Khanh the Killjoy

To be honest, Great...wasn't. If you loved The Great Gatsby, you're going to hate this book. If you hated The Great Gatsby, you're going to hate this book. If you have no idea what The Great Gatsby is, you're probably going to hate this book, too, because it's about a bunch of spoiled brat "summering" in the East Hamptons. And absolutely nothing happens in in it.

But if you read The Great Gatsby, you might have already predicted that.



The teens in this book are fucking dumb. At least the characters in The Great Gatsby have some depth, because they're adults. The main characters in this book have brilliant conversations over shit like a fucking swimming pool.

“It looks like it’s got a current,” she said with wonder, looking at Jacinta.
“It does,” Jacinta said. “You should come over to swim. Or just to float.”
“I’ll come every day,” Delilah said, and she almost sounded as if she really meant it.

And they cry over fucking Hermès bags.

On the shelves was a series of similar-looking handbags in a rainbow of colors. Delilah seemed bowled over. She stared at the bags, her blue eyes filling with tears.
“They’re—they’re so beautiful,” she said softly, her voice catching a little. “They’re all Birkins, aren’t they?”

To make it worse, I felt like this book uses gays and lesbians as a plot device. This book is The Great Gatsby with a lesbian twist, and it is completely pointless in that regard. There was no reason to include the lesbians other than shock value. There was no relationship between them, everything that happens between the couples was presented to us as an insider joke, of which we're the outsiders, not understanding what the fuck has just happened between two shared meaning-filled glances. Furthermore, the main character has a hateful lesbian best friend who's not so much as friend as it feels like the "friend" is merely an extension of the main character, used to deliver the scathing words and bitterness and hate that the main character will not say. The best friend is a "butch" lesbian who wants to be called "Skags." Skags is judgmental, she is horny, she is cruel. Skags is an offensive caricature of a lesbian character.

The thing is that The Great Gatsby is a pretty horrible book to begin with (my humble opinion, of course), because it's about a bunch of overindulged, greedy, pampered adults. There's really no getting around the fact that the characters in The Great Gatsby are pretty unlikeable. The book itself wasn't well-received when it was written, it only became popular two decades later during the midst of WWII austerity because people wanted some frivolity in their lives. It's not a premise that translates well.



So why rewrite it? Why make it about a bunch of wealthy, spoiled as all fuck teenagers who spend their entire summer fucking and getting drunk and snorting coke. What's the point? It's like remaking the worst movie in the world, Showgirls, the film. You COULD, but why?! I'm not supposed to like the people in the book, but the book shouldn't make me want take a chainsaw to their face, either.

Except this book is worse, because you can't even get any street cred for reading it. Tell someone, "I fucking hated The Great Gatsby," and you might be met with an eye roll, or a nod of sympathy, because hey, at least it's considered a classic. Tell someone "I read Great," and you'll be met with a blank stare. So you won't even get the bragging rights by reading this book (and really, the bragging right is the only reason for which The Great Gatsby is worth reading). Can you tell I didn't care much for it? I read this hoping to at least be entertained by a modern adaptation.

I wasn't.

The Summary:

I came home from Chicago like a raw-nosed girl crawls sickly and gratefully to her bed at 7 a.m. after a night-long coke and booze bender, wiping snot off her face and bile off a pair of lips she can’t feel. And if you think I’m too young to know what that looks like, you’ve probably never been seventeen years old and spent a summer in the Estate Section in the Hamptons.

This book mirrors The Great Gatsby, using a bunch of alcohol-drinking, coke-snorting trust fund brats. Naomi (~Nick Carraway) is the new-money daughter of a Martha Stewart wannabe (she hates her mother). Doomed *sigh* to spend the summer in the East Hamptons, or the wealthiest stretch of land in the US where the ultra-rich spends their summers, or rather, "summers" as a verb. If only we were all so unlucky.

The reluctant Naomi gets the beautiful and influential Delilah (~Daisy Buchanan) pushed on her by her social-climbing mother. Delilah is the...

...Republican senator’s ridiculously beautiful (but, I’ll admit, shockingly nice) fledgling model daughter.

, her boyfriend Teddy (~Tom Buchanan), and their friend Jeff (Jordan Baker). Jordan eventually meets Jacinta (~Jay Gatsby) at one of her parties. Jacinta...

"I guess she’s famous? Like she writes this famous blog?”

...is a fashion blogger, who is oddly enamored with Delilah. For no fucking reason, they start developing a relationship.

At times I’d catch them staring at each other with what I could only describe as longing. Something was developing between them that went beyond friendship.

Which proceed to an extent where Jacinta starts making dumb fucking romantic plans the way only silly pampered teenagers who can't see beyond their surgically-enhanced noses could.

“...and we’ll have a garden in the backyard to grow some of our food, and of course, if she wants to go to college, she can go to NYU or Columbia, and I’ll keep up with my blog and I’ll be much closer to the designers, being in New York instead of Florida.”

Honestly, the events in this book pretty much parallels The Great Gatsby, with similar characters. There's the girlfriend on the side, Misti (~Myrtle Wilson) a Jersey (or rather, Joisey) girl, and her husband Giovanni (~George Wilson). There are similar events. There are similar revelations.

You will find nothing new in this book besides the newfound urge to commit murder on the characters.

The Characters: No surprises here.

Naomi -> Nick:

“Um,” I tried again. “Isn’t—I mean—we usually go the other way. To East Hampton. When we drive there. I don’t mean you and me, because this is the first time I’ve met you. I just mean, you know, me and whoever is driving me. Which is usually someone I’ve never met before."

Meet Naomi, our narrator. She is an idiot.



She supposedly has straight A's, and "wants" to spend her summer studying for the SATs, but naturally she never fucking gets around to it. She's supposed to be Nick, and she is just the most boring fucking thing in the world. I can't really say much about her at all because she is so fucking dull. She acquires a boyfriend in the book, Jeff. Together, they are the dullest couple in the world.

Naomi is not terribly likeable, either. She hates her mom, and it's a kind of irrational teenage hate of which I can understand, but I can't sympathize. Her mother is a self-made woman. A millionaire who made her way up from the very bottom, and Naomi hates her mother the way only a rebellious, selfish daughter can. Everything her mother does is criticized, from the way she gets Botox, to her social-climbing ways, to her "cougar-like" ways, to how she doesn't eat. Get the fuck over it, your mother is funding your life and your education, you spoiled little bitch.

Jacinta -> Jay Gatsby:

“I heard she’s a distant cousin of Prince William."
“She’s definitely not American—you can tell she’s trying to hide an accent,” a boy in a peach bow tie said to his date (a boy with whom he was holding hands).
“She’s soooooo thin,” a tiny girl in pink ballet flats said to her friend. “I mean, like thinner than L.A. thin.”
“Her parents are dead,” a drunk guy announced to no one in particular. “She’s this orphan heiress.”

Jacinta is our mysterious Jay Gatsby. The wealthy girl with a secret. Gatsby, with all the artificiality and none of the charisma. Jay Gatsby is famous for being a millionaire, Jacinta is famous for being a fashion blogger on her website, thewanted.com. She's pretentious, we can smell her artificiality a mile away. She refers to everyone as "love," and there is zero depth to her whatsoever.

“Well, that’s the whole point, love,” Jacinta said. “Fun. I want everyone to have the most fun they’ve ever had in their entire lives. I want it to just be the most perfect party, the most perfect summer. For everyone.”

Her background is unclear (GASP), and there are really obvious hints that Jacinta's not who she says she is. The hints are as subtle as pairing red plaid leggings with a blue-and-white navy striped top.

“So where did you grow up?”
“Oh, everywhere. All over. Too many places to name,” she replied, and I immediately felt the ember of suspicion in my mind. Given my question, most people would proudly rattle off a list of cities to prove how well traveled they were. Either Jacinta was just humble or she was lying.

Hints. All over the fucking place. And our dumb-as-dirt narrator never fucking trusts her instincts.

Jacinta gets involved in a lesbian relationship, and there's no point to it, because there is absolutely no chemistry between her and the ditzy Delilah.

Delilah -> Daisy:

She is a walking, talking, living, sexy Barbie doll, if Barbie enjoyed skiing in Aspen, shopping in Paris, and smoking copious amounts of marijuana.

In The Great Gatsby, Daisy is a lovely, effervescent character. In this book, her version is less effervescent than well, constantly high. She may be beautiful and nice, but Delilah is as smart as pile of poop excreted from a Kardashian. Those quotes from the beginning of my review? That's from Delilah.

She's not a mean person at all. Delilah is truly nice, despite her depiction as a "Montauk Barbie," but there is zero personality. She is so rarely in the book that it felt like there was no point to her existence and no point to her relationship with Jacinta other than shock value.

Teddy -> Tom Buchanan:

Six feet tall with light brown hair, broad shoulders, and one of those heroic square jaws, Teddy was the kind of thick-necked handsome that starts to get paunchy in college unless it is continually worked out by university-level athletic competition.

Pretty similar to Tom. He's a former child-star who's also the heir to a wealthy oil family. He's a rude ass, a philanderer who cheats on the lovely Delilah with cocktail waitress Misti.

Jeff -> Jordan: I don't have a quote for him, because he's the dullest character in the world. I can't even remember what he looks like. He's completely inoffensive. I just can't remember him at all. In 10 years, after they get married, Jeff and Naomi will be one of those 20-something couples who walk their dog every morning in matching workout gear, have missionary sex on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, watch Law & Order: SVU marathons.

Overall: Yawn. Skip it.

“I love you, Althea—you are so beautiful,” murmured the young man into my ear.
I looked up at him from under my eyelashes. “I love you too,” I confessed. I averted my gaze and added privately, “You are so rich.”
Unfortunately, I apparently said this aloud.

Well, at least she's honest.

This book is reminiscent, however briefly, of Jane Austen's Emma, ruined by a love triangle and no romance. It is just darling, there are funnily-hyphened names like the Bumbershook and Throstletwist, a "Crooked Castle" with a moat (without fish---they've all been eaten), and a Happily-Ever-After. Unfortunately, it was bogged down by the lack of romance. This would ordinarily be a good thing, except, well, I read this book wanting a romance. Imagine that!

Snow will sometimes fall in June. Khanh will occasionally seek romance. Yes, it does occur, albeit rarely.

There is a love triangle in this book, and it pisses me off because there is no case for either of the young men involved. One is the perfect man, a handsome young Baron, a posher Mr. Bingley from Pride and Prejudice, if you will. The other a brusque, rude, ill-mannered jerk, the Baron's commoner cousin. The main character, the very Emma-like Althea has to choose between the two. This is a seriously sweet book, Althea is a very likeable character; she is vain, but completely pragmatic, she has to be, why?

The Summary:

Our only hope was in marriage. Mine.

The lovely Althea Crawley hasn't a single pence to her name, therefore it comes as a rather monumental task for her to save their ancestral home. Or rather, ancestral wreck. Althea's wildly romantic grandfather built a castle by the sea only to see it crumble into dust and disrepair after he squandered his entire fortune on the castle, leaving nothing to the castle's upkeep---or his heirs. The castle may look like a wedding cake threw up on Camelot.

Indeed, much of the structure was nonfunctional in any but a decorative sense, with winding stone stairs leading to nowhere, murder holes so improperly placed that they could pose no danger even to the most oblivious of intruders, and a hodgepodge of towers and battlements sticking out at random.

But it's their family home, and Althea is determined to keep it in the family. By whatever means necessary. And that includes some pretty unpleasant means.

“Perhaps I should consider an elderly suitor,” I mused. “They are more easily managed, I believe. And they often have defective hearing, which might be quite an advantage.”

Althea is not alone, she's got a loving mother, a four-year old brother, and two wealthy (but unhelpful in any way) stepsisters named Prudence and Charity.

Hint: the stepsisters are neither prudent nor charitable.

