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

Until I picked up this book, I’d never read a Betty Neels book, and I was not disappointed in the least. And in list format, here are are 6 Important Facts I learned about this novel:

1. Hot Dutch doctors, especially the wealthy ones, are incredibly generous and once in the hot throes of lovin’ say things like, “Oh, my darling, my darling!” And I have a hard time imagining Dutch doctors going into raptures of romantic expression by saying, “Oh, my darling! My darling!” However, I can imagine them saying, “But sit and fart in the duck!” Wait, no. I can’t.

2. If you get in a wreck in Holland, and are a British nurse, you and your bus full o’ spastic children (nice vintage terminology!) will end up at a hospital, one which will happily arrange to pay you as if you were one of their staff while you tirelessly and selflessly care for the children. Yeah. But what about retirement?!

3. The heroine is so relentlessly selfless it’s astonishing that she can stand upright. She’s got a backbone of the same durability as an old, damp dishrag. Her uncle and aunt treat her as one step up from hired help, and her cousin takes merciless advantage of her, even going to far as to slander her to The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. But really, they fed and clothed her so she can’t complain. And according to what I’ve read online, many a Neels novel features plain but noble British nurse falling head over heels with Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling. Did the Hot Dutch Doctors die out? Will angsty emo vampires suffer the same fate? Perhaps we need to spearhead the fund raising for the endangered romance novel hero species. Do not let the oversexed Regency Earl With Not a Hint of Venereal Disease go the way of the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling! Call now!

4. The heroine never complains, even when The Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling has listened to Evil Cousin instead of Plain Noble British Nurse, and accuses her of being a thoughtless wench. Plain Noble Brit Nurse needed to administer an enema of justice to her shitass Evil Cousin.

5. Fortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse, and rewards her for her selfless behavior. She wins an incredibly happy, optimistic future with the Hot Dutch Doctor Oh My Darling - in Holland, far far away from her family of craptastic crap.

6. Unfortunately, the happy ending elevates the Plain Noble British Nurse and rewards her for her selfless, and altogether spineless behavior. She never has to stand up for herself where it counts, really, and the selfish family never gets a hard paddle to the assal region like they deserve.

If Neels is part of the foundation of romance, and indeed I think she is, reading this book (complete with red page dye that came off on my hands) was both a quaint and educational experience. Quaint because romance, ma’am, you have come a LONG WAY. Imagine the heroine of The Magic of Living meeting up with a nurse heroine from a Blaze novel fresh after sex in the linen closet with Dr. McSchlong. Poor Plain Noble British Nurse would pass out cold. Her idea of scandalous was her cousin dating a married doctor - which is plenty sleazy but somewhat less of a shock when compared to what Blazing McSex can occur in Doctor/Nurse romances today.

However, reading The Magic of Living was educational because the elements at work in the story were effective on me, jaded reader that I am. The heroine was faultlessly noble, which got old but even still, she was amply rewarded and there’s no doubt I was rooting for her, especially because Neels took deliberate steps to make her sympathetic to the point of, “Oh, Honey,” but never quite so pathetic that I wanted to smack her around. The hero, however, was something of a stock background figure: enigmatic in his affections until the very end and even then, his mercurial announcements of love and of sweeping her off into the sunset were so abrupt it was creepy. Creepitude notwithstanding, the sudsy fantasy of vintage nurse/doctor category romance worked for me, much to my surprise, even though I could identify when Neels was working to make Plain Noble British Nurse even more Noble and Sympathetic. I more than enjoyed this trip in the wayback machine - but I wouldn’t want this to be the only type of romance I read. I like applesauce, but I also like hot sauce, and I wouldn’t want to eschew the latter for an exclusive diet of the former. 

Sarah reviewed Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist for Romancenovel.tv earlier this week, and I was supposed to get in on the HOT HOT VIDEO REVIEW ACTION, but alas, technical fuckiness got in the way. It ain’t easy being bi...coastal. So you get a review the old-fashioned way instead, which is almost definitely for the best, because appearing on TV presents all sorts of difficulties, such as dealing with the fact that I’m Sarah’s Tyler Durden. (And if you’re wondering whether this is my incredibly roundabout way of saying that I’m actually Brad Pitt...well, I’ll ask you this: have you ever seen the two of us in the same room?

Think about it.)

My corporeal status notwithstanding, here’s what I think of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist:

I like it. I like it a lot. It’s not perfect by any means, and I didn’t fall head-over-heels in love with it, but it is a fresh and daring beastie, and in many ways, it’s a very well-crafted story. The book, not unlike a good pop song, is rife with hooks. Behold:

1. It’s about a boy who asks a stranger to be his Five-Minute Girlfriend. I am a sucker for this storyline. The Fake Fiancé(e) plot will get me every. Goddamn. Time.

