This book is a whole lot of fun and I enjoyed it muchly. People are going around calling it the Latin "Waiting to Exhale" or whatever, and I guess I can see the point, but non-"Latin" folks would enjoy it just as much too, I think. And don't you just love the name?
The story revolves around six old college buddies who meet up every six months or so to dine and dish. The girls are:
* Lauren, an angry newspaper columnist who's got parental issues, a cheating fiance, and takes up with a drug dealer. It's not nearly as bad as you'd think from that description, trust me.
* Rebecca, an uptight woman who runs a magazine and is getting tired of her trust-fund loser husband...and that rich benefactor of the magazine is looking mighty intriguing.
* Usnavys (yes, she's named after what you think she's named after), who vacillates between wanting to date rich men and live the high life, versus settling down with the poor guy she's loved for over a decade.
* Sara, who seems to be living the perfect rich homemaker life...with a husband who's been beating her for years.
* Elizabeth, Sara's best friend, who's up for a major anchor job just as she gets outed from the closet.
* Amber/Cuicatl, a singer who's obsessed with the Mexica movement and finally is making it big...while her "husband" isn't so much yet.
That's essentially the plot- how the girls deal with these issues both alone, with their SO's, and together. While sure, there's some freaky bits with Sara's husband (fair warning there, pregnant folks may not want to read this right off the bat), for the most part it's quite entertaining and heartwarming.
It's the last day of school, and finally, Diana's out of school and activated to full-on Keeper duties. Her first job? At the mall, of course. Specifically, a mall that folks on the Otherside are trying to replicate enough so that one can be switched for the other, then hello, world having one hell of a bad opening in it. Grabbing Claire and her cat (of sorts) Sam, they take off for the Otherside version of mall, where they hang out with a pack of teenage elves and Arthur (yes, that Arthur). Meanwhile, Dean and Austin deal with a man who loves his mummy.
This one's a great deal of fun, and I especially enjoyed Diana developing interest in someone after all of her previous snarkage on her sister. Some folks might have issues with Diana being a bit more featured in this book (they've gone from 90/10 to 60/40 to 40/60 Claire/Diana, I think), but I liked her perspective and attitude on things, and Claire is still in it a great deal. I think it's high time Diana got more involved, too. I did find it kind of weird that two of the main characters were split off from the main action for most of the book, but I think that was to set up something for the next one...which should be interesting, eh?
(A wee bit of speculation spoilage below follows. Avert your eyes!)
Okay, so Claire "breaks the rules" in this one, right? Was there not being able to exit the ONLY consequence of breaking a Big Rule? I think not. That's probably the next plot...
The Claire-and-Dean show continues in the sequel to Summon the Keeper, as Claire continues to fight her attraction to him while still telling herself that if she keeps him around, he'll end up nastily dead. Then again, it turns out that denying her attraction OR giving into it may cause worse disasters...
In this book, Claire and her 17-year-old Keeper sister Diana are trying to track down an inadvertently-created angel-turned-teenage boy and demon-turned teenage girl, both of whom are feeling very confused by their new obstacles to deal with in life, such as hormones and genitalia. Diana's on the angel's side, trying to solve the problem without getting rid of him entirely, while Claire can't track the demon girl without having the angel somehow out of teenage-boy existence. Dilemmas, dilemmas...
I quite like Diana as a character, and was happy to see her more in this book. And you're kept on your toes throughout, bouncing between plot and amusement, especially with the new teenagers.
I'm working on a Keeper's Chronicles online RPG, so I had to reread through the series this weekend. Ergo, you get a review! Woo!
I always have a whole lot of fun reading this series, which features people descended from Lilith (approximately) that are able to use magic and end up spending their time monitoring and patching holes in the fabric of reality. Cousins are the monitors, Keepers are the site-sealers. (For more information, check the RPG link, as I've been typing up shitloads of quotes about it.)
In StK, Keeper Claire Hansen crashes at a ratty B&B, the Elysian Fields Guest House ("Why don't you just call it the Vestibule of Hell?"), overnight while waiting to get to the place where she's been Summoned to deal with a site. When she wakes up, she finds that she's at where she was intended to be, the grouchy old man running the place was a Cousin, and he's left her the house and buggered off. Leaving her to monitor a site where an evil Keeper lies asleep and a hole to Hell has been opened up and seeping since World War 2. Claire, who's more of a take-charge, no-compromise, fix-it-now girl, is unhappy about not being able to shut it down right off the bat, and fears that like most elderly Keepers, she'll be stuck monitoring the site with her talking cat, Austin, forever.