Althea's one fault is that she has a tendency to speak before she thinks. Thus, the failed marriage proposal at the beginning of this review, but fear not, for Lord Boring is coming into town. Or rather, into Lesser Hoo. Lord Boring is the rather unfortunate title of a young Baron named Simon Westing. He's, well, perfect! Money, a title, and handsome to boot.

The knowledge that he owned this imposing house and extensive property could only enhance his fine face and figure, which were further flattered by his faultless evening dress.

In contrast, his cousin, Frederick is a commoner, he's in BUSINESS (so lower-class), he's rude, ill-mannered, and to top it off...

He was an amazingly unattractive man.
It was the black scowl he bestowed on my mother and me that ruined his looks and rendered him repellent.

So now it's looking interesting. And to top it off, there's the Marquess. He's a little bit too old for her, and he's a peer. It doesn't look like Althea has much of a chance with the Marquess.

If he did remarry, it would be expected that he would choose a woman from one of the great families of England, not an impoverished young girl from the back of beyond in a dilapidated castle by the edge of the North Sea.

But one thing's for certain.

Life in little Lesser Hoo had become much more interesting of late.

Similarities to Emma:

Everyone would be much better off if I arranged matters to suit myself.
Let them find out the solution themselves. With a little assistance from me, of course.

Emma is beautiful, rich, and without a care in the world. Althea's not that carefree. The only thing they have in common is their beauty and their tendency to take over peoples' lives.

Althea didn't start off that way. She began the story with one purpose, to find an advantageous marriage. Slowly she realizes that she needs to manipulate the situation to get her stepsisters away, to get alone time with Lord Boring, which is simply impossible, since Frederick seems to be underfoot ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

“Why, oh why does His Lordship suffer the company of that odious man?”

The more new people she meets, the more plans she has in mind. If she likes a friend, she feels the need to "help" that friend along with their relationship. Of course, everything should work out in Althea's interest first, but she's still got everyone's best interest at heart! Does it come as a surprise at all that Althea makes a series of regrettable decisions?

I stared at her, stricken. What had I done?

Althea's Beauty: She is 17, she is beautiful, but her beauty is never directly shown in the book. I don't even know what she looks like, all we know is that she is tremendously lovely. She knows it, she wields her beauty with pride. Althea's beauty is the only thing she has.

I had always known, ever since I was thirteen years old and men first began to look at me, that beauty was power, the only real power (other than cash in hand) that a woman could possess. I knew it was transitory, and must be used shrewdly and well in the few years it lasted.

She uses her beauty to find a wealthy partner, but she HAS to, so that's fine with me. She is never cruel, she never hates people needlessly. She understands that looks are only superficial, and they do not affect the person beneath. She befriends a plain girl, Miss Vincy, without ever judging her appearance.

She was a good and gentle creature, as well as a talented and intelligent woman, who would make the Baron a better wife than I. Beauty is a coin squandered by time, but Miss Vincy’s virtues would last throughout her life.

The Romance: The most frustrating thing about the book, because there was so little of it. Lord Boring is rather...boring, it's true. There is nothing wrong with him, and that was what bothered me. There was nothing wrong with Lord Boring, so why is the book trying to enforce a love triangle on us?! Compared to him, Frederick was a jerk. He constantly refers to Althea as "Miss Hrrm" because he can't be fucked to remember what her last name is. He is shoddily dressed, he can't be fucked to wear normal clothing at a ball. He goes around desecrating her ancestral home...

“These portraits ought to be cleaned,” he said, ignoring my suggestion and fiddling with the painting of the little dog. “I believe that a penknife inserted here under the frame would allow us to see—”
“Mr. Fredericks!” I cried. “Please!"

He pokes around ancient monuments around her home, like why the FUCK would you try to screw around with something like Stonehenge?! Frederick almost gets her brother and dog killed, only to complain about losing his boots in the process of saving them.

“Be careful of those,” Mr. Fredericks instructed, having thrust the second boot square into my face. “They cost a monstrous sum of money. No, don’t throw them, you’ll scratch the leather.”

Sure, he saves them, but here's the thing, it was HIS neglect that endangered them in the first place.

Their romance isn't a romance in the traditional sense, not in the Regency sense. There's a lot of arguments and a lot of conflicts without a whole lot of emotion, so that things don't feel realistic when they eventually realize their feelings for one another. I wanted a sweet romance, but I just didn't get any of that. This book did surprise me, I didn't expect things to happen the way they did, so props for that, but otherwise, this is rather a disappointment, however cute it was.

Warning: Long science-related rage rant ahead >_<

Putting my trust in James would make me just as dumb. I couldn’t let him get to me no matter how amazing his abs were. Still, that sadness in his eyes—

Look, you fucking moron, a serial killer could have a sad look in his eyes right before he kills you and mounts you. Hopefully mounting in the taxidermy sense and not the sexual sense, but whatever.

I had hoped that a YA sci-fi written by someone with a Ph.D would make sense. I was tragically wrong.

This is probably one of the most outrageously nonsensical dystopian/post-apocalyptic setting I've ever read. The plot is barely worth mentioning, because it stems from one Too-Stupid-To-Live girl's idiotic inability to keep her fucking mouth shut. The book contains pseudo-science that might be believable to a 6th grader. It throws a bunch of abstract scientific bullshit at you in the hopes that something will eventually stick. The setting just doesn't make any sense on top of the inconsistencies. I will go over the setting in excruciating, profanity-filled details in a bit, but let me give you a taste of why this book is so fucking dumb.

It is 300 years in the future. We have almost no oxygen. The oceans have all boiled away. There is no water; water only exists through an artificial system that gathers up water molecules in the air and condenses it into actual drinking water. Because of this, the main character lives on...

"...one cup of water a day."

Let me tell you something. That's bullshit. A human cannot live on one cup of water a day. I don't care if you do nothing in your day but lie in bed, you still need a hell of a lot more water than that. Try 3 liters (or roughly 3 quarts) of water a day. One cup is nothing. The human body can last weeks without food, but only days without water. ONE cup of water (8 ounces) a day doesn't fucking cut it. It's a biological fact.

You lose water through breathing, you lose water through your pores. It's called insensible water loss. You don't necessary see yourself sweating, but rest assured, your pores are constantly breathing water. That's why we wear cotton clothes instead of plastic clothes. Our bodies are constantly losing water and we need to ventilate.

AND YET in the middle of all this water conservation, the people in this book still sweat constantly. Every other chapter is a mention of how someone is drenched in sweat (because Earth's temperature is so hot), and you know, when you're trying to conserve water within your body, you really shouldn't be fucking exercising until you're dripping in sweat.

“Sorry, I thought I’d get a run in before tonight. Did you want to use it?” Although he looked like he’d been running for hours, he barely sounded winded.

And I don't know if you've ever ran for 45 minutes at a gym, but one cup of water a day isn't going to fucking cut it, particularly not on a futuristic treadmill.

...forty-five minutes a day on the motion machine.

The Summary:

“That’s why he made sure [the guns] wouldn’t work for anyone but me.”
Markus looked surprised by my last statement. Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have mentioned that part.

This book wouldn't have happened but for Tora's inability to keep her fucking mouth shut.

It is 300 years in the future. The sun's pretty much went boom. There's no oxygen, no water. And Tora might be...

...the last girl on Earth

She is an orphan, living in a hideout outside of the pod cities. Her father was a brilliant scientist who designed a bunch of dangerous weapons for the government (the Consulate) only to regret it. The thing is that the weapons are pretty much useless because Tora is the only one who can use them. So the future is hopeless, Tora's running out of air, she's thinking of Plan B (killing herself) when a knock on the door comes. It's a baddie, Markus. Markus wants the weapons that her father designed.

Instead of lying to him or telling him the weapons don't work, or SOMETHING, Tora decides to be a motherfucking moron and tell Markus that she's the only one who can use the deadly weapons.

I wanted to kick myself for telling him about being the sole person who could fire them.

And now after moping and whining (50% of this book is Tora doing absolutely nothing but moping and whining), Markus has come back. WITH COMPANY.

So Tora hears suspicious noises on her underground bunker's door. Instead of like, fucking shutting herself in like what you should do if you suspect there's an intruder, SHE FUCKING GOES OUTSIDE (into oven-like temperature) TO CHECK!

Something was definitely hitting the door. My heart raced. This could go very badly, but I didn’t make it to seventeen by being an apocawuss. I braced myself, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

MOTHERFUCKING IDIOT. So now it's a 5 vs one fight, and to make it worse, there's YET another party shooting at them. And NOW instead of running the fuck away back into the house like she should have done in the first fucking place, Tora allows the intruders to break into her bunker for safety.

Markus shrugged and had the nerve to smirk at me. “Guess we’re all on the same side now.”

But it's ok, because one of the people trying to kill Tora is James. Dreamy, dreamy James. Who just tried to kill her, but who cares, he's so hot!

His body was solid muscle. Sweat dripped down his face, his chest, his arms … he wasn’t just sort of cute, he was hot.

Her stomach goes "fluttering." Her breath catches.

James and Tora get to know each other. She should be angry with him. But the sadness in his eyes...and...

I should be angry with him, yet a small part of me liked the look on his face.

They exchange Sad Life Stories (tm) (after he tries to kill her).

“They said that the world didn’t need another worthless child to feed and they shot her, her arms still wrapped around me.”

;_;

Tora finds multiple reasons to lift her shirt off for James. Like finding a place to hide a gun.

I turned away and lifted my shirt.

And check on the state of her rib injury.

I shifted my satchel over to the other side, and lifted my shirt up a little.

And play doctor with each other.

Aside from my panties, the only things under this flimsy excuse of a gown were bandages.
“You put me in this gown?”

Will James and Tora ever find a non-medical excuse to take each other's clothes off?Both his hands slid down toward my hips and his lips almost touched mine. I was no doctor but this was definitely not part of any medical exam I’d ever seen.Or will Alec, the boy with the puppy, get in the way of their One Twoo Wuv?!

Alec couldn’t die. Somebody as decent as him had to live. He saved the last dog on the planet. Tears welled in my eyes.

The Setting: I'm going to try to type this out without laughing. 300 years ago, the sun went boom because an asteroid hit the earth but we deflected it and it hit the sun instead (?! that's a long fucking distance for an asteroid to travel, damn, son!) but the asteroid contained Dark Matter so it made the sun go BOOM and there goes life on Earth as we know it.

Nope. Failed. BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA AHAHAH OH MY DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!



Ok, the "asteroid" was the size of the moon. 300 years ago is OUR PRESENT DAY. You mind telling us how the fuck we got the technology to launch a rocket that could deflect a giant asteroid into the sun? It's a long fucking way. Furthermore, a moon-sized asteroid would probably be predicted like HUNDREDS OF YEARS ahead of time, so why did it suddenly just fucking happen?! Dark matter inside an asteroid? PLEASE! Dark matter is an energy. It's a concept! It's not like a black hole, it doesn't make things explode. Dark matter just a term to explain things that we cannot actually find electromagnetically, like gravity. IT'S NOT GOING TO CAUSE THE SUN TO GO BOOM. NOT LIKE THIS.

An unexpected reaction occurred and the sun kicked into hyperdrive. It began burning hydrogen like crazy, and before anyone could comprehend what had happened, the helium in the core was exhausted.

So the sun did went boom, against all fucking odds. And now there's no oxygen on earth (?! OMG THE HEAT TOOK AWAY ALL THE OXYGEN TOO?!) and now there are no water because ALL THE SEAS BOILED AWAY. Fuck evaporation, right? Gee, the water cycle. I WONDER WHERE ALL THE FUCKING WATER MOLECULES WENT WHEN IT EVAPORATED AND DIDN'T GO OFF THE EARTH.



So the earth is hot, and if you go outside, expect to catch fire.

Please don’t let me catch fire.

There's no water, but there's a technology designed to harvest motherfucking water molecules from the air. Hmm, WHAT ABOUT THAT WATER CYCLE, HUH?!

