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* Is it just me, or is there something really scary about this picture? Like her neck is at a weird angle and at any moment he's going to fall on her and there will be this wicked snap? I'm getting shivers just thinking about it. Obviously I need to try harder to find images. Or learn to take pictures. One of the two. I digress....

I'm having far too much trouble coming up with exactly what I want to say. It's sort of a jumble of thoughts about the romance novel I read yesterday that was a whole lot of "What the fuck was that?" and how I'm re-reading my way through a stack of books (both a digital stack and an actual stack), my inability to do laundry and how I like to have sets of things. It doesn't make much sense to me now that I list out everything I was trying to say, but somehow when I thought "Yeah, I should update that new blog I started," those are thoughts that came to me.

So, let's just go with the What The Fuckery: This book I read was part of series. There's something off-putting about romance series books when you haven't read them all and the author does a lot of "and course so and so is one of this group of dashing people," and you have to accept that it's both true and that said group is so fabulous after all. Usually if I've read the first one it doesn't bother me so much because book 1 lays the ground work, but when I haven't read it and it does, it's straight-up telling and an author should have to work harder than that to make me believe.

Whatever, there was so much wrong with this book, and that's a shame because the actual romantic-ness was very cute. But that does not excuse the blatant  Cinderella rip-off, or the inexplicable stupidity that acts as the premise, or the cross-dressing giantess who may or may not have some sort of mental issue but can rip a lemon tree in half.

Yeah, I'm not kidding.

Also: it has the oddest epiloge I have ever read. Usually in a romance novel, the last few pages show some sweet scene in which the couple cuddle their children or whatnot. Harmless. Cute. In this book, the author decided that the couple have a troupe of adopted children (which was fine, but there wasn't a lot of ground work for it), but also in the midst of all this family togetherness that they needed to lock themselves in a hidden room, have anal sex, and then go greet adopted baby number 8. Which was just a gross juxtaposition, of which I'm still not over. Oh, and the cross-dresser married and lived happily ever after.

I'm still dumbfounded. It's sort of got me thinking though about how hard it can be to take a simple concept like love and turn it into a fully fleshed out story. Because what the author did really well was the lovey-doveyness. I'm struggling with re-writes for a couple of projects (as in, I can't seem to get anything done), and so as much as I want to call this writer out and say "Yeah, that was so stinking weird" I can't be too hard on her. Cause she's done what I can't seem to: finish something and have it published. It may have left my right eyebrow permanently arched higher than normal, but it is a finished book.

But still: What the heck was that? I mean seriously, there was so much wrong. So, so much.