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

There are few words that make me sigh in happiness like the word “pastry.” So when I read the synopsis and was asked to review this book, I was all up in that pastry idea. While reading this book, I nearly gave up just past the halfway mark, because while I was entirely enamored of some of the characters, like Elisabeth’s brother Rascal, and her mother, Ballard Foster, who has the Best WASP Name Ever, and who has lovely core of strength that shows up when its needed, still wrapped in a white linen and navy blue napkin that’s perfectly folded, there was one problem.

Well, with Elisabeth, there were three problems:

1. I wanted to smack a bitch.
2. The book is told in first person.
3. Go To #1.

At several points, I started talking back to Elisabeth’s narration. “Bitch, you did not just do that.” “Dear Lord, woman, why are you such an asshole? No wait, I know why. Maybe you could both recognize that your family is 75% asshole AND then choose to NOT be an asshole? No?” “Oh, Bitch, you did not just do that.” It is alarmingly frustrating to read about someone who wants to change, says she should, and then doesn’t while commenting in that moment all the ways in which she should change, just act differently this one time.

Elisabeth fully recognizes that her family is profoundly dysfunctional, and how her role in life as a pastry chef is to cook the happiness for each of her customers and “envelop” them in it, and she recognizes that she, by virtue of being raised by a classy mother and a brash father, has a good bit of the Well Bred Asshole in her.

Problem is, she lets herself be an asshole way, way too long. Elisabeth’s story begins with an almost systematic description of all the ways in which her life is stagnant and her daily routine is largely determined by everyone around her. She has a journalist pseudo boyfriend cum fuckbuddy, Will, who stops in to stop in when he and Elisabeth find themselves in the same place. Will is a curious character; Palmer does a deft job of creating his vulnerabilities while still allowing him to demonstrate what a selfish buttmonkey he is as well. In the beginning, Elisabeth and Will are pretty much perfect for each other.

Then shit changes, as shit is wont to do. Elisabeth has an opportunity land in her lap that sends her career into a direction that her father would and does violently protest: television. (It’s evil, you know. Four out of five dentists don’t let their kids watch tv. Or eat pastry.) She watches her brother struggle to play his own FU Card with their mercurial egomaniac of a father. Both the Page children have opportunities come to them purely based on their father’s fame. But what both characters learn is that while the opportunity might have shown up for that reason, their independent and individual success is largely due to their own brilliance.

And that brilliance, on Elisabeth’s part, leads her to meet Daniel Sullivan, a very nice midwestern boy who coaches basketball at UCLA, who bids on a cooking lesson with Elisabeth as part of her mother’s latest charity event - a scene that’s toe-curlingly awkward for Elisabeth but does a laudable job of establishing the imbalance of her character between acting like an asshole and wishing she were nicer - and who is utterly enthralled by Elisabeth, not by her last name, not by her job, not by her wealth or her own relative fame. He likes her, and she realizes the difference between being liked and being used. I wish, though, that Daniel had been more developed as a character. As underdone as he was, he seemed like a catalyst for Elisabeth than a choice on her part. And there is a moment when Elisabeth is so unbelievably horrid to Daniel’s mother that it took a good hour away from the book for me to calm down.

The best part about the book? The writing. Hands down, even with a character who bugged the ever living goddam shit out of me, Palmer is an adept master at the phrase that makes one snort and nod - nod because she’s right about what she’s describing, and snort because she skewers it perfectly. The very best and poignant line of the book comes at the end, when Elisabeth realizes the full ramifications of that fact that ultimately, she has to play her FU card to her own self.

Palmer’s writing is what made the book better than the character in it, a character who so irritated me it was hard to root for her sometimes. While I can’t say I loved this book, I’d happily read another book written by Liza Palmer.

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells, or rented from Paperspine.

Jayne, in her review, and Jane, in an email to me, both pointed out the extraordinary external force acting against the Daniel and Catherine: the entire city of New York will not let Daniel forget his wife. It’s true.

More than that: strange voyeurism that allows anyone to find out anything about 9/11 victims. Daniel’s late wife is not just a former wife; she’s memorialized online, in multiple sites, and because she died on September 11th, she’s called a victim and a hero. Thus it’s easy for the heroine to find out more about her, to find her picture, to find snapshots of her short life. Her life, and her death, are matters of public record and display, and by extension, the end of Daniel’s marriage.

