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

I think there’s a drinking game in here somewhere.  Lipstick as obvious (if clumsy) metaphor, take a drink.  Sex scene where only one partner gets off, take two drinks.  Scene with clueless parent, grab the bottle.

It’s got potential.

You’ve ruined me.  I don’t think I’ll ever sit through a Power Rangers episode and look on it the same way again.  :)

This sounds like a very stupid book.  The description of the lipstick put me off right away. 

I loved Judy Blume’s Forever.  I can still remember scenes from that book very clearly, even the detail of how the protagonist’s younger sister was an artist and painted designs that her family latch-hooked.  Wait - that was Forever, wasn’t it?

Bummer! I bought the book and have it sitting on my TBR pile. Except now I have no desire to waste my time.

Wonder how much I can get for it on e-bay…

The lipstick also doesnt make sense because in order to have the desired rainbow the dude would have to be getting less and less head. And why would he be down for that?

And why would Gin invite the couple that only kiss? Clearly they’re not going to be all about the rainbow. Party poopers.

(Clearly I’m taking the plot way too seriously)

I kinda suspected that was the case, but they do kinda market it to cause unrest.

Damn, sounds like there was more sex in the Sweet Valley High books.

Doesn’t Spencer’s or somebody have penis shaped lipstick?  If they don’t, they should.

Let’s buy some and send it to Mr. Ruditis.

Loved your review, Candy.  Remind me again why you’re not writing a book?  Funny, witty people really should write books.

Stef

You know what’s really annoying as hell?  The fact that this shitty book is getting so much press that it’s selling like spandex in the 80s.  There are too many excellent YA books out there for this one to be hogging the press (and the $$s of the teenage monsters and/or their mummsies).

Too bad Annette Curtis Klause and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes can’t whip up a couple good media scandles or whatnot.

PC

Actually, PC, it probably isn’t selling like leg warmers in 1982 because you can’t actually purchase it at either Border or Barnes & Noble as both have refused to stock it in their brick & mortar stores. It has a high sales rating on Amazon, but that may well be because that’s the one place people are actively buying it from. I don’t know how many independant bookstores are stocking it, of course, but I do think those Amazon numbers are likely not telling the whole story.

I think there’s a drinking game in here somewhere.

Yeah, sure. It’d probably go something like this:

- Every lame attempt to look relevant and hip by having the kids text-message each other, use their iPod or talk about TRL: 2 sips

- Every time the characters ruminate on the newness of technology (yeah, kids do this a lot): 5 sips

- Every excruciating, unfunny joke perpetrated by Ash and Rose in an attempt to look adorable: 2 sips

- Every copyedit error: 2 sips

- Every time Ruditis uses an unnecessary dialogue tag: 3 sips

- Every time Perry speaks indistinctly without having a cock in his mouth: 2 sips

Etc.

And why would Gin invite the couple that only kiss?

Apparently, because she was jealous of the couple and wanted to break them up. Why the couple even CONSIDERED going, however, is another one of the book’s mysteries.

Remind me again why you’re not writing a book?

I’m attempting to. Between a full-time job, this site and sundry other projects, I’m not making much headway.

Too bad Annette Curtis Klause and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes can’t whip up a couple good media scandles or whatnot.

Hell yeah, a book by Annette Curtis Klause about the dangers of promiscuous oral sex on would actually be, y’know, READABLE.

THAT is titillation!

Indeed. And tittirific! And tittilacious!

“Waves of pleasure washed over her body ready to crash on the shore.” (puh-LEEZ!)

Wow, a teenager having an orgasm, that lucky girl. Are we positive her boyfriend is a teenager? So I haven’t read the book, but c’mon, how common is it that a teenage boy brings his girlfriend to orgasm...does he even know how, or TRY for that matter?

Thanks for taking a bullet for the rest of us Smart Bitches and actually reading past that first paragraph, Candy.  I can only admire your powers of endurance for being able to withstand prolonged exposure to such painful prose.  Personally, I don’t think I could’ve done it. 

Or, to put it more succinctly: you totally rock!

I just want to know what shore the waves of pleasure were crashing on. Judging by what you said about the quality of writing, I’d say Jersey.

We bought the book based on the controversy (because, like, we both write on the edgy side of YA), but neither of us got past the first page.  It’s sitting on the TBR shelves.  I suspect, based on this, it will stay there.

---L.

Wow, a teenager having an orgasm, that lucky girl.

I’m staggered that a teenage girl has “bosoms"[1] and “loins"[2]. Has she been transplanted from the Edwardian era? What is wrong with “breasts” and “pussy”?

[1]Only large matronly women whose industrially engineered bra have a bosom and then it’s singular - one torso-wide shelf of boob.

[2]I suppose technically, women/girls have loins but it’s normally a word which makes me think of men’s genitalia.

I’ve been around teen girls. They do NOT say loins and bosom. Tits or boobs, and the popular word amongst my group for the groin area was cooter or hoo-hoo.

Too bad Annette Curtis Klause and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes can’t whip up a couple good media scandles or whatnot.--- Amelia had a semi-sex scene in Falcondance. One of those fade to black ones. Here I’ll just quote it, I found it.

Then she kissed me, standing on her toes and leaning against my body. Tentatively, I let myself put an arm around her back, holding her close, and I felt her lips smile against mine before she drew back just enough to speak.
“If you want me to go, I’ll go,” she said, softly, blue eyes vulnerable.  “But I would rather stay. And I think you would rather I stayed.”
She stayed. I stayed. The night was marvelous, and I had one vivid thought before I fell asleep: I could get used to this.

That’s as much sex as she’s ever put in a book I think. But her latest one, Wolfcry, was about being a lesbian. Can that be scandal? heehee

* obligatory introductory newbie wave *

1) Candy, you and Sarah should sooo set up a proactive review service for writers *before* they send their mss off to publishing houses, to keep such poorly written, phallocentric, vapid, caricatured crap from being printed and thus causing the untimely deaths of more innocent trees.  Bleccchhh!!!

2) What exactly are the symptoms of Ruditis, and is there a cure?