Just me here. Hi. I'm Dew. 32. Generally caffeinated. INFP. This is where I yap about books, mostly reviews of what I've read recently or even old favorites. Userpic from "Ink" by Kelly Vivanco, check out her work.
Title: Sugarbaby
Author: Crystal Green
Length: 265 Pages
Publisher: InterMix
Publication Date: May 2015
“It's Aidan Falls, baby. We might as well be another planet.”
Small towns are a microcosm unto themselves, singular little universes seemingly cut off from the rest of the world and abiding by a set of rules of their very own. In her new entry in the series, Crystal Green once again invites us in to Aidan Falls, Texas, and gives us a glimpse of a world where reputations rarely fade and football is king.
In all honesty, this is not the sort of book I often read. I was familiar with Crystal Green’s work – or, rather, as I better know her, Chris Marie Green, author of the Vampire Babylon and Ghost for Hire series – but this style of novel is not the usual of her work that I would be drawn to. Sugarbaby, though, was different – a different reading choice for me, and a something a little different for the genre.
The novel’s hero is Jadyn, a refreshingly frank young woman who has no problem admitting her flaws and mistakes. The novel opens to the heroine feeling the repercussions from a drunken mistake and getting the cold shoulder from her ex’s fan club, football fanatics who worship at the quarterback’s feet – the same quarterback that Jadyn cheated on.
"We all paid for the past in some way, except, with me, I'd made my own sins that'd dogged me for months, and, I'd wished I could right them.”
This in itself comes as a surprise in a genre where the heroine is usually some untouchable goddess with a Bella Swan-like immaculate reputation. The story only gets more intriguing from there.
If you’ve ever read any fan fiction, you might have encountered the trope where one soon-to-be star-crossed lover sends an inadvertent text or makes a phone call to a wrong number, bringing their new love interest into their life. Admittedly, I’m a sucker for that particular trope and when the wrong number text that Jadyn sends lands in the inbox of a sexy billionaire, I was admittedly hooked.
It’s not all roses and champagne, it’s real life with some fun fictional perks (a la the sexy billionaire) as Jadyn deals with the fallout from her own missteps, the loss of family, and the overall trials and tribulations of being a young woman in a small Texas town.
Trouble, said my smart side. That's what you're gonna get with him.
Jadyn, or Jade, is extremely likable as a narrator and the reader can easily understand the thoughts behind the actions she takes, all the while learning about the past that made her who she is. Her hero doesn’t trot in on a white horse to right all of her worries; rather, he slides in with a cadre of problems of his own traveling along with him, and the novel deals as much with the two of them righting their wrongs as with them finding each other.
All in all, it’s definitely worth a read. I do think I’ll be paying many visits to Aidan Falls in the future.
*In the spirit of full disclosure, I am reviewing this having received a digital ARC of the novel.*
CHECK PLUS: Cute story, if a little bit predictable (though that’s really a hallmark of the genre)
CHECK MINUS: First person perspective (personally not a favorite)
OVERALL RATING: B
1. The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell — The story of a big game hunter finding himself stranded on an island and becoming the hunted.
2. The Last Question by Isaac Asimov — A question is posed to a supercomputer that does not get answered until the end days of man.
3. The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov — A man passes away and has a conversation with the Voice in the afterlife.
4. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman — A collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of the house.
5. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson — The story of one small town’s ritual know only as “the lottery.”
6. Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway — A couple has a tension-filled conversation at a train station in Spain.
7. All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury — A group of schoolchildren live on Venus where the Sun is visible for only two hours every seven years.
8. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut — It is the year 2081, and all Americans are equal in every possible way.
9. The Monkey by Stephen King — The story of a cymbal-banging monkey toy that controls the lives around it.
10. We Can Get Them For You Wholesale by Neil Gaiman — A man named Peter searches the phone book for an assassin to kill his unfaithful fiancée.
Title: The Sticks
Author: Andy Deane
Length: 210 Pages
Publisher: Delerium Books
Publication Date: April 2009
There are certain things you expect to find on sale when you go to see a band play. Albums, obviously. T-shirts, of course. Bags, buttons, patches? Sure, why not! But books? Not so much. Finding a stack of horror novels on a band’s merch table may seem a little strange, but that is exactly how I came across The Sticks, a novel written by Bella Morte frontman Andy Deane.
The novel reads like a horror movie put to the page: a man is kicked out of a party where everyone seems to be taking themselves too seriously, and abandoned by his girlfriend to boot. When the girl in question seems to vanish, he and a fellow spurned partygoer set off to find her and get a lot more than they bargained for in theprocess as they nearly run down werewolf on a country road. Told from the protagonist’s perspective, thenovel is written in the first person, and the colorful language and thought process of Brian, the lead character, make the narrative both memorable and believable. The narrator is likable and carries a somewhat everyman feel, forced to deal with the hassles of weird neighbors, his missing girlfriend’s snobbish friends and even a car that proves far less than reliable. Brian is an ordinary guy – and a horror movie fan – caught up in some extraordinary circumstances, forced to fight for his life against an evil that no one else could possibly believe. Full of film references, the novel will be a delight for any horror fan to read.
Key to the novel’s success as a werewolf story is the fantastic description of the actual transformation. We’ve all seen a man change to a bloodthirsty werecreature in film and television, but it has rarely been put to page with such masterful description. Cracking bones, twisting flesh, a grizzled muzzle forcing its way forward: it just doesn’t get much better than this! The author doesn’t shortchange on the gore or bodycount either. This is a horror novel and that fact is never forgotten. The werewolf in question is a vicious, ravenous beast and it leaves a bloody trail of broken, bitten bodies in its wake. The novel is completely unapologetic in its use of gore and violence – just the sort of attitude needed for a great horror story.
Apart from being a little heavy on the use of similes, there is not much to complain about. The solid storyline would prove great fodder for a film, particularly so as lacking of decent werewolf films Hollywood has been since… well… just about forever. Deane’s writing career is just getting started, with only a few novels under his belt; if the others are as good as this one, we may be looking at a new force to be reckoned with in horror fiction.
CHECK PLUS: Fun story, likable characters, great horror elements
CHECK MINUS: A little overboard on the use of simile
OVERALL RATING: A-
See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages for words
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive
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