When the ponds, lakes, and finally, the oceans had boiled and evaporated, the Consulate scientists came through with technology allowing us to glean the precious water molecules from the atmosphere.
The technology was termed Water in Air Recycling, W.A.R.

And WAR SUCKS, because you can only get enough for one cup of water per person a day. Right. Because the human body can totally live on that.

And now the oceans are gone, the animals and plants are gone, we live on gel foods. There are Pod Houses inside Pod Cities. The United States is now a Sector 5, and we're all ONE BIG HAPPY CONTINENT NOW because the oceans don't exist anymore. We have one common currency. We have one common language (which is English. So sorry, France) but somehow Tora is a rebel because she loves dropping Spanish phrases into her vocabulary.

The sun was cooking me from the inside out. I was muy caliente, and not in the good way.
Your pink swimsuit looks muy bonita on you, she would tell me. We felt like rebels using Spanish now that it was supposed to be extinct too. Gracias, I’d respond.

What do you call a Spanish weabo?

Tora.

There is hyperdrive speed technology, we can travel to other galaxies, and in fact, we have found a planet that's EXACTLY LIKE OUR OWN. In the solar system Hydrus (Hydro, for water, get it?!?!?!11111). It's exactly like Earth. How very convenient.

Yes, it’s like Earth, minus the astronomical temperatures. Caelia’s sun is where ours was back before the ’roid hit it.” Markus smashed his fist into his palm like I needed a visual. He smirked. “People are already soaking up the rays—right next to the oceans.”

But don't get your hopes up, because we don't get to see anything except the inside of a bunker and a very boring ship.

Oh, and The Ultra Secret Weapon? It's powered by some New Agey HUMAN VIBRATIONS stuff. Sorry, but I have to laugh. I know it's possible, but I can't think back to my high school physics class without laughing at the concept of humans vibrating at a frequency to power a weapon.

The Plot: There was essentially no plot. Very little happens in the book besides Tora being a motherfucking idiot and pretending that she's Under The Sea.

I lay down and pretended to be submerged in the cool depths as the waves crashed above me. It was somehow harder to catch my breath down here on the imaginary ocean floor. After another minute, the need for oxygen overwhelmed me. I must have done a better job visualizing than I thought.

Or else moping and whining and giving us infodump after infodump on this post-apocalyptic world that doesn't make any fucking sense. The romance is forced, as expected, the writing is underwhelming.

Furthermore: WHY NOT JUST KILL HERSELF?! Sorry, but Tora ALREADY had a plan to kill herself because her world is about to end anyway. So she learns that she is the key to a destructive weapon, nobody can use it but her, and people can use her to destroy people, and her morals won't let her give the weapons away. So why not just kill yourself and save the trouble? Sorry if this sounds callous, but if you're already suicidal and millions of lives could be destroyed by a weapon you can fire, then why not? Ugh.

There's also girl-on-girl hate. There is one other girl in this book, and man, is she portrayed to be a jerk, a slut, a sharp-cheeked, bird-faced bitch who sits on guys' laps and does nothing except make dumb plans that gets overthrown by our beautiful, fantastic Tora.

Skip this book.

Once again, my chest tightened, and there was that weird fluttering sensation that was like butterflies. But it couldn’t be butterflies. I did not have butterflies over David Stark.

25% of the way in, I was sure I would give this book a 4, but I ended up wanting to fling this book at Harper's head. This book may be really, really cute, but overall, it's just an overextended love triangle without much of a plot. Nothing of importance happens in this book.



This was not a bad book by any means. I absolutely adored the main character, the relationships and the friendships were wonderfully written, the high school kids were just plain cute. But seriously, there was no fucking point to the love triangle, and I wanted to bash my head in every time the WONDERFUL BESTEST BOYFRIEND EVER Ryan clashed with BROODING HIPSTER ASSHOLE (with a heart of gold) David.

Not since Unearthly has a love triangle been so dragged out to agonizing nonresolution until the very fucking end. There was no fucking point to this love triangle. Why did it need a love triangle? Why could she not protect one guy and be his friend while remaining with her current boyfriend?! Why?!

If you don't mind the love triangle, I would recommend this book, because it was seriously sweet, as in the "I just ate a half pound of French chocolate truffles, but who cares, bitches, they're TRUFFLES!" sort of sweet. It was the good kind of sweetness. This book is so lighthearted and sweet. But that love triangle, man!

The Summary:

“So, Harper Jane Price. Are you ready to accept your destiny?”

It's silly, but if Harper hadn't forgotten her lip gloss, this never would have happened.

Harper Jane Price, Southern Belle extraordinaire, is perfect. She has a great life (let's not talk about her dead sister), a loving, wonderful boyfriend Ryan, fantastic friends, adoring parents, and a bright future.

Southern Belles are beautiful on the surface, sure, but what you might fail to notice upon first glance is that they have a backbone made of steel. Harper is one of those "I don't know how she does it" type of gal. Great grades, school president, popular, admired. Until the night it all starts to unravel. Until the night she forgot her lipgloss at the homecoming dance. Because then she had to borrow her friend's lip gloss. Because she stepped into the bathroom, only to encounter her school janitor, Mr. Hall, bloody and battered.

His breath was coming out in short gasps, and there was a dark red stain spreading across his expansive belly. There was no doubt in my mind that he was dying.

Before dying, Mr. Hall breathes an ice-cold breath of air into Harper's lungs (ew), and whispers to her...

“Look after him, okay?” he said, his eyes looking glazed again. “Make sure he’s...he’s safe.”

WTF?! So there's Harper, in her Homecoming outfit (which cost over $1k), hovering over a dead man. SHIT. And to make it worse, at that moment, her history teacher barges in. Not only does he insult her...

“I really can’t think of a worse choice,” he said, still smiling, “than the bimbo who wrote a paper on the history of shoes for my class.”

But he tries to kill her!! He doesn't exactly succeed, because somehow Harper finds the strength in herself to kick his ass.

The sword was still poised in the air when I came to an abrupt stop and sunk the heel into his throat, right under his jaw.

He really shouldn't have called her a bimbo.

So crap, what the fuck is all this?! Before he died, Mr. Hall muttered something about a "Pal," and some vague shit about protection. After Googling this shit, Harper theorizes that the "Pal" means Paladin (Thank you, World of Warcraft, really!). So the only thing Harper has to figure out now is who she's meant to protect.

Mr. Hall hadn’t been a superhero. He’d been a Paladin, and that was . . . different, right? And what—or who—had been his noble cause?
What was mine?

She'll figure it out eventually. Meanwhile, there's school to deal with. Not to mention asshole hipster extraordinaire David Stark. Everyone has a thorn in their life, and David Stark is Harper's pain in the ass. He's the only skinny-jean wearing hipster in the entire school, and ever since childhood, David's mission has been to take Harper down. Currently, he's on the school paper, writing vicious articles about her, and this latest one is the last fucking straw.

Under the picture of me and Bee, there was a smaller caption: Homecoming Queen misses crowning under mysterious circumstances. My eyes darted over the rest of the article as my heart started pounding. “...hiding in the boys’ room...violently ill...tension between the ‘Queen Bee’ and her underling, Bee Franklin...this reporter...”

Harper Price is PISSED, and she's going to murder that asshole. Except she can't.

Whatever the reason, my right hand shot up to slap David Stark across the face.
Half an inch from David’s cheek, my hand stopped in midair. And it wasn’t because I had some crisis of conscience, either. It was like my hand hit an invisible wall right by his head.

Well, fuck. It turns out that Harper is a Paladin chosen to protect David. And as much as she hates him, she can't hurt him. In fact, she has to protect him with her life. What will become of Harper's life? Her relationship with her friends, her wonderful boyfriend? Is she prepared to give it all up to protect David?

I withdrew my hand. “No, thank you.”
Saylor and David both stared.
“I appreciate your offer very much,” I continued. “But I’m afraid I have to refuse.”

Well, we all know that it's not that simple. But Harper already has so much on her plate. How is she going to deal with David...while trying to maintain her relationship with Ryan?!

“But you’re always arguing with him. Or talking about him. Or competing with him. And sometimes I wonder how you can be so obsessed with someone you supposedly hate.”

And Ryan is so understanding. He's trying to understand WHY she's spending so much time away from him. Harper is so busy sneaking around with David talking about being a Paladin that she just doesn't have any time for the perfect Ryan anymore. And Ryan really is perfect.

“I love you,” he said at last. “You know that. But it’s...it’s like we’re speaking two different languages most of the time. Harper.” He tugged on my hand. “If there’s something going on with you, you can tell me, okay?”

Even as he suspects something's going on between David and his girlfriend...

“You guys seemed pretty...intense yesterday,” Ryan said, dropping my hand.
“Yeah, we were intensely arguing over him writing that stupid article,” I said even as I had a sudden vision of me and David, laughing in his car. Hugging. God, we had hugged.

THAT'S THE ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK.

The Premise: The Paladin thing is just...strange. This is pretty original, in that I've rarely seen the concept of the Paladin used, and to be honest...it doesn't quite work. It's just a protector, nothing more. Someone assigned to protect a person, and the concept was not convincing. The mythology behind it wasn't well-drawn enough to be truly attractive, and overall, I just found the concept rather baffling. This book completely lacks Hex Hall's magic in that sense. It is an urban fantasy that's too light on the fantasy, with almost no relevant action at all.

Harper: She is just a fabulous narrator.



The quintessential Steel Magnolia. She reminds me a little bit of Mac in the Fever series. Before you go running away, I have to make a case for Harper. She is young, she is 17, and she is so utterly competent. Think of Harper as Mac 4.0. Harper has none of Mac's immaturity, on the contrary, Harper is astoundingly capable. She is cheerleader, class president, Homecoming organizer, she's in the Future Business Leaders of America, she's got great grades, she's got a gentle nature, she holds it all together. Most of it had to do with the fact that she's trying to get over her sister's death. Harper organizes away her grief with perfection. So much that her parents worry about her.

And the next time I did school stuff in the middle of the night, I just did it in my closet with the door locked. Honestly, what is wrong with this country when striving for excellence means you need antidepressants?

I absolutely loved Harper. She is never judgmental, she is a Southern Belle with none of the annoying characteristics, and honestly, I hate to generalize, but if you've got an Y chromosome, you're probably not going to like this book because Harper is so adorably girly.

THE MOTHEREFFING LOVE TRIANGLE:

Ryan was a good guy. He always had been.

Harper has a boyfriend, Ryan, and he is absolutely perfect. Handsome, smart, he has supported her throughout her family tragedy. He has stood by her while she joins 1000000 school committees, waiting patiently for her to make time for him. She's been in love with Ryan since 3rd grade, and it took her 6 years to get him. They've been dating for a couple of years, and Ryan is an absolute darling. He is an utter gentleman.

He lowered his head and kissed me, albeit pretty chastely. PDA is vile, and Ryan, being my Perfect Boyfriend, knows how I feel about it.

He gets along with her friends.

“Ladies,” Ryan said, nodding at Amanda, Abigail, and Mary Beth. “Let me guess. Y’all are...plotting world domination?”
“No,” Amanda told him, deadly serious. “We’re talking about Cotillion.”
“Ah, world domination, Cotillion. Same difference,” Ryan replied with an easy grin, and this time, all three girls giggled, even Amanda.

Her parents adore him. He truly is a wonderful guy. He's concerned about her, about all the pressures Harper places on herself.

And Harper adores him. Until David Stark steps into the picture.

She and David have known each other since they were children, too, it's a small Southern town, y'all. Harper and David have been each others' nemesis their entire lives, since the cradle, almost.

He and I had loathed each other since kindergarten. Heck, even before that. Mom says he’s the only baby I ever bit in daycare.

It followed through to middle school.

“I’m sure you’d hate to miss everyone’s felicitations.”
David had beaten me in the final round of our sixth-grade spelling bee with that word and now, all these years later, he still tried to drop it into conversation whenever he could.

He's taken to writing vicious articles attacking her leadership in school, and implying that she was pregnant. But the instant Harper gets "assigned" to protect him...suddenly, something fucking changes!

