Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Who’s the Daddy? is the incredulous tale of Caroline Atkins, who awakes in a hospital bed after an barely-described accident that has left her in a state of breathtaking amnesia. She can remember the chauffer and her favorite drink, but she cannot remember anything else, including her family, the two toadies who follow her father everywhere, and, surprise!, what happened two months prior that would leave her pregnant.

Seems that this book was published well before patient confidentiality was something that hospitals cared about, because Dr. Dumbass blurts out her condition in front of her parents, the toadies, her also-pregnant-and-annoying-as-well sister, and her sister’s husband. He might as well have done a song and dance routine down the hallway.

Here is where your phrase collection begins to come in handy. Now’s about the time I said, “Are you SHITTING me?” At two months, one with any medical knowledge might have the brain cell function to think that perhaps, if the patient IS pregnant, she might not have TOLD anyone. And Dr. Dumbass doesn’t have the foresight to think perhaps he’s messed up in spilling the buns, here (Note: not beans. There are no beans in this oven).

No, it’s all part of a concerted effort on the part of all these cardboard characters to Drive the Plot Forward at All Costs. Kind of like pushing a Nash downhill: when it’s that heavy, it’ll start rolling and move on its own momentum, but it takes a big shove to get it going.

Caroline, her overbearing bonehead father, her vapid charity-obsessed mother, and the two toadies, the sister, the sister’s husband, and - hello! - the hot studly construction worker man who just came barrelling into her hospital room, all want to know one thing: WHO is the FATHER of this CHILD?

Not, “When will she get her memory back?” Not, “Shall we put her in a facility to enable the resurrection of her brain’s memory?” Not, “Should she be released from the hospital?” But “Who is the father because dammit no child in THIS family is going to be illegitimate!”

Seriously, her father is more worried about who’s the babydaddy than he is about the fact that his admittedly favorite daughter cannot remember her phone number, because he has got a wedding to plan. Or, at least, make his wife plan while he spends money on it. The issue of her amnesia is treated as an inconvenience by everyone, including Caroline, who is released to her family’s care barely a few hours after she was admitted to the hospital after the “accident” that left her with no lasting injuries other than a headache and the inability to remember anything about her life up until that morning.

Come ON, Now

Caroline’s father demands, as she is being released, to know who the babydaddy is, and the two toadies from his office and the hunky construction worker all step forward to say, “I am.” Caroline has no idea who any of them are, but she thinks the hunky construction worker dude is damn hot.

After she returns home from the hospital, looks through her closet at all the mysterious clothes that she doesn’t recognize as belonging to her- though she DOES of course recognize that the labels are all designer and high-end - and introduces herself to the housekeeper, who is a kind, truthful, and noble sort, just as a housekeeper made of stock-character-cardboard should be, Caroline gets down to work: time to figure out who the babydaddy is.

She invites hunky construction man to dinner, and asks Mrs. Lamb, the housekeeper who she allegedly calls “Lambie,” -

Who are you kidding?!

- to set up a romantic dinner for two. Her father, of course, being the overbearing blowhard that he, as a stock-character-cardboard father, should be, rearranges things and cancels her dinner for two. He tells Mrs. Lamb(ie) to set an extra three settings at dinner - and invites Prescott and Adrian, the two toadies, to dinner as well, so that they can press their suit as Caroline’s future husband and father of her baby.

Caroline is none too pleased, but instead of telling that officious, pompous buttmonkey to go blow it out his ass, she makes Max, hottie construction guy, sit down at dinner with the two toadies and her entire, insane family, and put up with the lot of them through a meal. Suspend reality, folks, because the Plot Must Be Driven Forward and these people Must Interact.

Now here’s where it gets really, really good. Max charms Caroline’s mother, ignores her sister - who is livid that her older sister is stealing her thunder by also being pregnant - and goes chasing after Caroline after she leaves the table in a fit of gestational nausea.

After the romance of helping her hurl, they have a moment wherein, sitting on the bathroom floor, she leans into him and he almost kisses her. There is NO MENTION of teeth brushing, either. Post-vomit kissing! Now THAT is a new one!

Do you think I’m STUPID?

Caroline and Max continue to see each other, and the mystery unfolds: who IS the babydaddy? What do Prescott and Adrian hope to gain by proposing marriage under the watchful urging of her father and accepting the mystery baby as their own? Is it just to get at Caroline’s money and at her father’s company? And what happened that Max and Caroline stopped seeing each other? Oh, the questions, they pile up. Emphasis on “pile.”