There are, however, compensations. Such as the hunky, Clark-Kent-in-an-apron, 20-year-old caretaker Dean, and a French ghost named Jacques that haunts the place. Not to mention odd guests and an interesting elevator. Course, what does a Keeper do when one of the available men is dead (even if she can ahem, give him flesh for sexual purposes) and the other is (a) too young, and (b) a Bystander who really shouldn't be knowing about this stuff anyway?
While Claire's stuck dealing with magical issues on a day-to-day level, you'd think this would mean that the plot's kinda dull. Nope, somehow it stays interesting no matter what. Of course, the guests certainly liven the joint up, and one can't help but get a laugh at the snarkiness, the way magic works, and Austin. A fun read.
I've gotten into reading the Miles Vorkosigan series of late, but I'm kind of doing it in a weird way: I started with the first book and am now poking around reading the end of the series until the first bunch of books are put into compiliations. Might as well buy in bulk, eh?
I want to review some later books, but given how people go fucking berserk about spoilers (I'm sorry, but some of you DO), I'm not sure how well this would work. Then again, it is an older series and not one of the brand spanking new releases in the last few years, so does anyone care?
Anyway... a spoiler note: Cordelia's Honor consists of (technically) two books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. However, since the author originally intended for them to be one book, the second picks up right where the first left off, and I can't really discuss much without going into plot of the first book, y'all are just going to have to deal with it.
It's like Romeo and Juliet, minus the couple's deaths, they're a lot older, and there's a war on: Cordelia Naismith is from the enlightened, psychologically-obsessed world of Beta Colony, out on a astronomical survey mission when she ends up in the middle of an attempted planetary invasion. Her captor, Aral Vorkosigan, is of the Vor (warrior) class, a nobleman's son, and a bit too close for comfort in line to the Emperor's throne of military-obsessed Barrayar. And yet, somehow, they get along. Go figure. Course, it's kinda hard to court during a war, when a psycho military guy's trying to rape you, and getting sent home to a planet that now thinks you've been drugged into mental mind control.
I didn't like Shards quite as much as Barrayar, mainly because I found Shards rather hard to follow. Course, it is during a military mess and lord knows I don't understand anything military for crap, so YMMV.
I liked Barrayar a lot better, as Cordelia gets to juggle the fun of having a child after getting gassed with poison and an equally poisonous antidote, while there's another war on and dealing with a pregnant in-law to boot. Cordelia is one kickass woman, and one can't help but be sorry that this is the end of books from her major POV. This sets up the plotlines for the rest of the series featuring her in-utero-injured son Miles well, though.
I've already read The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club, so I snapped this one up, especially since as previously mentioned, I like bridal disaster stories.
I don't know what to make of Laurie Notaro. On the one hand, she's clearly a hoot in the scary-disaster kinda way. Really, when your future husband proposes after you've just told him that your ex has gotten gonorrhea... well, what can I say to that? You laugh and laugh a ton.
On the other hand, I keep thinking "oh man, no way can someone be THAT DISGUSTING as she makes herself out to be and still get socialized with in public on occasion." It stretches my imagination that someone could be that weirdly piggy on a constant basis. If she's really as bad as she says she is, well, yikes and oy vey. And I'm kind of confused as to the story format. Since she's a columnist, I would assume that these are her old columns. However, after reading Idiot Girls I'd assumed that this book was more recent columns from like, oh, the last few years or so. Which you'd think, and I'm happily reading along when she casually mentions getting married in 1994. Huh?! So I am kind of lost there.
I think I'm probably taking it too seriously and nitpicking, though.
Anyway, there's lots of fun stuff, from her nephew "the little king" lording it about, to fun with pets, to scary home repair and peeing in the yard, to being on a plane and sitting next to Nancy Sinatra and realizing that she'll HAVE to tell her a story about her grandparents.
Since I'm in the mood after Pamie's book, I bought some more Chick Lit to review around here.
If you like reading about wedding disasters, as I do, you'll have some fun with this one. Lauren's a "junior bridal consultant" who does all the work for her boss and deals with the boss's bitchy cat, not to mention a steady stream of Psycho Brides, crazy ex-girlfriends, and even a parachuting groom. She just got assigned to dealing with one, who's the boss's best friend's niece, and she'd better not screw that one up, right?
Easier said than done when the bride's best friend calls her "a total slut", the bride is desperate to get married, period, and she's uh, trying to boink any male within reach despite this. Meanwhile, Lauren and a member of the wedding party are interested in each other, but... Stuff Comes Up.
