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.

Review: Sleepwalker by Karen Robards

Really, April 7th? Really? Where did the first week go? After the brilliance that was Jenny's Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened everything else I read failed to connect. It was a pretty high bar to jump and most of the books in my bag took one under the ribs. I did what I always do in circumstances like this one, I hit the bestsellers.

Karen Robards is what Linda Howard would be if she gave up on abuse dynamics. I've been a fan of Robards for her entire career. She often has an eye for the realistic detail. When a character lights a small stove, she worries about where the carbon monoxide vents. So do I. While I've faulted her in the past for having overly durable heroines Sleepwalker ended up on this side of believable. Which doesn't mean it cleared all it's plot hurdles. To fully enjoy Sleepwalker you have to believe that a young police officer with a rich honorary uncle would be unaware of his criminal connections. She's grown up with his private security force and immense riches surrounding her, but never deeply questioned the source. I couldn't give that a full pass. If you can, then the second hurdle shouldn't be a problem either. When we meet Micayla she has just found out her lover is a cheat. In less than 24 hours she will be in a new relationship without giving him a third thought. Jump those two and you're going breeze through the rest of the course.

Micayla is housesitting to soothe her broken heart. Jason is breaking and entering to soothe his broken bank account. Soon they are on the run (in her pajamas, no less) while Uncle Nicco's men hunt them. Sleepwalker is cinematic. This is the sort of book you cast parts in while you read it. (Michael Bay would almost certainly direct.) Whatever your taste in Cops and Robbers, Sleepwalker has you covered. Cold cases? Political Corruption? Kidnappings? High body counts? Mick and Jason barely escape it all. This is Sleepwalker's final hurdle. While I enjoyed the frenzy, Mick and Jason never become real. (Their emotional connection makes Ocean's Twelve look like a production from Merchant Ivory.) The subtitle reads A Thriller and Robards means it. Mick and Jason fall in love because they do, ok? Why do you have to talk about their feelings so much? Can't we just enjoy being together?

Normally I'd recommend Sleepwalker but suggest waiting for the paperback. With the hardcover already being bargain priced (Amazon has taken it down to 8.50 as I write this) and the MMP not due until late July, you can probably pick it up in hardcover if that's your inclination. Its a great popcorn book. Sleepwalker is perfect for that night you just want to be entertained without having to think too hard about anything. Everyone makes it to the end of the book, except the characters that don't. Amidst the betrayals and bullets some faith is restored. The good guys get off, the bad guys get shut down. When the sunset arrives on the idyllic beach, you can picture the teaser clip for a sequel. (Samuel  L. Jackson would definitely make an appearance.)

Review: Shattered by Karen Robards

Generally, I wouldn't go back and revisit a book I read long before I started this site. I'm making an exception for Shattered. The thing is, I love Karen Robards. She has an eye for detail that many contemporary authors miss. If the heroine is a single mother and she loses a shoe, she's going to worry about how to afford replacing it. Her characters are grounded in reality.

In Shattered, Lisa is the exception that proves the rule. For the first part of the book, she's exactly what I expect. Lisa has real problems and she deals with them as best she can. Her mother is ill, her finances are precarious, she's got a history with her boss and then she finds a picture of a missing girl who looks exactly like her. I am ready to go. Don't buy me dinner, just take me home. Shattered and I are taking the phone off the hook and calling it a weekend.

When I reviewed the hardcover elsewhere I was bitter. I said things like "I wouldn't consider it a failure as a novel" and "Shattered closes like a series pushing six scripts into a half hour finale and then having the power fail during filming ... The emotional payout of so many things is muted leaving the reader mourning what could have been instead of reveling in what was." It was still fresh, what can I say. I was in love, having his baby, and he left me for a waitress he met behind the truck stop. (I want to read that book too, now that I think of it.)

With time, I forgave Shattered much of it's flaws. Scott and Lisa were memorable enough to stay with me for the rest of the year. There were no plot points left unresolved, the summation was simply a bit rushed and I felt cheated by the push of events at the end. What I would still fault Shattered for today is the unrealistic healing properties of the heroine. I think you could hit her over the head, stuff her in a trunk, trap her in a fire, send her car off a bridge and it wouldn't slow Lisa down. She's the 6 Million Dollar Woman in a little red dress. She takes her lickings and keeps on ticking, because she has to. I'd have liked it better if she at least started slurring her words or listing drunkenly to one side when she walked. (I know people cut their own hands off and walk down from mountain ranges to be rescued. I know that. It's possible. But they also collapse into tiny weeping balls in the corner that flinch at sudden movements.)

Shattered is definitely worth the time in paperback. I think we forgive more when the cost is less.