No. Just...no. I must have been high when I decided to read this. I mentioned it to a friend and he replied, "I would rather poke my own eyes out than read that." I may take it out back, put it on the grill, and set it on fire.
Rainie fakes her own death while on a cruise with her husband because he's going to kill her. She ends up working as a bookkeeper for a rancher dude in Crystal Falls, Oregon. Of course he's hot, and of course he sees her as a delicate flower that he wants to pick. They fall in love and all. His entire extended family foists themselves and their "aw shucks"-iness upon her, and she decides she'll marry him, but she has to divorce the psycho, who apparently killed his two previous wives to get their money, like he was going to do to Rainie. She gets her divorce, the FBI tries to use her as bait to get the husband, it doesn't work. One night, in a scene stolen right out of the movie Sleeping with the Enemy (which is discussed earlier in the book) the husband shows up in the backseat of Rainie's car and forces her to drive to her apartment - she won't live with Parker, the rancher, because he's Catholic and his family wouldn't approve and he's fucking THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OLD - and tries to kill her with a mix of Ambien and wine, and making it look like she offed herself. (Seriously? I can take a giant Vicodin for my broken spine and then go out drinking with Pajibans all night. This lightweight has a glass of wine and three Ambien and almost dies. Pussy.)
Whatever. Parker figures out that she was giving him clues on the phone, via talking about her HALLOWEEN COSTUME, and hoofs it over. Rainie uses the last of her strength to smash the wineglass into PeterExHusband's face. The paramedics come and get her to the hospital and pump her stomach. A couple months later Parker and Rainie get married.
I need Brillo for my brain.
Showing posts with label do not read at any cost or I will smack you. Show all posts
Showing posts with label do not read at any cost or I will smack you. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Title Fifty Nine: Play Dirty by Sandra Brown
Ok, I'll admit that this book is pure trash from front to back.* It's totally aimed at bored housewives who love the Lifetime Movie Network. It's possible that it destroyed a few of my brain cells.
A former Dallas Cowboys quarterback just got out of prison - I'm not sure why he was in prison, but it had something to do with him throwing a game for the Mob or something, and gambling, and I don't know what else. Anyway, this cat, Griff Burkett, gets the offer of a lifetime when he gets out - the billionaire owner of SunSouth Airlines wants Griff to get Mrs. SunSouth pregnant. The old-fashioned way. Because Mr. SunSouth is in a wheelchair and can't get the job done. Griff will make a boatload of money if he agrees. So he agrees. Mrs. SunSouth is okay with it. They knock boots at several appointed times, and Mrs. SunSouth gets up the pole right as the two fall in love, which is sad because now that the rabbit's dead, they have no more reason to meet. Then Mr. SunSouth turns up murdered, Griff is the suspect, but Mrs. SunSouth loves him anyway and helps him run. They figure out who really did it, everyone is redeemed, it turns out Mr. SunSouth was a manipulative, crazy bastard so no real loss there, and everyone is happy.
Seriously.
*Disclaimer: I was high on perfectly legal, professionally administered drugs when I read this.
A former Dallas Cowboys quarterback just got out of prison - I'm not sure why he was in prison, but it had something to do with him throwing a game for the Mob or something, and gambling, and I don't know what else. Anyway, this cat, Griff Burkett, gets the offer of a lifetime when he gets out - the billionaire owner of SunSouth Airlines wants Griff to get Mrs. SunSouth pregnant. The old-fashioned way. Because Mr. SunSouth is in a wheelchair and can't get the job done. Griff will make a boatload of money if he agrees. So he agrees. Mrs. SunSouth is okay with it. They knock boots at several appointed times, and Mrs. SunSouth gets up the pole right as the two fall in love, which is sad because now that the rabbit's dead, they have no more reason to meet. Then Mr. SunSouth turns up murdered, Griff is the suspect, but Mrs. SunSouth loves him anyway and helps him run. They figure out who really did it, everyone is redeemed, it turns out Mr. SunSouth was a manipulative, crazy bastard so no real loss there, and everyone is happy.
