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nothing special

Review of Nothing special, by A. E. Via

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Nothing SpecialI bought a copy of A. E. Via‘s Nothing Special.

Description from Goodreads:

Cashel Godfrey is big, tattooed, and angry, so people typically keep their distance. Fresh out of the police academy no one is looking to partner with the six foot four beast. When Cashel scanned the orientation room, he wasn’t expecting sexy hazel eyes to be locked onto him. Eyes of the gorgeous Leonidis Day. 

Leonidis is charming, witty, hilariously sarcastic, and the only one that can make Cashel smile. He’s an out and badass detective, but when Cashel saves his life in a raid that turns deadly, he sees something in the big man that no one else does…something special. 

Warning: Two sexy narcotics detectives. One with a serious hot spot for big gun-toting men, the other that yields a cannon; so be ready for the obscene sexual bang when these two come together.

Review: **spoiler alert**

Brace yourself. I’m about to rant and it’s not going to be pretty. I’ll apologise up front, but I didn’t find a lot to like about this book.

If I had to choose one word for this book, it would be inelegant. It’s not that the story is a bad one. It isn’t. It’s one that’s been written about a thousand times. But as I happen to really like growly cops falling in love, I don’t have a real problem with that. What I have a problem with are inaccuracies and jerky developments.

For example, the second sentence of the book introduces one of the main characters thus:

Detective Cashel Godfrey groaned and rolled his eyes at the captain’s obvious statement of most of their goals.

It’s their first day on the job as rookie officers. They’re in polyester uniforms and presumably beat cops. Then, part way through chapter one, we’re told,

It’d only taken four years for the two of them to make detective and get promoted to the Tactical Narcotics Team…

Well, if it took four years to make detective, God(frey) couldn’t have been a detective on page one (four years earlier). Further, it’s suggested that this is an impressive feat of promotion, accomplished because they are such a dynamic duo, but everyone from their cohort seems to have been promoted to detective too. 

Or how about the fact that just a page or so after God’s introduction, Leo is said to have a skull and crossbones tattoo on his arm, but later in the book, it’s God who has the skull and crossbones on his bicep, while Leo has “a couple armbands on each arm.” Consistency is important. Obvious errors pull me right out of a story.

Another thing that disrupts my reading experience is when solutions to problems are discovered or remembered so abruptly as to cause a stutter in the reading. Example: how about smooth transitions like this one,

Day got up and started pacing back and forth in his spacious living room. He stopped and ran his hands through his blond hair thinking about where God could be…then an idea hit him like a ton of bricks. Our tracking apps.

Yeah, that felt natural. This kind of thing happens a lot. Here’s another one, 

“What the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t move him by myself.” Day’s eyes widened. Oh. His neighbors. Those were some big motherfuckers.

Light bulbs just never feel unobtrusive and I hate them. 

But it’s not just problem-solving that isn’t handled well in this book. There are passages like this one,

“God said that they have kind of a strained relationship. He never went into specifics and I didn’t press the issue. But I’m sure it’s not that strained that his brother wouldn’t help him if he’s really sick. This will be a good way for his brother to show him that he loves him.”

Really this is fine, unless you consider that you don’t need to actually know that God has been disowned by his family to know he’s been disowned by his family, by virtue of the obviousness of that setup. (Not to mention what’s gonna happen, how it’s going to be resolved and what the HEA will be. All right there in that one statement.) I don’t like to see the scaffolding of a story quite so obviously.

And for the record, the resulting drama is just as gag-worthy and horribly sappy as you would imagine. In one fell swoop (finding tapes hidden in an attic of a house that the family moved into years after the hider died, so no idea how they got there) all is forgiven and God’s mom and brother are suddenly completely different characters. You might think almost ten years of hating and being horrible to someone might take a little more time to get over. But apparently it can be instantaneous and personality altering for all parties.

The thing is that there is so much about this book that is all almost good, but just so darned clumsy that it isn’t. Like when God becomes so sick he almost dies, but somehow never noticed it until he’s passing out? Sure it’s a perfect time for Day to nurse him back to health (and luckily prove he’s really loyal to God, as he was conveniently challenged to do just one scene earlier) but it’s also really abrupt, as is he miraculous healing as soon as it no longer benefits the plot.