For one horrifying second, I thought he was going to kiss me. I wasn’t really sure how I’d react if he did.
But it was only a hug. And if I maybe spent a second or two thinking that he actually smelled really nice, or that he was much more solid than he appeared, so what?

AND SO THE APOCALYPSE BEGINS. Who will it be? Will it be Ryan, lovely boyfriend Ryan who's waiting patiently on the side while Harper gets all her school shit and secret Paladin shit together? Or will it be David?!

Still, I had to admit, yellow was a good color on him. It brought out the gold in his hair, and—
I stopped myself. The gold in his hair? Since when did I care about David.

SO WHO WILL SHE MOTHERFUCKING CHOOSE?! Wonderful, neglected Ryan, or asshole-with-a-heart David? And will she ever stop being a motherfucking terrible girlfriend?!

“But, God, Harper, sometimes I feel like your whole life is a checklist, and I am way down at the bottom. And, you know, every once in awhile, you throw me a bone to keep me happy.”
I flinched at that, hard. Not only because it was insulting, but because it was way too close to the truth.

Get a grip, Jenna, I tell myself furiously. People’s lives depend on you tomorrow, and all you can think about is snogging Max.

As a child, I read almost the entire Baby Sitter's Club books. Almost 20 years later, I am rather bemused and amused to realize that I've essentially just read another story about babysitting. Sure, the premise is different, there's a dystopian future (and by dystopian, I mean the let's-throw-random-dystopian-element-crap-at-a-wall-and-see-what-sticks), but really, this is a story about a "tough" teenage girl who acts, more or less, as a babysitter to a delicate, fainting, stammering, blushing little boy.

‘Shut up,’ he says. ‘I hate you. I HATE YOU!’

Who throws one hell of a tantrum.

You might have noticed I used quotation marks for the word "tough." That's because this girl is a bad-ass, someone who is seriously kick ass. Only she shows no evidence of it in the book. Listen, I don't give a flying fuck if you proclaim yourself to be the biggest, baddest bitch in the whole wide fucking dystopian universe if you don't prove yourself. If you constantly quake in your fucking boots, if you constantly faint, if you're constantly fucking saved by the act of deus ex fucking machina, you ain't shit to me, ok?

If you read nothing else of my review, this is what I want you to know about this book. It is a long fucking book with a long fucking nonsensical plot.

1. The dystopian world is generic dystopian bullshit
2. There is a self-proclaimed tough girl who does nothing to prove it. She takes on three identities in this book. She is Jenna, then "Mia," then "Jessica"
3. There is a horrifying amount of deus ex machina, as in "OH MY GOD WE'RE GOING TO DIE IN 2 SECONDS. Oh wait, we're suddenly saved for some fucking reason!11!! Thank you God, Allah, Oprah, and that one Jewish dude!" kind of crap
4. There's a boy who does absolutely fucking nothing for the plot but look cute
5. There is no relationship building whatsoever

The Summary:

Part I: Jenna Strong

‘What’re you in here for, anyway?’ he mumbles thickly.
‘I killed my parents.’

And she never shows a single moment of remorse.

It is the year 2113 in England, now known as the IRB, or the Independent Republic of Britain. ACID is the police force that reigns supreme. Two years ago, Jenna Strong was a pampered, spoiled girl living in the Upper part of London, the wealthiest parts. She was to be LifePartnered (married) soon, at age 16. She had everything going for her. Until she killed her parents.

Two years later, Jenna is 16, and sentenced to a maximum security prison for their murder. No longer a spoiled, soft girl, Jenna is now pure steel. She has shaved her head, her body is tight with muscles, and she is one bad bitch. Jenna thinks she's going to rot in prison until a riot breaks out, and her friend, Dr. Fisher died saving her. For such a big, bad-ass girl, Jenna faints.

My head lolls to the side and darkness rolls over my vision like a wave.

Part II: Mia Richardson:

The face that stares back at me has brown eyes instead of grey. The nose is smaller, the chin rounder. The cheekbones are more pronounced. And all my scars are gone.
I’m almost pretty, for God’s sake.

Well, isn't that just lovely? Jenna is now rescued from prison, AND given an insta-makeover courtesy of plastic surgery within ONE day. She's even got her gorgeous hair back! In ONE day. Only now Jenna isn't Jenna anymore. She's involved in some kind of Super Secret Plan by the people who rescued her, and they won't tell her what.

The only problem is that Jenna Strong is now wanted by ACID for the murder of Dr. Fisher, the person who helped her escape from prison. Falsely implicated for his death, and still wanted for the murder of her parents, Jenna now has to claim a new face, a new identity. Jenna must now become "Mia".

And her life sucks. And her new pretend LifePartner sucks. Until she sees Max Fisher in the news. Max is the son of the late Dr. Fisher, and he, along with everyone, thinks Jenna murdered his dad. But "Mia" can't help but fantasize about him anyway when she sees his picture in the news despite knowing nothing about him.

He’s not handsome, exactly, but he looks friendly and normal and nice; the sort of guy, if you were lucky enough to get Partnered to him, you could imagine curling up with and talking to until the small hours of the morning, and not even noticing what time it was.

D'aww, isn't that just fucking cute. Until ever-so-conveniently, Max runs into her, tries to rob her in the world's most pitiful robbery attempt.

‘I – just – needed – some – stuff,’ he chokes.

And promptly faints.

As he lurches towards me his eyes roll back in his head and his legs fold underneath him like a puppet that has just had its strings cut.

Apparently, Max is an accidental drug addict. He didn't MEAN to become an addict, he was forced to be one (long story). And now "Mia" is his babysitter. Max is useless, because he's a recovering drug addict.

And he doesn't know that "Mia" is really Jenna, the one who killed his dad. Still, she babysits him, they run away together when ACID comes close. "Mia" mothers Max's weak, sickly ass.

He’s fever-hot. Crap. Maybe he hasn’t just got a cold.
‘I’m sorry,’ he croaks.
‘Don’t worry about it. You can’t help being ill,’ I say.

Only to have him turn completely against her when he discovers her true identity.

‘You lying, murdering bitch.’ His eyes are shining with fury and hate. ‘All this time, I thought you were helping me. I thought you cared. And it was all lies.’

So much for being grateful. And when ACID agents catch up to them, it's "Mia's" ass that Max hands them on a platter.

‘You don’t want me!’ he yells. ‘You want her! She’s a murderer!’

Ah, young love! Such loyalty!

Part II: Jessica Stone: And now "Mia" is in prison. Falsely accused of yet another crime she hasn't done. But she's not worried about her impending death.

He’ll never know, now, how much I care about him. I want that moment back where he tried to kiss me. And this time, I want to let him, and I want to kiss him back.
And knowing I’ll never have that again makes me want to curl into a ball and howl.

Also known as: priorities, Y DO U NOT HAZ THEM?!

Jenna "Mia" is now revealed to be Jenna. She has two choices. Death, or a new identity, with an erased memory to go along with it. She chooses the latter. She is now "Jessica Stone." Spoiled, pampered Upper girl, assigned a new LifePartner, going about her business, blissfully free of all worries.

But she can't help herself. She can't stop thinking about Max! Poor, poor Max! Poor Max who fucking sold her out! She needs to rescue him from prison! But wait! Alas, her fate is not her own. Apparently the people who rescued her in the beginning (remember them? Like 1000 fucking years ago that was) has a Big Secret Plan all along! (where the FUCK were they?!) They are going to overthrow ACID. They're going to bring freeeeeeedom to the whole fucking Former United Kingdom. And they need Jenna Mia Jessica Jenna's help! All right! Now we're getting somewhere.

Except...what about Max?

;_______________;

So these Secret Super Special Rescuing Agent People have two choices. They can either:

1. Save the world

or

2. Save Max

OH, GEE. I WONDER WHICH OPTION OUR BRAVE FUCKING JESSICA MIA JENNA IS GOING TO CHOOOSE!!1!11ONE!1111

‘So why can’t they rescue Max, then?’
‘It’s too risky. If any of the FREE operatives there were to even try to make contact with Max, our cover could be blown.’
‘That’s so wrong!’ I cry.

The Setting: Also known as: WUT? Ok, so it's the year 2113. It's like 100 fucking years in the future. And England is pretty fucking unrecognizable. There's random ass bank collapses and shit and 53 fucking years ago, some people decided to take over England and restore morality to allllllllllll the peepz!

So now we have the Independent Republic of Britain. Where girls are forced to get married at 16. Where marriage is no longer known as marriage but as "LifePartnered." Where there are public "LifePartner" ceremonies with big beautiful frilly fucking pricy dresses like a fucking quinceaneara or whatever they call it---party (I took French, not Spanish, ok?!). You have to apply for and get permission to have a child. There are fucking walls everywhere. There are Outer parts of London, Middle parts of London, and Upper parts, for lower, middle, upper classes.

And why do people get to be in Upper levels of London?

‘Because we deserve it,’ Dad told me.

Oh. Makes perfect fucking sense -_-

What the fuck?! How did things change so drastically? I mean, what the fuck is with the no-marriage-LifePartner shit, what's with the getting married---oh, excuse me, LifePartnered at 16?! How the FUCK did that come about? I'm not saying that things can't drastically change in 50 years, I mean, look at Afghanistan. Back in the 60s the women in Afghanistan were wearing miniskirts and going to colleges and partying, and look at them now. But there was an actual basis for change, there were explanations, their country turned to ultra-conservative based on their religion. Are you trying to tell me that a Western country would go for that shit without giving me an adequate explanation?!

Mia/Jenna/Jessica: Idiocy. Jenna is sold to us as a tough chick, but whatever, I don't see it. Throughout the book, Jenna is constantly saved by the act of God, or deus ex machina. She gets into a tough spot with an ACID officer. BAM, someone distracts the officer so that she can escape. She almost gets caught by another team of officers. OH WHOOPS THE OFFICERS JUST WALK RIGHT BY HER HIDING SPOT BECAUSE THEY DON'T THINK SHE COULD POSSIBLY HIDE THERE. Oh, they're about to get caught again! BOOM! Strangers to the rescue. Mia's about to die! AAAAAAAAAAH SHIT oh wait no, someone dies to save her life.

Fucking spare me, please.

All Mia does throughout the book is quiver, shake, quake in her pants, and regret not kissing Max. Her acts of heroism occurs so infrequently and when she finally does pull off some shit, it's so fucking improbable that I can't buy it. It's basically: GIRL PULLS OFF IDIOTIC ACT OF HEROISM IN THE NAME OF LOVE. Girl saves the world by accident.

Fuck that shit.

Actual rating: 3.5

He proceeded to do some moves I can only assume are part of a war dance in some lost tribe of the Amazon. There were a mysterious number of elbows involved, and a face that was probably meant to be sexy but looked more pained.

Some things are universal, and a horrible dance partner is one to which we can all relate ^_^

This book was all sorts of adorable. This is what I look for in an YA contemporary. Light romance, adorableness to the extreme, silly and realistic teenagers, and a very likeable narrator.

No slut shaming. No love triangle (despite the premise), and really, just cuteness all around. My only complaint is with the Head/Tails alternate scenario premise. Why? What was the point? It's an YA contemporary, let's leave it at one single possible timeline, ok? This isn't a choose-your-own-adventure book. The alternate scenario is just pointless.

The Summary: Heart LaCoeur has a horrible name, ok? Let's get that out in the open. It means "Heart the Heart." It's Prom time, and she's got no time for that nonsense, no sirree. Heart is going to prom with a group of her friends, guys and gals. They call themselves the "No Drama Prom-a" crew.

So Heart's set to chill with her pals. She's got an awesome vintage dress. And it's going to be just great!

Until Heart gets more on her plate than she planned. For one thing, her brother volunteered Heart as his friend's prom date without her consent.

“Eh.” He shrugged and swallowed the last of his pizza. “Anyway, he already had tickets to prom, so I said you’d go with him.”

