Review: Habibi by Craig Thompson

Habibi has been getting some great reviews. It's not surprising. Thompson is a beautiful artist with a real gift for page layout and imagery. To page through Habibi is to expect great things. In a way, Thompson's work is like Darger's. On the surface it is a mix of new and familiar pictures assembled into a grand narrative. At the heart it is a disturbing fetishization of the victimization of girls. There's also a slice of White Liberal and a dollop of Latent Homophobia running through it like a river  (Look, I come not to bury Habibi but to review it so let's get that underway.)

Thompson offers his tale of a world being slowly destroyed by profiteering and elitism, a tale of racial tensions and minority exploitation, a tale of pseudo-incest, pedophiles, abuse of power, human trafficking ... I lost track of it all actually. Over the bubbling stew of his big ideas is his smaller one, a comparison of Islam and Christianity. (I think Rumi's texts should be a controlled substance, like medical marijuana or Mad Dog.) Habibi starts with our young heroine Dodola being sold at age nine to her husband. Improbably (although certainly not impossibly) her husband has no family and so we open with child rape. (Kind of a sign the author has opinions on Arab culture.) It's okay because he teaches her to read and she comes to understand her rapist is like a child himself, captive to his desires. (I know. Pass the Excedrin.)

Dodola's husband is murdered and she is enslaved. There she claims a small black child she names Zam. Although she is still a child herself, her husband has made her literate and her abuse has made her feral so soon Dodola escapes the slavers and flees with Zam. At this point, and for much of the novel, Dodola and Zam appear to live in a long distant past. By the end of the novel they are freely moving in contemporary days asking us to accept that past events happened there as well. It doesn't work. Why is there an open 18th century slave market, complete with branding? Why don't they just shoot Dodola when she runs? Why is Zam's mother convinced they will be sold apart? (Human trafficking is still with us but the details do shift with the times.) Dodola and Zam escape to the desert where they find a marooned 1950's style yacht in the sand. They live there undisturbed for years. Dodola trades sex for food from the occasional camel caravan while Zam grows and gathers water. As the water dries up, he is forced to forage farther afield. As the only human he knows, Zam becomes drawn to Dodola sexually. (I started to call them Chris & Cathy in my head at this point.) But wait! After years of being raped in the desert (I mean bartering sex) Dodola is stolen away and taken to the Sultan's harem (really). She is obsessed with recovering her son Zam, to the extent that she doesn't bond with her actual son until he is the age Zam may have been when she met him. (Zam's age at their meeting could seriously use some continuity editing.) Her son reminds her of her most recent rapist and is therefore tainted. She wanted him to be black, like Zam, and when he is not she is disgusted. (This is getting way too long. I'm leaving half of it out and we haven't even got to Zam falling in with the transgendered and cutting his penis off in disgust over his lust for Dodola. Let's just cut to the chase.) Dodola becomes an opium addict. Zam rescues her from the harem, considers killing himself when he realizes he couldn't impregnate her anymore,  gets and quits a job as a middle manager at the water plant and they have a happily ever after nuclear family resolution when they adopt another slave. Whew.

Along the way we find there is no such thing as a decent Arab man. From Dodola's father explicitly selling her for sex to her multiple rapists to the seemingly friendly but actually unhinged fisherman working the diseased river, every Arab is corrupt. They don't keep their word, they rape and murder. Our black characters are just as one dimensional. There is the Mammy in the harem and the Magical Enuch, the Slave Mother and Zam. Women don't fare much better. Dodola is the most fully realized of them but she reads more as male fantasy than actual female. She is a motherly figure of intense dedication to her child / lover while a shrewd seller of self as well. Even as an opium addict or starving in a jail cell I couldn't connect with her. The transgendered are predatory, most obsessed with sex in some fashion. When Dodola and Zam attempt to return to Eden they find the ship overrun with refuse, a trash pile covered in trash pickers and their children. The rivers run with sewage, fish bones and filth. Only the water of the city is pure - carefully hoarded for wealth over health and filled with the toys of the modern world. Where Dodola and Zam have seemed to exist (even in the Sultan's home) in an English liberal fantasy circa 1780, now they dwell in 2010. This has to be a deliberate choice on Thompson's part but it falls flat. Our fairy tale is already drowning in detail and moral. Adding the sudden appearance of modern life makes it fall apart. So much of Habibi wants to be an aha moment. The author begs you to connect the lines of corruption, to see the way we have wandered from both faiths, the way the sins of the past and the sins of now are the same sins. Instead I connected finishing the book with wanting a long hot shower with a lot of soap. (Men love to draw women being raped. It's so meaningful!)

Habibi is lovely. It's trying to tell an ugly story and it succeeds but the tale it tells is uglier than the one it intended. People are going to embrace this, people are going to endow it with superlatives. I think most of them will be white and culturally Christian. Habibi hits all the White Liberal buttons hard on it's way down. Good intentions and all that.

Books I Cast Aside: Erik Larson And David King

I have read far too many WW2 books. I know about Hitler's dog, Hitler's niece, Churchill's second cousin twice removed and the American position on all of it. I've read things I can never remove from my brain (blocked the title out, white cover, Ukraine, lost village memoir, highly recommended except for ever sleeping again) and things that made me roll my eyes. I get obsessive about certain time periods and WW2 appears to be one. It probably has something to do with the epic death toll on all sides of my family. Anyway. I'm a sucker for a WW2 book. I'm also a sucker for books that contrast different realities. Erik Larson set the benchmark for this style of non-fiction with The Devil In The White City. Now I wish he hadn't.

