonetheless shot; everyone in town thinks him a potential thief! They know that he and his father are on the verge of being thrown out of their property into the street because of unpaid debts. Jeremy's father is incapable of earning a living, and all the odd jobs by which Jeremy was keeping them afloat quickly dry up. Now his family has no income, but things are about to turn around. Right around.

I highly recommend this story. This is how a YA romance should be written: not in the hammering, blundering, ham-fisted way of all-too-many stories, but in this natural, warm, and easy way which McNeal reveals, and in a story which is engaging from the start and told so well that you don’t want it to end. 212 pages is way too short for a story like this. I look forward to more tales of this nature and to this story becoming a movie.

The story intensifies as a friend of Ginger's "Conk" who is the son of the mayor, offers to help Jeremy with his foreclosure problem by involving his dad. Seeing an opportunity to own the entire block in which Jeremy's store is situated, the mayor offers an interest-free loan to Jeremy, which will pay off his debt. The loan will be due in six weeks, which gives him more breathing space by pushing out his deadline.

A slight problem here is that Jeremy is clearly not in any way old enough to sign a promissory note! But moving quickly along, Ginger Boultinghouse offers an out from even this new deadline by setting Jeremy up as a contestant on his favorite show, Uncommon Knowledge wherein guests are quizzed about what they claim is their expert topic - which can be pretty much anything. Jeremy signs up as an expert on the Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales; this should be a no-brainer given that he has one of the brothers advising him, but he has a weakness, which is that he's never seen any Disney movie based on those tales.

On the quiz, Jeremy does blazingly well, never putting a foot wrong, even on the $64,000 question, but he decides to try for one level higher: all or nothing on winning the jackpot. Unfortunately the last question involves what the huntsman returned to the queen in the Disney version, in place of Snow's intestines and liver (which is the request in the Grimm story), and Jeremy doesn’t know. In the sound-proofed booth, he hears a voice, not Jacob's, twice tell him to answer 'heart' but he ignores it, and consequently he loses all the money. This part didn’t work to well for me because Jeremy is already habituated to listening to, and trusting, the voice he hears from Jacob Grimm. Why would he suddenly go against all that and pick a lock of hair instead of repeating 'heart' which is what the voice advised him? I needed a bit more motivation there, but the story is so well done overall that I'm more than willing to let an occasional faux pas flow past!

And that's all the detail I'm going to offer for this story! Yes, I'm more cruel than Hansel & Gretel's witch! But I refuse to rob McNeal of any more of his amazing story by relating another single detail. To find out how this apparent disaster all plays out, you'll have to do what I now fully intend to do: buy the book, and then you read the story all the way through! You will not regret it if you're even mildly into stories of this nature. Even though at this point I haven't finished the entire story, I'm confident enough by now of McNeal's talent and skill to highly recommend this. Even if it goes downhill and ends in a miserable disaster, the first half of the book is so well done that it would still be worth the purchase just to read a half-a-story of this quality! I fully intend to get my hands on a hardback of this for my kids to read; it’s that good!

Just a quick post-script: I finished the novel and it did turn out to be excellent, so no issues there, although the villain turned out to be a wee bit obvious even to me! I loved the Ginger character immensely!

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Title: Impossible
Author: Nancy Werlin
Publisher: Speak
Rating: WARTY!

This one is about a girl called Lucy (yes, another one) whose mother, Miranda (yes another one!), is a nut-job. Lucy was raised by some caring foster parents, but she occasionally sees her mother, who left Lucy only one thing (not 'thong' as I originally typoed!): new lyrics to the Yorkshire folk ballad Scarborough Fair. Yep, it's that kind of novel. Since the cover image shows a long-haired maiden by the ocean, and since Scarborough is a seaside town (which I've actually visited) in one of my favorite English counties, I'm starting to think that this is a novel about mermaids. I sincerely hope I'm wrong; or that the novel is good enough that I don't care if I'm wrong!

Lucinda Scarborough's mother appears to be insane. Given that she was impregnated evidently against her will, or at least against her better judgment, and that neither parents nor father figure were in sight, this may be understandable. Miranda had it seems, a horrible life drifting from one care system to another, one hated foster family to another, until she finally busted out on her own after she became pregnant. Lucy is the result of that pregnancy, and she was raised by Leo and Soledad. They've been the best parents Lucy could have hoped for. Soledad was the one who helped Lucy's mom get through her pregnancy, so she feels a warm bond with them, but her biological mother hasn’t disappeared. She randomly shows up at Lucy's school, tossing out meaningless comments, and singing the words to the old Yorkshire folk ballad Scarborough Fair - words which are not in the commonly known version of the song.

Fortunately for Lucy, no one at school knows this bag lady is her real mom. As Lucy's prom approaches, Miranda disappears and Lucy forgets about her, focusing on what she will wear for her date, who is absurdly called Gray, as in those characters in a color comic book who are rendered in gray scale because they're really not important. Enter the villain: a mysterious and good-looking man who has very recently charmed his way into a job with Soledad (she's a midwife) wangles himself an invitation to eat with her and her family that evening, including an old friend of Lucy's, Zach (yes, another one), who is staying with them for the summer. Zach is like a brother to Lucy, but it’s Padraig, the charmer, who plays photographer, taking pictures before she leaves. She looks beautiful, but as she walks down the path to her date's car, Miranda shows up with a shopping cart full of bottles, which she uses to pelt everyone, especially Padraig.

Miranda is arrested and removed, and after changing clothes, Lucy heads off to the prom. Her date seems really promising, and Lucy can picture herself seeing him again, but as everyone is leaving, he lures her into the rest room, and there he rapes her. As this happens, Lucy tries to fight back but despite her strength and his diminutive stature, she cannot overcome him. She notes how different he seems: when she looked into his eyes to plead with him she didn’t see him there. There was clearly someone else inside him. Afterwards, she only imagines she saw this out of her shock and distress. Her date leaves her there and later she finds that despite the fact that he'd had nothing to drink that evening, he drove straight into a tree and killed himself.

Following up on a promise to her foster parents, Zach shows up at the prom to pick up Lucy and drive her to the after party. He's the one who finds her, bleeding and distraught in the rest room. She pleads with him to tell no one, and he keeps her secret. Over the next month, she strives to bring her life back to normal. Just as she seems to be succeeding, two events occur: the first is that Zach finds her mother's diary in that shopping cart (which had been parked in the garage temporarily); much later, the second event is that Lucy discovers she's pregnant at 17. She's amazed how much her life has turned out exactly like her mother's - a life she's discovered from reading the diary. The only difference is that she has friends and supportive parents which her mother apparently did not.