Caroline herself is one of those romance heroines we love to loathe: she’s described as “feisty” and in the first few pages almost comes across as somewhat snarky and strong. But then she’s faced with two men she doesn’t particularly like and one she can’t keep her hands off of, all claiming to be her babydaddy, so she does what any “feisty” heroine would do:

She promises her father she’ll marry the first man who provides “proof” that he’s the babydaddy. Because she’s caused her family enough embarrassment by being pregnant in the first place. And even as she comes to seriously distrust and dislike the babydaddy candidate who has “proof,” she still upholds her “promise” to her father that she will marry this unlikeable toad, because she… has to do what her father says.

Mm-hah! That’s some feisty heroine!

It almost seemed that the author went back and forth between “feisty” and “limp fish” because Caroline does have moments where you think, “Ah ha! She’s remembered her spine!” and then, faced with Daddy’s disapproval, she goes back to following orders.

I mean, check out this conversation:

“..You keep hanging on to that other man, the one you’re infatuated with.”
“I’m not infatuated with Max, Daddy. I love him. And he loves me.”
“Then why are you marrying Adrian? That’s not fair to him.”
She clenched her teeth in frustration. “I’m marrying Adrian because I promised you, and because he offered proof that he’s the father of my baby. But I don’t love him.”
“But, Caroline, it’s only fair that you marry him. After all, you’ve admitted that’s his baby.”
“No, I haven’t. I said he offered proof.”

Are you as confused as I am? It’s not fair to marry him if you don’t love him, but it is fair to marry him because he went through the trouble of offering proof that he’s the babydaddy.

There are some plot holes I can’t figure out, and of course I don’t want to give away all the crazy wacky bits of the story because someone will ultimately read this book just to see if it’s as insane as I say (Yes it is, trust me) But some things just don’t add up.

For example, according to the story, Max and Caroline had a whirlwind affair for two weeks, and Max was under the impression that she was new to the area. He took her on tours, drove her around, tried to help her find a job - and after they had hot hot sex, she ran away. He woke up, she was gone, and what the hell happened?

Then he hears her name on the radio following her accident - so she’s big enough of a name in the city that her accident MAKES the NEWS yet when he meets her, he’s never heard of her, or of her family, or of the family company. And when he hires a private investigator, even the PI recognizes the name. So how did he not know who she was?

But what drove me to collapse in fits of laughter and screaming was when it was T-minus one day until the wedding, and she tells Max that she needs him to be there, in the church pews, watching as she marries this other buffoon who has “proof.” She loves him so much she needs him to be there to support her as she marries someone else.

Now that, gentle readers, is love. And a “feisty” heroine.

Ultimately you do find out who the babydaddy is, but it’s more of a quest to disprove two of the contenders so the lustful pair can live happily ever after, and all the way to the end, the amnesia is almost an afterthought. But the ride to that happy ending is so completely bizarre, it’s almost worth buying a copy of the book used, just to tell people how truly bizarre the story is.

As I stated earlier, what made me angry about this book was that it seemed to assume I would accept any number of vacillations of character on the part of the heroine, that I would accept a heroine who would do as her father said even if she couldn’t remember her father in the first place, and that I would accept a hero who would put up with a heroine who put her father’s chauvinistic and inconsistent demands over her own desires and a hero who would never ask that she grow the hell up already.

He needed to grow a pair, she needed another hit on the head, the father needed sensitivity training and a clue, and I need to go find another book fast to get the taste of this one out of my mouth. 

Brighid has become an essential part of the Clan MacCallan. As Huntress, she holds a position of respect within the clan, and as close friend of the Chieftan commands her own share of personal respect as well. It doesn’t hurt that, as I mentioned, half-horse or not, she’s pretty hot.

The Clan MacCallan has been left in a state of upheaval by the events told in Elphame’s Choice, and as this book begins, Elphame’s brother Cuchulainn has journeyed to the Wastelands to bring back the New Fomorians, a group of half-demon, half-human hybrid people whose lives were saved by Elphame. Elphame is worried for her brother, who is in deep mourning for his lost love, killed by one of the half-demon Fomorians. Brighid volunteers to journey to the Wastelands to accompany Cuchulainn as he leads the New Fomorians back to the clan castle in Partholon.

When Brighid arrives in the Wastelands to meet the hybrid New Fomorians, she finds that Cuchulainn is a fragment of his former self, and realizes that part of her assignment, though unspoken, is to lead Cuchulainn back to himself as she and Cu lead the New Fomorians back to Partholon to be a part of the Clan MacCallan.

And that is more than enough for a story, right? But wait! There’s more!

Brighid must also learn to embrace the part of herself that is her mother’s daughter, that is, the part of her that is a High Shaman and has a connection to the spirit realm. Having rejected her herd and her responsibility to follow her mother into the position of High Shaman, Brighid has also rejected the spirit world and tries to resist the signs, messages, and premonitions she receives. Unfortunately, resisting one’s destiny is not easily done.

