I picked up an e-copy of Jewels Arthur‘s Forbidden on Amazon the other day.

When a little girl, all alone in the big bad woods, lets it slip that she’s on her way to visit her sick gran, I can’t help but take advantage. Don’t judge me. I’m hungry and let’s be real… What tastes better than a meal that doesn’t struggle—much.

Little do I know, my blood-thirsty plot is about to be foiled by a set of five werewolves that have decided to eat gran, take her place, and eat the little girl! I wish I had thought of that last bit myself.

The worst part is that I have been a lone vampire for years now so I have no one to watch my back. I am just easy prey to them and their beastly desires. If I can’t escape, I just may become victim to those desires and they are more than willing to huff and puff and blow my resolve away.

Before I read this, I couldn’t figure out how it had so many good reviews. It’s a little counterintuitive, but I understand now. Put simply, this is objectively bad—but in the absolute best way!

Years ago, before the time constraints of children, my now-husband and I used to do something called Good Wine/Bad Movie Night. One of us would pick up a good bottle of wine (Mind you, we were young and broke. So, our idea of ‘good wine’ was probably suspect.) and the other would pick out a bad movie. The idea was that the more you drank, the better the movie got. We watched a lot of B-grade sci-fi and questionable anime. But, my goodness, did we have fun with it.

If it were a movie, Forbidden would be a prime contender. It is bad. It’s ‘staying up until 2 am covered in Cheetos dust and cheap wine with your best friend’ bad. It’s cringe at the dialogue and sudden, inexplicable changes in character attitudes bad. It’s porn with minimal plot bad. But it’s not trying to be anything else. Which means you can laugh with it, instead of at it, and bask in its badness. I just had a ton of fun with it and will absolutely try the rest of the series.

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