Flight into Fantasy

Hi, Internet,

I love romance novels. Partly, I love them because reading them allows me to be a complete mushball in a socially acceptable way. And they are the one genre of fiction everyone derides, and I am ever a supporter of the underdog.

That all being said, some romances, such as those of Meljean Brook and Moira Rogers and Nalini Singh are easier to love than others. This is because these romances feature two likeable leads who are recognizable as relatable people, realistic conflict that keeps them apart, and worldbuilding that isn’t just tacked on for flavor.

Highland Wedding by Hannah Howell didn’t have any of those things going for it. I read it because I was validating it for Bookshare, which is the only way I ever would have finished it. Because, Internet, it was an awful book.

The premise is this. A long, long time ago, in an alternate universe that is supposed to resemble Scotland, sometime in history, although when is never specified, Islaen MacRoth needs a husband. (Incidentally, I have no idea how one pronounces Islaen.) She has her heart set on Sir Ian MacLagan, in true Disney princess fashion. The King decides that it would be awesome if the MacLagans and the MacRoths were allied, in case those pesky English should cause trouble, so he forces Ian to marry Islaen. And here we come to the riveting conflict of the book. You see, Ian was married once, and his first wife died in childbirth, which was apparently an agonizing thing, so he doesn’t want to put any woman, particularly not one as small and delicate as Islaen, through that. Islaen, on the other hand, had a mother who was positively a brood mare, and she is pretty sure she will be one, too. (Spoiler alert: She totally is. But that comes later.) For her part, Islaen sees herself as deformed, and is not sure that Ian will be able to bring himself to do the horizontal tango with someone as ugly as she is.

“What deformity does Islaen have?” you may be asking yourself. “Does she have extra arms? Is she perhaps a hermaphrodite?”

No. No, she is not. Instead–get ready to be horrified–Islaen has huge tracts of land. She decides to come clean to Ian about this, and they have the first of the many sex scenes in this book, after which they are discovered and Islaen’s father and Ian engage in the creepiest dialogue ever involving Islaen’s… assets.

Of course, after the wedding, not all is smooth sailing either. Ian insists Islaen use contraceptive sponges. She doesn’t. And then she gets pregnant, producing triplets. (See what I mean about being a brood mare?)

There’s other stuff that goes on, too. There are several evil skank whores who want Ian for themselves because I guess being broody and not all that bright is a turn on for some girls. There’s one odious fat man (his fatness gives him away as a villain) who keeps trying to rape Islaen. There’s also a crazy former lover of Ian’s ex-wife who decides that Ian must die and *also* wants to rape Islaen.

As for the lovers themselves, their conflicts aren’t the type that could be solved with a simple talk. No, the problem is that neither of these people is all that bright, so a lobotomy would probably be the kindest thing. Ian, for example, is always letting his passions run away from him and boinking Islaen wherever they happen to be, only later checking to see if she’s using contraceptives. For a man who’s dead set against having children–even if it is for the lamest reason ever–he sure is blase about the whole thing, and way too trusting of his wife. And Islaen is just dull. She is meant to be spunky and feisty, but she chases after Ian like a lost puppy, eager for any scraps of affection he hands out. She lacks a personality, and we’re supposed to find her interesting because she is something of a tomboy, having grown up with ten older brothers. Oh, and they both speak in Scotts dialect which, far from seeming truly authentic, came off as overdone. Surely, all the Scotts didn’t use “dinnae” and “wasnae” and the rest of it, especially if they were highborn, as our two leads are.

I haven’t mentioned the secondary characters yet. Sadly, they don’t do very much and fall into predictable patterns. There’s Ian’s friend, Alexander, who is clearly being set up for his own book, there’s the hero and heroine of the previous book. And then there are the two main villains, who are as believable as cardboard.

I was talking to Holly on twitter about this book, and she confessed that Hannah Howell was like crack to her. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t my reaction. My favorite kind of bad story is generally over the top in its awfulness, or it’s so campy that you can’t believe what you’re reading, but you’re entertained anyway. This book was just bad. I was never entertained, I found the conflicts ridiculous, and, if the book hadn’t been an ebook, I’d have wanted to chuck it against a wall. My grade, unfortunately, is an F.

Other Opinions

If any of you have read this book, let me know where you’ve reviewed it. Or, you know, use the comments to tell me I have all the taste of a dead fish. That works, too.

Yet again, this review will contain spoilers. If for some reason you want to encounter the Dollangangers pure and unsullied, you should not read further.