O’Reilly did two very smart things in regards to Daniel’s first wife: one, she didn’t allow Catherine to indulge in nasty, pointless jealousy, or allow anything to taint the memory of Daniel’s wife. It’s an old cliche, to highlight the strength and attractiveness of the heroine at the expense of the hero’s past relationships by comparison, but to do so in this case would have cheapened the significance of Daniel’s moving on into a new relationship. In a lot of widower romances that I’ve read, the former wife is a spectre hanging over both parties, either as a formidable nemesis, even from the grave, or as a source of guilt for one or both parties. Not so here.

Secondly, O’Reilly created a heroine who complimented complemented Daniel as he is now: quiet, reflective, and deeply loyal, who understands his desire for simplicity and clarity, and who serves as a compliment to his current personality, and a catalyst for him to leave the stark, mournful pattern of his life. If anything was going to spur Daniel into changing his life after Michelle died, it would be irresistable attraction, which is not only one of my very favorite plot devices, but is used in this plot in particular to reveal more about both characters. Neither one is pleased to be removed from their comfort zones, particularly when they realize the many, many reasons that their relationship could be uncomfortable.

Additional “whodunit?” conflict is taken care of off stage, which is kind of a let down - I think I said out loud on the bus, “Wait, that’s it?!” but it is absolutely realistic. Daniel is an accountant investigating potential financial shenanigans at Catherine’s family’s antiques auction house, and he’s not going to ride a white horse into the boardroom and slay the wrongdoers, or have some showdown in the stairwell that might involve firearms or some crap like that. He’s going to write a report and submit it to the folks who do things. That’s his job.

I do wish more screen time could have been granted to Daniel’s brothers when they meet the heroine for the first time, because I would have loved to have seen/read their initial reactions to the woman who brought Daniel back to living again.

And I wish that in one scene, Catherine would not have been chasing after a black market faux designer bags, as their sale and distribution has been linked by Interpol to terrorist activities. It seemed a poor choice of activity for Catherine, particularly since she is so attentive to detail and quality as she vets antiques. Terrorist ties or no, counterfeit bags are usually craptastically cheap and fall apart easily - to say nothing of the dye that comes off on Catherine’s hands at one point.

Brothers and handbags aside, I come away from this book with the following conclusions: Kathleen O’Reilly is an author name that will immediately pop out at me from the Harlequin rack, as her men are simply wonderful. This book supports my suspicion that O’Reilly writes men of Nora Roberts quality, which is high praise from me, as I love just about all of Nora’s heroes.

And finally: if there had to be a book I read that was the first in my experience to deal with 9/11 as a part of a character’s backstory, I am glad it was this one. O’Reilly handled with deft sensitivity an issue that could easily have been overdrawn and overwrought, and she deserves mad props for the effort.

Looking for independent book sellers? This book is also available from Powells.

Tessa bugged the shit out of me. You know that person you know in your life who is on the cusp of really embracing their potential and then without fail they whine or shoot themselves in the foot or make dumbass decisions while proclaiming, “I am figuring out who I am and what I want?” Tessa reminded me of that person I know, and it’s not a favorable comparison. I don’t expect every heroine to know what she wants, but Tessa’s one step forward toward what she wants not what she thinks she should have, OMG half step back, commence beating herself up for that step forward in a different direction, then take another step forward, repeat sequence again dance got old. 

And the conflicts between Tessa and Gabe that Tessa seemed throw up in front of them like so many pesky hurdles that weren’t that strong from beneath made me want to shake her. I want autonomy! I want anonymity! I want my own place! I want to not need anyone! I make bad decisions and I’m a good bartender, but that’s not enough. I want things and will deny that I want them! But I want them anyway when I SHOULD be wanting someone or something else! And I have to readjust all the things that I want because they are coming into conflict with other things that I didn’t know I wanted, and the other stuff that I want but shouldn’t want.

Tessa had that rare and irritating ability to delude herself, and I lose patience with that shit in no time flat. She recognizes that she makes bad decisions. Admits it outright. And yet she still doesn’t listen to herself - and she barely listens to other people who tell her she’s better than she thinks she is.