At one point when talking about her pregnancy, Lucy berates Zach in a very mean manner for no good reason, and yet it's Zach apologizes. I was actually liking Lucy up to that point. I hope she doesn't deteriorate. Since her mother evidently went through exactly the same thing Miranda did, perhaps Lucy's disturbing meanness is coming from the evil which has obviously infected her. This is evidently what Miranda was trying to warn her about, although why she confined herself to the asinine singing of an obscure song, is a complete and utter mystery. Perhaps that's all her insanity allows her to do? So this story isn't about mermaids, which is in its favor, but it's still being annoyingly obscure, which I detest, so there is still lots of opportunity for it to go to hell in a hand-basket.

So the family (Leo, Lucy, Soledad, and Zach) sit down to discuss the situation so far. Lucy declares that she will have the baby and she's convinced that it's a girl. She gives no thought whatsoever to what the Elfin King wants with his continued rape, impregnation, and abuse of this endless string of teenage victims or how it could well destroy his evil plans were the fetus never to be born. Note that this isn't a real case of real life rape, where the victim is entitled to decide what she wants; this is fictional rape by an evil serial rapist who plans on continuing to rape every progeny of every daughter every time they turn 17. And Lucy has decided to let him have his way with her and her progeny after he's already had his way with her and her ancestors!

Let's take a moment here to consider the ballad as sung by Miranda, shall we? For comparison, here's Simon & Garfunkel's definitive version

Here's Werlin's rather inelegant mash-up: Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Remember me to one who lives there, She must be a true love of mine. Tell her she'll sleep in a goose-feather bed Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Tell her I swear she'll have nothing to dread She must be a true love of mine. Tell her tomorrow her answer make known Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Whate'er she may say I'll not leave her alone She must be a true love of mine. Her answer it came in a week and a day Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; I'm sorry, good sir, I must answer thee nay I'll not be a true love of thine. From the sting of my curse she can never be free Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Unless she unravels my riddlings three She will be a true love of mine. Tell her to make me a magical shirt Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; without any seam or needlework Else she'll be a true love of mine. Tell her to find me an acre of land Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Between the salt water and the sea strand Else she'll be a true love of mine. Tell her to plow it with just a goat's horn Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; And sow it all over with one grain of corn Else she'll be a true love of mine, And her daughters forever possessions of mine.

Here's the original version: Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Remember me to one who lives there, For once she was a true lover of mine. Tell her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Without a seam or needlework, Then she shall be a true lover of mine. Tell her to wash it in yonder well, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Where never spring water or rain ever fell, Ans she shall be a true lover of mine. Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Which never bore blossom since Adam was born, Then she shall be a true lover of mine. Now he has asked me questions three, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; I hope he'll answer as many for me Before he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell him to buy me an acre of land, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; Betwixt the salt water and the sea sand, Then he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell him to plough it with a ram's horn, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; And sow it all over with one pepper corn, And he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell him to sheer't with a sickle of leather, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme; And bind it up with a peacock feather. And he shall be a true lover of mine. Tell him to thrash it on yonder wall, Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, And never let one corn of it fall, Then he shall be a true lover of mine. When he has done and finished his work. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme: Oh, tell him to come and he'll have his shirt, And he shall be a true lover of mine.

The four of them agree that whether this is a real curse or Lucy's imagination gone wild, they will follow up in every way they can. Zach takes it upon himself to try and trace Lucy's genealogy, and he succeeds in doing so for several generations, and the pattern is consistent: each daughter becomes pregnant at 17 with another daughter. So young are the rape victims that they conclude that it isn't out of the realm of possibility that Lucy's grandmother and perhaps even great grandmother are alive somewhere.

Leo resolves to research the song and all it's variants to see if he can find clues. Basically this means he gets to hang out at home and pay his guitar all day. Soledad is trying to discover how to make a shirt which has no seam and no needlework. Easy! Grab a garbage bag and cut off the sealed end, cut out two arm holes and there you go! Failing that, buy a 3-D printer and print one up. She way over-thinks this. But she's focused on entirely the wrong thing! The problem is not creating the shirt, it's making it magical. Even in Werlin's version, the description runs, "...a magical shirt...without any seam or needlework." So where will the magic come from? I suppose we could be generous and have 'magical' mean nothing more than it would have to be magical to make the shirt thus, but even back then when the ballad originated, it would have been possible to simply use an animal skin: no seams, and the legs, cut short, would be the sleeves.

But they're more focused on the other two requirements, the first of which has been changed dramatically from the real version of the ballad: "...find me an acre of land...between the salt water and the sea strand." But even with the wording changed to make it easier to beat, Lucy is still obsessing on buying the land rather than simply finding it! The strand can have many meanings. it was the name of the magazine in which Arthur Conan Doyle first published his Sherlock Holmes stories, it's a street in London, and it's also the name of a particular type of swamp land in Florida. Strand is a word which goes back at least a thousand years, coming from a root meaning 'strew'.

The final challenge is to "...plow it with just a goat's horn...and sow it all over with one grain of corn." Why she changed the ram's horn into a goat's is a complete mystery. Both goat and ram are represented in the constellations and are related species. Lucy considers the sexual meaning of plowing and sowing, but it doesn't seem to fit the rhyme very well. It does, however, fit Lucy's early onset of not-so-cute nymphomania.

That is to say that Lucy, who has almost literally lived with Zach since she was quite young, and who, despite being a healthy, perfectly normal teenager has never given him the time of day, now suddenly cannot think of anything other than rippling Zach muscles and Zach body heat. Yep. Clearly in Werlin World™ rape is not at all a debilitating, traumatizing event, and pregnancy changes nothing, neither your hormones nor your priorities, unless those hormones are really whore moans and your number one priority is whatever organ covered with Zach-flesh looks most like the number one. In Werlin World™, the only thing rape, consequent pregnancy, and a real and present threat to the safety of your child and your own sanity result in is an obsessive-compulsive need for Zach-meat. The novel could go only downhill from this point onwards, and rest assured it did.

Now I fully understand how Lucy feels when she gets the morning sickness. I must have Impossible sickness! So Soledad gets a mannequin torso to facilitate the creation of this unseemly shirt, but Lucy pitches a fit and orders her to take the mannequin back - she declares she'd rather use Zach. Now there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for this other than the shamefully 100% transparent reason (which is why it's no reason whatsoever) of artificially putting the two of them into an intimate position, but why do it so ham-fistedly? So Lucy and Zach become almost orgasmic over this, and the shirt gets made, and they plight their troth, after Lucy is a jerk and makes him wait interminably for any kind of answer.

Later, Padraigeous breaks into the house using his Elfin magic and he finds he can't touch the shirt, but the shirt is felt! If he can't touch it how can it be felt? Just messin' with ya. But this means all felt hats are also magic by definition. Since he can't touch it, this constitutes a certification that the first of the three tasks has been achieved.