As is often said about chick lit, it's a beach read. Fun kinda fluff and amusement. The resolving of the Psycho Bride is just hilarious. I have one major annoyance about the book, but that'll have to go in the extended entry spoiler section. I'll just say that uh, it's got a lot of qualities in common with about every romantic comedy made. Not bad, but in a way, coulda been better, I suspect.
Spoilers below...
I can't vague these spoilers up, really, so yes, there's some big plot revelations here. Or at least as big as they get for a kind of novel like this.
The one thing I think could have been left out to make this better is to lose the "mistaken identity" thing. It seems to be everywhere. It is unfortunately obvious very early on that Nick, Lauren's love interest, is NOT Darla's fiance the way Lauren thinks he is (might have been nice to explain why a mother would name her kids James Nicholas, Nicholas, and Rick), and yet we have to wait till around page 170ish before this is revealed. The fireman's ball kind of blows that entire thing if it's supposed to be a surprise, since (a) Darla is inexplicably absent at a date event, and (b) it's revealed that Heckler Jay is Nick's brother.
Even worse than that, really, is the jealousy plot. Honestly, I don't get why, after Nick has told Lauren that he DOES NOT LIKE DARLA and hasn't slept with her, she automatically assumes he's the brother that knocked Darla up, instead of doing a reasonable asking, "Uh, do Jay and Nick have any other brothers?" I'm not a jealous person, maybe I don't get that automatic-stupid-assumption thing, but GEEZ.
I loved this book. I believe it is in my top 2 now for chick lit favorites, the other being Good In Bed (which I plan on reviewing for here- actually, I did review it for here, with a lot of long quotes, and then my computer crashed upon saving, so it was gone, gone, gone). It is excellent. It isn't quite your typical chick lit plot of "single girl dates frantically looking for boyfriend, gets one" that has been rehashed so many times in so many places that it has become dull, thank the gods. It's about the love story of a girl and her website, and a few other people ;) It's about the nature of fame and how it differs online. It's about what it's like to be 24, in a dull job, having "given up" on your dreams in a sense and trying to figure out what to do otherwise from there.
I related so much. There's a short interview with Pamie at the end of the book that I've got to quote (hell, I'm quoting it all over the place):
"The most autobiographical part of this book for me is Anna's struggle to figure out who she is at this point in her life. I had quite the crisis when I turned twenty-five, realizing I wasn't anything like the person I'd always assumed I'd be when I got there. I wasn't the only one having a mid-twenties crisis either. I have a friend who's eight days younger than I, and when he called on his birthday sobbing, "I hate being twenty-five! Why didn't you tell me it sucks so hard?" I cried back, "I didn't want to scare you! I hate it, too!"
It was a rough year. I didn't know where I was headed or what I wanted. I didn't know who I wanted to be or what kind of relationship I wanted. Once I turned twenty-five, every facet of my life changed."
Brilliant.
I'll have to explain things a bit first: For those oh, three of you who aren't aware of her for one reason or another (the Anne Heche show, the library fundraiser), Pamela "Pamie" Ribon has been doing an online journal off and on for some years. After having enough of the journalling world a few years ago she took stuff down, took some time off, and wrote a fictional book that featured some of her old stuff.
Okay, so, the plot. I should get to that, huh, the actual reviewing bit?
Anna Koval is 24 and has this boring job in a high school library where she doesn't do much beyond sitting at a computer and supervising a school club. To amuse herself and partially as a birthday present for a friend, she starts a webpage and posts funny stories about her past. (The entries are often from her old journal, which isn't online any more except for a few special requests in the most recent entries) She's not entirely honest about things, separating her online persona of "Anna K" and her in certain ways. Like, for example, claiming she's still with the boyfriend who dumped her a year ago. Of course, people who read this are uh, going to think differently...
She surprisingly becomes an instant hit (oh, the joys of Googling the word "Barbie" and seeing what you come up with, I guess), and has fans, gets e-mail, gets invited to a conference, etc. It's not quite how she imagined things might go. On the one hand, she makes friends (of one kind or another) online, people send her sweet messages and gifts, she gets to be a little well known. On the other hand, well... there's the joys of the vaguely stalker-ish friend, people who know her finding her site...ahem...
It's really great. There's times you cry, there's times you laugh, there's times you laugh hysterically. I highly recommend.
I do kind of wonder, though, how people's perceptions of the book vary between those of us who read Pamie back then and those who will pick up this book having not done so. I know I, for one, can't help but read the acknowledgements page and know who half of the people are, read through the book and wonder if so-and-so is based off of so-and-so, wonder if X real life thing influenced Y in the fiction... I must admit this is kind of distracting. And yet, also intriguing in a weird way.
Oh hell, just read it, whether you ever read old Pamie stuff or not.