Brighid’s Quest hinges neatly into two halves: Part One is the tale of Brighid’s first quest: leading the New Fomorians into Partholon with Cuchulainn, and realizing how she alone can help Cuchulainn heal himself from the grief that has literally fragmented his soul. Part Two is the tale of Brighid’s second quest, as she realizes her destiny and tries to find a balance between her new life in Clan MacCallan, and her destiny as High Shaman of the Dhianna Herd.

The unifying element to these two halves is Cuchulainn, the hero of the story. PC Cast has set up quite a challenge for herself, in that it is very difficult to make a hero out of a grieving man who has just lost his love. Often the lost love is too good to be believed, shallow, one-dimensional, or revealed to be evil. Brenna is none of these, and, to make matters more challenging, was a friend of Brighid, who is mourning her loss along with Cuchulainn. But on the journey from the Wastelands to Partholon, which parallels Cuchulainn’s journey back to himself, Brighid and Cuchulainn realize they have feelings for one another, and both must struggle with their attraction as well as their guilt over betraying Brenna’s memory. And all of this emotional acknowledgement has to be managed without turning the reader off entirely, especially readers who are coming from the prequel and who “know” Brenna.

The other challenge is that Brighid, by virtue of being a centaur, well, to be blunt, she’s half a horse! I read this book the first week home from the hospital, bit by bit between feedings, rocking, and figuring out a baby’s nap schedule, and it was really freaking difficult to put the book down and go tend to anything else. Not only is this a wonderfully told story, but dude, she’s half a horse and there’s some serious attraction between Brighid and Cuchulainn, who’s a human, i.e. not half a horse. The possible logistics of the love scene were dinner discussion between Hubby and myself, because, did I mention, she’s half horse?!

I won’t spoil the answer as to how the happy-happy happens, don’t worry.

Brighid’s Quest contained some of my very favorite romantic elements: an emotionally wounded hero who is afraid of risking his heart a second time; heroine who can heal him, though at great personal cost; and a journey that has to bridge two very different cultures - that last one happens multiple times in multiple combinations, between the New Formorians, the Clan humans, the centaurs, the spirit realm, and the Goddess Epona, the ruling deity over the entire group. But even as I frothed at the mouth (ha) to find out how Brighid and Cuchulainn would find happiness and how the New Fomorians would find a way to live with the distrustful human Clan members, I had to ask myself: is this a romance, or is this a hybrid itself?

While there are strong romantic elements to the story, I would have to argue that it is not a romance entirely. It’s more of a hybrid between romance, fantasy, and, if we readers were members of the Clan MacCallan, an epic tale as well. 

My one disappointment with the story is something of a spoiler, so as usual, if you don’t want to know, you know what not to do. Cuchulainn spends chapters struggling with his grief, his feelings of guilt over Brenna’s death, and then further feelings of guilt over his growing regard for Brighid. But when it comes time for him to admit that he cares for Brighid, and that he can choose a future with her, he arrives quickly at a state of acceptance over his feelings and his intentions toward Brighid. For someone who struggled emotionally through the entire first part of the novel, Cuchulainn admitted his attraction to Brighid and acted upon it a little too fast for me, not only because I thought he would have to struggle with it a bit more (and not just because, hello, she’s half a horse!) but also because the shift in his feelings for Brighid and vice versa mark the hinge between parts 1 and 2 of this book, and I felt the transition went too quickly. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there wasn’t quite enough angst for an already angst-filled character. 

The most telling sign of my fondness for this book is that I keep stalling as I write this because my copy is sitting next to me, and if I pick it up to check a plot point or the spelling of a name, I start reading again, even though I finished the book a little over a week ago. I don’t even skim the pages; I start reading it in detail like I’ve never seen the words before. Brighid’s Quest is definitely a combination of several different and equally strong genres, but it also manages to be a hardy example of each one. I could recommend it to readers of romance, or readers of fantasy, with no hesitation.

Unless they want to borrow my copy. Ha. Mine.

Jolie starts out a poor mouse of a woman: she just got fired from her job at a real estate agency and is working the holiday season at Neiman Marcus’ shoe department as she tries to set up her own brokerage. Her boyfriend had disappeared, as has her car – a coincidence that the police put together and presented as a possible theft on the part of said runaway boyfriend – and she’s a brittle, unhappy mess at the start of her story. She ends up spending the first day of her new job waiting on her superficial and possibly dishonest old boss, and running into a multibillionaire with a stack of shoeboxes as she heads for the storeroom. The old boss is predictably horrid, but the multibillionaire is struck by Jolie’s… well, I’m not sure what strikes him about Jolie in the first place. Maybe one of those Manolo’s was a really heavy mofo and smacked him into an altered reality.