In fact, everything is fast. Anyone out there ever worked in or with law enforcement? Ever tried to make an appointment with a lawyer to meet you at the jail to speak to an inmate (or the appointment to speak to the inmate at all…or well, just get any of them to answer the phone the first three times you call)? How about managed to get face time with a DA to discuss an appropriate deal, let alone get the decision made? Get the paperwork for any of that?

I guarantee that stuff doesn’t ALL happen in less than an hour in real life (or even believable fiction), but it apparently does in the Atlanta Drug Taskforce of this book, and with no effort too. I don’t know, maybe they have support staff to make the phone calls. Because, as an example, at one point God and Day were told some information, flirted a bit, God rush to the bathroom to take care of some personal business and then they ran to the truck and straight to the jail to see the informant, with a deal in hand and the lawyer already there. How? How, ’cause I want to work in that department.

It’s not that I want to read each and every phone call or anything (that would be boring), but I need to know appropriate time has passed for things to have happened and I need things to sound right, in some vague but appropriate way. And it just doesn’t here.

I’m no expert on any of this, but that just makes the whole thing worse. If you had to be an expert to notice the errors, it would be forgivable. But I’m not. I just have a little real world experience (and I never had to speak to a DA) but I still couldn’t hack it. People who don’t know police procedure or know any more of the lingo than can be gleaned from late-night TV, shouldn’t write it. Sorry, that sounds mean, but more research was required to make this sound more natural than two boys playing cops and robbers.

All the talk of catching the “kingpin,” with no further clarification of the hierarchal nature of the gang involved is a perfect example. Is it a mafia? Cosa Nostra? La Eme? Triad? Yakuza? Bratva? Or just some punk kid calling himself the big cheese in the area? Each would be different and just talking endlessly about the generic ‘kingpin’ suggests no further knowledge on the subject, no deeper thought to the shallow plotting than an avid Law & Order fan. It says, “I know the kingpin is the top dog, whatever that is, but I don’t really know what that means so I’m not going to delve into it any further.” And this is REALLY felt by the reader. And this is not the only example I could use. 

Far worse than God’s miraculous recovery abilities or the department’s apparently super efficient administrative staff is the sudden development of a romance between God and Day. They had been partners for four year (and sinse when do cops get to choose their partners, anyway?). One is straight; one is gay. There has been no evidence of unresolved sexual tension between them. Then, BAM, suddenly they’re all over eachother and in love. What!? There is no real impetus of change, nor is there a gradual growth of feelings. It came out of nowhere. I think the author tried to use the events of one particular night to accomplish this, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t enough. So, it too felt completely unsupported.

Then, just about the time you come to terms with the romance (and the fact that God’s a complete selfish asswipe as a lover), the author throws in a foursome! A foursome? Really? I don’t have any problem with four men. It’s kinda hot actually, but when the book is full of lines like this, “Day was his and only his…” and the characters pull the “Mine, Mine, Mine” cards over and over, it doesn’t work when they then turn around and start swapping. NOT. AT. ALL. And if it doesn’t fit the plot, it’s just there as titillation and is therefore a complete fail.

Plus, it required personality shifts on everyone’s part. God and Day both hated Johnson and Konowski up to that point, not to mention Konowski was really, really homophobic. So to have the four of them suddenly partner up just didn’t work. And much like God’s mom and brother, Konowski became a completely different character afterwards. Complete personality 180. Personally, I like consistency in my characters as much as in my plot. (Though, I did have a decent laugh at the fact that the author posted a note in the blurb of book 2 saying that there were no “polygamous sexual pairings” in the novel. I guess she’s already gotten the message that readers weren’t happy about it in this book.)

I also had a hard time with the names, God and Day. For one, God, really? Was there supposed to be some subtle religious message hidden here? If so, I missed it. But also, because they’re nouns, so my brain just apparently refused to read them as names. There were a lot of instances of having to reread a sentence because I misread it the first time, plus two short clipped names were easily confused.