The couple marry a couple of weeks later, and Lucy has the bright idea of plowing (or is it ploughing?) the Bay of Fundy when the tide is out. This she does, and despite the Hell Fin King taunting her, she finishes it, the king is defeated, all the Scarborough girls are freed of their curse in retrospect, including her mom who gets her sanity back, and she and Zach live happily ever after, blah, blah, blah. Definite warty.

Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson

Title: Confessions of a Murder Suspect
Author: James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: WARTY! with the stomch-churning bouquet of rotten eggs.

This is the first Maxine Paetro novel I've ever read and as long as we're all about confessions, I have to confess I started out not liking it and continued that way until I hated it. It's a bizarre story about abusive parents who might well have earned what they got! I have read James Patterson before. I read one or two of his Alex Cross books, but I was not impressed enough to start reading anything else of his, and especially not after finishing this one.

I know the cover is largely outside of the author's hands, but you'd think someone of Patterson's stature would have at least some say in it, which begs the question in my mind as to why his name is in something like a 36 point typeface, but Paetro's is about half that size. Does this mean she contributed 50% less than he did, or that she's merely a lesser known woman and therefore, even though she wrote 50% of the novel, doesn't merit equal billing? I don't know. But I'm giving them equal billing and referring to them jointly as Jamax (because Maxames doesn't sound as good, and Paeterson isn't pithy enough!).

The story's told in the first person (the supposed suspect) which I tend not to like as a rule, and the tone of it just irked me for some reason. I think part of that was that these are snotty little rich kids, but that wasn't the all of it. Another big contributing factor is that the narration employs the 'dear reader' and 'friend' motifs which is frankly pathetic unless you want people to laugh at it. The name of the family featured in this novel is 'Angel' but this isn't a paranormal novel, it's just your common-or-garden murder mystery, wiht no murder and no mystery, it turns out!

Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, apparently strangled or poisoned in their bed, in their twenty million dollar apartment in the Dakota building in New York City - the same one outside of which John Lennon was murdered. There's no immediate sign of a break in, or of violence other than the murders. Nothing has been stolen and no-one heard anything. The female protagonist is Tandy (yeah, like the old Radio Shack brand), who is their daughter. She has several siblings (Harry, her fraternal twin, Hugo, her younger brother, and Matthew her older brother), all but one of whom were home asleep. There's also her mother's personal assistant (Samantha) who is a resident. Tandy is short for Tandoori (I'm not making this up - Jamax is!), named after what Patterson and/or Paetro claim is West Indian cooking, but in this they're clearly clueless! The tandoor oven is from Asia, not the West Indies! They need a better researcher and they need to wise up about Asian culture so they catch serious mistakes like this one.

The absent sibling, a football (not soccer) star (Matthew) soon arrives, as does their Uncle Peter with the family lawyer, Phillipe Montaigne, who I immediately suspect! (Just kidding!) The lawyer quickly dismisses the obnoxious cops, Hayes, and Sgt. Caputo who (and I don't think it's going too far to describe it thus) abused the kids, threatening to bust into their apartment if they didn't open the door. This is NYC after all.

So if twins are born from separate eggs, and are both female, are they still fraternal twins? Just how immensely deep in our psyche does genderism run?

It's Tandy who lets them in to prevent them breaking down the door. Apparently they were alerted to the crime with a 911 call, but they had no other indication whatsoever that any crime was going on. Tandy told them no one from the apartment made that call. She lied. Hugo made it, we discover much later. The police threatened violence against children. This is NYC after all. Now that the family is assembled, red herrings are being tossed out ad libitum, so we're immediately supposed to suspect both Tandy (who has exhibited violence in the past) and Matty (Matthew, who is built like a brick period) as well as Harry who is a tormented artist, and Hugo who is just plain psychotic. The family gets into a fight about who amongst them had a motive! Yes, this is a seriously dysfunctional family, who are showing no signs of their loss, we get it. Finally, they all go to bed, whereupon Hugo takes a baseball bat and starts smashing up his wooden four-poster bed (I told you!). Tandy has to go comfort him.

For no reason other than this is a YA novel, Tandy also decides that she has to solve this crime! I don't know who wrote the book blurb (it comes from the publisher evidently), but it's really misleading. It states, "Tandy knows just three things: 1) She was one of the last people to see her parents alive. 2) The suspect list only includes Tandy and her three siblings. 3) She can't trust anyone—maybe not even herself." Item one is technically true, but rather melodramatic. Samantha was the person last to see them alive other than the murderer. Item 2 is a lie, since Samantha was also there that night and their brother was absent and has an alibi. As for item 3, unless Jamax is really edgy, the one telling the story isn't going to be the villain. It almost never is! Maybe I should maintain a running cliché count in this review?!

When Tandy finally gets to sleep she dreams, and her dreams are evidently all memories of real events. In this case it's where her father bribed the operator to let them take the three-year-old twins on the Cyclone at Coney Island, which Tandy loves, but over which Harry has massive blue fits, which is a state in New England, too. The kids were seated side-by-side with both parents seated not with them, but behind them. Why two three-year olds didn't literally fall out of the ride is a mystery, but not as big of a mystery as to how, when being carried pick-a-back by her father with her fingers twisted in his hair, she can also be simultaneously grabbing onto his shoulders! Perhaps Tandy has four arms? I mean, forewarned is four-armed, right? Anyway, the upshot of this event is that Harry is further abused by his parents: from that point onwards they treat him like a wimp adoptee rather than a dearly loved son and Tandy is so utterly clueless that she only just then realizes it. At this point I want to strangle Mal-colm and Maud-lin! They are the worst parents ever, as events will show.

Another person in this story who needs seriously abusing is the police sergeant who is abusing Tandy by calling her every name but her name, names like "Toots" and "Tinker Bell". But this is New York City after all, so I guess that's just fine. Not that I'm a big fan of Tandy. She is truly annoying with her "confessions" interleaved between chapters (so annoying in fact that I've quit reading them), which are not in any way confessions at all, and with her bringing up topics and then dismissing them with "but that's for another time". She truly is irksome, and sometimes I hope she did do it so she can get the death penalty and we can be done with her.

The police are coming to the apartment at all hours with no lawyer present, which means that even if one of the siblings did do it, this case is going to be thrown out of court. But this is New York City after all. Uncle Peter discovers that $1.7 million is missing from the pharmacy corporation's accounts (a corporation run by him and Malcolm), and coincidentally, an equal amount is found in a Channel Islands bank under Matthew's name! Matthew offers no explanation for this, and none is to be found in the entire novel.

Peter-head immediately calls Craputo about it and as good as states that he believes that Matthew perpetrated the murders. The average NFL salary is greater than $1.7 million! Matthew is a Heisman trophy winner who plays for the New York Giants. Mark Ingam was a recent Heisman winner and he started on a $7 million salary over four years! Where is Matthew's motive? Note that at no time in this entire investigation is suicide ever considered an option.

