Book review notice and question

[neadods]

My review of Devil's Bargain is up on Reviewing the Evidence. I'm going to miss the next round of Once Written because I didn't read the books as soon as they arrived and thus will miss deadline. Planning on reading next week and getting into next ish, at the end of October.

I've been trying to make up my mind if I'm going to review the book I just read. I read it with that in mind, and RtE would take it. It's just... like many movies, while I enjoyed it while I experienced it, afterwards the questions pile up and poison my retroactive appreciation. I'm not sure I can write a review that doesn't turn into a feminist rant.

And it would be a feminist rant. The female lead is pretty typical of action plots written by men - smart and spunky, up to a point. While the male lead doesn't quite take away her glasses, lab coat and hair pins and melt her with "Why, you're beautiful!" he does take it upon himself to loosen her up. Which, frankly, she needed, because she was such a damn "good girl" that she wouldn't even tell her fiance that she was allergic to the food he kept feeding her.

I'd forgive her being a stereotype, I can, indeed, roll with everything else she did in the book. (I will admit, he had the other stereotype too - that she civilized the man because he wanted to get her attention and good wishes.) But I just can't look back and forgive this woman for not telling a man for 500+ pages that he was trying to poison her because it would hurt *his* feelings. A man who was going to keep feeding her his favorite food every day of their married life - what DID she think she would do then?

Comments

[lagilman]

Gee, I'd think the first time I turned blue and stopped breathing, or threw up on his shoes, he'd start to get the idea of changing the menu...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Her response was to simply not eat. Not eat the lunches he brought her at work. Not eat when they were out at restaurants and he ordered (!) Etc.

I want to endorse the book, but the more I think about this point, the more it bugs me. How can a character be described as an unpolished diamond and a tough lawyer in training when she can't even look at a man who is knocking himself out to please her and say "I know you love them, honey, but that will make me sick."

[lagilman]

How can a character be described as an unpolished diamond and a tough lawyer in training when she can't even look at a man who is knocking himself out to please her and say "I know you love them, honey, but that will make me sick."

Gahhh. I would have thrown the book across the room at some point. Being a foodie with food allergies, with an S.O. who has even worse food allergies, that kind of behavior is just...alien to me. I'd have no respect for the character at all.

(it's really easy to say "oh god, I wish I could, but blue's really not a good skin tone on me.... you go on, though, and tell me what it tastes like -- I've always been curious.")

If this was for Stupid Plot Reasons, both author and editor need to be kicked.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I didn't throw the book across the room, although the more time goes by, the less I enjoy it in retrospect. Of all the silly plot contrivances, though, that is the one that sticks me in the craw. It's supposed to show how hard she's trying to be a good girl and how much she's willing to sacrifice for being with the safe-but-wrong man as opposed to Our Hero.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

That would be every bit as unbelievable and annoying to me. Didn't we talk about the book with the guy who had the lethal peanut allergy, was NOT in denial about it, was judging a chili cookoff where he knew very well that anything could wind up in that pot, and yet didn't have an Epi-Pen with him? This is worse. That one detail alone would make it a one-star on my scale... maybe even a zero-star.

(One star = "This is a dud, don't waste your time." Zero stars = "This is so badly written I couldn't even finish it.")

[neadods.livejournal.com]

And yet, except for that detail, I rather enjoyed it. I kept waiting for it to be dealt with inside the book... and it wasn't. Now it's getting bigger and bigger and more annoying in my memory.

I swear, though, it would have never been even a small running joke if a woman had created that characer.