Psst! She Reads Trashy Novels...

October 31, 2005

Review: Love's Potion by Monica Jackson

Seeing as it's Halloween, I thought I might take a few minutes and post a review of a paranormal romance. I've got a couple of hours until the parties start, and it's not like any of those lazy-ass trick-or-treaters are going to climb the hill to our house. In the interests of keeping me out of the candy this year, we're giving out stickers. I suppose I ought to consider it a blessing the candy-craving costumed mini-criminals are too lazy to hike up here, because if they did climb the hill just for a lousy sticker, we'd get egged for sure.

But I digress (don't I always!). The book in question is Love's Potion, by Monica Jackson. I've been wanting to read it for a while now because I happen to like Ms. Jackson's blog, and because it's a very rare bird - a paranormal romance with black hero and heroine. So last week I hied myself on down to the local Borders and had a look around for it. I knew from reading Ms. Jackson's blog posts not to expect it to be in the romance section. Instead, it was tucked away in the Colored - er - African American Literature section.

Love's Potion is the story of Jasmine Flynn, a lonely New York CPA, who finds a djinn (genie) in an antique perfume bottle. Raziq the djinn is not your stereotypical puffy-pant-wearing, wish-granting, archaic, cross between M.C. Hammer and Mr. Clean; he's a denim-clad, modern-minded hottie who can make a woman's dreams come true, even (or, especially) if she's dreaming of him.

But when Jasmine lets Raziq out of the bottle, she lets herself in for a whole lot of trouble. The more time Jasmine spends around Raziq, the more she becomes immersed in the previously unseen magical world of angels, demons, and a power-hungry sorceress who sees Raziq's magic as a ticket to world domination. Before you can say Kazaam! Jasmine and Raziq are battling evil, and their growing feelings for each other.


As with Jackson's short story, The Way Back Home, the thing I enjoyed and admired most about this book was Jackson's talent for characterization. Jasmine and Raziq are relatable, well-rounded characters. The few brief scenes between Jasmine and her best friend Carmel feel warm and natural.

As a writer, Jackson blithely avoids the cliches and characterization-quagmires that tend to trap less skilled writers. Orphaned Jasmine has a sad background, but instead of coming off as an extraneous excuse for the Big Misunderstanding that will keep the lovers apart (as so often happens in modern Romance novels), Jasmine's survivor guilt with regards to her family and gun-shy attitude toward men seem natural, given her history.

Another thing I liked about Jasmine is that she isn't the typical goody-goody "everybody loves her" romance novel heroine. One of the aspects of her past that Jasmine has to overcome is her failed affair with a married man. In Romanceland, women who sleep with married men fall into one of two categories: innocent victims who didn't know their lovers were married, or evil bimbos who knew and didn't care. Jasmine doesn't fall into either category. She's a woman who did something wrong and is still paying the emotional price. Jackson handles her heroine's past so adroitly that I respected Jasmine more for her honesty and integrity in dealing with her past sins, rather than less.

Raziq's characterization is not quite as deep, but he still makes a great impression. He has an appealing attitude, and plenty of personal quirks that set him apart from the usual tortured, brooding, boring heroes of other paranormal romances. For one thing, Raziq actually likes being a genie. Like Jasmine, Raziq has lost loved ones in his past, but the loss doesn't turn him into a bitter Heathcliff-esque hermit. Instead, it makes his understanding, caring attitude toward Jasmine's past seem that much more natural.

If I have one complaint about this book it's that the romance aspect seemed to work better than the paranormal aspect. The characters felt real, but the magic felt...like a plot device. Raziq spends a bit of time explaining how his djinni magic works in the beginning of the book, but by the end of the book, characters are doing things that haven't really been covered by the rules.

In theory, I like the parallel between the characters discovering their love for each other and discovering new magical powers. But while I have a pretty good handle on self revelation, I felt kind of adrift when it came to the magic side. A few more rules and a smidgen of foreshadowing would have made it all seem a little less deus ex machina.