Because Jolie, she is alternately insipid, clueless, willfull and then terrified, and utterly, utterly gullible. It’s hard to identify with or cheer for a character who decides to find out what happened to dear old boyfriend but then scares the crap out of herself at every turn, yet does little to figure out how to protect herself better.

So much happens to this woman, and she reacts with such terror much of the time that you wonder why she doesn’t crumple up in the middle of the action. I was so fascinated by the setting and the premise that I kept waiting for Jolie to come busting out of that plain-Jane shell and start kicking ass, but no. She remains as she is described on page 18:

[The mall was] a far cry from her own sheltered upbringing. She had been an only child, a change-of-life baby, and her frugal parents had harbored rather old-fashioned notions of child-rearing. But even if she hadn’t worn the most fashionable clothes or obtained her driver’s license until she was 18, she could thank her parents for loving her and for giving her a good value system. (Bond 18)

What…? Huh? Oh, sorry. I fell asleep transcribing the wonder that is Jolie. Bond hammers the point home with multiple references to the mess Jolie is in and how little she fits in that mess, such as: “How had she, a normal, hardworking good girl become enmeshed in a murder investigation?” (Bond 82) She’s a walking virtue, this Jolie.

Then comes her introduction to Carlotta, a sales woman in Neiman’s couture section. Carlotta is a full-time employee who has cultivated the attitude to keep the customers with intentions to buy involved in securing her attention, while scaring away the ones who are just browsing well out of their price range. Bond goes out of her way to make Jolie unassuming, quiet, and pure-heartedly friendly; why would someone as sophisticated as Carlotta be her friend? Carlotta is savvy, outgoing, clever, a seasoned makeup and wig artist, and she has perfected the art of party crashing. From printing up duplicate tickets to exclusive events to making sure she carries store-bought drink tickets to events that would otherwise require her to purchase them, Carlotta makes her way through Atlanta’s nightlife putting on a show, and hobnobbing with the rich and elite just for fun.

What’s odd about Carlotta is that she’s actually one of them – she’s from old money, though the reason for her pulling the wool over the eyes of people within her social stratus is beyond me, and beyond Jolie. It’s never really addressed, except in Jolie’s expansive ruminations.

My first thought upon reading Carlotta’s introduction into the story was that she was the villain, because I could think of no reason why someone as stylish and cultured as she would befriend someone like Jolie so instantly. But Carlotta does, and brings Jolie along under vague pretenses to a party at the High Museum, and gate crashes her way in with Jolie standing open-mouthed beside her.  Eventually Jolie relaxes and has fun, but afterward she’s not really able to talk about the experience to her friend Leann because “[s]he didn’t want to admit she’d been bamboozled into being bad.” (Bond 86)

The party crashing becomes the crux of Jolie’s moral dilemma, and she spends more time agonizing over that than she does over her decisions whether to tell the police about her suspicions regarding the missing boyfriend. Carlotta purchases couture formal wear and shoes for them from their respective departments, and teaches Jolie secrets as to how to return it all in pristine condition so they get a full refund. How Neiman’s doesn’t catch on to he high number of employee purchases and returns on their accounts is beyond me. Jolie has a horrible time managing her guilt over the swindling of this multibillion dollar department store, and makes occasional comments about how their behavior isn’t “right.” This bugged the ever living shit out of me because there were so many larger issues at hand, from missing, possibly dead boyfriend, to his car being fished out of the river with a dead chick in it, to finding herself in potential danger from either the boyfriend or someone else, and she’s fixated on whether her moral values can handle Carlotta’s purchase of some Manolo’s for the Museum party when she has every intention of returning them. It’s like watching a church burning down and wondering if using the holy water to put out some of the blaze would be a mortal or a venal sin.

Meanwhile, all the party crashing has brought Jolie into contact with some very interesting people, beginning with Carlotta, and expanding to include former business associates of her missing boyfriend, and the very eligible bachelor, Beck, who not only remembers her from being pummeled with a cascade of shoeboxes at Neiman’s while shopping with his sister, but recognizes her through a variety of disguises. Beck starts attending a lot of social events to catch sight of Jolie, though his fascination with her is really never adequately explained, even by Beck himself. He makes several attempts to do so, and each one comes out false and wooden, as if he’s saying the right words at the right moment so Jolie (or I, the reader) will believe his truehearted intentions.

