Backstory Boycott

In the past week, I read two romances that really frustrated me: About That Night by Julie James and The Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne. Both of the these books have received very good reviews from others, and if you want to read positive things about them, I suggest you go to those sites. I, on the other hand, had some major issues with the storytelling in both of these novels, which failed because of issues with the characters' backstory.



Kyle Rhodes shut down twitter after his girlfriend broke up with him via a photo tweet of her making out with another guy (harsh), and as a result spent several months in prison. Once he gets out, he runs into US prosecuting attorney Rylann, whom he asked out on a date in college. They're attracted to one another, blah blah blahhhhhhggg.

Julie James always has problems with the beginnings of her novels, even in Just the Sexiest Man Alive (review here), which I adored. But About That Night is probably the worst of all her beginnings so far. There is a TON and TON and TON of backstory that is delivered in the most unimaginative way possible (i.e., exposition and infodump). Even if I wasn't already familiar with most of it from reading A Lot Like Love (review here), I would still want to skim the 80+ pages where we get to see the episodic and brief moment when Rylann and Kyle meet in college; Rylann breaking up with her boyfriend and moving to Chicago, reflecting on life, etc.; Kyle under house arrest, reflecting on how he got into prison, getting out of prison, thinking about life, etc.; AND THEN FINALLY the story starts with Kyle reluctantly testifying about something he witnessed in prison. Except that lasts for about fifty pages and there's still more than half of the book left to goooooooo.

Basically About That Night has no plot whatsoever. The book was so caught up in telling me a backstory that it forgot to deliver an ACTUAL STORY. By the time Rylann and Kyle had gotten together, I'd lost total interest in this not-a-story. Not mention Kyle is the most unbelievable hero I have run across in a loooooong time.



Joanna Bourne is another writer whom I'm generally a big fan of. She has a great, unique style of writing, backs up her novels with solid historical research, sets many of her books in France, and wrote one of my very rare 5-star reads, My Lord and Spymaster (review here).

The Black Hawk started off with a bang. In my head I was thinking, "At last, a story I can finally sink my teeth into!" In the opening scenes a French spy named Justine is stabbed on the streets of London and seeks help from Adrian Hawkhurst, an English spy we met in The Forbidden Rose (review here). Hawker was the best part of The Forbidden Rose for me, so I was thrilled to see he was getting his own book. It turns out he and Justine have been in love for years, but are always spying on opposite sides of a conflict. Now Hawker has to find out who tried to kill Justine and convince her that they can finally be together.

Hey look, it's a plot! Yay for plots! And it's a different plot from the one Bourne used her last two novels, so double yay! I was settling in for an awesome read... and then the flashbacks started. Not my personal flashbacks, mind (that would be bad enough), but flashbacks of everything Adrian and Justine had ever done in their entire lives.

Perhaps it wasn't everything they'd ever done, but it certainly felt like it. In a 304 page book, 184 pages consist of flashbacks. And in case you're under the delusion I needed to know any of the stuff in these gratuitous flashbacks, let me assure you that I did not. The first flashback, which is sixty effing pages long, basically recounts info I'm already familiar with from The Forbidden Rose. Getting people up to speed is fine; boring people to death with endless backstory that has no purpose and zip to do with the plot is NOT.

And because there was so much time spent on the backstory, just as in About That Night there was no development of the characters and their relationship in THE ACTUAL STORY. Who stabbed Justine becomes obvious as soon as the person shows up on the page, and after that the story becomes très boring. I'm very happy these characters have a long history, but JK Rowling had a lot of backstory she needed to fill her readers in on, too, and she didn't do it by taking her readers out of the story with flashbacks every twenty pages. For which we thank her.

It's common knowledge that I have major issues with prologues, and now I have major issues with flashback scenes, too, thanks to these two books. Aren't flashbacks really just a prologue put into the middle of the book instead of the beginning, anyway?