She would have continued pushing herself into accounting, a field she was not at all interested in, because she thought that was a responsible profession, until two different people pointed out that her near-encyclopedic knowledge of New York City’s real estate would make her a great real estate agent. Well, duh-cakes, honey.

The underlying theme centered on Tessa’s achievement of autonomy and partnership, and the idea that it is possible to find a job that fulfills and matches your interests and goals, instead of merely a job that pays the bills. Gabe has that at his bar, but it’s his family’s establishment. He loves his job, and his life, and has always wanted to be doing exactly what he’s doing now. Tessa is conflicted between what she wants to do and what she thinks she should be doing.

Visually explained, Tessa needed to build her own pedestal of accomplishment and then place that pedestal next to someone else’s for equal protection and balance, and not erect a leaning structure that rested entirely on the strength of someone else’s foundation. Problem was, she hadn’t recognized that she had already established her own foundation by moving to Manhattan on her own, getting a job, paying her way through college (even if she was in the wrong major for her skill set) and working at a bar making a huge and solid circle of friends. She never fully gave herself credit for the accomplishments of her backstory.

However, every moment that Tessa bugged the shit out of me was underscored by the fact that, though her habits and hand-wringing moments of self-doubt were irritating to me personally, they were each and every goddam one exceptionally well written. They. Were. Real. I wanted to smack her upside her stubborn head because she seemed so real. It’s rare that a character would get under my skin so much, especially in the limited page space of a category romance. Usually I need a great many more pages to be so bugfuck annoyed by someone, but no, in a few hundred pages, I wanted to sit her down and conk her on the head with a liquor bottle. Then have a drink with her. She brought out the ‘Oh, honey’ in me, but that’s not a normal occurrence with me. O’Reilly gets it right, so right it’s real.

And speaking of right: O’Reilly gets New York right, too. Damn near perfect, and I’m there every day. She knows her apartment buildings, how the different neighborhoods within Manhattan change in a three-block walk, how “Chelsea” used to mean one thing and now it means something entirely different, and what various people in different stages of their lives are looking for when they move into their shoebox in the sky. O’Reilly got Manhattan dead on perfect.

So what was the best part?

While reading this book, I made a note to myself: “hr to ex NR men.” What does that mean? If this book is any indication, Kathleen O’Reilly may be the heir to the Nora Roberts title of Really Unbelievably Nuanced, Delicious Male Characters (aka RUN-DMC). All you ladies who dig Nora for her well-written, flawed, funny, and fabulous men? Go out and find yourself this book. I was totally into each and every brother, and not just Gabe, the protagonist, because they were each fascinating, even as supporting characters who were presently mired in repeated habits of behavior and weren’t fully fleshed out.

The attraction between Tessa and Gabe, his realization of his feelings, and his interactions with Tessa, his brothers, even his bar clientele: delicious.

This book is funny, real, and marvelously well done, with an exasperating heroine I still cheered for, Nora-Roberts-esque male characters ( A WHOLE SET OF FOUR THREE OMG YESSSSSS), and a setting that I know, love, and enjoy when it’s done well. Well played, Ms. O’Reilly. Well played. 

Ink Exchange begins with another look at a scene from Wicked Lovely in which Aislinn, the heroine of Wicked Lovely, sees a faery walk into the local tattoo parlor and touch a steel case, something that faeries are not supposed to be able to do. In Ink Exchange, you find out who that faery is, and why he can touch metal and not be sickened by it.

Leslie is a friend of Aislinn’s, and in the prologue, Irial, the faery from the tattoo parlor, is watching her. He calls her a “lovely broken toy.” That pretty much sums up Leslie: she’s desperately trying to recover her own health and happiness after an assault perpetrated by someone she ought to be able to trust. Her attempt to reclaim herself centers around acquiring a tattoo, and she’s frustrated in her efforts to find the perfect image. Like many women who pursue ink, she wants to reclaim her body for her self. She wants something unique, that won’t appear on the skin of anyone else, and when Rabbit, the tattoo artist, shows her a book of drawings of his own design, one image speaks to her and, in a way that alarms her slightly, demands that she choose it. Ultimately, that tattoo links her in a dangerous, addictive, damaging and symbiotic relationship with Irial, and in the course of identifying what that relationship is and whether she wants it, Leslie realizes how weakened, and how strong, she truly is.

