NaNo Update–Why am I doing this to myself?  I really don’t think my brain was built for this kind of immersion in writing.  It needs breaks.  Breathers.  I feel like I’m too close to my own work but I still plow on.  Thankfully, I’m on track with everything albeit just a little closer to insanity.

First and foremost, I had no idea I was picking up a paranormal romance novel when I snagged this from the bargain shelf at Barnes and Noble.  I had heard of the author in passing but not enough to associate her to any one genre or anything like that.  I just thought the book sounded interesting and it was five bucks, hardcover, so I said what the hell.

Lo and behold, all I need is the first description of a man the MC finds attractive to tell me there’s going to be some central-plot loving going on later.  And the thing is, I don’t read romances.  I’m sure there are some good ones out there but aside from the fact that they normally don’t interest me, this book just solidified the notion in me that I can’t stand romances.

I’m sure there are much better romances out there, much better romance writers (dear god, I hope so) with realistic plotlines but picking up something like this just makes me question why my mom loves these kinds of books.  She’s a Nora Roberts addict.

I can handle the romance, I really can.  I don’t mind the sex.  Trust me.  I really don’t mind.  What I can stand is when the author relies on every freakin’ romance cliche in the book to get her point across.  Again, I don’t read romance and for me to be rolling my eyes at large chunks of this text is saying something.

I almost wanted to dig the story except, right from the get-go, I wanted to punch the MC, Susan, in the face.  I couldn’t stand her.  Her very existence on the page felt contrived, like the writer wrote her how she wanted her written, not how the character actually wanted to be written.  I think it was pretty obvious that the author was looking for a spunky, feisty little thing that could hold her own against some nasty beasties.  Yawn.

And why the hell does she give laundry lists of what people are wearing?  Can she describe character no other way?  And why is the first thing the MC sees in a person, any person, despite the circumstances, is their looks and how good looking they are?  Why?  And why is everyone so good looking?  I don’t know about you but if a cat turned into a naked man in my living room, I’d be thinking ‘Kill it!’ not ‘could I tingle his dingle without him noticing?’  Realism people.  Say it with me now.  Realism.  And I’m not talking about the cat thing.

And then there’s the insufferable name Rayvn.  It’s bad enough to have a female character named Raven.  How emo.  I’m sure she wears way too much eyeliner to boot.  But to have the male love interest and secondary main character be named Rayvn, I wanted to slit his wrists for him.  Why?  For the love of god, why?  Rayvn?  That’s like spelling vampire with a y.  Just take a fork and scrape it against a plate, why don’t you?

Aside from the fact that the plot was more forced than a toddler in a beauty pageant, the sex scenes were “OMG deep” (in between sneezes, that was the depth) and that I could see the whole mate thing from the second it was mentioned somewhere in the first quarter of the book even though it didn’t happen until the second to last chapter, it was the Uber God Redundant of Redundancies that was the kicker.  If I had to hear about how shunned of a reporter Susan was, how alone she was, how alone Rayvn was, any of their histories or how Susan’s heart ached, cranked squeezed or any other number of squishies her heart could do for someone, I was going to rip my hair out.  Really, where was this woman’s editor?

I would say this novel defied every rule of writing I’ve learned but saying ‘defied’ can a lot of the times mean something good came out as a result.  This was not good.  So I will use violate.  This book violated, and violently so, every piece of education on writing I’ve received in my writing history.  Every single one of them.  From the redundancies to all tell, no show to cookie-cutter characters with “flaws” as thin as gossamer to the inability to tell a cohesive story without wandering back into massive info-dumping mid-plot which half the time was redundant information.

Now I know this is a book in a series.  According to Amazon it’s book number 10.  For the love of god there are at least nine more of these?  Why isn’t the writing phenomenal at this point?  Why hasn’t anyone told the author to take some writing classes and fix those fatal flaws in her work?

Really, is the sex that much of a draw that people will overlook the crap?  Is the story that good?  Personally she came way too quickly for any normal, human girl and the plot needed a hell of a lot of work.  It has potential but it’s buried in the mediocrity of the writing.

To be fair, I had a few eye-watering moments where the emotions between Rayvn (*yak*) and Susan came close to being real but I was so quickly wrenched from those moments by the otherwise lackluster writing that I just couldn’t stay involved.  I tried but in the end, I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the characters.  They held no interest to me.

Remind me to consider my bargain bin purchases a little more closely next time.  I want to make sure I find something with substance on the next go around.

Just a side note, this is not by any means inclusive of all romance writing.  Like I said, I’m sure there’s stuff a hell of a lot better out there but unfortunately it’s crap like this that gives romance a bad name, I think anyway.  I have respect for writers of all genres so long as they do what they do to the best of their ability and are capable of recognizing their own faults.  If this was the best of the author’s ability, maybe it would have been better kept as a midnight fantasy told amongst friends.  Like Twilight.