There were also a lot of things that just plain annoyed me, even if not necessarily wrong. Like God carrying and actually using a Desert Eagle. I know the man is supposed to be huge, but still, a Desert Eagle? Really? Those things are 4+ pounds, empty! I would also have liked more description of the characters too. For example, at 58% it’s mentioned that Day trimmed his beard and I thought, what beard? No beard had been mentioned up to that point. Things like that.

Lastly, the book needed a bit more editing. There are a lot of misused words and typos. For example, the word ‘off’ was often missing its second F, to spell ‘of’ instead. And, you know, to catch the inconsistencies.

So, final thoughts: this was basically just barley ok. I know I probably made it sound even worse than that, since I didn’t care for it. But I’ll give it OK, even if not much more. I didn’t toss it on the DNF pile, but the best way to illustrate my opinion is by admitting that I bought Nothing Special and Embracing His Syn at the same time. I would never return a book after reading it, but halfway through Nothing Special, I returned Embracing His Syn. My book budget is too small to keep it when I wasn’t that impressed with the first one.

However, I want to end by saying that what irks me won’t necessarily annoy another reader. So, as always, I encourage people to pick the book up and make their own decision on it.

spirit

Book Review of Spirit, by John Inman

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Spirit

I bought a copy of John Inman‘s novel, Spirit.

Description from Goodreads:
Jason Day, brilliant designer of video games, is not only a confirmed bachelor, but he’s as gay as a maypole. One wouldn’t think being saddled with his precocious four-year-old nephew for four weeks would be enough to throw him off-kilter. 

Wrong. Timmy, Jason’s nephew, is a true handful. 

But just when Timmy and Uncle Jason begin to bond, and Jason feels he’s getting a grip on this babysitting business once and for all, he’s thrown for a loop by a couple of visitors—one from Tucson, the other from beyond the grave. 

I’m sorry. Say what? 

Toss a murder, a hot young stud, an unexpected love affair, and a spooky-ass ghost with a weird sense of humor into Jason’s summer plans, and you’ve got the makings for one hell of a ride.

Review:
I thought that this was really quite cute, funny in a clever sort of way and suspenseful. It was also well written and well edited.

Yes, the precocious four-year-old was far too clearly communicative to be realistic. He was very adult sounding, in fact, and that annoyed me a bit. I wouldn’t have wanted baby talk or anything, but no four-year-old has that much reasoning power or clear, concise, grammatically correct speech. It was distracting (but maybe that was exaggerated for me since I have a 4 year old). Similarly, and possibly as a result of the adult toddler, the interactions between the Jason and Sam and Timmy were unrealistic. (Along with Jack, Paul and Sally, are those not the most boring American names the author could have chosen?)

And yes, despite generally loving Jason, I thought he was so camp as to be a cliché. Not so much because he listened to show tunes or used concealer on his acne, but because of his constant need to talk about things being butch or that he might not be manly or macho enough to do whatever—lift a suitcase, swing a sledgehammer, face a spider, etc. It was just a constant attack on his status as a man, as if to say, ‘I’m gay so I obviously can’t also be strong, or brave, or handy with a hammer.’ Certainly, Sam had no such compunctions. Some of this wouldn’t have bothered me (it’s his personality, after all), but he never missed an opportunity to remind the reader. 

The relationship between Sam and Jason also felt a little convenient, but the plot couldn’t have happened without it, so no real complaints. I’m not sure how I felt about all the aiming for the face and licking the leftovers in bed, though. I’m really just not sure. I didn’t necessarily dislike it, but I couldn’t decide if this was supposed to be a little kink thrown in or if this was supposed to be (or maybe is, what do I know) a normal, everyday practice.

All in all, I had a few niggles but for the most part I laughed a lot, nibbled my lips in anticipation, sighed at the romance and generally enjoyed myself with this one.

Book Review of Zero at the Bone, by Jane Seville

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Zero at the Bone

I borrowed a copy of Zero at the Bone, Jane Seville. (Thanks, M.)