Too many books since then seem to be walking the same ground in a different field. I currently have a ten book nonfiction backlog due to the bottleneck created by two such books. Despite both of them dealing with WW2, I am moving on. They've kept me from other books for far too long. David King's Death In The City of Light would be an exceptional book if he edited half of it out. It's daily life in occupied France, it's a serial killer preying on desperate Jewish refugees, it's a police procedural, it's an exhaustive look at an investigation. Unfortunately it's also about Camus, Sartre, Picasso and their crowd. It's just too much. Our party people add nothing to the narrative and it's exhaustive detail is not well served by the breaks the reader takes to discover Simone was moody. I want to finish this book so much that I just started skipping all the sections with the artists. It was still overloaded. King has a fantastic book in here, but it's not the one that went to press. People with more patience for info dumps and backtracking expository will adore it. I'm shelving it for that rainy day where excessive ruminations appeal.

The other log in my book jam is Erik Larson himself. A look at the society and diplomacy around pre Pearl Harbor Germany? Well hell yea! Except it's boring. Don't get the wrong, the political stuff is interesting, the man on the street stuff is interesting, but the subtext of Martha Dodd is troubling. Every attempt is made to portray her fairly and sympathetically. Which is sort of a problem. She would be all over TMZ if she were alive today. A woman who parties with the German government, considers dating Hitler and goes on to end her days as an expatriate? Wanted in America for spying on behalf of the Soviets, not wanted by the Soviets, she let her high ideals (such as they were) lead her to a fairly unpleasant life. Judgement was never Martha's strong suit be it politics or men. If I had approached this book as a look at Martha, perhaps I would enjoy it more. If I hadn't tried to read it at the same time as Death In The City of Light I might be raving about it now.  It too is being shelved for a rainy day where I feel more tolerant of her foibles, less annoyed at her willful indulgences. After all, this is probably seconds away from becoming a Tom Hanks film.

Review: Everybody Loves Our Town by Mark Yarm

Of course it's Kurt. It's still a great cover. Kurt turning away from the adulation he has sought says everything you need to say about him. Even the audience seems uncertain about their evening. Are we enjoying ourselves? Is it okay to enjoy ourselves?

Once, quite a few years ago, I was sitting in a bar attached to a small nightclub waiting for a show to start. I can't remember who was playing. After a while, it blurs together like a merry-go-round with a few bright moments standing out. So we're waiting for this band and a big screen is playing music videos. (It's what they did, once upon a time.) I'm in Connecticut with a girl from Indiana. I don't know why she's there. She hates concerts, music and those who play instruments. (I know she arrived suddenly and in some emotional distress so I assume I already had the tickets and just took her along instead of leaving her in my apartment with my razor blades. Go with it.) There we are, two friends. A Blind Melon video comes on and we both sigh. I say (truthfully) that I saw Hoon play shortly before he died and it's a damn shame. She says she didn't know I was a fan of Shannon Hoon. She wishes she'd known. We could have gotten together.

At this point I have known this girl close to a decade but we don't discuss music. She tells me she and Shannon grew up together. The Very Bad Things that happened in her life happened while she was in that scene. (None of it involved him.) Her brother worked for Axl Rose's parents. She was in the center of a number of music circles and I had known her for years without knowing a thing about it. The rest of the evening was a fascinating conversation we never repeated. None of it mattered to her. These were the people she knew and the things they did. It was exactly the same as the people I know and the things they've done. Why would I mention any of it? Who cares?

This is the brilliance of an oral history, when well done. Everybody Loves Our Town is exceptionally well done. If you've read this far and wondered why I told you about one night in a bar in the 90's, then it won't be the book for you. If you're wondering what she said to me, what I said to her, you will adore Everybody Loves Our Town as much as I did. This is the definitive history of a time and a place that affected a generation of young adults. (Stuck in a small town after growing up in a big city, it was Andrew Wood's voice that reminded me escape was possible. He was already dead.) Hearing the participants tell their story in all it's overlapping contradictory nature is like that bar conversation in the 90's. Free from music theory, free from obvious editorial direction, Mark Yarm lets the reader sit back and enjoy the conversation.

Starting when everyone is young and stupid (as we were all once) and moving through the Very Bad Things that always happen (when you go from young and stupid to slightly older and not much brighter) and then to the bright morning of After (where you realize you grew up somehow), Yarm tells the story of a specific scene with universal meaning. As close as you can come to a bar conversation with each of the participants, Yarm's oral history has all the power of Patti Smith's Just Kids. I hope it does just as well in the market. I recommend pairing this book with a basic knowledge of the Seattle sound and a viewing of Pearl Jam: Twenty. It will remind you your youth was never misspent, it was squandered on things you still love. (And if we're ever in a bar I might tell you my Kurt Cobain story, but I'm afraid the Shannon & Axl stuff isn't mine to reveal.)