Tandy forgets to take her pills - her father insisted she and her siblings take a variety of ten pills every night pills which she could find nowhere identified. Tandy is now determined to find out what they are, and to stop taking them until she does find out. She talks Harry into doing the same. Yeah - way to drop off a daily regimen without knowign what it is and without even stepping it down. Tandy is an idiot, and she's supposed to be the smartest one in the family.

Craputo arrives early that morning. He accuses Tandy of poisoning her parents, and he arrests her for "obstructing governmental administration" along with the rest of her family. What? I'm sorry but while I am interested in finding out what's going on here, I'm also nauseated every other page by the bullshit writing. Jamax is making this story really hard to stay with. Right as of this moment I suspect Uncle Peter, the lawyer, and young Hugo, as well as a double suicide by the parents!

Tandy and all her family are arrested and carted off to jail, charged with obstruction. Their lawyer shows up the next morning and gets them out. The DA dropped the charges because it would be hard to make them stick, and he'd rather get one or more of them on a murder charge. The useless piece of trash lawyer who, if there's a conspiracy here, is no doubt in on it, offers her nothing when he should be filing a lawsuit against the NYPD for harassment. And the press are harassing them mercilessly, too. The fact that children are being subject to this and no one seems to care is what's criminal here and has taken this completely out of suspension of disbelief here. Oh, I'm in disbelief: that anyone could write so ham-fistedly. I guess that's what you get when you write a novel by committee!

So even though they're freed from holding, they do not all arrive home at the same time. While they're waiting for Samantha to get there, Harry calls Tandy's attention to a news item on TV where Matthew's girlfriend calmly announces that she's pregnant with Malcolm's (not Matthew's, but Malcolm's) baby! Tandy searches Samantha's room and finds a locket to Samantha from Maud, in which Maud gushes love. Samantha arrives at the apartment having showered and changed. Wait a minute - Samantha lives at the apartment! She has nowhere else. In fact, the first thing she announces is that she has found a place to live. So how did she shower and change without coming home to the apartment? Just another mystery in a long line of unsolved mysteries. So this novel is now a soap opera, and that soap is being voluminously shoved up your...well, you know where. I need to go get some anti-emetics.

The soap continues to be mercilessly shoved where the sun doesn't even want to shine, as Matthew's girlfriend is found dead, and Matthew is arrested for it based on zero evidence. We hear no more about that for the entire rest of the novel!

After breaking into her neighbor's apartment based on nothing more than a wild hair up her busy-body ass, Tandy discovers that the neighbor has a video tape (DVDs and digital weren't invented when this antique was dredged up from the pond scum?), which shows exactly what happened. Maud decided to end her own life because she had pancreatic cancer and was about to be brought up on fraud charges, and her husnband committed suicide because he's a complete waste of skin. neither parent gave one nano-second's thought to theior children beign charged with murder, or not knowing what these pills were they ahd taken all their lvies, or not ahving a penny to their names. I'm truly sorry that their parents are dead - because they deserved far worse.

Tandy's brain-dead, idotic, jackass, clueless, moronic, dimwit conclusion for this complete abandonment by their abusive jerk-wad parents? Oh they must have loved each other at a Shakespearean level to have done this. Yeah, the lowlife criminal cowards abandoned their kids and left them to rot so they must be the world's greatest exponents of true love.

I'm sorry but this is hands-down the absolute worst crime novel I've ever been insulted with in my life. It's a shameful a waste of trees, which if they had to be cut down, would have been put to better use had they been rendered into toilet paper, because that's precisely what this novel is: a festering pile of excrement and nothing to wipe it up with.

Untraceable by S.R. Johannes

Title: Untraceable
Author: S.R. Johannes
Publisher: Coleman & Stott
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, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

I'm ½-way through this one, which is the first volume in The Nature of Grace series, and I have to say that I'm not very impressed. The premise is a good one, but the execution leaves everything to be desired. There are related novels which I flatly refuse to entertain based on what I've read so far: Unspeakable is either another novel in this world, or it's a very à propos one-word review of Untraceable; Uncontrollable is without question a fair description of the little jerk of a protagonist in Untraceable.

Grace Wells's father has disappeared. He's a park ranger and he's been gone for three months and no one knows what happened to him. Since his radio was found in the river, the assumption is that he drowned, but there's no evidence that anyone has ever scoured the river for him! The police are telling Grace that it's the responsibility of the Park Ranger service, which is about to drop the case. Grace is scouring the woods herself using field-craft that she learned at her father's side, but everything she does is pointless because it's been three months and a few rain storms in the meantime, and any meaningful tracks or trails are long gone.

For a story that's supposed to be centered on a female protagonist, I found it inexplicable that every animal she encounters out in the forest is identified as a 'he'! A cricket, a squirrel, a snake, a rainbow trout (which is slimy by the way, in case we aren't yet girlish enough for you!) are all firmly male with not a suggestion of a female creature in sight. How do these creatures breed out here?! Or are the females of the species staying at home doing the housework? I found that level of genderism appalling in a female-centric novel, and it's an entirely predictable betrayal of the very basis of the novel. Sadly, it's not the only one.

Grace is so pathetically desperate that when she finds a Cheetos bag, she begs the police captain - an old family friend - to dust it for prints because her father ate Cheetos! This says more about how illogical the story is than it does about Grace, however, since she is now effectively telling everyone that her father the Park ranger was a complete slob, who trashed up the very park he was supposed to help maintain! Even if there were his prints on the bag, what would it prove? If this were merely a sign that her therapy isn't cuyting it, that would be one thing, but it turns out that it's not. It's actually a sign that Grace is a stupid, spoiled brat who has no clue as to the meaning of the term 'boundaries' or that of 'decent behavior'. She exhibits increasing stupidity as the story continues, starting with stealing the file on her father from the police captain's office!

On a trip into the forest, we're immediately subjected to the beginnings of a tired, tired, tired cliché of the inevitable young-adult love triangle. There's the standard bad-ass newcomer whom she meets in the forest and with whom she inescapably falls into inescapable instadore, contrasted with the faithful, devoted, good-natured moron whom she abruptly ditched, but who will do anything for her and who consequently, she abuses criminally (I use that word avisedly). Grace is a heartless user, and she deserves no consideration or respect IMO.

She happens to very conveniently overhear two guys talking like they're going bear-hunting out of season, and since we've had it bitch-slapped into our heads that Grace loves bears, she's naturally loaded for bear at hearing this! Pop quiz! So having heard this news about the hunters, Grace now decides that the best thing is to:

1. Alert the rangers and police, OR
   
2. Leave her employer in the lurch by running out on her after-lunch shift, follow these bad guys alone into the deep forest without telling anyone what she's up to, and thereby risk getting herself kidnapped and/or killed?
   