Seriously.
*Disclaimer: I was high on perfectly legal, professionally administered drugs when I read this.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Title Forty Five: The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits
So imagine that I'm browsing in a bookstore, or maybe the book section at Target. I notice you checking out The Uses of Enchantment. I watch for a minute while you read the back, sense your hesitation, and then see you say to yourself, "Eh, seems interesting. I'll take it."
Now you see a slightly manic blonde hauling ass towards you making frantic waving motions. When did they start letting homeless women with well-maintained highlights hang out in Barnes and Noble? you think. At that moment I arrive in front of you, my ponytail slightly disheveled, panting a bit from my trek across the store. (I should really cut down on the cigs.) "Put it back!" I cry. You wonder why I'm so vehement. What could be so wrong with a book whose blurb promises a tale of Mary Veal, who disappeared from her posh New England prep school one day after field hockey practice and reappears a few weeks later with no visible injury or trauma save a case of amnesia. Was it true, or did she fake the whole thing? What repercussions will the event have on Mary's family, therapists, and Mary herself? Why wouldn't you want to check this out?
I'll tell you why. It's a hot fucking mess. Julavits is aiming for literary and instead turns out a disjointed, confusing, and subpar book that tries to blend three different "narratives" - "What Might Have Happened," a convoluted account of Mary's experience with a kidnapper/fellow fugitive/pervy old dude who supposedly suffers from amnesia himself; "Notes" from her first therapist, who goes on to write a book detailing what he considers Mary's entire fabrication and which ends up destroying his career when he's accused of improper patient conduct with Mary by a feminazi colleague; and "West Salem," the events that follow the funeral of Mary's mother fourteen years to the day from Mary's disappearance (Mary's mother, incidentally, refused to see her before she died, and spent most of her life obsessed with an ancestor accused of being a witch). Is that confusing enough you? Congratulations, now you know how I felt when I read the book. Beyond the fact that Julavits has three concepts that never come together, there is no real resolution. You never find out why Mary took off with the guy (if that's what actually happened). You never understand why Mary let the feminazi take over and trash her therapist. You certainly never get any sort of revelations or conclusions from grownup Mary. It's never even made clear who the dude in the car was. It ends abruptly; it doesn't even whimper to an end. The whole thing is like watching a fly buzz between a window and a screen until it drops dead, but somehow less entertaining.
Put the book down. Walk away. I promise not to stalk you through the store.
Now you see a slightly manic blonde hauling ass towards you making frantic waving motions. When did they start letting homeless women with well-maintained highlights hang out in Barnes and Noble? you think. At that moment I arrive in front of you, my ponytail slightly disheveled, panting a bit from my trek across the store. (I should really cut down on the cigs.) "Put it back!" I cry. You wonder why I'm so vehement. What could be so wrong with a book whose blurb promises a tale of Mary Veal, who disappeared from her posh New England prep school one day after field hockey practice and reappears a few weeks later with no visible injury or trauma save a case of amnesia. Was it true, or did she fake the whole thing? What repercussions will the event have on Mary's family, therapists, and Mary herself? Why wouldn't you want to check this out?
I'll tell you why. It's a hot fucking mess. Julavits is aiming for literary and instead turns out a disjointed, confusing, and subpar book that tries to blend three different "narratives" - "What Might Have Happened," a convoluted account of Mary's experience with a kidnapper/fellow fugitive/pervy old dude who supposedly suffers from amnesia himself; "Notes" from her first therapist, who goes on to write a book detailing what he considers Mary's entire fabrication and which ends up destroying his career when he's accused of improper patient conduct with Mary by a feminazi colleague; and "West Salem," the events that follow the funeral of Mary's mother fourteen years to the day from Mary's disappearance (Mary's mother, incidentally, refused to see her before she died, and spent most of her life obsessed with an ancestor accused of being a witch). Is that confusing enough you? Congratulations, now you know how I felt when I read the book. Beyond the fact that Julavits has three concepts that never come together, there is no real resolution. You never find out why Mary took off with the guy (if that's what actually happened). You never understand why Mary let the feminazi take over and trash her therapist. You certainly never get any sort of revelations or conclusions from grownup Mary. It's never even made clear who the dude in the car was. It ends abruptly; it doesn't even whimper to an end. The whole thing is like watching a fly buzz between a window and a screen until it drops dead, but somehow less entertaining.