Title: Petals on the Wind: The Dollanganger Saga, Book 2
Author: V C Andrews
Genre: Gothic horror/WTF trainwreck
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: You know, that’s a really good question. Let’s just call it trainwreck syndrome and leave it at that.
Synopsis: This book picks up exactly where Flowers in the Attic left off. Chris and Cathy make it to North Carolina, where they are taken in by Paul Sheffield, who it turns out raped his first wife and screwed around on her, and yet who is the least dispicable man in the entire series. Chris becomes a doctor, Cathy begins her dancing career, and Carrie graduates to the position of complete tragic figure. Oh, and Cathy manages to take revenge on her mother by… sleeping with her stepfather and having his baby.

My Thoughts: I’ll give Flowers in the Attic some credit. It was a bad book, but there was something cheesy in its badness that made it strangely compelling reading. In this sequel, any sense of fun I had with the story is gone, and I’m not entirely sure how come I managed to finish it. Also, a reader has to have a heart of stone not to have some pity for four kids locked in an attic for years, but the sympathy doesn’t last when at least the character narrating the events of the story is a complete sociopath. What makes it worse is that we are supposed to gloat over Cathy’s mastery of everyone around her, from her brother (who is still in love with her! Ick!) to her stepfather, to her mother and grandmother at the end. Reading this book was an absolute chore, but I was determined I’d see it through to the end.

In my review of Flowers in the Attic I mentioned that I was bothered by a really troubling and very explicit misogynist streak in the text. This is here in spaids as well. Cathy is constantly playing games with the men in her life, alternately seducing and then pplaying hard to get. It’s worse in this book, though, because it’s also clearly Cathy’s fault when Julian, the dancer she first marries, hurts her. After all, she provokes him, and people actually tell her that she needs to stay with him or he’ll kill himself. When she doesn’t heed this advice, Julian gets into a terrible accident and eventually does end up killing himself. As I read, I kept wondering if any teenagers reading this book, struggling with their burgeoning sexuality, actually think relationships between adults are like this? Because seriously, Cathy should have gotten the hell away from Julian long before he conveniently died.

Also, Paul Sheffield, the doctor who takes the Dollanganger kids in, has a terrible past. See, something horrible happened to his wife so she hated sex, so what does Paul do? He rapes her, because he is a man and he has needs, you know. It’s implied that it was Paul’s wife’s fault for not getting over herself, and it was further her fault when Paul slept around with young girls. Just… ugh.

The revenge Cathy exacts is also painful to read about, because not a whole lot happens. Cathy and her mom shout backstory at each other, then the house catches on fire, and that’s pretty much that. There was also a painful scene in which Cathy whipped her helpless grandmother, which, rather than being cathartic at all, was just so very wrong on so many different levels.

Final Thoughts: I hated this book. It was a chore to read, most of its characters were completely unlikeable, and I was really bothered by how much the author clearly seems to hate her own gender. The train wreck syndrome doesn’t make this book worth pursuing.
Final Grade: F

Other Opinions

• Mrs. Giggles, whose opinion is very different from mine

P.S. Oddly enough, the book I started reading after I finished POTW was Jennifer Donnelly’s The Tea Rose. It’s another rags-to-riches story featuring an indomitable heroine successfully gaining revenge over the people that did her wrong. However, it’s a much better book, because I like Fiona and she’s not a sociopath. Plus, there’s no incest. Always a good thing.

It seemed only fitting to review this book on Halloween. After all, Halloween is the one day where we try very hard to scare each other silly. And this book is definitely scary, although perhaps not in any conventional sense. Also, you have been warned. There are some pretty heavy spoilers throughout this post, so if for some ungodly reason you want to read this for yourself, you should probably skip the rest of this post.

Title: Flowers in the Attic: The Dolanganger Saga book 1
Author: V C Andrews
Genre: Wikipedia says it is Gothic horror, but I just call it an awful, awful trainwreck from which I could not look away.
Source: Bookshare
Reason for Reading: I think the conversation went something like this:

Primavera: “OMG, you’ve never read Flowers in the Attic?”
Me: “No. I do know it’s got incest in it and one of the kids dies from eating sugar doughnuts.”
Prima: “OMG you should read it. I’ll read it, too, so we can *headdesk* together.”

Thus it was that I started reading the book. And then got so horrified I had to tweet about it. A lot. I do not know whether Prima managed to get through a reread, or if she just got a vicarious thrill from watching me suffer.

Synopsis: OK, so there’s this family, the Dolangangers, and their lives are peaceful and idyllic until the fateful day when Mr. Dolanganger dies in an awful car accident. Mrs. Dolanganger, being basically a useless waste of space, decides the best thing to do is take her kids back to her family home. She’s going to charm her father into forgiving her for a terrible thing she’s done, namely run off with her half-uncle (that would be Mr. Dolanganger) and then get herself written back into his will, so she can inherit a fortune. The plan is to spring the kids on the grandfather as a surprise, and the only way to do that is to shut them away in an attic. The few days Mrs. D. promises turn into four years, and in the meantime, Cathy, our uber-special, pretty pretty princess heroine, and her brother Chris (who is brilliant! And he’s going to be a doctor! And he’s brilliant! And he’s a great artist! And did I mention he’s brilliant? Because I don’t think I did) get close in a way that two siblings never should.