And to make it even messier...

Ryan beckoned me closer with a jerking head motion. “Listen...I was wondering...would you want to go to prom with me? As friends.”

WELL, FUCK. Heart doesn't want any of this. She tries to turn them both down, but there are problems.

“So...” He drew an elaborate, invisible design with his finger on the lab table. “Just pick someone and be done with it.”
“It’s not that easy.”

Seriously, it's not that easy. For one thing, Troy is the most pathetic, broken-down jock in the world. He just got dumped by his girlfriend, hence why he needs a date, and he's more teddy bear than tough guy. How can you turn down someone who looks like this?!

“If you don’t want to, that’s cool.” Troy looked down, and I swear to God, I thought he was going to start crying. Ginormous, six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Troy Rafferty was going to break down in the french fry line.
“That’s cool,” Troy said softly. “Sorry to bother you.” He started to lumber away, and my heart crumpled.

NOOOOOOO. You'd have to have a heart of ice to turn him down.

So Heart goes to turn her friend Ryan down, only it doesn't quite work out either.

He smiled and laughed nervously. “I just feel like I should be honest with you,” he said. “I didn’t want you to think that I was asking you because...that we...that I...” He took a frustrated breath and let it out in a short huff. “I’m gay.”

*HOWLS WITH LAUGHTER*

So now Heart's stuck between a downtrodden, depressed teddy bear of a jock, and a gay guy who wants her to be his beard. NOW do you see her problem?

So Heart tosses a coin. Heads or Tails. Heads, Troy wins. Tails, Ryan wins. And thus, we get to watch Prom Night unfold in both scenarios. There will be torn dresses, drunken kisses, terrible dancing (Hint: gay guys are terrible dancers, too).

There will be horrible kissing experiences, designed to incite jealousy in an ex-girlfriend.

There was nowhere to turn when he laid a wet, alcohol-soaked kiss on me.
His tongue was like a fish flopping on a dock in my mouth, but hot instead of cold.

There will be relationship counseling.

“Ugh, maybe you are gay after all.” I crossed my arms.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’re into sports and you hate dancing, but now here you are giving me relationship advice.”
“You have way too many stereotypes in your head.”

And maybe Heart will realize who she should have gone with all along.

He laughed. “You’re having...thoughts?”
“And feelings. Damn it. Feelings! This is not on my agenda.”

Heart: Yeah, she's got a crappy name, and a crappy mother. Don't hold it against her. Heart feels like a realistic teenager. She is normal. She is not "quirky" or strange, she's got a sarcastic sense of humor sometimes, she tends to get snarky, and her internal dialogue gets to be kind of silly sometimes. The point is that Heartnever pissed me off. Like this internal monologue about the utter horribleness of her name, Heart.

Sometimes, people ask me what it’s like to be named Heart, but how am I supposed to answer that? I mean, how would you answer if a fish popped out of a lake and asked you what it was like to breathe oxygen? Apart from freaking out that a fish was talking to you, of course. You don’t know what it’s like to breathe anything else. You’d probably be like, “I don’t know. It’s okay, I guess. What’s it like to breathe water, Talking Fish?”

I would understand if you found her annoying, but I thought she was pretty cute.

Despite her name, Heart is a skeptic. She's not a skeptic in the sense of I WILL NEVER EVER EVER LOVE AGAIN BECAUSE MY MOTHER ABANDONED ME AS A CHILD. No. Heart is a skeptic in the sense that she believes in romance, she believes in love, but she is willing to take it slow. She is pragmatic. Rational. She is not a believer in fate.

“I don’t believe in fate.” It was automatic. My response since I’d decided not to let my maternal genetics and my porn-star name choose my future for me.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like the idea that I can’t control the outcome of something. Your choices should be the only influence in your own life.”

She is a NORMAL girl. She loves her friends, she is kind-hearted. Heart knows that a beautiful girl can be kind, too. She never, ever slut shames, and she calls out bad behavior when she sees it.

“Did you see the way Olivia went off? God, that girl would do anything for attention.”
“I know, she’s so pathetic.”
“I can’t believe she even got nominated for prom court.”
“It’s just because she’s going out with Austin.”
“Seriously.”
I wasn’t exactly buddy-buddy with Olivia, but my ears got hot with embarrassment and anger listening to them dissect her.

From confronting a bunch of mean-girls in the bathroom, to talking to her brother's beauty-queen friends. She never, ever judges someone for her looks. She defends the beautiful girls when she hears them being trashed behind their backs, and doesn't expect any rewards for it.

I had a feeling they’d both heard plenty of gossip about themselves over the last four years. You don’t get to be a senior looking like custom-ordered perfection without earning a little jealousy along the way.

Heart really did win over my heart.

The Other Characters: What made this book so fun to read was the fact that the teenagers feel like real people. These boys and girls could have been my friends when I was in high school. They joke around with each other, boys and girls can be friends without drama, they're a group of mixed boys and girls who just have a lot of fun with each other. They like each other, they laugh with each other, they have fun! And I had a lot of fun with them. They do silly things, they play lighthearted pranks on each other, they do dumb things. Nothing is ever outrageous.
This book really defies the stereotype that all pretty girls are bitches. There are numerous beautiful girls in the book, cheerleaders, prom queens. They may be beautiful, but they are portrayed as people, too. They're just normal girls who just happen to look pretty. There is never an attempt to hate them or to slut shame them. I love that about this book.

The Romance: There is only one romantic interest in this book, and it is predictable as heck. That's not to say it's not sweet. It's the friends-into-lovers trope, and it is so light and well-built, that I found it to be completely understandable. I rooted for the two. I wanted them to be together. I wanted to see them get past their misunderstandings, and I cheered for Heart when she got pissed off and told off the boy of her dreams because he was kind of an asshole.

“Uh-uh. I had no idea how you felt about me. None. And you know whose fault that is? Yours. If you wanted to ask me to prom, you should have frigging asked me. You don’t get to whine about it just because somebody else had the balls to do what you didn’t. I’m done apologizing to you.” I poked him in the chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Get over yourself.”

I love Heart's slightly cynical attitude. She's not one of those I-believe-in-soulmates people. She doesn't want to rush into things, and that's just fine with me.

“And you have to promise we’ll take it slow.”
“How slow?”
Blanking, all I could think of was my mother. I blurted out, “Well, like, let’s not have kids anytime soon, okay?”

My friends and I have a reunion once every 6 month or so. And we always get sushi.

This time, we decided to try something new.

And it's the most ironic fucking thing in the whole world that the one time I decide to eat a fish stew, a COOKED fish stew, I got food poisoning. I threw up last night for the first time since 12-23-2006. Yes, my stomach is so ironclad that I never upchuck my food. Ulcers, yes, vomiting no.

So yeah, last night was just another level of hell.

The man I shot was named Jason Earhart, dean of the math department. But then, he was only a body.
I am wicked because the moment Jason died, the only thing I felt was relief.
I murdered an innocent man in cold blood.

I'm sorry, am I supposed to like you?. This is a book about the nature of good and evil, and it completely failed to convince me that any of the criminals within this book deserved a second chance at life. I am not pro-death penalty by any means. This book just failed to be convincing on the grounds of speculative fiction.

This book tries to present the premise that a criminal may be granted a new lease on life if their minds, their genetic makeup is pure. That despite their murderous crime, they could still be goooooooooood inside.

Bullshit.

This book is an inconsistent, flashback-filled mess, with an unreliable first-person narrator. We are told that Evalyn is a murderer, and yet there's no attempt at building sympathy for her whatsoever. She shows no remorse; all we got is a self-pity-party, there was nary a mention of the people whom she was purported to have killed. How am I supposed to care about her? There's plenty of guts and blood, but it was purely gratuitous. I was gnawing on a small pork hock while reading a scene where a girl's head exploded, spraying bloody brain matter all over the fucking place without feeling a twinge of nausea. The violence is there only for shock value, because I didn't give a damn about any of the characters and I didn't care whether they lived or got gutted or died. There was no emotion to any of the deaths within this book.

What's the saying, "Do the crime, do the time?" Yeah. It may not be perfect, but our current justice system mostly works. So what the fuck is with this new Compass Room shit? I don't get it! What's the fucking point?!

It's not just the premise, the characters and how they're presented completely failed to back up the idea of inner goodness vs. "evil" acts. I feel that a person should be judged by their actions, not their thoughts. We all have a darkness within us. It's up to us to suppress that evil. This book completely failed to convince me on the concept of the Compass Room, and it didn't convince me that the criminals and killers within deserve to live through the experience.

The Summary:

Fifteen years ago, government scientists manufactured an accurate test for morality—an obstacle course, where the simulations within proved whether a candidate was good or evil. It was named a Compass Room.

Evalyn is a mass murderer.

The footage of my crime rolls. Crying families outside Roosevelt College. Students and professors wailing, screaming. FBI, police, bomb squad.
All storming the school to catch one of the shooters who initiated fifty-six deaths.
All storming the school to catch me.

She is one of eight who has killed 56 people at her college. She got caught, and now she is most likely going to die.

But not through the death penalty.

She has chosen the trials of the Compass Room. The Compass Room is a technology developed to determine the true morality within a person. It is a moral obstacle course, and it will kill those who are truly evil.

After the law passed, engineers updated the Rooms to kill the wicked. They became the most accurate form of the death penalty ever created.

It's not entirely clear how the Compass Room ("CR") works, but Evalyn is one of 10 criminals, all of them murderers, who will enter the CR to be tried. 10 will go in, statistics say that an average of 2.5 will make it out. The guys, girls, all in their teens through their 20s, are all multiple murderers. They are hoping for a chance to prove that their minds are good, that they deserve to live.

They enter the CR, and it's not as they expected. For one thing, it's not a room. It's a vast expanse of space that changes, that moves them from one "Testing" environment in different scenarios. From a plush mountain resort with top-shelf liquors to a wilderness where they have to scrounge for food. The only thing that remains consistent is the nightmares---or rather, the "Tests" that pop up to evaluate their goodness.

She creeps to me, shoulders erect. Her head hangs at an angle, stringy blonde hair falling limply around her shoulders, eyes sunken in their sockets.
“Shh.” She reaches out, like she’s going to place a finger to my lips. I shut my eyes, waiting for her touch.
“Don’t tell him I’m here. I want it to be a surprise.”

And the tests can be deadly. There is no trial by jury here. One wrong motion means death.

Clasping her hands on either side of his head, she twists, elbows swinging as she snaps his neck in half.

Except when it doesn't. Because it seems that the morality in this book is pretty relative.

Casey hacks and hacks, blood splattering across his face and clothes as he rips the knife away. He doesn’t stop, not when his dad has to be dead—again—his back nothing more than ripped denim and mangled pockets of swelling blood.
My breath rattles through the air. Nothing happens.

Aaaand that's pretty much it. They find food. They fall in love. They survive. They make friends. They're all criminals, some of whom are intrinsically good inside? Whatever. I don't care.

The Premise:

Fifteen years ago, government scientists manufactured an accurate test for morality—an obstacle course, where the simulations within proved whether a candidate was good or evil. It was named a Compass Room.

Look, I don't give a flying fuck if your DNA is made up of flowers petals and a sprinkling of unicorn dust. If you raped my sister, if you killed my family. If you tortured and killed numerous people, I want you to rot in prison. I don't give a fuck if you're internally good if you've killed someone, intentionally or not. That's why we have a multi-layered justice system. You get tried by a jury of your peers, depending on the severity of your crime.

Involuntary manslaughter and negligence is judged and sentenced differently from murder. That's why you have different charges when a person gets tried for a crime. That's why after you get sentenced, there's yet another system of appeals in place. Your sentence will depend on the severity of your crime. There's a difference between killing someone by accident and getting a few years in prison, versus willfully committing multiple murders. THE JUSTICE SYSTEM! IT WORKS!

So why this book? What's the point, really? Especially when you can kill again and again and not get punished for it in the Compass Room? This book tries to tell us that murder is relative, that murder is ok if it's justified.