Description from Goodreads:
After witnessing a mob hit, surgeon Jack Francisco is put into protective custody to keep him safe until he can testify. A hitman known only as D is blackmailed into killing Jack, but when he tracks him down, his weary conscience won’t allow him to murder an innocent man. Finding in each other an unlikely ally, Jack and D are soon on the run from shadowy enemies. 

Forced to work together to survive, the two men forge a bond that ripens into unexpected passion. Jack sees the wounded soul beneath D’s cold, detached exterior, and D finds in Jack the person who can help him reclaim the man he once was. As the day of Jack’s testimony approaches, he and D find themselves not only fighting for their lives… but also fighting for their future. A future together.

Review:
I’ll admit I expected a lot from this book. People seem to love it. There are tons of raving reviews out there. Plus, well, it claims it name from a poem by Emily Dickinson, for crypes sake. I mean, that’s got to count for something, right?

And I’ll also say up front that I didn’t necessarily dislike it. This is one of those books that I think is designed to make women go weak at the knees; watching a big, tough, emotionally closeted man break down for that one special person and rejoin the human race. This is a theme that really seems to work for a lot of us, my self included. So, it did resonate with me. Don’t think otherwise.

I even liked the characters. D was one of those growly, silent types that pushes all my buttons and Jack seemed to be a smart, capable man who I also liked well enough, even if he did become progressively more twink-like as the book progressed, making his character feel a little inconsistent. (Another reviewer likened him to a teenage girl, and while I think this is an exaggeration, there is definitely a degeneration of his adult maleness as the book moves along. The book starts to feel very het-like by the end.)

However, despite being attracted to the basic type of mm romance this is and actually liking the characters themselves, the book wasn’t a huge success for me. The main reason is that it felt…it seemed…hm, well let me just compare two rivers for you as an illustration.

On a normal, day a river might flow tight and contained within its banks. It’s easy to walk up to the edge and say ‘this is where the river starts, that over there is where it ends.’ Past which, might be forest or fields, whatever. And within those craggy, debris strewn parameters, the water flows at its natural rate, accommodating whatever boulders or fallen limbs might be under the surface. Fine.

But after a heavy rain, that same river will flow over its banks, spread out into wide marshy swaths of ill-defined wetland. It’s hard to know when your foot’s going to leave dry soil and become mired in mud. There is no obvious edge, no obvious ‘here it starts, there it ends’ and everything beyond what you think might be the borders is absorbed into it.

This book is post-flood for me. Its plot seemed to spread and spread and spread. It’s not that I didn’t like the plot, I just kept waiting for the end, only to be given more. Only to see that bank surpassed and spread to the next copse of literary trees.

What I’m trying to say is that the book was long. I mean really, really long. The internet says that the paperback is only 295 pages, but I have a hard time believing it. It just went on for bloody ever. I thought it might never end, what’s more it felt like it wound down about a dozen times, only then to pick up again with yet another swell of action. I like action and all, but it started feeling like 15 epilogues instead of a smooth continuation of the story.

Even though there seems to be a lot of love for this book, there also seem to be a lot of readers that were annoyed (some enraged even) by D’s speech pattern. It didn’t bother me. Maybe ’cause I grew up in the South, where it wasn’t that unusual. What did bother me was that as the book went along, the originally very proper doctor started picking up D’s verbal habits, making them harder and harder to tell apart.

I was almost driven to distraction by all the internal dialoguing though. And oddly it is dialogue. Each character seems to have an alter-ego they can converse with. It was nice to know their private thoughts, sure, but there was so much of it that it really broke up the story. Plus, we were often then told that all these lengthy internal feelings were communicated in a look. Really, in a look?

I did appreciate that D and Jack didn’t have a fairytale happy ending. It was happy, but they were having to realistically learn to live together, instead of a seamless transition into perfecthood. I also like that there was a little flex in their bedroom play. The two have a lot of sex. It would be unimaginably boring if they never changed things up a bit. (Though I won’t credit it with much realism…or even much sexiness.) I loved X and I’d be interested in reading more about D’s task force, if the story could stay focused on it.

So, there are things I liked, not least of which was the actual writing. And as a story, I have few complaints about it. As a book however, as a book that doesn’t seem to know its own limits and reasonable constraints I was well ready for the silly thing to end.