Put the book down. Walk away. I promise not to stalk you through the store.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Title Thirty Six: Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis
Boring. Vapid. Shallow. Insipid.
Oh, don't mind me. I'm just coming up with words to describe this transparent stab at chick lit. Who decides to publish this shit? I was intrigued by the idea of a story about a woman who uses her mother's breast cancer diagnosis as an excuse to abandon her career and gentleman friend and essentially hide from her life for a bit. I thought, "There could be something there. A real honest look at what it's like to be an adult but not know how to be a grownup." This is not that book.
Emily's father walked out when she was five. Her mother's a drama queen. Her sister's a socialite. Emily has spent her whole life being defined by her past (a point that she, as the first-person narrator, makes again and again and again until I wanted to throw the book against a wall). She became a lawyer because she didn't know what else to do. She's afraid of commitment. She dates a guy she works with until she quits the job and the relationship. She takes a gig as the receptionist at her father's law firm while she waits out her mother's lumpectomy. She visits her shrink a lot. She pushes back her cuticles. She ponders the fact that she's afraid of living but doesn't do anything about it. It's really this boring. Don't fucking read it.
Oh, don't mind me. I'm just coming up with words to describe this transparent stab at chick lit. Who decides to publish this shit? I was intrigued by the idea of a story about a woman who uses her mother's breast cancer diagnosis as an excuse to abandon her career and gentleman friend and essentially hide from her life for a bit. I thought, "There could be something there. A real honest look at what it's like to be an adult but not know how to be a grownup." This is not that book.
Emily's father walked out when she was five. Her mother's a drama queen. Her sister's a socialite. Emily has spent her whole life being defined by her past (a point that she, as the first-person narrator, makes again and again and again until I wanted to throw the book against a wall). She became a lawyer because she didn't know what else to do. She's afraid of commitment. She dates a guy she works with until she quits the job and the relationship. She takes a gig as the receptionist at her father's law firm while she waits out her mother's lumpectomy. She visits her shrink a lot. She pushes back her cuticles. She ponders the fact that she's afraid of living but doesn't do anything about it. It's really this boring. Don't fucking read it.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Title Thirty Three: Do Dead People Watch You Shower? by Concetta Bertoldi
If you see this book, run away. As quickly as possible. Bonus points if you set it on fire before you run. (Kidding.) (Kind of.)
Look, I admit to a certain fascination with ghosties. I love watching "Paranormal State" and have a slight crush on Ryan Buell. Okay, a big crush. I sort of want to have his babies. So I picked up this book hoping to find some interesting anecdotes about the life of a medium and her communications with the Other Side. Instead it was like being trapped at the kitchen table with a loudmouthed North Jersey paisan (I'm an Eyetal; I can say that) who refuses to let you leave until she has told you every detail of her life. "Oooh, look at me, I can see and hear dead people! I bring comfort to grieving family and friends! "They" told me who I was going to marry! I know so much more than you but I can't prove it but dammit you need to believe me because I am an expert!" Shut up and shove a cannoli in your mouth. Your writing is trite, vain, and has the skill level of a dyslexic middle schooler. (This is not a jab at the writer's dyslexia, or anyone else's for that matter; she is simply a poor author, incapable of writing more than one paragraph for many of the "chapters" of the book.)
