Review: The Last Kiss Goodbye by Karen Robards

* This review first appeared at Love In The Margins.

Sometimes I self harm. Mostly with books.

I really hated everything about the first Dr. Charlotte Stone book. I wasn't planning on reading another but Suleikha Snyder wouldn't stop talking about ghost sex. (Wait, is it still self harming if I can blame someone else?) The Last Kiss Goodbye is so much worse than The Last Victim. I am completely cured of my Karen Robards fandom. We had some good times together but they are o-v-e-r. Capital O. Underlined. Exclamation points. Freezer full of ice cream. If I could go back to 1981 I'd tell myself to put the book on the shelf and walk away, because this isn't a forever love.

In The Last Victim Robards rolled out a love triangle between a living FBI agent, a dead serial killer and the lovely yet self destructive psychiatrist in peril, Charlie Stone. Although she alludes to his potential innocence, our serial killer (Garland) is still far from a prize. He's crude, thoughtless, dismissive and consigned to hell for unknown reasons. (Assuming he didn't really slice and dice all those women). Charlie falls for him hard on the basis of nothing but his appearance. The Last Kiss Goodbye picks up seconds after The Last Victim's end, launching the team on the trail of another killer.

I will give Robards one piece of credit. She doesn't dwell in terror porn. Robards largely keeps her focus on the investigative team. I wish they were a more interesting group. (Charlie is toxic.) 

Where The Last Victim reminded me of Darynda Jones The Last Kiss Goodbye reminds me of fan fiction. Charlie's entire inner life consists of "He's probably a dead crazy psycho killer but omg he's so hot and I want him he can't leave me omg what if he is in pain?" Because she knows her kink is destructive she leads the barely-there living love interest along in a really distasteful forced triangle of dishonesty. It's not pretty. "You can't control me, dead psycho lover! I will show you!"  Of course, her psycho dead lover totally can control her. So he cockblocks the FBI agent and gets sent (yay!) to hell. Charlie is codependent so she panics and begs him to come back.

If you only do what he can do, you won’t be doing much, she told herself severely. But then she thought, By now, the coffee’s probably cold. So she didn’t want to drink it anyway, and that had nothing to do with Michael at all. - Robards, Karen. “The Last Kiss Goodbye.”

This thought happens during a team meeting on the serial killer who invaded her home a few hours prior. Because what's most important to Charlie is that Garland might miss drinking coffee. This won't be the only time Charlie actively ignores her own self interest  to climb the cross. Besides thinking he's hot and trying to save him from hell, Charlie also stands up for herself.

“You’d want to drive, too, you—you man,” she mouthed, piling a fair degree of venom on that last word. - Robards, Karen. “The Last Kiss Goodbye.”

I mean, wow. You tell him, Dr. Stone. Slow clap for sure. In addition to Charlie's inexplicable obsession with a man who agrees hell is the proper destination for the life he lived, Charlie has to find the second serial killer to target her in so many weeks. (Maybe she needs a new perfume?) Luckily she has a secret psychic friend to phone for vital yet obscure plot clues. Between talking to dead people and phoning a friend Charlie has this investigation on lock! We are also treated to the only other major female character in the book continuing to resent Charlie for incomprehensible reasons. (Because bitches?) After Charlie is inevitably placed in peril at the hands of the killer (gosh, who could have seen THAT coming) it is revealed that her taste in men has always been tragic. Well, there's also a bit in the middle of the book involving a college affair with a predatory professor. That Charlie. She just can't help herself!

Review: The Last Victim by Karen Robards

Let's get the petty complaint out of the way quickly. In the opening pages of The Last Victim our heroine, Charlie Stone, is regretting drinking the booze laden "Goofy Grape Kool-Aid". Ok, two points. Maybe three. Goofy Grape was a Funny Face flavor that ended production in 1983. The events are taking place in 1997. Our heroine was born in 1980. It is possible she was so fond of Goofy Grape at the age of three that she adopted it as her generic name for grape flavored drink mixes, but it bugged me. Like I said, petty. Fast forward 15 years and I've got some issues with The Last Victim that are far from petty. I'm writing this in early June, so my entry into the book was cold, not an advance review in sight. If you go into the book knowing the basic plot you may enjoy it far more than I did. Robards has good pacing, she has distinct characters, their actions are consistent and logical to who they are. Unfortunately there is one element of The Last Victim I couldn't get past for all the Goofy Grape in the world.