For a romance, which I don’t know that this book really was, there was a complete lack of character development for the hero. Beck was as one-dimensional as many of the supporting characters. He was rich, his father owned a media empire, he was protective of his sister and he called in favors to keep Jolie’s increasing scandal out of the media as much as possible. Ok, great traits, but what about Jolie? He repeatedly tried to help her when she looked alarmed and close to tears about something, and he recognized her when even people who knew her well, such as her former boss, were fooled. When things got particularly hairy, he bailed her out by calling in more favors. He was a regular white knight in beat-up flipflops, with an altruistic heart and a bank account to make one swoon.

He’s hot. He’s rich. He’s disillusioned with the pretense of wealth. He thinks it’s hilarious that she crashes parties he’d rather not have to go to. He’s hot – and rich, did I mention? And he has about three or four modes, like those faces you can hang on your cubicle wall to tell the office, which is made up of people who don’t give a crap anyway, how you are feeling today. Beck is compassionate and concerned. Beck is horny. Beck is using his influence to help you. Beck is ardent.

The man had the emotional depth of an eggshell. He certainly didn’t make me swoon. I was curious how he had that effect on Jolie, because I found his instant concern for her, and the extremes that he went to protect her immediately after meeting her, a little conspicuous. He did take any emotional risks to be with her, and didn’t change or grow, except he bought more shoes as an excuse to see her again. But he wasn’t a hero equal to the heroine; he was a convenient hero. He was hot, he was rich, he was charming, and he was there.

However, I don’t envy Bond the task she set up for herself in this book. It’s not easy to write about a heroine who needs to be involved enough with the missing boyfriend to care about where he is, and yet have enough reservations about that relationship that she won’t beat herself with the Prada shoes when she realizes she has the hots for the new man in her life. She has to care enough to keep looking, but not care so much that she turns down Mr. Hotty McMeanttoBe.

It was almost at times as if she was searching for her brother, only with a lot less personal angst. Just as I never understood what was so interesting about Beck, I never understood what she saw in Gary, the missing dude. It had to be hard to balance Jolie’s affection for and desire to find out what happened to her boyfriend, while at the same time introducing a more appropriate love interest in her life. Gary was a big part of the mystery. Was he bad? Was he not so bad but mixed up with bad people? How did he end up with these people in the first place? And did he care about Jolie or was he using her? Was he kidnapped by aliens? Did he run off in a pair of high-heeled Via Spigas and wear his feet down to stubby ankle bones with the pain of it? How do women walk in those shoes, anyway?

There are a lot of dropped storylines, or false leads that didn’t add to the plot so much as confuse me as to why they were never developed. For example, Carlotta’s brother is mentioned at least a dozen times as the source of her party-crashing equipment, but the reader never meets him. Carlotta also has some problems of her own that are neatly tied up at the end, without ever showing any true angst on Carlotta’s part to indicate how severe or how superficial these problems were.

But by far the one part of this book that made me drop a whole letter grade was the sex scene. This was the most antiseptic sex scene ever. It was almost as if Beck turned to her with a gleam in his eye and a woody in his pants and said, “Female, do you wish to have sex relations?”

This was the essence of life: a magnificent man, and hormones run amok…. Determined to be more participatory than a hat, Jolie returned the favor with equal consideration, then after a few mental calculations regarding expansion, contraction, and overage, she straddled him in what proved to be a gradual yet successful maneuver.

I’m not sure what the goal was here, perhaps an allusion to her real estate career, but this was the height of the many, many times in the last 100 pages I asked, silently, “Are you kidding me?” Overage? It’s humpity humpy hump, not calculus.

By the time I finished reading this book – and it was a fast-paced read that took me about 2 days to and from NYC – I had folded the corner of so many pages of questionable plot twists, bizarre character development, and kooky dialogue that the book looked like it had shark teeth when I fanned it open.

I really wanted to like this book, because the idea of crashing elite parties and mixing with the guests just for the hell of it seemed so outlandish and fun – and the possibilities for romantic suspense in a setup where the main character is dressing up in couture shoes and fashions to sneak into these events are just endless. But a boring heroine, a facetless hero, and a few too many dropped storylines with herrings that weren’t so much red as they were grey, made the resolution to that adventurous start conclude in a bland and tasteless fashion.

Because her family, it is The Suck. Her elder sister, Justine, is an egomaniac ball buster who was all set to marry the man of her dreams when the youngest sister, Mica, ran off with him the morning of their wedding. Several years later, Justine is an exec in a makeup company who busts balls and is a general beeyotch to everyone who works with her, until one day the disgruntled wife of one of the (many) married men she sleeps with bursts into her staff meeting and threatens to kill off the employees one by one unless Justine proves that she was or wasn’t with the woman’s husband that afternoon. I won’t go into the manner in which Justine has to prove said activity, but it is quite a scene. Justine barely escapes with her life, and after dealing with the immediate repurcussions of her behavior both in and out of the office, decides on the advice of a kind police officer to head home to North Carolina to see her family, hide out from the yet-uncaptured disgruntled wife, and recuperate.