At 218 pages, Love's Potion was a tad slim for my $6.99. I read it in a little more than three hours, but it was a good yarn. And who am I kidding? I shell out $1.50 a pop for Godiva chocolate truffles whenever I'm feeling the least little bit PMS-y. I always say that quality is worth the price. Love's Potion was a well-told story, and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I'll probably buy another Monica Jackson novel, though a few extra pages might make the purchase easier to rationalize.

Happy Halloween!

Posted by sk :: 10/31/2005 :: 0 comments

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October 30, 2005

Topic: A Defense and Definition of Trashy Novels

People have strange ideas about reading. From the time we are young, parents, teachers, and other adults treat reading like it's good for us. They talk about reading like it's broccoli, or some sort of vaccine against ignorance and teenaged pregnancy. They encouraged, threatened and cajoled us into reading, and when we took to it, they bragged about us to their friends - "Oh, my little girl just loves to read!"

True, reading does have some great advantages - I've embarrassed myself plenty by using three-dollar words I can't pronounce that I picked up from some book or another. But mostly, it's just another form of entertainment, like videogames or TV. Like other entertainment media, some books are art, the vast majority exist to make money by entertaining the reader. Which is why I can't understand why some people get so impressed or huffy about a person's choice of reading material.

Most people have a sort of Madonna/Whore complex when it comes to People Who Read. The good PWR are the ones who voluntarily spend their free time with Literature like Anna Karenina or Jude the Obscure. And the bad PWR? If your preferred genre of reading features a clinch cover or the name V.C. Andrews, you my friend, are a Reader of Trash.

When I say Trash, I mean it in the most positive way. I'm reclaiming "Trashy" for those who read and love entertaining fiction. The Literary Self Righteous tend to regard any book that doesn't somehow improve or teach you as Trash. They sneer down their noses when you whip out the latest Nora Roberts on the train, or dismiss you with a disgusted, "Oh," when they learn that the last book you read featured Stephanie Plum. Though most folks tend to regard People Who Read as somehow smarter or more sensitive than their mouth-breathing, TV watching brethren, reading Trash will only get you stereotyped as a fat, lovelorn housewife who devours Harlequins and bon-bons with gluttonous abandon.

I'll refute that right now. What I choose to read for fun says nothing about my intelligence, my education level, or my self-esteem. I picked up reading romances from my mother - a college-educated career woman who never took shit from any man. All of my Trash-reading friends are educated and successful. Some of them were even English majors.

In further defense of Trash, some books that are now considered classics started out as Trash. The line between the two categories is often simply Time. I had an English teacher who would not let us read Stephen King's The Stand for our book reports, but actively encouraged us to read Gone With the Wind. When I complained, she explained to me that Gone With the Wind was a classic, while The Stand was mere popular fiction. Yeah, so a riveting story about good and evil with biblical and folkloric allusions is not worth reading, but a racist, historically inaccurate soap opera about the life and loves of a spoiled, slave-owning whitegirl is? (I'm surprised Forever Amber wasn't also on the list - it's a better book, though Moll Flanders has them both beat.)

Jane Austen and Charles Dickens both wrote novels that were hugely popular and highly entertaining. And while I'm no big fan of Literature for the Sake of Literature, I love me some Austen and Dickens! Those two knew how to tell a good yarn. And - for Oprah's sake! - look at Dracula. That book has got to be one of the crassest, most exploitative, f*cked up, poorly written pieces of "Literature" I have ever read. But it was hugely popular and it's over a hundred years old. Voila! A Classic.

So why should I read Literature for the Sake of Literature when the stuff I'm reading may well be book report material in fifty or a hundred years. If Gone with the Wind and Dracula are classics, why not Born in Shame?

Posted by sk :: 10/30/2005 :: 2 comments

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October 15, 2005

Review: Bandit Queen Boogie by Sparkle Hayter

Sparkle Hayter always makes me laugh. She has a sharp wit, a well-developed sense of the absurd, and a thing for Bandit Queens - what's not to like? In Bandit Queen Boogie, Hayter combines interests and ideas that will be familiar to fans of her Robin Hudson series - celebrity obsession, bloodthirsty media types, road trips, Bollywood, Indian Organized Crime, Canada, coincidence, performance art, mistaken identity - and rolls them into a rollicking road tale.