But it doesn't exactly work that way. Morals are not relative. You have to have some sort of absolute standard. Murder has to be wrong. Rape has to be wrong. Some things have to remain absolute. If morals are relative, can you give me an argument, that, well, there are some cases in which it's acceptable to rape a child? No. This book plays on the idea that morals are relative, and it doesn't work.

Furthermore, the "tests" in the Compass Room are just unconvincing. Different scenarios are presented, if you pass, you get to live, if you fail, you don't. But for some reason, some people can fucking kill and still be able to get away with it. What the hell?! I don't care if you killed someone who bullied you, that person may be a motherfucking asshat, but you are not judge, jury, and executioner. Someone doesn't deserve to die just because they are a jerk!

The concept of the Compass Room is just vague. The science is almost completely unexplained, and the reasoning behind the use of the Compass room just doesn't make any fucking sense. Yeah, it's supposed to save money, but how exactly does it fucking save money when there's only 10 people allowed inside at a time for a period of 30 fucking days. Why, if we have such advanced technology to manipulate the brain to create mass hallucinations, do we not just run a fucking simulation with one person strapped to a chair? Simple! Gah!

Remorse:

“I bet you’re enjoying this, dying just like her. Like you think you’re some fucking martyr,” he spits.

Evalyn is a oh boo fucking hoo poor poor me type of girl. She is a mass murderer. Throughout the book, we know that she's a killer, but we just don't know how.

But here's the thing, throughout the book, she never shows a single fucking sign of remorse. Not once did she ever feel sorry for all the people she has killed. Not once did she think about the countless lives she has destroyed, the countless numbers of wives, daughters, husbands, sons, friends whose lives she has devastated by her acts of murder. She only feels sorry for herself, and the fact that she could not help save the life of her friend, Meghan.

I was the one who kept proving myself to be a killer over and over in the Compass Room.

And she's another reason why the Compass Room is so unconvincing.

“Of course you wanted to kill him. We all did.”

So why is she still alive?! Clearly, the Compass Room has failed -.-

Final Comments: The writing runs purple prosy at times despite the complete lack of emotion in the book.

The Compass Room is pregnant with sin. Not the ghost of our crimes, but real, pungent sin.

And is just plain bad in some parts.

He doesn’t look at peace, more like a baby. A frightened baby.

The romance is stupid, but it doesn't bother me, despite the fact that this is a New Adult and the love interest is an honest-to-goodness killer. The flashbacks are completely useless, and serves only to frustrate me, because they contribute so little to the plot besides telling us about Evalyn's perfect life in college, with her wonderful (and completely forgotten) ex-bf Liam "Last Year."

This is a review for Cory's WIP: Scandal. It's currently free-to-read at

her website.

As you guys may have noticed, I don't read erotica, and I'm not a fan of M/F/M romances. I am not homophobic, nor am I against the enjoyment of sexuality (I'm not exactly a Puritan, in case you can't tell from my constant use of profanity). It's just that I know what turns me on, and I know what I enjoy. I'm a traditionalist in that sense. I like commitment and monogamy in my relationships. I don't like reading about love triangles. I don't care about anything dealing with more than two people in a relationship.

Which is why it came as a complete surprise to me that I found myself enjoying this book.

Scandal challenged my very monogamous concepts on love. It showed me the possibility that there can be a meaningful relationship between more than the traditional model of a man and a woman or a man and a man. It opened to me the idea that two men can be soul mates and maintain that love and devotion even after a woman comes into the picture. It made me understand that pain can be pleasureable to some, and that submission and dominance is more than just sexual in nature. It made me realize that sometimes you need to lose control in order to maintain control in the face of chaos. When it feels like world is collapsing in ruins.

I guess what I'm saying here is please give this book a shot. It might challenge what you find to be acceptable and even enjoyable.

First, the disclaimer. I'm the author's friend, and I've been beta-reading her book chapter by chapter as she wrote it.



A group of us read it and criticized it, we told her what was good, we told her what sucked. I'm a tough reviewer, and I'm a tough reader. This isn't my first time beta reading a book, and I'd be pretty fucking useless if I was nice and considerate and not wanting to hurt feeeeeeelings.

If and when you guys have criticism, be it positive or negative, please do tell her. As she has repeatedly told us, this book is not her baby, and she will gladly accepts your assessment.

Like she accepted mine -.-



The Summary: Katherine (Kit), Duchess of Hampshire, has got a pretty sweet life. I mean, she's young, lovely, immensely wealthy, and the wife of an upwardly political man. To the public, they appear to be the epitome of all that is wrong with the British upper class. Prickly, snobby, asexual. Heaven forbid they should touch each other in public, 19th century voters don't want their politicians nuzzling their wives in open sight.

But in private, John is a kind, caring, gentle husband. His eyes light up at the sight of her.

"As he turned to meet my gaze, his full lips lifted in a welcoming smile, and his dimples made a rare appearance."

Kit's even got a loving twin brother. Marcus.

“Damn you, man, you do not need to announce me!” a roar came from the hallway.

"I have a standing appointment with her, which you bloody well know. We do not need to go through this every damn time, Sherman!” Marcus shouted, his voice much closer than before.

Clearly, Marcus and the bucolic Kit are not identical twins. But they love each other, despite the fact that after her marriage, they're not as close as they once were.

Awesome! Perfect! So why the fuck is our lovely Kit so unhappy?!

Sprawled over the rest of the couch, with his head on my husband’s thigh, was the large form of his lover, Henry Fletcher.

...Oh, well. Crap. Ok, that's a pretty legit reason. It turns out that Kit and John's marriage, while not devoid of "like," is empty of sex. Kit has been living a lie. She entered this marriage willingly, recovering from a broken heart. She has known about John's sexual proclivities all along. Kit accepts it, she even likes her husband's lover, Henry. The three are great friends, they adore each other, they enjoy each other's company. Three's company, or so they say.

But three years into the marriage, and things don't feel right. Kit is still a virgin, and becoming increasingly unsatisfied with their arrangement. It's all fine and well to be friends with two handsome men, but companionship isn't enough. She sees the love between John and Henry, and goddamn it, Kit wants to feel that passion, too.

His amber eyes shone like topaz as they fixed on the point where Henry’s lips touched my skin, and the intensity I saw in them unsettled me.

What I would give to have a man look at me that way.

The entire household knows John's secret. Kit is the object of the servants' pity. But John is nothing if not considerate, he senses that something is wrong.

“Do you ever feel as though you made the wrong decision, Katherine?” he asked, his voice desperate and his beautiful face tormented in the dim light.

John, ever the tortured soul, feels desperately guilty about his choice to entangle Kit into his mess. Kit tries to be happy for his sake, but clearly, something's got to give.

And Kit's so very lucky that there are two men available to give it to her.

Henry and John are in love. John and Kit aren't quite there yet; they respect each other, but a mutual respect is a far thing from physical attraction. Can their marriage be consummated?

“Is it possible?”
It only took half a second for his eyes to come sliding back, and I watched as he dragged them down over my jaw, my throat, my breasts, my waist, and then back up again. “It’s possible,” he said on an exhale.

And Henry is only too willing to assist.

“We can’t just dive into this,” he said, his rumbling voice slow and lethargic.

Yes we can! I wanted to shout.

"YES, THEY CAN," EVERYONE READING THIS CHAPTER SHOUTED.

“I can tell you what I’d like to happen,” Henry offered, a lazy smile on his face. We both looked at him, waiting. “I want Kit to spread her legs, I want you to lean back into her, and I want you both to watch as I suck you off.”

Perfect! Kit's got her men, she's lost the Big V. What can possibly go wrong now?!

About your husband.

Together the notes read, “I know a secret about your husband”. No, Henry hadn’t sent it, and neither had John. So that begged the question, who had? And why?

Well...crap. This is serious shit. John is a politician, remember? He wants to do good. He wants to help people.

If words get out, his career will be ruined. Kit's life will turn to shreds. John, Henry, and Kit have no choice. They have to turn to the motherfucker douchebag asshole Jericho fucking Barrons one man who can help them.

“Who did you send for?” I asked.

He eyed me a moment before responding. “James.”

James is handsome. He's also bad news, but he can get the job done.

As events unfold, Kit comes to realize that she has a fire that's just now started to burn. The scandal is just the beginning of Kit's journey to self-discovery.

I needed to lose control. I needed to find a person or a pastime to surrender myself to. I needed to be helpless to someone or something, turn my mind off, allow myself to feel, to want, and follow through without fear of the repercussions.

The Respect: What sold me on the concept of M/F/M is the amount of respect and love that John, Kit, and Henry have for one another. John and Henry are always so considerate of Kit's feelings.

“Are you all right, Kit?” John asked, his voice sounding far away.

Has he been calling my name all this time? I wondered. It took me several attempts before I finally managed to answer him with a strangled, “Yes.”

“Do you want us to continue?” he pressed.

Before every new sexual act, they ask for Kit's consent, in a way that doesn't kill the mood. It enhances my love for them, it enhances my respect for them, and the knowledge that they willingly seek Kit's consent makes me love them all the more. You will find no New Adult alpha fucking males asshattery in John and Henry.

John is such a gentleman. He always talks to Kit, he always asks her how she's feeling, without feeling effeminate, without being intrusive. He is respectful in a way that gives her space, and the three of them feel so right for me. It's a sexual relationship based on love, admiration, that eventually becomes lust.

That, I understand perfectly.

The Characters: Some, I loved more than others. I loved Marcus, but man, that boy had me half wanting to strangle him and half wanting to give him a hug.



Kit: I wasn't fond of Kit at first, as you can tell by my initial reaction to Chapter I.



It's a little hard to be sympathetic towards someone who's so privileged, and yet feels like she's so repressed. I was resentful and indifferent towards Kit in the beginning, but I slowly came to understand how she came to feel that way. I was with her as Kit grew, I cheered for her when she came to realize that she's got to get off her fucking ass and do something about it. Kit starts off as passive, a bystander to John and Henry's affair. She accepted her place as John and Henry's friend. As well-meaning as they are, John and Henry suppressed her needs out of their own selfishness and their inability to see beyond their own love affair.

Kit is someone who earned my respect as she came to self-actualization.

My thanks again to Cory, for allowing me to be a part of this sexually frustrating experience.

Because I got 2 incredibly stupid messages on Goodreads.

Relationship chart.

So apparently BL doesn't display the entire chart, so click here for the full size.



I'm sorry for that chart. I'm pretty good with charts and graphs and stuff, but Microsoft PowerPoint has failed me this time. Why? I tried so many templates, but there simply wasn't a premade chart adequate enough to draw out the entire fucked up chain of relationship in this book. So there you have it. My brilliant hand made relationship chart. Yay me.

This isn't the story of two girls, one Princess, one Magician. It's a book about really, really horny teenagers who fuck all the fucking time. And it's not the sexy kind of screwing, it's "Oh god why am I doing this I hate myself, this is so wrong because my virginity should be a precious thing to be saved for my husband but whatever #YOLO BITCHES!" kind of fucking.

It's the story told from the POVs of *takes a deep breath* Marie-Victoria, Aelwyn, Wolfgang, Ronan, and Isabelle. And that's just some of the main cast. *facepalm* Thankfully, it wasn't hard to differentiate between the, 5? 10? Whatever.

If you've read Cruz's Blue Blood series, you'll know what to expect. Romance, romance, and more romance. Love triangles, love squares, love dodecahedrons. Just be thankful there's no twincest in this book. But then again, it's only the first installment, so we'll see what comes next. To be honest, I wouldn't mind twincest, because the soap opera element is the only thing that made this book worth reading. This book may be set in a magical alternate universe of the US/UK/Europe, but there was no fucking point to the magic.

For 90% of the book, magic was all but nonexistent, to be honest, it made for a pretty setting where you can use magical jewelry and use spells to color your hair and that's pretty much all there fucking is to it.

It's a fast read, I'll tell you that.