Review: Holy Terror by Frank Miller

I honestly can't believe the asking price on Holy Terror. MSRP is $29.99 and I don't think I'd buy it for a buck. Here's everything you need to know. "Stunning art can't save this reactionary rage tale lacking nuance or emotional engagement." Also? Phantom Menace had smoother dialogue. This is a propaganda piece in the worst sense of the word. By dehumanizing Al Qaeda's soldiers Miller wants the reader to be comfortable with their slaughter. This version of Al Qaeda is one without explanation. A Muslim's first sip of beer before blowing up a nightclub undermines even their zealotry. In Holy Terror's construct your choices are between murdering violent thugs on 'our' side and murdering violent thugs who are on 'their' side. There is little difference between the two. I have long been a fan of Miller's dramatic art style, his willingness to tackle dark, complex characters and his refusal to sanitize human motivation. Holy Terror is just bad. It fails on so many levels that I am disappointed in Miller for bringing it to market. This is a work that would have been better served sitting in a filing cabinet, unearthed postmortem to show how the author used art as a catharsis while his self editing eye recognized it's failure. Put to that purpose, Holy Terror could have enhanced Miller's legacy. Instead it serves as a disappointment to me and a cautionary tale to others. Without the self awareness he brought to the characters of Sin City or the pointed humor of Martha Washington, Miller offers a shallow work I'd expect to come from Iran's propaganda department. Here, read the Amazon version of this review.


"This one's bad kids, really bad. Visually, it's as stunning as Miller's best work but Holy Terror is an uninspiring fantasy lacking all nuance. While Al Qaeda retains it's name, New York turns into Empire City and the attacks come from deep within it's bowels. (Like a bad taco.) The wooden conversations appear inspired by 1950's serials (or the recent work of George Lucas), the villains ramble on to prove their lack of motivations or redemptions and our heros are too sadistically drawn to root for. Without the charm or self awareness of Sin City's denizens they slash and slaughter their way through the gossamer thin plot. In tone Holy Terror reminded me of an anti-semitic screed with a different ethnic focus. Miller is capable of much, much more than this. Had he put his rage aside, Miller could have offered the definitive book on terror and our need for those who fight it. Instead readers are treated to an outpouring of anger with a side of contempt. His therapy, our cash. The Batman clone is a man who orders Americans killed as easily as he does terrorists. He is somewhere past vigilante. If this were my first Miller book it would also be my last. I'd think, nice artist, too bad about the text. The art is fantastic. Miller's distinct style is put to excellent use in several panels, his anger fueled sketches of elected leaders as ineffective talking heads are among his best work. His signature three color art style is beautifully deployed throughout Holy Terror. Sadly, the story is abysmal. It's tedious, it's repetitive, it's predictable and it's ultimately unenjoyable. Bogged down by it's own strident fury, Holy Terror simply isn't worth owning." 


Frank, what happened to us? Remember in the 90's when it was all love letters and puppy baskets? I can defend your use of sexually aggressive impossibly proportioned women, I can defend the belief that "Sometimes standing up for your friends means killing a whole lot of people" but The Fixer is no Dwight.   I can't defend what is essentially hate speech, even if that hate has solid roots. To emotionally engage with The Fixer you have to accept that his way is the only way, that there is no future beyond slaughter, that sadistic torture and murder are a sane answer to horror. Evil is eternal. There will always be madmen with new and inventive ways to terrorize the innocent. What defines a people is their reaction to it, their recognition of what is and is not decent. There is no depth to The Fixer, no brighter day. His is a world of perpetual war, mutually assured destruction. It's also really boring. 

Review: Bad Boys Do by Victoria Dahl

I've been wanting to talk about this book for a few weeks but I haven't felt very tolerant. The problem of my intolerance has not been for Dahl's excellent book, but for readers of this review. There are things I am very tired of reading that I know others are not. If I say "I am so freaking sick of the man whores already" then I will be approached by the man whore defender. If I say "I have had it to about here with the mousy introvert" the same thing will happen. But I have, I've had it with both of them. Yet I loved Bad Boys Do.

Dahl has done something great with power dynamics in this book. Making our man whore (Jamie) the younger member of the partnership and our mousy introvert (Olivia) the elder, she has shifted the balance just enough for me to be interested. As Bad Boys Do progresses, it becomes obvious that Dahl is upending a few more apple carts. Because Jamie is sexually attractive and works in a bar, no one thinks twice about exploiting him. From women grabbing at his kilt (manskirts are another thing I hate) to his sister pimping him out to draw crowds, everyone expects Jamie to enjoy the attention. What else is he for? Having been told he's a plaything without substance, Jamie is perfectly primed for a sexual predator to take advantage of him.

That's not Olivia. I found Olivia far less interesting. I don't care about her recapturing her power after shaking off domineering parents and an older spouse. I am not that compelled by her as a heroine. She is interesting (for me) only as a catalyst for Jamie's personal growth. It's Olivia who, in the guise of an empowered heroine, further exploits Jamie. Her belief that they are exchanging her professional expertise for his sexual services further erodes Jamie's self confidence. The heat meter in a Dahl book is fairly elevated. She's not an erotica writer, but her characters use sex to further their relationship. I was sorry when they fell into bed (or the hot tub or...) because I didn't want to skim ahead but I so completely don't care about the physicality of the characters relationship that I didn't want to read on either. (I felt a little bit like Jamie.)

Olivia has a realistic and well detailed experience of personal growth but my impatience with her Mouse That Roared backstory kept me from really rooting for her. I don't know why Jamie couldn't find his way to his self worth with someone more personally assured. While the power dynamic was interesting, the required building up of Olivia undermined the emotional components for me. Jamie has to do some pretty heavy lifting in this book. Not only must he disprove the tired belief that men are always up for it, that an endless stream of women is a dream come true, but he also has to be the one who lifts the mouse out of her hiding place. Jamie had it coming from all sides, no one really believes in him but Olivia, a woman he has to help believe in herself. No wonder he breaks.