Which do you think she does? You got it right! And what do you think happens? Yep! Got it in one! And who do you think rescues her from these clichéd caricatures of dumb red-neck brutes into whose evil arms she falls so helplessly? Yep, it's the mysterious bad-ass guy in the forest - you got it right again! So now we learn that this young woman for whom we're supposed to root is not only wilting like an unwatered wallflower, but is also stupid squared. She has a cell phone but never once does she call in where she's going or that she might be in trouble with two poachers, or that she's escaped from two poachers and someone from the Ranger's office needs to come pick them up.

At one point, while she and her rescuer (no word yet on whether his hair falls into his eyes, but he does have recognizable muscle mass) are sheltering in a cave from the conveniently pouring rain which our field-crafter never saw coming (or if she did, she sure kept quiet about it), she actually has this thought: "Maybe it can't hurt to give this guy a chance. Drilling him is much better than being grilled about my encounter."! I did not make that up! She would rather drill him than be grilled! I'm sure that's not what the author intended me to imagine, but it is what she achieved!

Nor did I make up this one which appears a bit later: "Just as I'm about to give up, something nibbles at my fly. Breathing evenly, I do a quick jerk..." Yeah, she's talking about fishing, but there are better ways of writing these things, and if your story is in danger of going over a cliff, you definitely don't need to pile on any more baggage with sloppy syntax or idly composed prose that might tip an already precarious balance in your reader's mind! This guy Mo, the bad-ass savior of Grace, has never harmed her or even looked like he would, and now he's actually saved her life, yet she's having more qualms about him than she did about blindly following two nasty guys into the forest by herself! Honestly? Now she gets all cautious?! Maybe Grace is short for graceless?

I'm sorry, but novels like this, if this is all they have to offer, need to be sold with a free barf bag attached. I was hoping that the other half of this story would be a lot better than the first one, but it seems not. Grace is still doing monumentally dumb things. When she gets back to town, she fails to tell the police of the fact that she was held hostage by people whom she actually considers might have something to do with her dad's disappearance! Yeah, just let 'em run wild, graceless! Instead she goes directly home without even a care for whether someone might be following her. When Les the Ranger shows up, she does tell him, and he goes off after the bad guys Al and Billy, telling Grace to wait at home. Pop quiz! So having been told by a Park Ranger to stay home Grace now decides that the best thing is to:

1. Stay home as instructed, OR
   
2. Promptly heads into the forest without telling a sole where you're going?
   

Right again! I think Grace might actually have taken the lead from Luce (of Lauren Kate's abysmal Fallen novel) for being the dumbest cluck in the hen-house. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that the title of this novel refers to Grace's functional neurons.

So predictably, Mo finds her again - what a stalker he must be to always be there when she is! But unlike her behavior with the bad boys Al and Billy, she takes Mo down hard before she realizes who he is. She she can put him down but no one else? Is that the basis of her attraction to him?! Or maybe the basis is the fact that Mo is creepy enough to sneak up on her after all she's been through and not even have the decency to offer a word of greeting on his approach? I skipped an entire chapter at this point because I was in danger of going into a diabetic coma from reading it. The chapters are all titled "Survival Skill #" whatever, and 18 was nothing but Grace flirting cheesily with Mo instead of searching for her dad. I guess she soon dropped that old geezer from her consciousness

"Survival Skill #19" has her unaccountably freaking out over the sound of what might have been gunfire in an area where hunting is regularly going on! Of course it might have been an engine back-firing, but she denies that with a "No way!" when she's ridden her motorbike up there frequently, and she's also followed a truck up there. This makes zero sense. Instead of fearing for the life of Les, whom she sent out here to find those guys, she goes into a panic for herself, and starts running! Mo physically restrains her and demands to know what she's hiding! This is the girl he had to rescue from two deranged guys and he's too stupid to grasp why she might have panicked? She tells him her dad has been missing for "three months, eleven days, twelve hours, and forty three minutes" even though she cannot possibly have it down to the minute or even the hour. No one can.

Brain-dead and graceless fails yet again when Les reveals he has actually brought in Al and Billy. How he managed that when both of them are violent, armed, and have no scruples, is only addressed later and obtusely, but what's a far bigger fail is that all graceless now has to do is accuse them of kidnapping her, and they're in custody for a long time, yet she fails to do so! Instead she goes haring off on some wild-ass chase based on the soda can that Les was drinking from! I want to ditch this novel and move on to something better because I'm now forced to consider that it might be a children's novel and not YA at all.

The only thing actualyl retaining my interest right now is that I'd thought Les would end up getting killed, but since he didn’t, I'm seriously considering that the real villain is Les - or maybe even Mo which would be a pleasant change, but I can't see that happening. So Grace hikes for two hours (wihout telling anyone where she's going, to get to this station based on Les's soda can, and she becomes immediately suspicious when she arrives there, but instead of using her cell phone to call for help, she takes out her knife and lies in wait. This girl is stupid, stupid, stupid, even as she tells herself that this time she needs to be smarter. Snooping around, she finds the station trashed, and a dead bear, hunted illegally, but she does not call it in and she takes zero evidence, not even photos with her phone. Stupid, stupid, stupid. This is definitely a children's story and was therefore pitched to me under false pretenses!

Grace goes back to town and meets with the police captain, but then spends two pages without telling him what the critical problem is, bantering with Wyn instead! When Carl the captain finally drags it out of her that there's a dead bear, he asks her "Are you sure?"! Honestly? Are you kidding me? Maybe it was a dead bee? What could you mistake a dead bear for? Maybe it was an old rug someone tossed out?! But of course since Grace is stupid, stupid, stupid, and incompetent, and didn’t call it in, nor procure evidence, nor take photos, then she has nothing to offer them, and even if she did have evidence, it's not evidence that Al or Billy, or Les had anything to do with it.

Wyn offers to help her but she lies to him, failing to mention Mo. So now Grace is a liar and a jerk, and we’re supposed to root for her? At this point I'm thinking she deserves everything she gets, including a dressing down from Carl for trying to tell him how to do his job. Wyn offers to go the station and get pictures of the dead bear (assuming it was a bear, remember, Grace might have mistaken an old discarded winter coat for a dead bear). Grace immediately forgets how upset and frustrated she is and starts shamelessly flirting with Wyn, which probably accounts for his shameless manhandling of her, with his hands all over her inappropriately and she never raises an objection.

When they arrive at the station, the place is all cleaned up, and the dead bear is gone! Clearly Al and Billy are innocent (at least of the clean-up), but this doesn’t register with Grace, who decides to Google them! She goes out to meet Mo at the river the next day -the hell with continuing her search for her lost father, over which she's been obsessing for months. Who cares about a missing dad when you can squeeze Mister Hottie in the forest with a phishing rod? Naw, it’s much more important to flirt with Mo, who is supposed to be British but uses Americanisms just like a native.