Mica, meanwhile, ran off to LA with the fiance, Dean, and is now a contracted hair model and minor celebrity, living a very wild and exhausting life. She finds herself confronted with the mess her career and health have become due to Dean’s over-involvement, and her agent, a sensitive man named Everett, directs her to leave Dean, go to the doctor, and take better care of herself, as she is in danger of losing her contract with the hair care company. She decides also to head home to hide from Dean and further heal herself.

The family reunion is set against the backdrop of an unsolved murder that the three sisters witnessed when they were much younger, as the accused and convicted murderer manages to secure a hearing to determine if a conspiracy or inept police work caused his conviction. Ultimately, the sisters have to come forward with what they saw, which further implicates them and damages their already fragile relationships with one another.

So, hello, the Malfunction Sisters are converging on Monroeville, North Carolina, and Regina has to referee the ongoing battles between Mica and Justine, mediate the dissolving partnership and business interests of her parents, assist a hunka-hunka-burnin’ love named Mitchell with the itemization and appraisal of the value of her parents’ antiques store for liquidation purposes, figure out who committed the murder she and her sisters witnessed 20 years prior, and manage to find her own way to happiness.

Regina rules. Loved her. Loved how she learned to ignore her sisters when they were being childish brats - which was far too freaking often - and loved how she learned to appreciate herself even though she felt like no one in her family appreciated her. Loved how she began to appreciate her own value, and recognize her own talents. In short, love how she began to love herself.

I loved the romance between Regina and Mitchell, though I wish he were as full fleshed a character as Regina was, but since this book danced the line between women’s fiction, suspense, and romance so many times I began to accept that he was partly a hero and partly a catalyst for her developing character. Mitchell has his own backstory, and since just about every character is a suspect in the suspense plot woven through the book, his history is a slowly revealed puzzle, which allowed him to be slightly suspicious, even though I knew I could count on his innocence since he was the hero to Regina’s heroine.

But more than anything: I loved the dog. Mitchell has a dog, Sam, who is the best part of the book. While he doesn’t have wild antics and a subtle personality like a Crusie or a Donovan animal sidekick, Sam is a constant and adorable character, lending empathy when needed and serving as an emotional barometer to various scenes.

I read this book straight through in about 24 hours, from two bus rides in and out of Manhattan and an evening on the sofa, and I have to say what hooked me most was Bond’s skill with dialogue. Much of the book is dialogue, and very little description outside of setting the mood of the scene by decribing the environment the characters were in - and more often than not one of the characters did the describing. Bond is skilled with the clever conversation and since I tend to skim paragraphs of exposition in favor of the dialogue when I read, I ended up reading just about every word on the page. 

My problems with this book rest mostly on the development of Justine and Mica. Mica, the youngest, ran off with her sister’s fiance and ended up in a horrible, addictive and abusive relationship with him. Her decision ultimately became her own punishment, so in my eyes she started off even - she’s living the atonement for her major infraction.

But Justine is just horrid. She’s a downright nasty person and has a long, long way to go back to redemption in my eyes, and even as she dances around changing the parts of herself that were so inherently unlikeable, she would still backslide into further sticky territory as a character, forcing me to wonder if she would ever truly be redeemed in my eyes. In the end, I’d have to say she wasn’t, because she managed to make every situation about her, and in the end committed a horrible assault on Mica that seemed, to me, to be far too easily forgiven. Her realization of how shitty her behavior had been throughout the story was not nearly as wrenching as I thought she deserved. She was a witch and I wanted her to pay.

Lastly, still on the “just desserts” topic, while she is a fascinating character and well worth reading about as the middle sister who realizes her own worth is something that she herself has to define, Regina never fully received any real acknowledgement or apology from anyone in her family, from the parents who take her for granted to the sisters who band together despite their own issues to heap abuse on her as if she weren’t really a person worth their consideration. However, Regina’s increased strength and resolve to take care of herself and to not allow her family to hurt her anymore is a much more realistic resolution than to have her family come on bended knee pleading for forgiveness. Family doesn’t change easily, and you can’t really expect a family member to wake up one Afterschool-Special later and realize, “Oh, I’ve been horrible! I must change my wicked ways!” While the part of me that empathized with and rooted for Regina wanted some serious groveling, I have to admit that the novel’s ending did ring true to how real families move past their discord.