As in the first volume, Good Girls Don't, the family dynamics are spot on. The unspoken regrets, the emotional assumptions, the burdens of roleplaying - all are expertly depicted in the Donovan siblings relationships. Where I frequently lost patience with Tessa, the compulsive liar and pleaser, (in book one) she shines here. The time table is a bit frantic (Bad Boys Do takes places almost immediately on the heels of Good Girl's Don't) yet her evolution holds together. For me the strength of this series has been the family relationships. I can easily see Victoria Dahl having a Nora Roberts like career on the basis of those alone. After all, I'm coming back for Real Men Will in which the heroine owns a sex shop. A skimmer of sex scenes has no business in a book with that setting, yet there I will be. (Is the sex shop the new toy store? Will all future quirky young business women stock fetish wear instead of trains? Should I even talk about trains and sex shops in the same parenthetical? Probably not.)

Postponed Review: Lord & Lady Spy by Shana Galen

Shana Galen, she's my popcorn girl. She's my reliable not sure what I want tonight read. I just can't get behind this one. Other reviewers love Lord And Lady Spy. They love it so much that even though I can't finish it myself I bought a copy for my aunt. I am possibly the only reader that will ever dislike it. We're discussing Lord And Lady Spy not to refute those reviewers, but to think about Authorial Choice.

Recently Dear Author has seen a few discussions evolve that are (at their core) about Authorial Choice and the reader's willingness to accept that choice or not. Authors have weighed in with mixed results. I've become interested in authors I never would have considered. Authors in my TBR pile shifted to my Do Not Buy list. Authorial Choice is about taste. You can't tell a reader they must like something. You cannot counter a lack of enjoyment with a lecture on historical plausibility.

Which brings us to Lord And Lady Spy. Historical plausibility is pretty much out the window on this one, leaving the reader with the choice to enjoy or not enjoy. Taking the Mr. And Mrs. Smith concept back to Romanceland, Shana Galen sets up an interesting conflict with two spies cut loose from their assignments. Married, yet blind to their shared profession, the challenge is to transfer the attention and thrill that espionage gave them into their life together. Add in emotional distance caused by a miscarriage and Galen has given herself plenty to work with.

Fairly early there is a scene that will be familiar to many - an afternoon with the in-laws. Sophia is stuck entertaining her husband's family, people she doesn't particularly like. (Many women can relate to that dynamic.) Through a series of events the family assumes Sophia is pregnant. When Adrian returns home this is the news that greets him. Sophia does not correct this misinformation and here I make the Reader's Choice to hate her. My exact thought was "What a vicious selfish bitch." I no longer care what Sophia has or has not had happen to her, I no longer care what will or won't evolve for her, I just hate her.  Adrian now believes his wife has been unfaithful, Adrian's family now believes an heir could be on the way and Sophia stands silent. Why should she correct what she never claimed, she thinks. Why should she have to? Why wouldn't Adrian simply know it to be untrue? She wraps herself tightly in her passive aggressive victimhood and stalks out. I want her to get hit by a carriage, die quickly, and clear the path for a heroine to take the stage.

This is an example of a completely valid choice by the author meeting the equally valid choice of a reader. It may be utterly necessary for Sophia to carry her injured pride forward, it may be necessary for Adrian to believe she's slept about. I don't care. I don't want to have him in pain, reacting against her or choosing to forgive her when all she had to do was utter three small words. "It's not true." By keeping her mouth shut she's unleashing emotional pain on herself and those around her. I don't care why she does it. I can't overcome the action. If the hero ultimately forgives, I won't. As a reader, I was unable to set that aside. A book succeeds when it carries a reader past those stumbling blocks, when the author's choices are presented in a way that overcomes the reader objection. For one reader, the heroine should never sleep with her brother. For another reader, the heroine can't be a sexual puppet without repercussions. For this reader, once I think your heroine is a vicious selfish bitch, it's hard to stay with her. Sophia's silence is completely plausible, it's historically accurate and it may be a good choice by Shana Galen for the plot she's crafting. Many other readers had no difficulty with it at all. Sophia and I, we had to break up over it. Amazon is selling it for 90% off for a limited time - for 79 cents you can see how you feel. (I don't mind having paid full price, I try to buy my go-to authors on release day as a show of support.)

Review: The Real Duchesses of London by Lavina Kent Revisited

 I rather wish there had only been two volumes of the Real Duchesses series. Initially, it seemed like a fun and fresh concept, the added aspect of female friendships made the novellas seem deeper than they were. While Annabelle, The American is not a bad story the hero is fatally flawed. The sustaining aspect of female friendship is given little to work with as the girls barely know Annabelle and her close friends reside in America. The revelation of the catalyst for events falls flat as well. Carrying on with the Kink of The Week theme established in the earlier books, we discover Annabelle might have some Naughty Schoolteacher in her soul. (File that under things I didn't care to know.)