The Summary: It's circa 1900. We are in an alternate universe of our world, where magic is prevalent, where Merlin exists, and where the current ruler of the Franco-British Empire (long story) is Queen Eleanor. She is 150 years old. That magical universe thing? Just forget about it. It's almost completely irrelevant. What's more important is the luuuuuuuurve!

Two girls.
One beautiful and strong.
One plain and powerless.
Only one shall be queen…
And the other shall serve her.

Marie-Victoria: It is plain (no pun intended), that the plain girl is Marie-Victoria. The 17-year old daughter of Queen Eleanor, Marie's the epitome of all the stereotypes about British monarchy. Which is to say, she's as plain as pudding, she's pale, she's sickly, she's a fucking pussy scared of her own shadow (or rather, her mother's), and she's perceived to be a spoiled brat.

Marie was starting to be a bit of an embarrassment to the whole court. The princess, instead of acting like a girl on the cusp of a great romance—awaiting the appearance of her soon-to-be-beloved—was sulking around the palace, holed up in her room, eating sweets and not speaking to anyone.

Marie is sick, she's got a tuberculosis-like wasting disease, she's had to wear leg braces her whole life, among other things. Man, inbreeding sucks balls.

Long live Kate Middleton! Fresh blood, whoo!

Marie is going to marry Prince Leopold. Golden, handsome, PERFECT Prince Leopold. Everyone loves Prince Leopold. Except for Marie. Why? Well, he's handsome and all, but Marie is really *sigh* in love with her guard, the man who saved her life...the valiant, the handsome, the strong...Gill. Yes, gill, like that part of a fish. Blurble blurble.

So what's a girl to do?! Marry Leopold and save the peace of her kingdom?!

The peace of the empire depended on her taking the Prussian prince as her bridegroom. The sooner she accepted her fate, the easier her life would be.

Or will she...follow her heart! Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuun!

Aelwynn:

When she was a child, she’d always wanted what was the princess’s. Even at seventeen years old, it was a hard habit to break.

The daughter of Merlin. Yes, THAT Merlin. Apparently he's a person, and he's been alive for 1000 years, and his sister is Viviane, the Lady of the Lake. Sucks for him, he's got a rebellious daughter who got herself sent away to magical rehab, and after 4 years she's come back. Honestly, there was no point to Aekwynn to this story because she does fucking nothing besides act as Marie's magical accomplice whenever Marie needs a magical fucking makeover. All Aelwynn does is get jealous of everything Marie has. There was no point to her character at all, otherwise.

Ronan: Welcome to the United States! That's right, we're crossing the Atlantic Ocean now. For some fucking reason, we're now follow Ronan Elizabeth Astor's story. She's from the famous Astor family, only it's a not-very-well-kept secret to New York society that their family is fucking broke because daddy Astor has a habit of making terrible investments. Therefore, what's a girl to do? Well, save the family. Ronan is going to Europe, in hopes of making a good match -> ka-ching! There's no shame in money-hunting and social climbing, especially when you've got Ronan's golden fair beauty. And Ronan plans to aim high in her quest for a husband.

Ronan was nothing if not ambitious.She would be married at the end of the London Season—and she determined right then and there that she would make not just a good match, but the best match; perhaps even catch the eye of the Kronprinz of Prussia himself.
Ronan was nothing if not ambitious.

But as we know, fate doesn't always work the way we intended to. Mistaken identities occur! A reference to Wuthering Heights will come into play! How fast will her clothes come off?!

Wolfgang: Oh, a guy! Yay! Wolfgang is the younger brother to PRINZSTSZE LEOPOLD *spittles* Those Germanic accents, I tell you. Not the golden boy like his brother, Wolfgang is a gentle soul, destined to a life as a glorified "sheep farmer." He's not like his brother, he's not!

Unlike his vaunted older brother, he had no taste for womanizing, no desire to father a litter of bastards. He vowed that once he was married he would never take a mistress.
Wolf, the Beast of Berlin, was more Labrador than fox when it came to the ladies.

See?! He's a gentleman! Leopold screws anything with a hole, but Wolfgang he's so nice! Until 5 minutes after we meet him, he suggests a game of strip billiards with a girl he barely knows.

He had just proposed they play a game where they take their clothes off.

Oh. That type of gentleman. -_-

Isabelle: It sucks balls to be Isabelle. It sucks more because she's been sucking PRINCZSZST LEOPOLD's balls, because now the motherfucker has gone and gotten engaged to another girl. He was his first, really! Isabelle and Leopold had been engaged, she a lovely French royal, he a handsome Prussian prince. It was love at first sight, they were to marry. Until Leopold threw her over for the whey-faced Marie. And they're still fucking. And it's so wrong. But they're still fucking. And it's the most painful, awkward fucking ever.

Leo leaned over and kissed her again, and now he was on top of her, kissing her again, and she wriggled underneath him, and found she was crying. She was crying without making a sound, the tears streaming down her face as he kissed her, just like the first time, when she had been unable to ask him to stop.

What do you even call crying while fucking? Fuckrying? Cryfucking? Honestly, craughing sounds like so much more fun than this.



So there you have it. The complicated love life of 5 (and more!) teenagers.

Cory made me a teacup as thanks for beta reading her book. I'm so lucky. I get to read erotica AND I got a teacup out of it.

Welcome to Oz. Take a look at the Yellow Brick Road. Like it? Good. Now run away, run faaaaaaaaaaar away. Pray for a tornado to take you back to Kansas, because man, Oz is fucked up as shit.

“Oz has changed,” Gert said. “The trees don’t talk. The Pond of Truth tells lies, the Wandering Water stays put. The Land of Naught is on fire. People are starting to get old. People are forgetting how it used to be.”

But let's get back to the beginning, what the fuck happened?! How did Oz get to...this?



The Summary:

Tornado or no tornado, I wasn’t Dorothy, and a stupid little storm wasn’t going to change anything for me.

Amy Gumm is white trash. She lives in a trailer in Kansas, with a drug-addict mom, no dad, and no future. She's stuck with her mom's pet rat named Star that, with her luck, might turn out to be Peter Pettigrew in the long run (I'm just kidding). Life fucking sucks. So when a tornado warning is announced, Amy doesn't really care. What's the worst it could do? Kill her? Life sucks, remember, so who cares about dying? Until well, shit, the tornado actually happens. Hint: it really sucks to be airborne in a metal trailer.

My stomach dropped and kept dropping. I felt my body getting heavier, my back plastered to the cushions now, and suddenly—with a mix of horror and wonder—I knew that I was airborne.
The trailer was flying. I could feel it.

She lands, thankfully intact, but it soon became very clear that she's not in Kansas anymore.

“Welcome to Oz,” the boy said, nodding, like he expected I’d figured that out already. It came out sounding almost apologetic, like, Hate to break the bad news.

And yes, Oz is bad news. Cause this ain't your grandmother's Oz. That cute little film with the pretty pretty verdant land of Oz? Nope. This Oz is more post-apocalyptic than fairy-tale.

A vast field of decaying grass stretched into the distance. It was gray and patchy and sickly, with the faintest tinge of blue. On the far side of the pit was a dark, sinister-looking forest, black and deep. The air, the clouds, even the sun, which was shining bright, all had a faded, washed-out quality to them. There was something dead about all of it.

After some mysterious parting words, the boy disappears, leaving poor Amy wondering what the actual fuck just happened? So she's alone in a strange land, cute boys appear and disappear out of nowhere. There's a yellow brick road. Should Amy make like Dorothy and follow Der Yellow Brick Road? *angelic choir sings AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH~*

I knew the answer already: what I was going to do next was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life.
I turned back. Just put one foot in front of the other. Nothing had changed except the color of the road.

Fuck, no!! This girl's got some common sense. She doesn't want to go wandering into a nuclear wasteland-Oz. Amy runs away! Bah, unfortunately, there's really nowhere else to go. I mean, think about it, you can either follow the ONE BRIGHT THING in this dilapidated world, or you can go wandering off to fuck-knows-where in the dark scary totally creepy mysterious forest with man-eating corn stalks.

Before I could even touch it, a black vine sprung up from the ground and curled around my arm like a whip, squeezing tight. It burned.

*snorts* And I thought High Fructose Corn Syrup was bad.

Amy follows the road. Reluctantly. Shit's looking reeeeeeeal familiar. There's Glinda, the Good Witch, only she looks like a Stepford Wife with a plastic grin. And apparently plastic grins are a thing in Oz, as a very angry Munchkin sees fit to tell Amy.

Other than the twitching, [her lips] didn’t move. At all. Even when she talked.
“What’s with her mouth?” I asked Star under my breath.
I jumped when an actual voice answered in a hoarse whisper from behind me.
“(A) it’s PermaSmile, and (B) are you out of your dumbass mind?”

Ok, so there really ARE munchkiins! Hooray! Except they're really sad munchkins, and to be fair, you would be too if your fellow Munchkins were being imprisoned and made to work their ass off to generate magic all damn day. And the monkeys, the flying monkeys. Fuck, they're now imprisoned, and some of them have had to take drastic actions.

“Don’t mind those,” he explained, seeing the look of confusion on my face. “That’s just where my wings used to be. Before I cut them off.”

So yeah, clearly Oz sucks now. So what happened?!

“They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?”
Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “Dorothy happened,” she said.

Oh, Dorothy. The lovely Dorothy. The crazy as shit Dorothy. You know that saying about power going to people's head? Yeah. That's what happened. Dorothy got more cray-cray over the years, and now she's imprisoning people, making poor munchkins work, enalsving flying monkeys, forcing everyone to wear Perma-Smiles :DDDDDDDDDDD every fucking day. And it's up to Amy to save them all.

Wait, what?! What the actual FUCK?! No! Amy just got here! She doesn't want this shit! She hasn't even graduated from high schoool. What the fuck is this about saving Oz?!

"That’s why you’re here. We need you to stop her.”
I sat up straight. I didn’t know the first thing about magic. I didn’t know the first thing about Dorothy. “Me? I just got here. How am I supposed to stop anyone from doing anything?”

That's right! You tell them, Amy. I'd run away too. Screw this destiny shit. But there's a sect of people, the Order of the Wicked whose plans are to restore Oz to its former glory. Dorothy has stolen Oz's magic, and they want Amy's help to restore it. So what do they want Amy to do?

“Simple. You’re going to kill her.” She looked right at me and said, “Dorothy must die.”

MWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA YES KILL THAT BITCH.

Sorry. I get a little excited over murder.

Needless to say, there's a lot of work to be done to take Amy from white-trailer-trash to "Teen assassin." There's going to be magical training, combat training, and tea parties. Yes, tea parties. Don't worry, it's all part of the Master Plan. *cackles*

Will Amy be able to help the people of Oz? Will she be tempted to make the same choices that Dorothy did?

“It’s your choice,” he said. “It’s not magic that makes you who you are. It’s the choices that you make. Look at Dorothy.”
“What about Dorothy?”
“That’s exactly what makes Dorothy evil.”

The Setting: Just fantastic. This is Tim Burton's Oz.



I'm not sure if someone has bought the rights to the movie yet, but this is a book that deserves to be visualized. The setting is just beautiful. It is such a dark, twisted version of Oz. There's the beauty and darkness of the land itself, the stunning Emerald City hiding all sorts of horrors. You think you know the Tin Man?

His oversize jaw jutted out from the rest of his face in a nasty underbite, revealing a mess of little blades where his teeth should have been.

The Scarecrow? The Lion? Not these versions. The Lion and his army of rabid animals (including a giant fucking murderous bunny) will eat you up. Get ready because people will die.



This book is so dark. The characters are so angry, with good reasons. So many have been enslaved, so many have been killed, sacrificed at the whim of Dorothy and her gang. Yes, there are munchkins, but munchkins have family, friends, loved ones who have died, too.

“You asked why they work for her,” she said. “You asked why the Munchkins don’t just tell Glinda to fuck off and take her machine somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I was wondering that. Maybe it was stupid of me.”
“It was,” Indigo said, shooting me an annoyed look. “Do you think they have a choice?