This is the first Stephanie Bond book I’ve read, and if they are all like this I’ve got me some glomming to do. I don’t often encounter authors who can effortlessly blend suspense, mystery, romance, women’s fiction, and family drama in a novel that still manages to be somewhat light and certainly funny. I Think I Love You deals with some real issues, and while the romance sometimes takes a backseat to the murder and the family mishegas, the happily ever after is more than satisfying.

Sarah says:

The weekend I moved, you could have visibly seen the yanking grin on one side of my face from where the plot and the character of this book hooked me. This book arrived the day I moved, and I had it sitting in the window seat of my house, literally the only thing unpacked in a house full of boxes. I kept hiding behind the boxes to keep reading it - this book seriously hooks you so bad you’ll have a rictus curl in the side of your face.

Tara is spunky, snarly, sexy and fabulous, and since the book is written in the first-person, you spend a lot of time in her head. I didn’t mind in the slightest being there, as Tara has both a fascinating way of looking at the wack-ass events in her life, and at people’s behavior in general. She’s judgmental and doesn’t pull any punches, and just wants to be left alone. However, the prose, as it is first person, jumps from subject to subject rapidly, much like your brain does when it’s sparking, and sometimes it’s hard to tell ruminations from plot developments. I suppose this is one of the perils of writing in the 1st person.

As for Howard, the reader has to rely on Tara’s impressions of him to get a sense of his character, and this is difficult, since the reader has a much better sense of her friends since she’s known them longer. You know she thinks he’s hot, and you know that he’s persistent, almost to the point of creepyness. But because all the development takes place from her perspective, you aren’t really sure if he’s a character worth trusting or if you can blithely rely on him as the “hero” of the novel.

His character, particularly in the beginning, comes across as a rather weird dude, and my understanding of his personality isn’t quite as developed as I’d like when he starts spilling his guts about his emotional past. What’s supposed to be an personal moment early on between Tara and Howard leaves me feeling like I do when I encounter people who engage too quickly emotionally and tell me things I feel are none of my business. If I had a better idea of him, a more-developed sense of his character and who he is or at least what he looked like, other than that he was hotty mcmuffinstud, the true-confessions moment would have inspired a lot more pity. As it was, he had to fight his way back, in my estimation, from creepy over-divulging guy, to adorably hot man who wants to take care of prickly Tara and her crazy ass universe.

I am, however, glad this is a series because I wasn’t tired of Tara, Howard, or any of the auxilliary characters by the time the book ended. I wanted to know more about them, and about Tara. But more importantly, I wanted to know more about the day to day life Tara leads, especially when someone isn’t trying to throw a curse on her. She runs a revenge website, and sells fascinating products. The reader learns the history of one or two, but not all, or how she came up with the idea in the first place.

The thing about the Keys that makes the story both believable and a total escape is the residents’ acceptance of events, people, and attitudes that are really fucking bizarre. From Miss Good Voodoo to this dark silhouette that watches Tara’s window at night, to the cook at Crusty’s who hates her for reasons relating to ceviche, there are some funky ass people in this story, but Tara isn’t fazed by them at all, or, if she is, she gets over it fast.

To evaluate this book, I have to ask myself, did I like it? I sure did. But is this a romance? Or a ghost story? Or a paranormal mystery series? I don’t honestly know. There’s definitely a breaking-through-the-armor moment with Tara, and there’s definitely some romance going on, but unlike many a romance I’ve read, aside from admitting that she checks out his buns, there’s no internal ruminations as to how Tara feels about Howard. I don’t honestly know that it is part of her character - she’s more of a “he’s got to prove he’s worth my time before I go pondering the fineness of his eyebrows” kinda gal - or if romance is meant to be the main element of the story.

I look at this novel as the pilot episode of a really fucking awesome tv series, where there’s a lot of initial construction to do, and after you’ve watched awhile, you realize the pilot doesn’t necessarily reflect the entirety of the series’ tone and style. However, if the series goes where I hope it will, the pilot will have launched something very interesting.

Sarah’s Grade: B-

Candy Says:

Hey, if Chuck Palahniuk can do it in Haunted, then Cindy Cruciger can do it in Revenge Gifts, too.

What am I talking about?

Tense changes, people.

The books switches dizzyingly from past to present and back to past again. The tense changes oftentimes happen within the same paragraph, and in at least one spectacular instance, within the same sentence. And there’s no discernible reason nor pattern to these tense changes. Tara walks into the sushi restaurant in present tense, sees Howard in the past tense, eats lunch with him in the past, then leaves the restaurant in the present.