Before I spoil the ever loving heck out of Annabelle, I'll take a quick pass at Elizabeth, The Enchantress. For me, the cool and collected Elizabeth has been a star of the series. Her ability to stay composed in the face of scandal has it's roots in her own scandal ridden past, a scandal level that seems fairly extreme. One wonders where her husband's heir was as she took the reins of his estate in her 19 year old hands. Removed from the reach of her comically uncaring uncle,  her husband off to parts unknown within days, Elizabeth masters her own destiny? I suppose. There's no KoTW here, unless you count a sex toy that makes a brief and somewhat anticlimactic (sorry) appearance. Elizabeth and Linnette (you may recall her as The Lioness) are forced to make nice, the women gather around in a show of solidarity, but the true bonds of female friendship are weaker yet. Perhaps the overriding theme of this series hasn't been KoTW, but rather Women Who Just Wanted To Be Wanted. For all her strength of character, Elizabeth folds like a house of cards when her husband shows up.

Annabelle takes the revelation of her husband's secret family as her cue to get busy with the sexxing. Sure she's sad and all, but how can they move past whatever it is unless they keep the lines of communication open (the same lines that never revealed he might be keeping two households)? Here we're going to go into spoiler land because Annabelle, The American has the same unrecoverable flaw that Elizabeth Boyle's Lord Langley does. This guy is an absolutely terrible father. An unredeemable creep of a father. He's not just a deadbeat dad, he's a deserter who moans that he couldn't stay gone. Why would I want rich beautiful caring Annabelle to end up with him? Do the only kids that count belong to the heroine? Is this some sort of postmodern second wife syndrome hero we're seeing these days? Remember when a hero collected all their bastards from the countryside and insisted on fathering them? Remember when they were careful not to be a baby daddy at all? How is parental desertion suddenly acceptable? I don't get this. The set up for Annabelle's man is that he knocked up a women below his class but he super extra loved her. Reader, He Married Her. These are legitimate kids. So his dad gets mad. Rather than man up and tell the Duke that he has a wife with a pair of kids, thank you very much (Actually, only one is legit. He married her between kids.) he allows himself to be sent off to some estate to do something.

When he returns, he has a young daughter and an infant daughter and a dead wife. His dad, the aforementioned Duke, tells him to keep his yap shut or the kids go to the workhouse. Again, his kids with his wife, who is dead because he left them behind. Like a coward. So does our hero snatch his kids up and take them to America? Does he tell his dad to stuff it and get a job from one of his society friends? No! He goes to America alone, where he plans on staying forever, and his dad agrees to educate the kids then places the older one as a governess. Right. So after raising her younger sister with her dad off living the life of a ducal second son in America (did he even appeal to his brother, the heir?) she (still towing her younger sister) enters into the workforce taking care of others children. Here she meets a boy and falls in love. He dies. Like her mom did. There's a baby (not hers) and she takes the care of it and her sister and moves forward with all the strength of character her father lacks. Meanwhile, he meets Annabelle and says "Hey baby, you're hot and rich and could have anyone. Let me tell you I don't love you so your self destructive side can come out to play." They marry and he plans to live in America for his whole life and raise fat happy babies. (Babies that count, I guess.) His brother dies, which makes him the heir, which brings him back to London where he still doesn't tell his wife about his first marriage or his children. Now he's all woe is me, I love my kids, I married you to provide for them, sob sob sob, but it's a lot of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and very little Actual Good Father. Suddenly his dad is all "Yea, when I found out at least one wasn't a bastard I kinda felt bad about this whole thing, but whatevs," Annabelle still doesn't meet her stepchildren, she's too busy consoling and sexxing up the massively entitled baby she married. At no point does she call him out on his child abandonment, despite being American. The guy is a complete creep. So's his dad. When his dad comes by with a halfhearted "Sorry I was a bitch and made your social life hell" Annabelle is all, that's ok. Let's start over! The woman has looks, money, and a family willing to take her back in her home country. What does she need these losers for?

And still I preferred Annabelle The American to Elizabeth, The Enchantress. While Annabelle's man is a weak willed loser, Elizabeth and hers were just deadly dull. I was forcing myself to click through the pages so I could say I did. In Elizabeth the identity of the other cartoonist is revealed. His motivation? "We don't know, he just always kind of hated us. It's weird." His fate? The proverbial plantation home in the Islands where he can be overlord of the non-white citizens around him. Yes, it is always so satisfying when a woman hating villain is given a home where he can prey on the less societally endowed women of the world. That solves everything. I clutched my pearls and cried tears of joy at his fitting comeuppance - a removal from society and all it's pleasures. I suppose my suggestion, after this excessively long opinion piece, would be as follows. Buy Linette The Lioness. Consider Annabelle The American if you have a high tolerance for child desertion. Skip the other two.

Review: In Total Surrender by Anne Mallory

This one's worth Agency pricing. We're talking about Lorraine Heath levels of awesome here. I think it may also be controversial. But we can get to that, right?

The opening had me a little off balance. I was afraid that our heroine, Phoebe Pace, was going to be a TSTL* naive Mary Sunshine type. (At one point I was deeply concerned for her mental stability.) Without giving everything away, I was wrong. So wrong. If Phoebe starts to worry you, give her time. She's worth waiting for. Phoebe's doing the whole "anything for my family" bit but not in a "I'm trading myself for my brother's debts" kind of way. She's more of a bill juggler. You know, like when you accidentally send the power company the phone company's check? (I think they got wise to that one.)  Phoebe's family owes Andreas Merrick quite a bit of cash, but she's thinking they can pay it back if a few events go her way.