He describes her as a cute girl, and far from being insulted, she shows as little upset from this as she does when he demeans her with 'blossom'. On the contrary, her face heats up and she builds a totally unnecessary fire, apparently just from the heat of her face. When the fire gets going, sparks "twitter" from it! I did not make that up! Twitter! Yep, there's probably a hash tag floating around. Look for #St.iMental.fire. Clearly this is not instadore! This is surely an original Native American Brand True Love™! I mean, get this: "His mouth attack mine with such force that my lips forget to fight back." Yep - demeaning Native American pigeon English! I suppose it’s a typo - that the 's' was missed from the end of 'attacks' but seriously, with the way this scene is going, I wouldn’t at all have been surprised if that sentence had been followed up with something like, "Me Mo. You squaw. Me make heap big love to you in my tipi." So much for the strong female protagonist. Goodbye, graceless, hello Mary Sue! Or maybe we should use a more condescending Native American cliché like 'Dances With Dumbass"?

So Mary Sue goes to Mama Sue for advice on the photos of boot prints she has, and despite not having a single thing by which to judge the size of the prints, Mama Sue nails them down to a size 10 and a size 11. She must be a truly remarkable woman. Mary Sue makes the super-human leap to the astounding conclusion that the smaller boot is Billy's and the larger is Al's. So another day when she could be searching her grid for her dad is blown off to have fun with Mo. How easily she's distracted. Dances With Dumbass make me heap sick. She spends the night with Mo, without calling anyone to let them know where she is. She has a bad dream but eventually she can fall asleep with Mo's arms encircling her in a Mo Original Ring of Safety™. Sigh.

Her mom freaks out when she gets home the next morning and Mary Sue Grace (MSG) offers neither a word of apology nor of explanation. Far from it. She treats her own mother like crap. Her mother complains that she missed her psych session yesterday and MSG declares arrogantly that she will pay for it, since she's a working girl, but guess what? Since at this point, she's not worked throughout this entire novel except for one shift which she blew off at lunchtime, she's hardly working in any meaningful sense, now is she? So her Mom grounds her, but Wyn shows up, and this shameless 16 year old starts kissing him. It must be the power of Wyn telling her that he wants to think for both of them! I am not kidding: that's exactly what he said!

I'm sorry, but I'm outta here. This novel sucks rotten wood like a forest fire. I have better things to read with my time. This is a definite WARTY!

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

Title: Pretty Girl-13
Author: Liz Coley
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Rating: WORTHY!

Well I'm in love with Liz Coley, and I've only just started this one! This novel impressed me from the off, so I am thrilled to be on my third novel in a row to which I find I can warm up. I love this title which translates to PG-13(!), but this book is a disturbing book, especially after the very recent revelation (at the time I'm writing this) of the three brothers who abducted three teen-aged girls and held them for a decade. I don’t know how anyone can come back from that, but it's heartening that people do. At least those women were not tortured and left in shallow graves; that is they weren't tortured physically in the commonly understood sense. They were very much tortured emotionally and psychologically, and that's more than probably worse.

In this fictional account (perhaps rooted in fact? I don’t know, but I'm going by Coley's dedication: For J, who survived) Angela Gracie Chapman was abducted from summer camp when she was thirteen. No one ever discovered what had happened to her. Now she's sixteen and "wakes up" walking down the street towards her home. Her parents almost go into shock; they're also victims of this crime.

The detective who was on the case arrives quickly and she's subject to the indignity of having to go to the hospital for a rape examination by a male doctor. Nowhere is there a social worker, psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist of any appropriate kind available. I find that hard to believe - unless the hospital she was taken to was truly second rate. She can’t get such an appointment until the next afternoon.

Meanwhile, the nurse keeps calling her 'sweetie', which doesn’t seem to bother Angela in her 13-year-old state, but I definitely feel like I want to catch that nurse upside her condescending head for it. Angela blacks out for a few minutes when the doctor examines her vagina and no one seems to see this, not even Angela - not properly. Hopefully the psychiatrist will latch onto that. From her physical state, it's clear she has been manacled and held prisoner for the intervening three years, and from her mental state, it’s clear that she dissociated herself from what was happening and walled it off in order to try and cope with the horror of it, which accounts for the "amnesia" (yes, in quotes- more on this anon!).

She has flashbacks in a different person to things she did or things from which she was protected by dissociation. Her thirteen year old self did not know how to cook, but her sixteen year old self seems to have that knowledge hidden away somewhere. She's very strong for her size, and her hands are calloused, like she did hard work, but she cannot recall it. When she woke up that day on her own street, she carried a bag with clothes and a shiv. She recalls none of what that means.

Her immediate problem right then is that she still thinks she's thirteen and expects to be treated like that, but her dad won't even hold her hand. She can barely handle the knowledge that she's actually sixteen and the world has moved on three years while she was on hold like some kid's forgotten DVD. She can hardly stand to look at her face in the mirror which looks so different from her mental image of herself. Her favorite clothes don’t fit and her body seems like it belongs to someone else. It’s ironic that someone, someone with very piercing dark eyes, she half-recalls, "borrowed" her, and now she feels like she's borrowing someone else. Since her clothes are annoyingly useless, she goes with her mom to the mall to buy fresh, and is outraged by the prices. She buys very little, but later, she finds something in the bag that evidently her alter ego (or one of them!) lifted from the store without her (Angela's) knowledge. The fact that she lets this go without even analyzing it is portentous.

The psychologist, Lynn Grant seems very much on the ball. I was impressed with her first meeting with Angela. It was very well written. She failed to address what might happen if a media circus surrounds Angela, which I thought was an awful omission, but When Angela awakens from what she thought was a few minutes of hypnosis, she learns from Grant that she was "out" for a half hour, and Grant was talking to another personality called Girl Scout, not to Angela at all, and Girl Scout is very worried about Angela.

Angela has to fight her parents a bit to get what she feels she needs. Her father is being completely dumb about this, not understanding Angela at all, and her mother wants her to get back to normal. Her mother accidentally reveals that she's pregnant, and what with that and reading her mother's scrapbook that she started after Angela's disappearance, Angela is now half under the impression that her folks gave up on her and moved on, and that she's shortly to be replaced with the new baby. In the end, bolstered by Grant's agreement, Angela determines that she should go back to school, but start in ninth grade because she knows she has catching up to do, but not that much.

On her first day at school in her first class, she's recognized by a girl called Maggie, who takes Angela under her wing and surrounds her with supportive classmates who vow to help her catch up on school-work. That part is hilarious, and delightfully written. The potential problem starts as she's leaving at the end of the day, and she runs into her old friends from when she was thirteen: her "boyfriend" Greg, and one of her two girlfriends, Livvie. She has refrained from calling them because she felt really weird about it, and so young compared with them, given that she feels paused at thirteen.