I know. I have the same problem too. Takes one to know one, right? But oh my, reading it was exhausting because every time the tense changed, I mentally switched gears. By the end of the book, I felt kind of numb.

Distracting tense changes aside, however, I agree with a lot of what Sarah says: this book is pretty entertaining, and the narrator, Tara, is truly refreshing, especially for a romance heroine. She’s no shrinking violet, that’s fer damn sure, and lord knows I’m tired of shrinking violets in romance novels.

But. Butbutbut. She hasn’t had an orgasm before.

No, she’s no virgin, but apparently she’s had nothing but lousy lovers all her her life.

With Howard, though? Screaming bliss within minutes. I shit you not. Sigh. This romance stereotype seriously needs to die, die, die.

But here’s a puzzling thing: Tara, while basking in the afterglow, muses on how much she misses ruthlessly using a man’s body for her selfish pleasure, which leads one to the bizarre conclusion that orgasmless, unfulfilling sex with clueless lovers is selfishly pleasurable for Tara Cole.

---Please note, there’s been a bit of debate about how accurate the paragraph below is. Check the comments for more details---
That’s not the only inconsistency, either. One of her friends, Sam, is gay (or at least presented as such) in the beginning of the book. Some time later, and without any explanation or signs of bewilderment on the part of the narrator, Sam is straight and seriously hitting on Tara. Perhaps this can be attributed to an unreliable narrator, but even unreliable narrators are surprised, and Sam’s sudden orientation switch doesn’t give Tara pause. Me? I paused, actually said out loud “Hang on minute, I thought the dude was gay!” and spent five minutes riffling through the first 100 pages of the book looking for references to Sam’s homogaiety.

And while the narrative voice is fresh, different, quirky and very, very entertaining, the non-stop vignettes and snarky remarks eventually wear thin. Yes, I get that Tara is cynical. Yes, I get that she has an evil sense of humor. I like her for that. WHY is she constantly pointing this out to me, though? The story and her actions already show this to me in ample detail, and the endless internal quipping slows the pace of the story quite significantly in some spots.

I’m also not sure I buy into the love story. I’m with Sarah on that, too: Howard is very attractive, but other than that, he’s a cipher, and the speed with which the romance happens can give you whiplash if you’re not careful. Part of this is because of the amount of space taken up by the snarking; instead of viewing the relationship develop in more detail, you’re treated to yet another off-center observation from Tara, which, by the end of the book, tends to be a variant on previous observations she’s made earlier in the story.

The pacing overall is uneven. The book starts out at a fairly leisurely pace, with weirdness building on weirdness. The last 70-80 pages of the book, though… Woo damn. The book isn’t so much kicked into high gear as launched into Mach 3 with no warning. Characters who were peripheral to the story are all of a sudden introduced willy-nilly, mayhem and magic galore happen, and the resolution of the story? Fun, but a bit too pat and convenient for my tastes, especially after all the build-up in the first parts of the book.

One last nitpick: There are snippets of Javascript code in the book, all part of the script that generates a quote of the day for revengegifts.com.  That’s all well and good, since Tara’s a computer geek, which is something else I like about her--convincing computer geeks in general are in short supply in Romancelandia, and female computer geeks? Shit, I think Tara’s the first I’ve encountered. The big problem though? The script cannot work as written. (Feel free to skip this whole paragraph if you’re not interested in reading me blather on about Javascript, by the way.) So for one thing, the one curly bracket in the script is left open, which, in my experience, does not make for Happy Code. For another, if Monday == 1, then it follows that Sunday can’t also == 1. Not to mention the wrong comment tags are used in the wrong spots; Javascript comment tags are two slashes (//) and they should be used within the <script> tag, whereas HTML comment tags look like this: <!-- --> and should appear outside of the <script> tag. The exact reverse happens in Tara’s Javascript. The lack of formatting tags in the Javascript are also puzzling; as with HTML, carriage returns do jack shit in the script--you need to code in the paragraph and line breaks. I know, petty nitpicking, but hey, if you want to include computer code in a book to show what a 1337 haxx0r the heroine is, then by crackey do it RIGHT, or at least fake it convincingly enough so that a ‘tard like me (trust me, I ain’t no great shakes with Javascript) can’t look at the script and go “Huh. Wait a minute, there’s a buncha weird things going on here....”

Despite all these issues, though, Revenge Gifts is still worth checking out. Tara is a fun alternative to the usual romance heroine (orgasmless state notwithstanding), and I’d wager I’m one of the few people here who’s really, really bothered by constant tense changes and broken Javascript. The story is definitely not run-of-the-mill, and the humor is pretty damn black in spots--something sorely lacking in most romance novels.

Candy’s Grade: C