Andreas Merrick is the potential controversy. The brother of One Night Is Never Enough's hero, Andreas gives new meaning to 'dangerous to know'. (He's a crime lord, it makes sense.) Taking the realistic outcome of the Merrick brothers background to the next level, Mallory makes it clear that Andreas isn't secretly a super nice and harmless guy. He kills people on at least a weekly basis. While it startled me, it works. We have so many dark, angsty, self made men in Romance Land that claw their way up, run gangs, control vast sections of London, and manage to do it all without hurting anyone. If you're a universally feared ruler of the streets, it's likely more than just talk. I can see some readers having difficulty accepting that Andreas isn't a nice guy. It's not a nice world he lives in. In his world, nice means dead.

So Phoebe wants to save her family business and Andreas wants to destroy it as a step on his path to revenge. (Those dark and angsty guys always have the revenge thing going on.) Poor Phoebe is caught in the middle with her company on one side and Andreas's enemy on the other.  I loved the power struggle between these two equally determined characters so much. I read a Lorraine Heath novel directly after In Total Surrender and I still say Anne Mallory has turned in one of the best books of the year. It's so good I even forgive her giving our super dreamy Andreas a definitely not dreamy family member. (We'll just pretend we've never seen that guy's picture, ok?)

In Total Surrender works on it's own terms but I think my emotional connection to the characters was aided by having read One Night Is Never Enough. Both Andreas's social awkwardness and Roman Merrick's flippant attitude are well established in the prior book. While In Total Surrender certainly explains both, I would read the two together if possible. I hope this book puts Anne Mallory where she belongs. She is on my short list of favorite historical authors. This has been an interesting series from Mallory, asking us as readers to accept that the dangerous hero is often a murderous one. It would be easy for her to spin a series off from the other side of the coin, people who have suffered as the unseen collateral damage of the brothers. I can't explain why women are attracted to men like these in life, but in fiction the Merrick brothers are certainly worth the trouble.

*Too Stupid To Live

Review: New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb

Does this really need a review? What are we -  33, 34 books out? (I guess we do because I find myself with things to say about New York To Dallas.) Disclaimer - I like Nora Roberts / J.D. Robb as an actual person. I think she is gracious, hilarious, biting, generous, all the things I look for in a person. I find her NR books hit or miss and her Eve series completely addictive even though I don't like Roarke. (I know. That's fine. Being a party of one never bothers me.) Some on Twitter wondered if the series could continue as it is with so many of the primary mysteries about Eve wrapped up. I say yes.

For me, Eve's backstory has gone to characterization. While I have been interested in aspects of it, I have not felt a compelling need for answers. Having the answers doesn't fundamentally change what I enjoy about the books. Still, taking Eve to Dallas was a smart choice. As the series has grown, so have the lives Eve becomes involved in. Sometimes I feel characters are getting shoehorned into a story they don't belong in, just so they can make an appearance. Putting Eve in Dallas relieved author and reader of that mental checklist. (Although almost the entire cast is at least name checked.) I agree that NYTD would be a reasonable place to tie off the character. Roberts works several years ahead of publication, so I imagine her editors know if she's done with Eve. My money says no. I think she was done with Eve's past, with having that shoe waiting to drop.

There is a character introduced fairly early in NYTD who made me sigh. I knew where we were going before we left the station. While the execution was well done, it's not the path I would have liked to see taken. The world is really not as small as it seems in NYTD. (That's been an issue for me in the past as well, there are only so many overlapping circles I find reasonable.) The core plot of NYTD I quite liked - a criminal Eve put away in her youth returns for a rematch in the prime of her career. He's lost his edge, she's gained experience, but he has the advantage of caring less about the lives in jeopardy. (One thing I really adore about the In Death series would be that it never fetishizes or eroticizes the psychopaths.) Parts of the story reminded me of details from the Jaycee Duggard story, but not in a Lifted From The Headlines way. Overall, it's a solid Eve Dallas tale, and one I think will not disappoint fans of the series.

On the downside, NYTD has a 'cofftea' moment. Eve picks up several new shorthand slang words, including one for analysis.  I was not the first to notice this, it fairly jumps off the page. (If the author wasn't Nora Roberts it would be a meme by now. I have never even considered doing such a thing to my laundry.) My new catchphrase for the year is going to be a quote lifted directly from the pages of NYTD. I just can't say it in front of any kids. Or at the laundromat. Possibly even in public (although we both know I will). Yet these sentences made it through all the eyes that stand between a prepublication certified bestseller and your hands. Goes to show.

Review: Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

Do you think if I rolled around on the floor and waved my arms that Courtney Milan would rub my tummy? Because I have to tell you, I am so her bitch. Which is not to say that Unclaimed is perfection in a yellow cover. There's an editorial choice made near the end that I take issue with. (Everyone loves a reunion story, I suppose.)

Back to the book. Mark is the poster child for purity. This made me nervous because in my experience the guys with the purity rings are either A) lying, B) closet cases or C) destined to cheat on their RealDoll. (Did you see the episode of Dollhouse with the RealDolls and the golfing serial killer? I mean, all the icky rape culture implications aside, oh wait. You can't examine Dollhouse without them. Hm. Back to the book again.) Mark is D) None of the above! Mark Turner is Jonas Brothers famous for being a normal guy who just decided not to exploit women.