2. In the tradition of some of the greatest coming-of-age tales, like American Graffiti, it takes place in the course of one night.

3. Late-night teenage capers! In Manhattan!

4. The book is written exclusively in first-person, with all the bits from Nick’s perspective are written by David Levithan, and all the bits from Norah’s perspective are written by Rachel Cohn, and the chapters alternate point-of-view.

Good, clean fun.

So Our Intrepid Hero, Nick, is the bassist for a queercore band and has just finished playing a show when his Evil Ex Girlfriend hoves into view. In desperation, he turns to the girl in flannel standing next to him and asks her whether she’ll be his five-minute girlfriend. And after some struggle, she agrees. And they share a smoking-hot kiss. And then her Evil Ex appears. And then assorted adventures ensue, including hijinks that involve a dying Yugo, a jacket named Salvatore and a strip club featuring dancers who dress up like nuns while performing songs from The Sound of Music. And since it’s a YA novel, along the way, the two of them learn valuable lessons about letting go, taking chances, making the right sorts of choices and not moving too fast. Awww!

And really, if there’s one thing I have to complain about with this book, it’s that I could sometimes spot the Big Lessons too easily. I didn’t like it when I was a kid, and I like it even less as an adult. Cohn and Levithan aren’t especially heavy-handed with it (unlike the utterly execrable Rainbow Party), but some of the characters behaved in perfectly convincing precocious teenagerish ways, and other times behaved in ways that you would mostly see only in a YA novel. Nick’s Evil Ex, in particular, was inconsistent in rather jarring ways, and there were times when I wondered why Nick and Norah didn’t behave more like the horny teenagers they are, but these quibbles are minor. What I liked about the book far outshone the problems I had with it. There are three things in particular that stand out for me:

1. The way it talks about music. Music is an incredibly visceral experience for me, and it’s taking over a lot of the “Keep Candy Happy and Sane” tasks that leisure reading used to accomplish (because leisure reading time isn’t exactly in plentiful supply nowadays, cry). I’m a bit of a music geek (if I weren’t so slapdash about the way I dress, I’d probably qualify as *gulp* a hipster), and going to a show is often a full-body experience for me. Cohn and Levithan capture that really, really well, with all the force and unfettered passion of teenagers whose emotions well so full and so hot, they threaten to burst out of their skins.

2. Its portrayal of teenage sexuality. Norah is horny. Nick is horny. They fool around. They’re not virgins. They think very frankly about sex. Yeah yeah yeah, I mention up above that I wish Nick and Norah had behaved more like horny teenagers, but by and large, this book captures the impetuousness and sexiness and high-running emotion of teenage crushdom without seeming either exploitative or preachy. Teenagers think a lot about sex, and the book treats that as a given without making it a point of titillation. That’s hard to do, bitches.

3. This is probably my favorite aspect of all: I love, love, love the queer-friendliness of this book. This is not your mom’s YA novel. Nick plays in a queercore band. His bandmates are gay. Norah, at one point, has doubts about Nick’s sexual orientation, and she’s peeved because she wants his hot ass, and not because being gay is somehow revolting or villainous. During the night, they go to a strip club full of drag queens and strippers dressed as nuns. There’s a little bit of girl-on-girl making out. And it’s all portrayed as more-or-less the status quo. I especially loved the fact that Nick’s sexuality comes off as somewhat ambiguous to the outside eye. When was the last time somebody like this was portrayed positively in a romance novel? Shit, when was the last time a character like this was actually a hero in a romance novel? I can’t think of too many. Nick’s ambiguousness and the general queer-friendly air of the book were a breath of fresh air, especially compared to the way romance novels tend to hyper-masculinize their men--which, paradoxically, enough, often makes me wonder what they’re attempting to compensate for. The contrast Nick provided was especially stark because I read this right after I finished Dark Lover by JR Ward.

And speaking of Nick, I would like to state for the record that for much of the book, I felt like a pedophile because he is HOLY CRAP SO HOT. It’s highly disconcerting to develop a hard-on for a fictional character 11 years younger than me, but seriously? I’d do Nick, and do him hard.

Sarah, in her video review, mentioned the ending and the issue of the Happily Ever After. I have some issues with the way the way the Happily Ever After is often portrayed and treated in romance novels, and the rather strange and, to be perfectly frank, somewhat fucked-up expectations we seem to have, but that’s another rant for another day. I agree with Sarah: the ending is excellent and full of hope and future adventure, and it doesn’t make the typical mistake that many stories do that take place in similarly compressed timelines, i.e., end with the protagonists declaring love everlasting (like the creepy and awful and unintentionally hilarious ”Naughty Under the Mistletoe”).