Charlie Stone  is about the dumbest heroine I've ever read. (I know Robards likes the name, she's used it before, but if you're going to write a series about a woman who sees dead people the names Charley and Harper are taken.) Charlie Stone is self destructive in a completely new and original way for me. She is sexually attracted to serial killers. Ok, that might not be fair to Charlie. She is sexually attracted to a dead serial killer. Our supposed love triangle is between Mr. Great On Paper who leaves her unaffected and Mr. Rocking Body Dead Guy who killed seven women before he was placed on Death Row. Charlie muses to herself that the attraction is sick (YES) and unwise (YES) and maybe even a bad idea (DO YOU THINK?) yet finds herself unable to resist his rock hard abs. Because if a man is hot, even if you know he is evil, sex is what you can't stop thinking about (NO). This aspect of the book is so problematic that the rest of it doesn't even matter. If you can get past the hero being a serial killer, if inmate fantasy is your thing, The Last Victim is going to rock your world. If you think a woman who survived a serial killer, studies serial killers and is trying to save a young girl from a serial killer overlooking a serial killer's crimes for his hot body is reasonable, have I got a book for you. We've seen this dynamic before. Let's do a quick compare and contrast between Robard's Charlie and Darynda Jones' Charley. For Robards, we will use CS, for Jones we will use CD. Ready?

Sees dead people. CS / CD
Is the Grim Reaper. CD
Has super hot physical encounters when asleep. CS / CD
Is normal human who should know better. CS
Boyfriend has been in jail. CS / CD
Boyfriend killed or tried to kill parent. CS / CD
Boyfriend pursued by apparent demons from hell CD / CS
Boyfriend appears to protect her when needed, even against own will. CD / CS
Boyfriend admits to having done great evil. CD / CS
Boyfriend claims innocence of murder. CS

So yea, the paranormal girl and the super bad boy from hell is a thing, apparently. It's better than Charlaine Harris and her incest-lite sibling couple... ok it's not. I am more comfortable with the high ick factor in the Grave Sight series than I am with Charlie Stone and her boy toy. I completely get that Robards is going to pull a switcheroo in the second book and reveal that Garland is not a serial killer. (He hints at it enough.) But you have to go with what is on the page. On the page Garland is a man being drawn into Hell who threatens, who intimidates, who admits to having done very bad things and who has been convicted by DNA and other evidence. Charlie actually wonders, while getting frisky, if sexual gratification is what flips his psycho switch. The reader may suspect Garland will turn out to just be an average criminal, but Charlie believes him to be otherwise and there lies a very dangerous thing indeed. A serial killer is not a child who went wrong one day. They are not a misunderstood person in need of compassion. A serial killer is a predator who sees other humans as prey. A love affair between Charlie and Garland is like a chicken loving Colonel Sanders. How can a reader buy into that?

Garland is shown to have an explosive temper and a bad past. But he watches ESPN! And he is physically attractive! He can't be so evil as that, can he? Look! He engages in grooming behavior with Charlie! He protects her and berates her! He compliments her! He's a good guy gone wrong! He can be saved, right? No! It doesn't matter if Garland turns out to be innocent in a later book. We are in this book. And in The Last Victim he is the last person I'd consider a hero. That Charlie, with the information she has at hand, falls for him makes her impossible to root for. She can never overcome my personal judgement of Dumber Than A Rock by a later revelation of innocence. It's like the old Regencies where the girl dresses up as a guy so the hero can run around saying NoHomoTho while checking out her ass. I'm not interested in any trend that requires me to go NoPsychoTho.

All of that said, this book is going to have devoted fans. I think it will spark a lot of conversation in romance about where the boundaries of mainstream couples are and what leeway we will and won't give an author in telling her story. I know what side I'm on.

Retro Review: Burn by Linda Howard

Are you as fascinated as I am by revisiting my past? No? Dude, what's wrong with you? Ok, well, since I am I bring you another review from the Blog Community I Completely Forgot About. I kind of recall writing this one. Unlike the last one. Maybe I was coming down from the Doxorubicin. (I'd say enjoy, but I don't think that's the right sentiment here.) Love the rating I gave Burn. Looks like I was bitter. (Let's not talk about it.)


Title: Burn
Author: Linda Howard
Genre/Historical Period: Contemporary
Grade/Rating: Not As Bad As Death Angel
Summary/Review: Titanic Meets Category Romance
Part of a Series?: Concentrate And Ask Again
Would I recommend this book?: I wouldn't knock it out of your hands and scream "RUN"

You know, if I hated Burn the title itself would write the review. Given the last few books Linda Howard has written, I think it's pretty brave to call a book Burn (especially since it has just about jack all to do with the content). Then again, given that her next book is called Ice, this might just be some publisher branding meme. Burn is  two stories at once, and it is neither great nor terrible, it straddles the fence of lost opportunity and tries not to fall off. So there are going to have to be spoilers, right?

We meet our heroine, Jenner (right away you know her parents are loons) as she struggles home from her dead end job at the meat packing factory. If you've ever been poor, working a dead end job, or exhausted while some good looking loser expects you to bring home the beer, you'll find that Jenner's exhaustion rings completely true. Here I got excited because for the first time in a long time Howard wasn't giving me a beautiful buffed gal living in luxury with a few problems on the side. Finally we were back in reality land with a hard working woman driving a beat down car and standing in the Michelob line on a Friday night. Prince Charming was due with his tool belt any second, right?