She goes back with them to Greg's house and apparently does not realize the importance of calling her folks, who seem remarkably lax about her exposure and vulnerability in traveling to and from school given that she's an abduction victim. There seems to be no concern for her at all that her abductor might want to "re-acquire" her, or that the media might make her life hell once they learn of her return. She's reassured to see that Greg and Livvie still view her as a close friend, but she's surprised that they no longer hang out with the third of their foursome who evidently became a school pariah when she ratted them out for having a kegger. No one speaks to her any more. The immediate feeling I got after reading this was that Angela is probably going to end up seeking her out.

She seems to still have the hots for Greg, which she did at thirteen, but it does seems a bit awkward to me. It’s definitely an exceptional and forgivable case of instadore! I get the feeling that maybe all will not turn out well between them. But something goes very bad elsewhere, and unexpectedly so. Her favorite uncle comes to visit her and they go for a walk. Suddenly it's night and Angela is home and cannot recall the last several hours. Eventually she figures this out as one of her personalities surfaces for the first time - the one that took over every time she was raped by her captor.

This same personality tells her that her uncle has been abusing her for years, every since he began babysitting her. She became so agitated by it that she zoned out and this new personality, which she knows as 'The Slut' takes over. This is the personality which has been buying the exotic underwear and which puts on make up much more boldly than Angela ever would. It's also the personality that came out in the back seat of Greg's car one morning when he was supposedly giving her a ride to school. He took her for a ride sure enough.

Angela's personalities have begun frothing to the top as her therapy sessions continue, and she finally volunteers for an experimental treatment using gene therapy which is aimed at blocking the ability of specific neurons to communicate, which the doctor in charge of the study thinks will effectively kill Angela's alter egos. In order to do this, they have to map her brain using a CAT scan, while Dr. Grant brings out each personality one by one. Unfortunately, she can only bring two out, one of which is the slut

This assault, of course, causes a rebellion in her alter egos, and they become much more active. She evidently has four of them in addition to "herself". The Slut is a street-wise and very sexual being; Tattletale is a very young personality who communicates with Angela using a really old tape recorder she had as a kid. She is the one who dealt with her uncle's advances. Girl Scout is still around, but she has chosen to make herself scarce at this point. The Little Wife is the one who cooked and cleaned during Angela's captivity, and i had thought she was another personality, but Coley confused the issue. The Slut and Little Wife are both the same personality. That took some grasping. The Angel is a male personality which may well be the one who killed her captor - assuming this is what happened, and it's starting to look like that.

Angela has told Dr. Grant about all of these except for Tattletale and her knowledge of her uncle's sexual assaults. She's kept this a secret because she fears it will break up her family if it comes out that her father's younger brother has been molesting her. Her mother has already told her that her father is being so distant because he's wracked with guilt about not keeping his daughter safe. I must confess, suspicious little tike that I am, that I'm seriously wondering if her father knows more about her uncle's activities than he's willing to admit. But what bothers me more is that none of the doctors have any worries about what Angela will get up to when The Slut puts in an appearance. They're failing to adequately protect Angela from herself, and that bothers me. I don't know if it's written this way because Coley wants it like that, or if it's because she simply hasn't thought this through properly. I guess we'll find out as we go!

One thing which bothers me now is that Angela makes arrangements to babysit for a neighbor so she can pick up some cash. This bothers me because I'm now concerned about which personality is going to actually be doing the babysitting and what the consequences of that will be! As it happens that first night seems to go well. It's only after Angela gets home that the problems start. Her personalities like to come out at night and do stuff: like make diary entries, clean her room, do her math homework, etc! This means that poor Angela 'wakes up' without having had any sleep! The baby had concerned me because of Angela's personality splits, but having read a little further, it concerns me for a different reason!

Worse than this, however, is that Angela makes out (in 'The Slut' personality) again with Greg and he tells her that he's going to break up with Livvie, and start dating her again - but he never does break up with Livvie. As each day passes, he still sits with her at lunchtime at school. Angela goes shopping with Kate to get a nice dress for the upcoming formal. They run into Livvie and there's this serious bitch-fest which comes up between her and Angela out of nowhere! Livvie is obviously still planning on going to the formal with Greg. which causes Angela to pursue Greg about it and it becomes quite obvious (to us, but not to Angela, evidently) that Greg isn't going to leave Livvie. He makes out with Angela again and the next thing she knows, he's dropping her off at home with everything agreed, except that Angela can't remember the last hour. All she knows is that she has no one to go to the formal with.

I have to wonder where Livvie is during these times. If she and Greg are so close, how come he has all this time before and after school to get it on with Angela? How come neither he nor she have any concerns about STDs or pregnancy? Yes, I'm overly protective of Angela, because unlike some of the better female protagonists I've read about of late, Angela actually does need protection, and she's not getting it, not from her family, not from Greg, who supposedly is very fond of her at least, and not from her doctors! This can only end badly!

Angela has the procedure to eliminate the personalities, but they can apparently do only one at a time, and the first to go, at Angela's insistence, is The Slut/Little Wife. Before she goes, she puts in a quick appearance to tell Angela she left her a diary entry hidden in a drawer at home. When Angela reads it, she discovers that she was apparently impregnated by her "husband" during those three years. It isn't expressly stated, and Angela does not appear to read it that way, but the Little Wife's tale of growing fat and thin again?! But that's not the weirdest part - more on this in a few! Also Little Wife reveals that she conjured up The Angel to 'take care of' the husband.

Hey, for once I was right in my prediction! Yeay! Things ended way badly with Greg. But let's not jump too far ahead! So Katie has a boyfriend called Ali who has a brother called Abraim, both of whom I really like. The whole friendship with Katie is turning into something wonderful, and her interaction with Angela is precious. She isn't at all fazed by Angela's slow revelation to her (doled out carefully over their reacquaintance) that she has dissociative disorder. Katie thinks it's cool and embraces it whole-heartedly, casually bringing it into conversation without any hesitation or fear. The four of them go to the formal and have a good time, but Coley doesn't share any details. Instead, she jumps straight to where they drive up the mountain, and watch the sun come up.

WHAT? This is a sixteen year old, going on thirteen, who was abducted for three years, has some serious issues (understandably!), and her parents have no problem whatsoever with her quite literally staying out all night with a boy they've never met? (Her parents miraculously disappear from the story during that evening - nowhere in sight, which is distinctly weird!) This, I'm sorry, but this is bad writing, Coley's first real slip-up IMO. Greg chases down Angela (having been made suitably jealous at the formal!), and tells her he's dumped Livvie, and now they can be together, but Angela no longer has Little Wife the Slut on board, and she turns Greg down, so this monumental prick teams up again with Livvie and the two of them start a not-so-subtle hate-campaign at school, which no one in authority seems to have any interest in stopping! I find that a bit much. Angela is reduced to carrying around a small spray-paint can to spray over the absurdist and libelous graffiti they leave about her.