Jessica (I started to Google Jessica as a Victorian name but I got distracted by Rhenis as a cross gender name of unknown origin and ended up just trusting Milan. I mean, this is a series with a dude named Smite. If she wants a Jessica she can have a Jessica. It's probably even historically accurate.) is not as impressed with Mark's purity as the rest of London. (I don't think she'd be into boy bands either. Jessica strikes me as more of a bar rock kind of girl.) She hasn't been a virgin in a very long time, leading her to think that Mark is of the lying type. For the right bribe, she'll prove it. This leads to a WTF moment for me. It seems the Turner boys reclaimed their childhood home. Some serious stuff went down in that house but Mark decides to go back there to lay low. I haven't been in my childhood home in (cough) years and I still have nightmares about the place. I didn't have half of what the Turner boys dealt with so their affinity for the home confused me. But it's Mark's house, he can live in it. Flashbacks are his own fault. (Burn it down and salt the earth, I say.)

Aside from Mark and Jessica there are some really excellent side characters and a number of Smite sightings. (He's the cute Jonas Turner.) Also, a dog. Sort of. Mark has to deal with all the small town drama that his celebrity and her impurity bring with them while navigating his very normal personal desires. Jessica realizes she's been living inside a shell of herself, unable to see past her survival mode long enough to claim her own life back. I adored them, and I adored their story. Even with the sentimental bits and the weird real estate issue. Unclaimed is a love letter to morality for morality's sake and the power of siblings in our lives. Bring on Smite and toss me a tennis ball.

Review: One Night In London by Caroline Linden

* Teal is the new pink.


One Night In London might have the WTF cover of the year. From the pearls draped just so in her cleavage to the frankly awkward pose, this is a cover Anonymous would use. Perhaps we should have a contest - what activity is our heroine engaged in? It's obviously less than enjoyable - look at her face. She's not quite certain she wants to move forward with whatever it she's currently doing. I tried the pose and considered the options. It wasn't a pretty assortment.

One Night In London was my first Caroline Linden read, or at least the first that I can recall. This one is definitely a Mixed Bag, but the book has good bones.  (Courtney Milan did the bigamous father better.) Linden is stretching her resolution over several books, a tactic I find annoying. Story points arcing through several books is fine, but there has to be enough advancement for reader satisfaction. (Alternatively, the heroine's custody plot is exceptionally well done and fully resolved.)

I like Francesca. She's a bit of a user, but that's ok. (Francesca has a friend without benefits. She leans on him heavily, hangs with him constantly, then gets irritated that he loves her.) She's got a serious temper and flirts with social ruin (A woman planning a custody fight!) but she's fair. Her frustration in the face of the twin obstacles of social class and gender are understandable. Anyone who has ever been helpless in a custodial situation would relate. Edward is the family fixer. You know the one, thinks he controls it all, pretends his ducks are neatly aligned, the whole time frantic not to drop any of the things he's juggling. His older brother is the drunken party animal, his younger the man of action type. Edward makes sure the bills are covered. He is all about understanding, until his fiancee defies his comprehension. I liked him too.

So here we have sympathetic adult characters engaged in high stakes situations (gaining custody of a child, proving their legitimacy and saving their family home) but ultimately end up with a hot and cold read. I'm pretty open about being a skimmer. It's a rare sex scene I will read. One Night In London is not weighed down with sex, but when it arrives it's a story stopper. They thud onto the page and seem to last forever. Skimming, I was thrown out of the story wondering how much longer they'd be going at it. This wasn't the rare book I read every page of, but I'd expected it to be. I still think One Night In London is worth the time, but the twin flaws of extended climaxes and lack of primary plot satisfaction keep me from loving it. My TBR Lindens have moved to the front of the stack, I like her willingness to embrace flawed heroines.

Review: Record Collecting For Girls by Courtney E. Smith

I feel bad about this review and I haven't even written it yet.  Let's preface everything by saying I hope between the time I write this (May) and the book's release (September) the publisher seriously reconsiders both the marketing and the cover copy. Record Collecting For Girls absolutely fails to deliver what it promises.

On the positive side, the design is fantastic. Arresting, visually assertive, all around excellent cover work. As well, the first chapter is fantastic. While reading it I was planning who to buy the book for at Christmas, who'd talk with me about it first. It was the proverbial hit single of a dog album. The rest of Record Collecting For Girls took me from irritation to rage and then to resigned disillusionment. The cover promises "Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd One Album At A Time," It also vows "Gives Readers Tips For Curating A Real Record Collection." That bit is a complete joke. Smith doesn't believe in record collections, she believes in Hype Machine and extra hard drives and pirating singles instead of evaluating albums. Her records and CDs have been boxed for years, by book's end she is discarding them. This is not a girl's guide to a broad appreciation of music, it's a long recitation of the romantic failings in Smith's life and what she chose to listen to while she got over them. Let's go chapter by chapter.