Wrong. Jenner wins Powerball. Sure, she calls it the lottery, but with a 300 mil payout, those of us on the Michelob line know what game she was really playing.  It stays interesting because Jenner sensibly panics and takes the reader through all the post win steps you never think about. Like it taking months for the money to show up, and most winners blowing it all on craft beer and hookers. But not Jenner, cause it's not even her beer. She finds herself an up and coming lesbian (no, really, and may I say a huge thank you to Howard for bucking the trend of introducing gay characters just to kill them or have them turn evil?) and invests that cash like woah. Meanwhile, everyone in her cobbled together life proves themselves unstable and desert her.

(Let's take a moment to examine the class warfare that's about to go into play. Before Best Pal uses her for money, and having lots of money makes her see that. But her After Best Pal uses her for a backbone, and that's ok. Being used for money BAD. Being used as an emotional crutch GOOD. Since Jenner never goes poor, she doesn't really have to worry about how her new BFF would relate to a meat packer, does she?)

Alright, so Jenner gets rich but not happy. She discovers that taxes suck and tax breaks are not as plentiful on the ground as she'd been led to think, and that having money is actually quite a burden on 
Ms Howard Jenner. Rich people are untrusting, but much nicer than you'd think, and charity functions are really all about charity. Now that these things are off her chest, we leave absolutely everything up to this point behind. Seriously, rip the first half of the book out and set it on fire, leave the book in the closet for a year, start over, and you'll find it makes as much sense as it was going to make. The long set up of who Jenner is and why she is and her change in circumstances are only there to place her on a boat. Jenner, who has always had trouble fitting in, but now has trouble from a place of money and is smart (since she doubled her lotto win with investments) and only lost 20% in the recent market crash (well done Ms. Howard! Jenner!) boards a boat while her Bestie does not! There, you've got all you'll need for background.

Ok, so in the second book, Jenner is held captive by one of those lawless dudes that Ms. Howard likes almost as much as her "barely wet" fast, um, expressions of love. And her condoms. Seriously, this guy (whose name I already forgot - I think it's Cael but I kept calling him Caul like it was some kind of hoodrat thing) has coworkers who pass condoms out to people they think should sleep together. Can you imagine? You walk by your boss and you say "Hey buddy, I saw how you and marketing were eyeing each other - Catch! I brought you crazy kids a prezzie!! Its got a vibrating ring!" Yea, there's employment security. Anyway, she meets him, he's kinda hot, he kidnaps her so he's not so hot, she thinks he might rape her so he's REALLY not hot, he makes it clear that he's aware of the power disparity and No Rape Will Happen In This Book, No Matter How Alpha I Am, and things settle down to the plot. This would have been a most awesome plot except the bad guy totally tells you everything bad he's going to be doing. And it's awesome bad. It's so bad you want him to succeed and the whole book to be about them trying to stop it and the slow unfolding of events and the aftermath on all of them who survive and how it affects them and.... right, well, not so much the way it happens.

They don't even figure out what's going on until the very last section of the book. It's all Julie and Gopher and Lido deck shenanigans while a kidnapping contract worker and his really wealthy but spiritually lost captive find their way to each other through her savvy intellect and his willingness to be seduced. Then suddenly, pretty much by accident, they find out the bad guy is wanting to go all Titanic so Celine Dion will write songs for him, and it's a rush to save anyone they can. Which is kinda awesome but way too short. And there's no clean up - it's Wow! We are in DANGER and then it's DANGER ON and then it's Danger Over, Six Months (or whateves) Later. They don't even float in the water and think about which person they'd eat if they got, like, really hungry and people had to be eaten. Or have to explain to the Coast Guard why Titanic is being recreated in warm tropical waters. 

It's not a bad read, it's kind of an enjoyable read in several places. As a whole, it's incomplete. I wouldn't buy it in hardcover but as a library book I'd totally do it once.

Review: Ice by Ice-T and Douglas Century

I just want you to read this book.

Simple as.

If you're American you probably know Ice-T as either an actor, a rapper or as a symbol for what's wrong with the country. I think we need to flip that over and look at Ice as a symbol of what's right with our country. Ice is every American myth distilled into one man. Orphaned? Check. Troubled relationship with remaining family? Check. Lived in a war zone and / or wore our uniform? Check that twice. Self made man? Strong personal values? Honest about his faults? Works with our youth? Faced down political enemies? Willing to compromise? Strong work ethic? Whatever you've got on that Great American list you can go ahead and check it off. I have long respected Ice-T, but if the book was bad I'd tell you straight. So would he.

It's not. Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood (who titled this thing?) is fantastic. It's his voice, it's his story, it's uncompromising, and it's valuable. If you pay attention, you might learn something. Plenty of people have judged Ice without really knowing much about him. Was he a criminal? Yes. I would argue that there are any number of criminals respected in this nation, and Ice is far more honest than most in repudiating the sins of his youth. He's also a man capable of facing down the right and left when his career was hijacked to serve political interests. Faced with a public stoning, he reinvented himself and thrived. (Even at the time I found it ironic that the man doing the most to speak out against gang violence and thug life was being demolished as a symbol of the same. America, bunch of idiots, God love us.) 

If nothing else, it's a good read. If you pay attention, it's a real look at how America eats it's own and what a person with integrity can do to stay ahead of the mob.