The only heartwarming segments deal with Bertoldi's experiences with the deaths of her father and brother. They were, and still are, evidently devastating and painful, and if her communications and visits with them have brought her some comfort, then I'm glad that what she calls her "gift" has allowed that. Otherwise, it's a lot of showmanship with little substance. She trumpets her small validations and chalks her failures up to a sort of "Oh, only God is perfect, and I won't be perfect until I am one with Him" mentality. There's a lot of pseudo-New Agey crap sprinkled liberally throughout the book, especially pertaining to her concept that those who go "home" arise to a different plane of consciousness and cease to exist as separate entities, instead becoming a part of God, shedding all earthly constraints. I don't know about you, but when I get to heaven I want to find great sex, exquisite chocolate, flowering gardens and beautiful beaches, along with high-quality scotch flowing like a river and books as far as the eye can see. I want to enjoy my earthly senses to the fullest. In the end I decided that Bertoldi is a hack, which may be unfair, but hell, it's my opinion and my review.
Look, I admit to a certain fascination with ghosties. I love watching "Paranormal State" and have a slight crush on Ryan Buell. Okay, a big crush. I sort of want to have his babies. So I picked up this book hoping to find some interesting anecdotes about the life of a medium and her communications with the Other Side. Instead it was like being trapped at the kitchen table with a loudmouthed North Jersey paisan (I'm an Eyetal; I can say that) who refuses to let you leave until she has told you every detail of her life. "Oooh, look at me, I can see and hear dead people! I bring comfort to grieving family and friends! "They" told me who I was going to marry! I know so much more than you but I can't prove it but dammit you need to believe me because I am an expert!" Shut up and shove a cannoli in your mouth. Your writing is trite, vain, and has the skill level of a dyslexic middle schooler. (This is not a jab at the writer's dyslexia, or anyone else's for that matter; she is simply a poor author, incapable of writing more than one paragraph for many of the "chapters" of the book.)
The only heartwarming segments deal with Bertoldi's experiences with the deaths of her father and brother. They were, and still are, evidently devastating and painful, and if her communications and visits with them have brought her some comfort, then I'm glad that what she calls her "gift" has allowed that. Otherwise, it's a lot of showmanship with little substance. She trumpets her small validations and chalks her failures up to a sort of "Oh, only God is perfect, and I won't be perfect until I am one with Him" mentality. There's a lot of pseudo-New Agey crap sprinkled liberally throughout the book, especially pertaining to her concept that those who go "home" arise to a different plane of consciousness and cease to exist as separate entities, instead becoming a part of God, shedding all earthly constraints. I don't know about you, but when I get to heaven I want to find great sex, exquisite chocolate, flowering gardens and beautiful beaches, along with high-quality scotch flowing like a river and books as far as the eye can see. I want to enjoy my earthly senses to the fullest. In the end I decided that Bertoldi is a hack, which may be unfair, but hell, it's my opinion and my review.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Title Seventeen: Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell
You know what? This book was a piece of horse shite. It doesn't even deserve a review but some innocent trees died just so that it could be printed, and then I wasted valuable moments of my life reading it when I could have been doing something else, like scrubbing my toilet or pondering Barack Obama's economic stimulus package or wondering why I can't rock short hair like Jayne and Rachel Maddow or re-watching the heartbreaking conclusion to the second series of Doctor Who and crying my eyes out over Rose standing on the beach with mascara running down her cheeks while she chokes out "I...I love you" and the Doctor looks back at her with all this longing in his holographic eyes and manages a "Quite right, too" and SWEET CRACKER SANDWICH THIS BOOK WAS HORRIFIC.