Best friends 4 evah, Blackie and Chloe decide to spend the summer after college in Europe. For Chloe the trip is relationship rehab after getting dumped by the obligatory chic-lit insensitive man, and Blackie goes along for moral support. Both discover they have a talent for crime when they end up inadvertently robbing a married man who tries to pick them up in France. Chloe's and Blackie's crime spree makes for a fun read, but when Hayter thickens the plot with a stolen statue, a missing celebutante heiress, and a murder, things really start to cook.

Bandit Queen Boogie is a good light read. The plot is way more fun than most chick lit. Chloe does a good bit of whining about the boyfriend who dumped her, but it doesn't form the core of the story. Hayter does a great job describing the friendship between Blackie and Chloe. It felt real, and lived in. Like many long-time friends, Chloe and Blackie know each other's faults, and are friends anyway, even though they do fight and get annoyed at each other from time to time.

The European resort settings make Bandit Queen Boogie feel a bit like a mini vacation. It would make a perfect beach read. I wish I had found this book in June or July. I can imagine myself parked on the sand at Venice, Santa Monica or Hermosa with this book in my hand and beer and a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips by my side - heaven!

Posted by sk :: 10/15/2005 :: 0 comments

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October 06, 2005

Topic: Interracial Romance Novels

Browsing through Amazon, I happened upon the reviews of this Interracial Romance (IR) fan. It struck me as strange that someone could be so hooked on IR as a category, and then it struck me as rather strange that I don't read more IR, myself. I mean, I am the product of an IR, and my marriage is interracial. Why wouldn't I want to read about relationships that reflect my life?

Maybe because they usually don't. Reflect my life, that is. In the few IRs I have read, the thing that keeps the hero and heroine apart is usually race. Families and friends make a big deal of it; the couple gets grief, has cultural differences, etc. Aside from a few ignorant questions and comments from strangers, Hubby and I never had any IR drama. We met like any two people, fell in love, shacked up, and then got hitched. We did do a bit of learning about each other's cultures but it was open and fun.

And it's not as though we're unusual. Three of our five closest couple friends are interracial. The couple with the greatest cultural differences is actually one of the two same-race couples. Technically they're both white, but he's European, and she's American. Of the five couples, I'd say they're the one with the most cluture-clash and family drama.

In mainstream Romance novels, white chicks are always getting the Happily Ever After with the tall, dark and European man of their dreams, and there is rarely a big deal made of the language and cultural difference. But stick two American characters of different races together - people who speak the same language and are at least a little familiar with each other's cultures - and readers seem to expect drama. The IR fan I mentioned above wrote the following to the white author of an IR romance:

...you need to really leave your sheltered section of Michigan and come out to the real world of interracial romance and not this watered down acceptance that you have written.*


Michigan probably has more IR hangups than California, but the "real world" of interracial romance has - in my experience and in the experience of most people in my age group and geographic area - plenty of acceptance. Is it too much to ask to see this acceptance reflected every now and again in a story about two people from different cultures, but the same country, who are lucky enough to find love?

Topics for Another Day:
Why is it that the "Interracial Romance" category only seems to cover stories about black-white relationships, and never those supposedly mainstream stories about clueless white girls who get swept off their feet and into bed by hot-blooded Latinos, or dark, mysterious (racially mixed, English-speaking, non-Muslim) sheiks? And why don't those trash from the past Loincloth Love Stories featuring virtuous settler women and noble savages count as IR? And where the hell are all the Asians? My completely unscientific observations and disgruntled male Asian friends suggest that one of the fastest-growing types of interracial relationships is Asian woman / white man. Where the hell are they, huh?

*I haven't read the book in question, and, I don't live in Michigan so I can't make any judgments about how realistic its portrayal of IR in the upper Midwest is.

Links updated Nov. 8, 2005. Because, dayum, if you plug any ethnicity but African into the Amazon search along with the words "Harlequin Presents" you will get a long-ass list of books with that ethnicity and the word "virgin", "mistress", or "wife" in the title. Thanks to the Smart Bitches for inspiration.

Posted by sk :: 10/06/2005 :: 0 comments

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