Leslie’s choice to use a tattoo to reclaim her body is understandable, but when that tattoo and the forces behind it turn on her and claim her body for the use of someone else, her own choice becomes another assault without her consent. Exploring consent and assault through the tattoo allows the reader to examine the larger issues of consent and assault operating within Leslie’s backstory, and the whole book is layer upon layer of parallels.

One of Henderson’s concerns was whether 12 year old girls ought to read this book. My answer: “Without equivocation: Fuck, yeah.” The story explores themes that will give a young woman entering puberty a buffet of crucial topics to think about, topics that become particularly important because around 12 years old, my hormones hit the highway to Pueblo Loca and I was batshit miserable through most of it. This book is about so many layered and devastating things that affect teenagers, including sex, sexual assault, autonomy, addiction, strength, power, powerlessness, and how easy it is for damaged children to be taken advantage of by those with agendas of their own.

The skilled depth and layering of the story is unfortunately undermined by some aspects of the execution. The dialogue can slide from enigmatic to pretentiously vague with disturbing ease, and there’s a dramatic self-consciousness to the narration and the characters themselves that reminds me of teenage angst and drama, which made the already-painful storyline a bit more difficult to read, though the tone is in keeping with the age of the protagonists. The mortal ones, anyway.

The mortal wrongdoers who harm Leslie also for the most part disappear, and no closure is granted for the reader or for Leslie - at least, none that is disclosed - and while the paranormal characters do experience their own denouement and conclusion. The significance of the fact that Leslie wants very much to return to the mortal world from her involvement with the faery world is diminished by the focus on the faery characters, (spoilers ahead: highlight text to read it) and in the final scenes, Leslie is a background character, once again used to highlight and underscore Irial’s significance. Relegating Leslie to the background, to be commented on by other characters, did not sit at all well with me since the story is as much about Leslie’s recovery of her self and her autonomy as it is about the faery courts operating around and through her.

The other aspect that irritated me was that so many of the ancillary characters knew what had happened to Leslie before the novel began, and did nothing. They just knew, and watched her suffer, and did nothing. On one hand, their inaction was somewhat understandable seeing that, faery-involved or not, the protagonists of this series are teenagers, who are not powerful by any stretch, particularly these teenagers who operate largely without sound parental guidance or presence.

On the other hand, even within powerlessness, there is the opportunity to help her, and not one of them took it. I may be picturing my own teenage life through tinted happy glasses but I’d like to think that if I knew a friend had suffered the way Leslie did, I would have found some way to help, or at least let that person know I would help them find safety.

Finally, a word of warning to those who come to this site looking for romance reviews. This isn’t a romance. (spoilers ahead: highlight text to read it) There’s not a happy ending for Leslie in the sense that a romance reader may be looking for, though the situation in which the book leaves her is entirely appropriate and optimistic. This is not the same style of faery tale as Wicked Lovely and readers expecting more of the same of that novel will not necessarily find it.

It’s hard to describe concisely what this book is about. On the surface it’s about a girl who gets a tattoo and finds herself mixed up in multiple faery courts. But it’s also about a girl recovering her autonomy after assault, and her right to choose to feel overwhelming pain rather than have it taken from her without her consent. It’s about addiction, and about how choosing pain often means choosing to live, but it’s mostly about how brave, adult, and courageous a decision it is to make that pain-full choice for yourself.

Henderson’s assertions that 12 year old girls ought not read this book because of her mistaken perception as to the sexuality within the story are infuriating in light of the manner in which this book explores profoundly important issues. I can think of few books that should be required reading for teenage girls, but this is certainly one of them. It’s painful, and it’s important.

2. The heroine: weird. WEIRD. She resists the Insane Hero but when he kisses her, it’s not as if she actually LIKES it. It’s more like he has incredibly fast acting rohypnol on his lips and whenever he kisses her, she lapses into a coma. A complete cessation of brain function occurs. At one point, I’m not even kidding, she’s in her passion-fog coma, and then realizes that at some point, she got naked and so did he and neither of them had a stitch of clothing on! Oh, noes! 