Kay Scarpetta was the best forensic medical examiner in the history of the world but now she's not but they don't say why, and her weird niece Lucy is some law enforcement genius who left the government and runs a private firm and kills bad guys and flies a helicopter, and some fat detective named Marino loves Scarpetta but he's fat and alcoholic and has a peptic ulcer, I think, and Scarpetta never thought of him that way anyway so he just keeps eating and drinking and being gross. Kay's ex-lover Benton is dead BUT HE REALLY ISN'T he's just undercover and she doesn't know it and this crazy werewolf man (yes, seriously, they call him Loup Garoux because he has hair all over his body and is a deformed freak with pointy baby teeth and no peen) is on death row in Texas because he tried to kill Scarpetta many books ago, and she gets all wrapped up in his case again for reasons that are never made clear. Meanwhile, Wolfman Freakypants has a really good-looking twin brother who is also a murderer and kills women in Louisiana and feeds them to alligators with the help of his twisted fuck of a fatass lover Bev. They live in a bayou shack. Scarpetta gets tied into all of this because she gives a seminar at the beginning of the book and one of the students is from the area where WolfyFace's brother is hacking the wimmens and that student gives her a blow fly in a jar. (SERIOUSLY.) The only other time that blow flies come up is when Lucy stages a suicide and tries to use the buggers (see what I did there?) to throw off time of death, but it ultimately doesn't work and no one mentions blow flies again for the rest of this pointless tripe. At the end the Wolfman escapes from Death Row and is in the wind, his brother and brother's ladyfriend get shot by Lucy, and Scarpetta meets up with Benton and realizes he's not dead, and sits down on some stairs to try to take it in. The end.
Really. It ends right there. No postscript, nothing. Just, "Hey, you're dead." "No, I'm not. I had to fake my death to keep you safe." "You're a bastard." Sits down. Blank pages follow. I have questions, dammit! Where's NoPeenWolf? Where did the rest of your crew go? Why do people keep buying Cornwell's books? Why is Cornwell even allowed to write books? Is this the worst book I've ever read? When will the stimulus package pass, and what will be included? Do I have enough toilet bowl cleaner? Why do I still cry at an episode of a cheesy sci-fi show that I have seen over a dozen times? Am I really still wasting time on this review? Not anymore, I'm not.
Kay Scarpetta was the best forensic medical examiner in the history of the world but now she's not but they don't say why, and her weird niece Lucy is some law enforcement genius who left the government and runs a private firm and kills bad guys and flies a helicopter, and some fat detective named Marino loves Scarpetta but he's fat and alcoholic and has a peptic ulcer, I think, and Scarpetta never thought of him that way anyway so he just keeps eating and drinking and being gross. Kay's ex-lover Benton is dead BUT HE REALLY ISN'T he's just undercover and she doesn't know it and this crazy werewolf man (yes, seriously, they call him Loup Garoux because he has hair all over his body and is a deformed freak with pointy baby teeth and no peen) is on death row in Texas because he tried to kill Scarpetta many books ago, and she gets all wrapped up in his case again for reasons that are never made clear. Meanwhile, Wolfman Freakypants has a really good-looking twin brother who is also a murderer and kills women in Louisiana and feeds them to alligators with the help of his twisted fuck of a fatass lover Bev. They live in a bayou shack. Scarpetta gets tied into all of this because she gives a seminar at the beginning of the book and one of the students is from the area where WolfyFace's brother is hacking the wimmens and that student gives her a blow fly in a jar. (SERIOUSLY.) The only other time that blow flies come up is when Lucy stages a suicide and tries to use the buggers (see what I did there?) to throw off time of death, but it ultimately doesn't work and no one mentions blow flies again for the rest of this pointless tripe. At the end the Wolfman escapes from Death Row and is in the wind, his brother and brother's ladyfriend get shot by Lucy, and Scarpetta meets up with Benton and realizes he's not dead, and sits down on some stairs to try to take it in. The end.
Really. It ends right there. No postscript, nothing. Just, "Hey, you're dead." "No, I'm not. I had to fake my death to keep you safe." "You're a bastard." Sits down. Blank pages follow. I have questions, dammit! Where's NoPeenWolf? Where did the rest of your crew go? Why do people keep buying Cornwell's books? Why is Cornwell even allowed to write books? Is this the worst book I've ever read? When will the stimulus package pass, and what will be included? Do I have enough toilet bowl cleaner? Why do I still cry at an episode of a cheesy sci-fi show that I have seen over a dozen times? Am I really still wasting time on this review? Not anymore, I'm not.
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