Review: Cemetery Girl Book One by Charlaine Harris and Christopher Golden

My curiosity for how Charlaine Harris would translate into this new medium was strong. After all, from the necrophilia and furry-fetish loving of Sookie Stackhouse to the quasi incest is best life of Harper Connelly, Harris can be trusted to dish out WTF action in a page turning fashion. 

As graphic novels go this is a definite C read. The art is fine, the pace is numbingly slow, the storyline is hardly original yet still intriguing enough. Issuing this first chapter in hardcover is a blatant money grab as the content better suits a $3.99 rack title, but you've got to pay your marquee name somehow. We open with Calexa waking up in the cemetery with only a vague memory of having been killed and dumped. She takes her name from the tombstones and hides in the crypts, afraid whoever wanted her dead will find her if she leaves. Calexa is already off to a perfect Charlaine Harris start because if I ever wake up with no memory and the knowledge that someone might want to finish me off I am absolutely going to do anything except stay where they left me. But our dear Calexa, she… who are we kidding? She doesn't matter at all. Let's spoil this thing and you'll see why I brought this book to you.

Calexa witnesses the murder of a girl named Marla. Because there is a huge empty hole in the house of Calexa's body, Marla takes up residence. Calexa hates having Marla's memories of a loving Hispanic/Black family in her brain and she wants them gone. Marla isn't terribly happy about being trapped in Calexa's white slacker brain, but she doesn't know how to leave. The rest of the book is Calexa leaving Marla's family in agony because reporting the murder doesn't fit into Calexa's plans. She carries around Marla's magic smart phone. It can answer calls, be accessed without a password, and never loses power or leads the police to it's location. (Ah, Charlaine, I love the way you roll.)

Eventually Calexa realizes that Marla videotaped her own murder. I'm not sure how, what with lying on the ground and then being dead and buried and all, but Marla got some damn good camera angles. Calexa realizes that Marla has solved her own murder while giving Calexa a way to report the crime without involving herself. Eventually Marla's murderers come looking for the phone, endangering Calexa. This is the kick she needs. Calexa sends the video of the murder to Marla's entire contact list, including Marla's parents. (Hey Mom & Dad! Know you're sick with worry - but here's a cool video of my murder and a few snapshots of where my body is buried! XOXO!) Cops round up the villainous brown kids, as the mentally ill white kid (Calexa, in case I lost you) finds safe haven.

That's the entire book. $24.95 worth of action, right? But wait! You also get a snippet of the script for Book Two revealing that Calexa was experimented on in a mysterious laboratory and that Marla won't be the only dead person to invade her empty brain!

*This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: The Last Wicked Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath

I've been off Lorraine Heath lately, but the amount of domestic violence in Moonstruck Madness made me inclined to examine how a modern Avon author addresses it. It was interesting how less in charge of her life Winnie is than the heroine of McBain's book. The set up for The Last Wicked Scoundrel involves two side characters from an earlier series. Winnie is the widow of a duke and William is the physician that saved her life.

Both Winnie and William have an abuse history. Winnie is an orphan abused by her dead husband. William is a child of the streets with multiple abuse points. Both of them blame themselves and excuse their abusers in a fairly predictable and natural way. William's scars  are internal, Winnie's external. (Cue yet another round of Scar Kissing.) In the three years that Winnie has been on her own, William has refused to cross the class and wealth lines that divide them. Until suddenly, he does.

(Spoiler alert. Part of William's problem has been that Winnie's husband wasn't dead. In an earlier book William and his friends staged the duke's death and shipped him off to Australia. The duke, having failed to die, returns with a fair amount of anger toward his wife.)

Winnie fears she's going mad and her physician is a natural place to turn. Faced with a new proximity, and having spoiler related reasons of his own, William sets about seducing her. This was utterly boring. I was interested in the emotional development of Winnie and William within the short confines of the novella but suddenly we're all about the licking and the stroking and the succumbing. Winnie never knew it could be like this, William has waited so long, yadda, yadda, yadda. Back to the plot.

While those surrounding Winnie consider her late husband a monster, he is properly shown to be a fairly average (if vindictive) man with entitlement issues. He murdered previous wives because they stood up to him. Winnie's failure to do so preserved her life. His thwarted plan for her disposal seems out of character and a bit convoluted, but I was willing to go with it. The acknowledgement that the women prior to Winnie were emotionally stronger but equally abused is important. Abuse is dictated by the abuser. It is their choices that dictate the violence. It is their failings that trigger it.