After reading The Black Hawk and About That Night, I came to a depressing conclusion: as much as Fifty Shades of Grey (review here) made me roll eyes and want to throw myself out a window, it was actually better than either of these two novels (from the perspective of storytelling; neither Black Hawk nor About That Night left a terrible taste in my mouth like I'd just licked garbage, so that's a point in their favor). At least in Fifty Shades there was a plot--one blatantly stolen from Stephenie Meyer, but still, a plot--the characters, for what they were, were believable, and there was some chemistry between them; and EL James didn't bore me to death with backstory delivered in lame-o infodumps and flashbacks. She just told the freaking story and let the characters' history emerge as she made it up it went on. So yes, if I was going to compare these three books (and clearly I am) I would say if this is an example of what James is going up against, I am no longer surprised she's selling so many books. There's a lot to be said for not having one's patience tried.

Book Review: FIFTY SHADES OF GREY by E. L. James

This book will teach me to read novels just because they're nominated on a 'best of' list.

Anastasia Steele (that's a mouthful) is a naïve college senior when she meets handsome richy-rich guy Christian Grey. Although he tells her to stay away from him, he keeps following her around. It's all cool, though, because she likes him! Then she discovers he has some Serious Issues that he likes to express via a BDSM lifestyle (it goes way beyond sex), and Anastasia spends the rest of the book hem-hawing over whether or not she wants to sign his insane contract that gives him the right to tell her what to eat, wear, and shave. Will these two crazy kids get together? More pertinently, DO I CARE?!?

I've heard this book described as being either love-it or hate-it, and I have to say I fall firmly into the latter category. At fist it seemed okay... ish. The writing was not great, and was a very awkward combination of first person viewpoint and simple present tense; but it was light and fun and mixed together secretary-billionaire category romance tropes with Twilight, both of which I love. That being said, even though I was entertained, I was a little bothered by the sense of geography--which can be described as shaky at best--and the fact that the American characters talked like extras from a Harry Potter movie. The author is British, and trust me, that and the fact that she has no ear for North American dialect is ABUNDANTLY obvious. Why didn't she just make her characters British? Damn if I know.

So I was already thinking this novel was a little cray-cray, and then the BDSM thing started.

I've read and liked novels with strong BDSM themes, but in those cases the sex felt integrated into the story and made sense for characters. The sex in this book is hot, no doubt, but in a porntastic way, and quite frankly I got bored with it pretty quickly. It has very little to do with the characters, especially Anastasia, who's not even a submissive and has no interest in BDSM at all--I think that's probably the most ridiculous part of this whole thing. I really wanted her to tell billionaire guy to fuck off, but knew she wouldn't because, one, it wouldn't be much of a book if she did; and two, she's a spineless idiot whose actions make no sense.

Plus, if you're thinking of trying this book because it's Twilight fan fiction, I strongly urge you not to do so. The details of the novel may be ripped out of Twilight--it's set in the Pacific Northwest, Anastasia has a flighty mother who's remarried and living in another state, her father is a monosyllabic sports fan, and she has two guys chasing after her (other than Christian): a boy-next-door-type who works with her in a hardware store owned by his family, and the 'ethnic' best friend, José, whose dad is her dad's friend--but those details have absolutely NOTHING to do with the plot, and the tone of this book is not in any way similar. In fact, judging by the amount of lip-biting that goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that James has watched the movies more than she's read the books. Like many other elements of this novel, the Twilight aspect feels like a poorly hacked-on gimmick. It's not an homage to the Twilight series, that's for certain.

I don't know what I find more annoying/insulting about this book--the throw-away Hispanic character, the fact that it could be set in Rio de Janeiro and be the same story, the total lack of attempt on the part of the author to make her AMERICAN characters sound like actual Americans, that it made me want to projectile vomit on several occasions, that finishing it stole away FOUR DAYS of my life that I will never be able to get back, or that the author implies BDSM is good substitute for psychotherapy--but overall it was pretty annoying.

I do not recommend this novel. But if you want to read a book that contains little to no research, poor writing, no attempt at character development, a heroine who falls into every stupid Victorian trope that ever existed, and sex scenes that are little more than porn, then by all means have at it. I would like to thank the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review, however! That was really nice of them.



Musical Notes: "Marry the Night," by Lady Gaga