My Thoughts: You know how there are some books that you enjoy even though they are bad, because they’re fun stories, and it’s obvious that the author isn’t taking herself all that seriously, and even though they may have all the substance of cotton candy, they are a lot of fun? Well, this isn’t one of those books. This book I kept reading with wide-eyed incredulity, wondering how V. C. Andrews could possibly top herself. I didn’t like it, but I had to keep going because it was a trainwreck and I could not! look! away! This book was like reading the horrible tempestuous fantasies of an emo teenage girl which should never have left her hard drive. It’s so very overwrought, with everyone being over the top in their cruelty or their kindness or their passion.

I don’t even know where to start with this book. Should I tell you about Cathy, who is immature, self-centered, and a brat, in addition to being the prettiest girl ever? And that’s our *narrator*. She’s the embodiment of a Mary Sue, because everyone either loves her unreservedly or hates her fiercely. She’s even got typical Mary Sue flaws: she’s stubborn, she sees the dark side to every situation (so, basically, she’s right all the time), and she’s a complete nitwit. She talks a good game, about not needing approval from anyone, but she seems to be incapable of doing anything on her own initiative. And let’s not forget that she writes in an over-the-top style, with lots of exclamation marks and phrases like “golly-lolly” or “Good golly day!” inserted every once in a while. I don’t know who in the world ever talked like this, but I am fairly certain I would want to commit horrible violence on them if I did meet someone who did.

Chris is one of those YA boyfriends I don’t like. He’s utterly devoted to Cathy, who doesn’t appear to notice any flaws. He’s also Edward Cullen-tastic in his creepy obsession with the women in his life, first his mother and then his sister. Also, as mentioned earlier, he is brilliant. And knows everything about everything. And is such a pompous windbag that I want to slug him. Frequently.

The younger Dolanganger children, Cory and Carrie, sadly only rate a paragraph. I loved Cory, who was sweet and frail and absolutely adorable. Needless to say, he is the one who bites it with the sugar doughnuts at the end. Poor Carrie, by contrast, is just unloved by everyone. Cathy doesn’t think much of her, Chris ignores her, and their grandmother is outright abusive.

That brings me to the adults. The ones we meet are caricatures, all. The kids’ mother is a vapid bimbo who gradually loses herself to pretty clothes and attentions from men. The grandmother is an imposing witch of a woman who is so over the top in her abuse of the kids.

There isn’t much of a plot. The kids never think to try and escape until years into their captivity, and then only after Cory finally dies. As one reviewer put it, they’d never survive a real kids’ book.

“But Shannon,” you may well be asking yourself, “What about the incest?” Well, let me tell you. It’s as creepy as you might imagine, given that our hero and heroine are basically prototypes of a certain sparkly vampire and his ladylove, only, you know, related. And not sparkly. In addition to the creepiness, though, the incest scene underscores something I noticed throughout the series: a horrible misogynist streak I can’t believe I’m reading in a book written by another woman. You see, Cathy *made* Chris rape her. If she hadn’t snuck into her mother’s bedroom and kissed her mother’s new husband, Chris wouldn’t have gotten jealous. And if Cathy hadn’t been wearing a short nightie, Chris wouldn’t have been tempted. So, basically, Cathy asked for it. And Cathy’s not the only one who has to deal with implicit slut shaming. Her mother is described in frighteningly sensual tones, and Cathy begins to truly despise her when she figures out that her mother isn’t nearly as pure as she once thought she was. I kind of get the impression that in the world of Cathy, it’s totally OK if *she* sluts around, but other women who do the same? Total h0rs. Which is weird, considering the bizarrely sensual terms she uses to describe her mother.

Final Thoughts: I really have no idea how to grade this book. It’s awful, tawdry, and has no redeeming factors. But I do want to read at least the sequel, because the trainwreck syndrome is bad. I think the awfulness of the story and the writing win out over my TWS, though, so this one gets a failing grade.

Final Grade: F

Other Opinions:

Bookshelves of Doom: I was going to seek out other links, but really, just go read this. It’s all you need.

Book 25: on the Bright Side, I’m now the Girlfriend of a Sex God is the sequel to Louise Rennison’s Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. Like its predecessor, this book was extremely cute. But it had the exact same flaws–namely the heroine, Georgia Nicolson, is a little snot who should be smacked upside the head.

Speaking of people who should be smacked upside the head:

Lolita was my book club’s selection this month. I did not enjoy it. I’m apparently not enough of an intellectual reader to pick up on the myriad symbols present in the text, and I found the characters, at best flat and boring, and at worst irritatingly whiny and psychotic. Plus, it’s about a pedophile. I just really couldn’t get past that.