Winnie compares a moment of emotional damage from William to prior physical damage from her husband. It's important to me as a reader that she recognized it but it's more important that William accepts it. He doesn't tell her she's wrong, he examines if he agrees with her. He does and he makes amends. She is a woman determined to break old patterns. She is not willing to be in any way diminished. Unfortunately the author is working a tough tightrope by having Winnie skirt into TSTL territory. Winnie goes from never confronting a threat to thinking confronting threats alone is a better choice. It's not. It's pretty idiotic. Let's hand wave that and get back to William.

Spoiler Alert. [su_spoiler title="Can't Wait To Get Nasty?"]William killed his mother by accidentally shoving her down stairs while she was beating him. His father sells her body to the hospital and takes off. William becomes a mudlark, then a thief, then a physician to the Queen.[/su_spoiler]

William makes assumptions based on his abuse history that are natural and logical and get left unresolved. Heath addresses his survivor's guilt but leaves the possibility that his abuse was willingly enabled alone. Complicity in domestic violence is still pretty taboo for the historical romance world. Abusers are not monsters, in the sense that they can present normally and defend their actions. Collaborators may feel completely justified in their own choices or love the abuser to the point that they also subscribe to the logic of the abuse. (There's a lot in that basket. Maybe we'll unpack it in another thirty years.)

Overall The Last Wicked Scoundrel was worth the time. I would have liked less sex and more relationship building, but that's pretty much a given for me. Winnie has a few TSTL moments, including one that completely discounts parental rights in the Victorian era, but overall she's trying to take control of her life. William is wonderfully beta. I say give it a go.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins. 

Review: the Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan

I am aware Courtney Milan's The Countess Conspiracy has been heavily reviewed. It's at the top of everyone's list for Best Book of 2013. (Save yourself some time, it's good and you should buy it.) Unlike most I had some issues with The Countess Conspiracy that kept me from declaring this her best book ever, ever, ever. It's a good book, it's one of her better books, but did I cry? Not even a sniffle. Every superlative I've ladled over Milan stands and is justified by The Countess Conspiracy. Long may she swim in the butter boat of my adoration. Here's the thing, I didn't want Violet and Sebastian together.

From the prior books in the series it seemed likely they would be together, and for the very reasons that unfolded. Certainly the Violet and Sebastian of this book were perfectly suited and should be together. Absolutely. But what if Violet truly didn't want him? What if Violet deeply treasured his friendship but just wasn't that into him? That was my Violet. I'd toyed with her being interested in Free. I'd toyed with her being truly asexual. I'd considered any number of paths for Violet to walk that I had to abandon to appreciate the path Milan's Violet was on, a path my Violet had already rejected. The real Violet is totally into Sebastian and she absolutely should be. He's divine. I adored the way he had to slowly realize that he was actually just as clever as people thought, despite feeling like a fraud. I applauded the way their lifelong friendship allowed them to see each other's family clearly while giving the wisdom to hold silent. Their miscommunications were appropriate. The relationships with their friends and family was as richly detailed and considered as their relationship with each other. This was a wonderful look at a woman recovering from low expectations and a man from high. Everything about this book is what I want when I want to read a romance.

Which brings us to the close. I've been having a lot of trouble with the final act of romance books lately. Part of it is them, part of it is me. I feel, while reading, as though the end is not something I've arrived at slowly and naturally. Instead a sudden burst of speed occurs as we near the finish. Plot threads start flying, knots are tied,  speeches are hastily assembled, and everything is As It Should Be when our couple embraces on the final page. I feel all askew. I wanted to look out the window a bit longer, I don't understand why we had such a rush and bother. I've become a romance dowager, always too hot or too cold and rarely just right.

At the end of The Countess Conspiracy it's Violet rushing about. I can see her rapid embrace of a newly perceived future but it's all just too easy. Everyone listens to her because she's Violet and the book is ending. I don't want to reveal all the steps to the finish line, if I had my way you'd read the book knowing nothing at all about it when it begins. While Violet deserves her happy ending, this ending was too incandescent for me. There's only one dim spot on her horizon and it's a smudge she can fairly easily live with. Please ignore my curmudgeonly ways and enjoy The Countess Conspiracy for the multitudes of things it gets right. Milan is my favorite author in the field.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.