In short, if you’re looking for a Young Adult romance that’s unusual, unabashedly urban and topical (though it sometimes verges on the fleetingly scenester-ish--fifteen years from now, kids reading this will be snickering and rolling their eyes at the references to emo and hipsters, I have a feeling), pick this book up. It’s unlike any YA novel I’ve read, and I really wish I’d had something like it when I was a teenager. I certainly love reading it now, well past my teenage years, and have Cohn and Levithan re-capture some of the spark and turmoil of those years for me.

If I had to write a compulsively honest personal ad for Throne of Jade, it’d go something like this:

Slightly awkward transitional book full of high seas adventure, political intrigue, derring-do, exotic locales and nascent musings on the nature of liberty, natural rights and sentience seeks geeky reader who squeals with glee at the thought of an alternate history of the Napoleonic war with dragons. I might not be as taut and compelling as my predecessor, but I promise to be compulsively readable just the same. Give me a chance to spend all night with you between the sheets. You won’t be sorry.

If you haven’t read His Majesty’s Dragon yet, I definitely do not recommend beginning the series with this book. It’s not so much a matter of lost backstory, as Novik does a decent job of catching you up on events, but that first book sets up a lot of essential detail in terms of how the Aerial Corps works, and the dragon-aviator bond. And for that matter, don’t read this review if you haven’t read the first book, for yea, it is indeed spoiler-riffic, since there’s a Sort of Big Surprise at the end of the first that dictates the plot direction of the second.

I’m one of the few girls I know who didn’t really want a horse when growing up. Horses are nifty critters and all, and I loved Black Beauty as much as the next kid, but ungulates just don’t do all that much for me. I liked predators much better. Screw ponies--I wanted a dragon. I didn’t care about the magic crap, really; I mostly loved the idea of having a predator the size of a house be completely bonded to me. A huge predator that can talk and breathe fire: what’s not to love? But alas:

That said, it still took about three different people thrusting Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon in my face before I sat up and took notice--then sat back down to read. Where I proceeded to be utterly glued to the book for the next day or so. Seriously, people, I was reading this book while stopped at traffic lights.

So some critics claim that all alternate histories have a hook, a one-line summary that encapsulates the premise of the universe; the hook for His Majesty’s Dragon would be “Holy crapping damn the Napoleonic War with motherfucking DRAGONS OMG DRAGONS SQUEE DRAGONS!”

OK, that “SQUEE DRAGONS” bit might be more editorial commentary than fact. But seriously. Napoleon. War. Dragons. How can you not squee? It’s as if Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series made hot sweaty love to Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books and the resulting children were totally fucking awesome instead of terrifying bastard children of mash-ups that should never have been.

In case you can’t tell, I liked the book. Like, a whole lot. I’m not sure I’d marry it, but I’d sure as hell make out with it at a party.

Agnes just bought her dream home from the mother of a friend of hers. She has a newspaper column as a food writer under the moniker “Cranky Agnes” and is a generous woman who wants a permanent family - which shouldn’t be a problem, since she loves feeding people, but somehow, it is.  Aside from a not-very-small anger problem that usually manifests itself with a frying pan and someone’s cranium (often a fiance or boyfriend caught cheating on her), Agnes is pretty awesome. In fact, now that I’m finished with the book, I’m going to miss her.

Shane, as the back cover says, “Just ‘Shane,’” is a hitman. His Uncle Joey asks him to come to the very very back of the backwater that is Keyes, South Carolina, to take care of a “little Agnes,” who seems to be under attack, as someone tries to steal her dog - though that someone ends up getting beat down with a frying pan for their trouble. Shane arrives, and indeed, people are entering the house attempting to shoot Agnes. Add to that a wedding to throw, a grandmother of the bride and former homeowner trying to sabotage the whole shebang so she can get her house back AND keep the downpayment, a somewhat secretive and very steel-Magnolia mother of the groom, a mother of the bride who is caught between wanting revenge on her mother for a world of hurts and wanting the best wedding for her daughter, and a bride and a groom caught between all these crazy ladies, and Agnes has her share of problems to work out in a few day’s time.

Unfortunately, the arrival of Shane brings with it additional problems which can be filed under the heading of “mob,” “elderly but not retired mob,” “other hitmen,” and “25-year-old scheme to recover $5 million dollars,” and since Shane and Agnes are drawn to each other in primitive and intimate ways, their problems create a very very soupy mess.

Yes, this is certainly a bunch of problems. In fact, I’d say it’s an anthology of problems, but if I did, someone might come after me with a frying pan. So we’ll pretend I didn’t say the “a” word.