Now, the awkward process that is removing a bra from another person, let alone panties or socks or God forbid pantyhose, would wake someone who was merely sleeping, so what kind of haze is this woman in!? And, perhaps I’m over-thinking this, but I can’t help but ask: where is the line that defines “I’m so hot for you I can barely see straight” as opposed to “taking complete advantage of some ninny who descends into non compos mentis with one kiss?” I’m telling you: roofie kisses: Mmmmwaaaahhzhzzzzzzzzzzzz. Hey! Where are my clothes?

3. There’s profoundly little variety in the plot. Avast! We have a storm front of punishing kisses with a 90% chance of throwing the heroine down on the nearest horizontal surface!

Then, the wind changes. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz runs away to another location, fleeing her own home like it’s been condemned by the power of his tornado of burning, somewhat stalkery and utterly insane love.

Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You follows Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz (see “stalkery and utterly insane” above) and hello...more punishing kisses. Nearest Horizontal Surface + Roofie Kisses MWAAHHHZZZZ + Absurd Removal of Clothes = UH Oh Spaghettios!

4. They get caught! By her fiance, one week before the wedding! Oh, noes! Milquetoast Fiance finds them IN her bedroom, buck naked, in flagrante licking-toe.

Cue the woeful haiku chorus:

She’s not pure as snow?
Virginal expectations
Dashed to muddy slush!

4. Jilted Milquetoast Fiance, he’s up to something. No man is that controlling while being that kind, particularly if that man is a spurned, humiliated former fiance in a Harlequin Presents romance novel. He will be villainized by the end of the book, mark my words!

Cue the mournful trombone.

I found you in bed!
With HIM?! The wedding is off!
...I can has yr house?

I smell financial shenanigans on the part of Jilted Milquetoast Fiance to be unearthed by the tender business acumen that runs alongside the passion for punishing kisses in the Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You.

5. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz runs away again. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You follows her again. Roofie Kisses Mwwwaaaahahazzzz promises she won’t run. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You begs her for her love, her mad sexxoring, her hand in marriage, whatever. Roofie Kisses Mwwaaaahahzzz takes off the minute Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You closes the door to take a leak.

6. Lather rinse repeat.

7. Even the setup of the plot is absurd: after one week of knowing one another in a boss/secretary environment, and after four years of subsequent separation, there’s more punishing kisses and entirely bizarre declarations of love from Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You than you can shake a stick at. A long, suddenly naked, where did THAT come from stick.

8. Enter the insanely beautiful and potentially insane ex-wife of Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You, the oddly precocious son of Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You, and some additional conflict, and stir.

I promise, you’ll get fizz. Lots and lots of fizz. 

And you know what? Candy is right. That fizz is drinkable. Drink the fizz, it says. You’ll want more. Turn the page, more fizz! 

This book is like that crackly fizzy candy - the sugar variety, not the Malaysian variety. It’s not satisfying yet you can’t stop the compulsion to taste it some more.

It’s cracktastic, sudzy, over the top, silly and utterly insane fizzy candy, and I cannot put it the hell down. It’s a horrible turn-the-page omg-what-next experience, reading this book. What is IN this book? The utterly frothy insanity is just too absurdedly entertaining to put down, and even though my ability to suspend belief deflated by page 3, I am still reading at a crackalicious pace simply because I cannot stop myself from wanting to know what crazy ass car will be loaded next onto the holy crap locomotion. Seriously.

It’s absurd. The Roofie Kisses Mwwaaahahhzzzzz heroine vacillates between spineless - or possibly unconscious - and strong enough to run away from a hero who scares her. Insane Hero You Love It When I Kiss You is autocractic, demanding, and, dare I say, punishing in his affections, which he declares immediately and presumes she returns based on… well, based on what evidence I have no idea. Perhaps falling in love for him is based on the idea that if you insist upon it enough, it will come true?

The plot goes in loopy circles that don’t spell out so much forward progression as they do plain old loopyness, and yet. I. Cannot. Put. It. Down. Even the ending is one last resist, one last insist, one last punishing kiss. Nothing’s so much resolved as just...exhausted, and thus the story winds to a unsatisfying finish. I believe I said out loud, “Are you kidding? That’s it?”

Bottom line: this is bad entertainment at its finest. The book on its own is a solid D. But that D comes with a hefty caveat: it’s practically impossible to retreat from this book. You’d love to fling it at the wall, but you can’t, because there’s one more page and surely she isn’t going to -

Oooooh, yes, she did. *turn page*