• Record Collecting For Girls will sell a lot of copies as a Kindle sample. It's funny, focused, and correct in stating music conversation is dominated by the male perspective. Someone should take this chapter and write the book it belongs in.
• Top Five Lists does feel like a springboard to a real conversation about music as Smith explains how (to hold her own with boys) she came to her cutting edge choices of Elvis Costello, REM, Sleater-Kinney, Stevie Nicks and Fiona Apple. Here, among all these (white) critical darlings, you start to realize that you're going to Epcot instead of on a World Tour. (Fiona, Stevie, not your fault.)
• Where Have All The Girl Bands Gone? Mixing a small bit of info about the Go-Go's with an assertion that The Bangles were underrated Smith takes a drive by at Phil Spector's influence and name drops some early punk and post Lilith Fair without really exploring much of it. Sex sells. Unless you're the Dixie Chicks.
• My Scrobble, Myself. How to see what boys like to listen to and evaluate what you're listening to. 
• Making Out With Romeo And Juliet. How to decide what to play while trying to get laid, by a boy, and how to impress that boy (never a girl I guess) with your fine taste in music without scaring him off with your mad taste in music and a little bit about how soundtracks are compiled. Plus, boys (not girls) and making out. 
• Guilty Pleasures. Smith feels if you don't have a guilty pleasure you're pompous or boring. She likes the Pussycat Dolls. She thinks you should like what you like unless it's the Black Eyed Peas and then you shouldn't. 
• The Smiths Syndrome. Where to start? Pick a band, then refuse to ever date anyone who likes that band because they are all the same. To back this up, (Why are we still talking about dating? When do we really talk about music, it's evolution, or crafting a course of personal study?) she declares that all avid Smiths fans are mommy's boys obsessed with serial killers. Wow. That's so offensive and wrong I'm not sure how to articulate it. As an avid Smiths fan (by her criteria) and one of Moz (although I am currently boycotting him)  as well I must say I can't agree. Nor do the male Smiths fans I know discuss serial killers, concern themselves with serial killers or wear pompadours. And yes, we do travel long distances to see Moz. Hey, that's her world, she can live there. Nothing to me. 
• Give It To Me For Free shows Smith claiming that free music sells music. While I agree with that assertion, it's hard to take it seriously amid her repeated urgings that we get all our music from Hype Machine.
• Are We Breaking Up? Smith has music she likes to listen to when boys dump her or she dumps boys. She'd give up on boys but she still wants someone to pay half her bills. (No, really.) This chapter caused my partner to say "If this is how women discuss music it's amazing Joan Jett can stand to be a lesbian."
• The Next Madonna holds Madonna up as awesome. For all her flashing of her indie music creds and bragging on the width of her musical knowledge, Smith spends all her time in the top of the pops. Is Britney the next Madonna? Is Gaga? Why is Madonna herself? Let's talk about these three white girls a lot. I suppose the many women who worked in music during Madonna's career can never matter as much as Madonna. Let's just move on.
• Music Blogs Are Just Dadaist Conversation. Smith feels people are inadequate when they write about music. (The jokes write themselves here.) You should find some blogs and download lots of free music to see what you like. Maybe even set up an RSS feed to amass more music than you can practically listen to. (Waiting for the bit about buying music to show back up, but it doesn't.) All free and semi legal, she says. While I am not against music blogs (I use plenty) it's a bit both sides of the mouth, her position on paying for your tunes. Don't archive records or CDs, amass free tracks - and then what? Buy legal copies of the mp3s? 
• Our Song, Your Song, My Song is a way to talk MORE about dating. Having established in the intro that a problem with women breaking into music is their quality being viewed through the lens of male attraction, we now view our music as it relates to attraction. (That's deep, huh?) How do you know if it's your song? What if it was already their song? Let's talk even more about the authors love life, because this book isn't really about music and how to love it, explore it, understand it - this book is about the author and boys. 
• The Death of the Record Collection - Oh yes she does.
• Adventures in Second Live shows Smith doesn't just use RSS feeds, MTV freebies and the like - she also enjoys hard to find sections of online gaming. Because it's hard to find, it's awesome. 
• Rock'N'Roll Consorts. At first I thought Smith had tired of talking about her own sex life and was moving on the sex life of others, but really she wanted to talk more about hers. First we talk about how ick groupies are (never mind she is mostly judging a woman from the 1960's who experiences a culture and state of mind that Smith shows no real interest in exploring) and how kinda ick wives are and how no one should ever get involved with men (or girls?) in rock because they all suck and will do you wrong like this rock guy did her. 
• Beatles VS. Stones is based on someone having told her that girls who like the Stones will bang you. It's like the black guy in the bar telling you he only dates white women because they (insert offensive assumption here) but Smith runs with it, explores it, talks at length about how the Stones and Beatles being at odds were just marketing ploys (you don't say) and the Stones are icky because they are too old to perform those songs and should just retire and stop trying to make money. Ageism on parade, but I think the Stones fans won't be bothered.
• Down The Music K-Hole! This is it! We're going to discover how to expand our musical preferences! How to move from one genre to another! How to discover new sounds! What types of things might.... oh wait, we're just going to say "go to a web site and hit some buttons and listen to some stuff and mostly just listen to Prince cause I think he's awesome." Except we're going to do it with Choose Your Own Adventure stylings (or automated customer service phone menus).
• Acknowledgements - This book was a dream and so many people helped her make it. This I totally believe. 

I am sure Smith is a lovely women. If I had approached this as "My Years At MTV" or "The Guys I Dated And The Music We Listened To" I am certain my reading experience would have been different. Perhaps not totally different, but different all the same. Instead, I was expecting a conversation about music, how to love it, how to evaluate it, what to do to expand yourself, how to build your tastes, and I got an awful lot about how Smith can't find a nice boy to open a joint account with. I can't say either of us are better for the experience and I regret my negativity. If it's any consolation, this is the measured and mild version of my disappointment.