Worse than that, the evil Greg and Livvie call the press and reveal the story of the abducted girl returning home, so now the press is all over the school and all over her home. This I find unbelievable. Not that the press would behave like jerks, but that they would not have found out about Angela already. Everyone in the school knew. The students would have told all their friends and their parents. It's simply not credible that this story wouldn't have broken much sooner than this.

But let's roll with this one, because we have bigger poissons à faire frire (see how wonderful it looks in pretentious French? lol! Or should I say, Français prétentieux ?)! Anyway, Angela gets home to find not the press, but the police and the press, although why there are so many police is a mystery since they don't seem to be doing anything about the press. Detective Brogan is there, and he tells Angela that they've found the cabin where she was held, and while there was ample evidence of her being there, there was no trace of her captor anywhere to be found; the cabin looks abandoned. Did the avenging Angel kill off the criminal? It may be more complicated than that. Recall that apparent baby that seems to have disappeared? Was the baby killed? Or is the baby the selfsame one which Angela babysat?

Angela now has the opportunity to go with the police to the cabin to see if it triggers any memories, but she's not too fond of that idea. And why didn't the police, who are aware of her sessions with doctor Grant, have one of her personalities describe her captor to a police sketch artist? Angela takes this news badly and throws up. Later, sitting in the shower trying to get her other selves to reveal something Angela is convinced they're hiding from her, The Angel shows up and his hands are bloody and he begs Angela to get rid of him next so neither she nor anyone else can discover what he did. Angela doesn't want to let him go, because he protected her from Greg. She now regrets even "killing off" Little Wife/The Slut.

Then Angela comes back into herself to find the bathtub bloody. She just had her period. So this complicates things! I love this story! If this is her first period, it explains why there was no issue with pregnancy in her trysts with Greg (although STDs still remain a problem - and note that Coley makes no mention of Angela being tested for any such thing after her return, which is one thing I'm sure they would have done). However, if this is her first period, there is no way she could have become pregnant during her stay at the cabin, But I think this is a red herring on Coley's part! Shame on her trying to mislead me like that. I thought we were friends!

When Angela gets back downstairs after her shower, something truly weird happens. Her mother refers to detective Brogan by his first name. Coley has made me so suspicious now that the first thing I thought when I read that was to ask myself: "Did Angela's mom have an affair with Brogan? Is the baby she's carrying actually his? Am I evil or what? Hey, Coley did this to me, making me second-guess everything she's writing! It's not my fault!

Angela discovers that Doctor Grant cannot get her in to erase The Angel until after Thanksgiving, so she's stuck with him until then, but there's no word on whether Angela talked to her and told her anything about what has happened recently, so I'm forced to assume they didn't talk. This isn't good, because Angela is already irrationally tarring herself as a murderer, and now she has all Thanksgiving to let it eat her up. But it gets worse: Coming over for turkey is that turkey Uncle Bill who raped her repeatedly when he was supposed to be babysitting her.

He starts feeling her up in the kitchen every time they're alone until The Angel surfaces, breaks his fingers, and stabs him with a large fork. But it gets worse. Her father comes running in at this ruckus and tackles Angela to the ground claiming she's finally had the psychotic break he was expecting all along! I want to kick that son of a bitch squarely in his juvenile balls before I cut them off and feed them to the neighbor's dog. I hope Coley has some deep, penetrating revenge coming down on both these scum.

Her mother is no better - she calls for an ambulance! Now the picture is complete: Angela's abuse started long before she was abducted, long before rapist Bill started on her. It started with Angela being unfortunately born to parents who are complete dickheads. As the siren approaches (seriously - they got here that fast?) Bill the pond scum punches her in the stomach and pins her arms behind her back and the medics, brain-dead robot puppets that they are, immediately inject her with a sedative, and she blacks out.

Some one needs to fire those medics. Angela wakes up in a room, restrained on a bed, with her mom sitting by. When she reacts negatively, not violently, but merely negatively to her mother's mention that Bill (or is it Bull?) is fine and forgives Angela, her mother threatens her with another sedative! Angela (and I cheered when I read this!_) asks her mother to leave and requests doctor Grant to come in. Coley slips a bit here, too, because when Grant comes in, Angela asks her to remove the restraints (which remind her horribly of her abduction and imprisonment) and Grant acts shocked that she's even in them. This is a trained psychologist who came back from vacation to see to Angela, and who has already spend some considerable time there that day, yet she apparently didn't observe that Angela was in restraints, nor did she note it from her chart - a chart which is she was any kind of decent doctor, she would have thoroughly taken in the first chance she got!

This novel is divided into four sections, starting with You, then We, followed by Us (I think - I went thru the book several times trying to find section 3 and couldn't!), and ending with I. The end of section 3 is a bit too pat for my taste. Angela, who has discovered the The Angel was eliminated while she was sedated, miraculously integrates the other two by herself. I don't like this part because it sends a misleading message that anyone can overcome the most appalling mental trauma with barely any effort at all. But the story isn't over yet and I'm excited to read the last section to find out what's hidden behind the firmly closed door that The Angel wouldn't even let Angela's other personalities through. I think Coley wants us to believe it's the secret of Angela killing her captor, but I'm convinced, rightly or wrongly, that it has to do with babies.

Coley betrays Angela here because rapist Bill evidently gets off with a restraining order and no jail time. Now Angela's grandmother is pissed off with Angela for forcing her to choose which of her two sons she will favor. She chooses to favor the rapist. Angela makes a date with Abraim - the first upon which they will have gone without Katie and Ali along for the date, but before that, she has to babysit. There is it again. Coley has to be telegraphing this baby stuff for a reason!

Or maybe not! Angela has an uneventful babysitting, that is until she touches the baby blanket when she's checking on him, and suddenly the Harrises are back home and it's one o'clock. Now where did the two hours go? It looks like Angela actually isn't quite as integrated as she thinks she is. Did we get a trip behind that locked door which The Angel wouldn't let anyone past? Angela sleeps very late the next day and when she finally gets up, she realizes that her rocking chair has been moved. This was a regular occurrence during her split days, but it should no longer happen. Angela arrives at the disturbing conclusion that there's yet another personality which has never even surfaced, let alone become integrated with the rest of her!

I so love this novel, and that's where I'm going to leave this review. This novel made me excited, angry, emotional and anxious to read the next page. Despite some issues and flaws (which Coley commendably addresses in an afterword where she reveals that 'J' was indeed an Angela but in real life), this novel is possibly the best I've read since i started blogging this year. The ending is awesome and so well written it makes me depressed that I didn't think of it! I am definitely going to be stalking Coley's name on bookshelves in future!