They cannot stand up against the power of those with magic. Hell, even the trees aren't allowed to be happy.

“Did that tree just move?”
“They talk, too, but they’ve taken a vow of silence.”
“Voluntarily?”
“The princess felt that their conversation ruined the apple-eating experience and was therefore a violation of the Happiness Decree.”

Dorothy: My one complaint here is that Dorothy looks like a slut. Really, was it necessary to have Dorothy the Evil resemble a street walker? But man, her appearance is deceiving.

Instead of farm-girl cotton it was silk and chiffon. The cut was somewhere between haute couture and French hooker. The bodice nipped, tucked, and lifted. There was cleavage.
Lots of cleavage.

Don't be fooled by her appearance, Dorothy is twisted. It takes brains and manipulation and power to get as far as she did in the land of Oz. She commands her minions, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, Glinda...etc, and they, in turn, command their own army. Dorothy may be vain, but power gets to people's head, and before you know it, they turn crazy. And yep, that's what happened. I'm not fond of the fact that Dorothy is pictured to be so vain, but underneath all that, there's sheer madness. And I can totally understand why she hates Amy so much.

Dorothy’s face was burning with aggrieved rage. “I am the only one. There can only be one.”
My gut twisted. I understood. We had the same story. It was like we were wearing the same dress to the prom. Dorothy thought her landing here was fate—that it made her special. Another girl from Kansas meant that it was just a regular occurrence and that she wasn’t special at all. Or—worse—that I was here to take her place.

She loves torturing animals, and there was a scene involving a mouse that was truly painful to read. Look up psychopath, that's Dorothy in a nutshell.

Amy: Amy is the kind of character that I love; she feels realistic. Yes, she does heroic things sometimes, like rescue people she really shouldn't be rescuing, but she acknowledges her stupidity. She is not TSTL, she sometimes has a few mean thoughts, and she gets a little mouthy and talks back when she's nervous. The difference between Amy and other bitchy YA characters is that Amy is never malicious. She's just kind of a jerk sometimes, like me.

Amy also has a tendency to get scared, to run away. And that's just fine with me. She's not perfect.

Why did I hesitate? Was I that weak?
I told myself that I didn’t want to ruin the Order’s plans—they’d told me to wait—but I knew that wasn’t entirely it. I’d chickened out.

I understand perfectly. I'm a wimp. I like the normal, the routine, if you hand me a Special Destiny, fuck no, you can take my destiny and you can have it. I just want to read books and be mean.

Amy actually trains for her skills, for her magic. It doesn't come to her naturally. She also doesn't hesitate to kill. Can I get a fuck yeah?

I sliced diagonally across his chest and then drew the knife out only to plunge it right back in, drawing an X along his left side with the blade.

Final comments: Reader beware that this is the first installment in the series, so expect a lot of world building, a lot of plot development, but not a lot of resolution. This book is a setup for the eventual showdown.

There is romance, but it's light. Amy has a crush, there is a hot guy in the book, but the romance is very light and it didn't bother me. The plot takes priority.

Overall: Highly recommended.

We have a secret Order. I'm not fond of the fact that she needs rescuing, but she's just an average girl, so it's all good. I'm raising my eyebrow at the magic knife that gives her magical fighting skills, but whatever.

So far, no romance.

But really, does Dorothy have to look like a French hooker?

I'm actually really enjoying this book, despite the hint of insta-love. The main character is bitter and angry, and trailer trash. She's more inclined to run away than to get into stupidly heroic situations. The writing is great. This is looking to be a fantastic book so far.

“I cheated on her every day. In my mind, I thought of you in ways I shouldn’t have, again and again. She was nothing compared to you. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before—”

What's the saying? Once a cheater, always a cheater? Oh, the fucking hypocrisy.



There were many things I wanted to do to Anna Oliphant throughout this book. Some of them involve a bottle of choloroform, a shovel, and an unmarked grave. Mostly, I just want to bring Anna in front of the US Congress as an example of how the US educational system has grievously failed our students. To be frank, Anna Oliphant is a motherfucking idiot.

Yeah, I guess you could say this is a sweet romance, but it's not the good sort of sweet. It's the "Oh my god, why did I eat that entire package of Oreos? I DON'T EVEN LIKE OREOS!" sort of sweet. It's sickening, and best in small doses, and I still feel like I need an internal cleanse after spreading the reading this book over several days. The good thing about it is that this book isn't the sugar-free type of gummy bears, so there were no anal explosions. It wasn't the worst contemporary I've ever read, but this book was tremendously annoying and I simply do not understand the hype. I know many of people enjoyed it, and I can see why. Anna is the sort of character that grows on you, much like mildew, or herpes. Once you get used to having it, it doesn't really bother you much anymore.

I'm not opposed to romance. I love romance, but I read this book hoping to be swept away by a romance. Instead, I was sucked into a whirlwind of idiocy.

Oh, the Stupidity!!:

The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-u-i and not w-e-e.

People like Anna Oliphant is the reason why everyone hates Americans. Anna is 17, and she is a moron. She is the epitome of the stupid, ignorant, egocentric American. For fuck's sakes, she thinks there are motherfucking mimes on every fucking corner in France. She thinks that people go watch mimes as an everyday pastime!

I’m going to be sick. I’m going to vomit that weird eggplant tapenade I had for dinner, and everyone wil hear, and no one will invite me to watch the mimes escape from their invisible boxes, or whatever it is people do here in their spare time.

I'm sorry, but I'm inclined to judge anyone who doesn't know that oui is spelled o-u-i and not w-e-e. It's one of those foreign words that isn't even fucking foreign because it's so fucking common. Oui is yes in French. Si is no in Spanish. It's one of those words that's so fucking commonly used that you have to be a complete birdbrain not to know!

Anna is terrified of anything foreign, although to me, France really isn't that foreign or exotic, but I didn't grow up in Atlanta. Is Atlanta really that ass-fucking backward? Is Atlanta really completely isolated from the rest of the world, despite being one of the biggest cities in the US (Anna's words). Do they not have paninis in Atlanta?

“Where have you been all my life?” I ask the beautiful panini. “How is it possible I’ve never had a sandwich like this before?”

Not only is she ignorant, she has no survival skills. Anna is in Paris, attending a school for Americans. Fucking everyone speaks English, the French teachers speak English. Anna is terrified of getting food in the cafeteria and avoids the cafeteria for weeks because she doesn't know how to order food.

Let me tell you a brilliant way of ordering food, in any language. You smile, you make eye contact at the desired food, you point, you nod. It's motherfucking universal.

I hate to say it, but if you're a pretty girl, you can get anyone's help (most likely a guy, but often another girl, too) just by looking cute and helpless and tilting your head at an angle (guilty as charged). It ain't feminist, but it works when one is desperate, and the fact that Anna doesn't have the fucking common sense to do this instead of hiding in her room for weeks like a motherfucking pussy doesn't bring her up in my estimation. I'm not judging Anna for being shy. Anna is not shy. I was a shy, shy teenager. Anna is incompetent. There is a difference between incompetency and shyness.

After weeks and weeks of going to classes, of learning French...Anna doesn't know how to fucking spell "please" in French.

Mer is next in line, and I transcribe her speech phonetically.

Oon ploss see voo play.

That's suppsed to be une place, s'il vous plaît.

Her impression of Paris is one with like, blah blah Marie Antoinette and that really short dude, like, I think his name is Napoleon? You know, like, the one on the horse in that painting by that dude? And oh my god, the Moulin Rouge, and that cute little movie with the little girl in the yellow thingy! Madeline!

And this is a chick who wants to be a film critic when she grows up.

My dream is to study film theory in California. I want to be our nation’s greatest female film critic.

Although judging from the way she thinks, I think she's more suited to a career writing for the tabloids, the type with the sort of "PRESIDENT OBAMA CAUGHT IN INTERPLANETARY ORGY ALONG WITH PUTIN AND MERKEL" headline rather than as a film critic.

I wonder if Matt is a better kisser now that he has someone more experienced to practice on. He was probably a bad kisser because of me.

Oh, no.

I’m a bad kisser. I am, I must be.

Someday I’ll be awarded a statue shaped like a pair of lips, and it’ll be engraved with the words WORLD’S WORST KISSER.And Matt will give a speech about how he only dated me because he was desperate, but I didn’t put out, so I was a waste of time because Cherrie Milliken liked him all along and she totally puts out.

Oh God. Does Toph think I’m a bad kisser?

Anna, Anna, ANNA!!!!!: So beautiful without knowing it!! So perfect! So adorably fucking clumsy! She even looks gorgeous when she falls flat on her fucking face!

"You’re beautiful.”

I trip and fall down on the sidewalk.

I look away as he takes my hand and helps me up. “I’m fine. Fine!” I say, brushing the grit from my palms. Oh my God, I AM a freak.

“You’ve seen the way men look at you, right?” he continues.

“If they’re looking, it’s because I keep making a fool of myself.”

I've seen this before. And it ain't cute. Spare me the whole adorkable thing. I don't like Zooey Deschanel, and I don't like Anna. It just looks like she's trying too fucking hard, and the cute but oh-so-clumsy trope is just so fucking overplayed right now. I wash my hands of it.

It's not blatant, but the relationships between the girls in this book are meant to portray Anna as the good one, the best one, the most adorakablest girly girl in the whole wide fucking world. Rashmi is "Rash." Cute. I don't think so. Mer is just a little chubby. Volleyball player chubby, but it's ok ^_^; Amanda the slut, Amanda the bitch. And Anna. Anna is just so good because you know, she feels really bad that Etienne likes her, so she does everything she can to make Mer not jealous. It's not Mer's fault that she's not good enough for Etienne! And boy, Saint Anna keeps reminding us that she's a good person!



And poor Ellie. Poor Ellie, Etienne's girlfriend. But surely, it's ok for Etienne to cheat on Ellie with Anna if she loos like a slut, right?

Slutty nurse. I don’t believe it. Tiny white button-up dress, red crosses across the nipples. Cleavage city.

CHEATING IS OK IF YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS A BITCH: That's the message that this book sends. Oh, that Ellie. That stupid, stuck up Ellie. Ellie who thinks she is better than everyone else. Surely it's fine if Etienne seeks comfort elsewhere if his girlfriend is a cold fish, a stuck up snot, right? No. I don't fucking think so. How about you break up with her FIRST? Just because a girl is a jerk doesn't mean she deserves to be cheated on. I do not appreciate the way this book sends the message that it's morally acceptable to cheat on a girlfriend who neglects you! But it's morally acceptable to cheat on her if you feeeeeeeeeeeeel bad about it, right? Fuck this shit.

THE CHEATING: And yes, it is cheating. What do you call this?

"I said you were beautiful. I slept in your bed!”
“You never made a move! You had a girlfriend!”
“No matter what a terrible boyfriend I was, I wouldn’t actually cheat on her. But I thought you’d know. With me being there, I thought you’d know.”

Ok. Etienne has a girlfriend, Ellie. Etienne holds hands with Anna. He is still with Ellie.

It’s nice holding hands. Comfortable.

I wish friends held hands more often, like the children I see on the streets sometimes. I’m not sure why we have to grow up and get embarrassed about it.

You know why? Because you wouldn't like it if Etienne held hands with another girl if he was dating YOU. Fucking hypocrite.

Friends don't sleep in each other's beds.

I mean I didn’t SLEEP sleep with him. Obviously. But I slept with him.

I slept with a boy! I burrow back down into my sheets and grin.

And that boy has a girlfriend. And then you do it again. While he still has a girlfriend. While you have an almost-boyfriend.

You make eye contact and blush at each other in a theatre. While he has a girlfriend.

You kiss each other. While he has a girlfriend. While you have an almost-boyfriend.

You flirt with each other. While he has a girlfriend. While you have an almost-boyfriend.



I don't see this relationship lasting very long.