Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 26

Author Your Life summit!

Recently, I got invited to do a really cool thing and now it’s coming up and I’m so excited to share my involvement in this:

One of my very most favorite author people, Lara Zielin, had an ah-ha moment after a personal and professional crisis that sent her reeling. She realized she could use writing to help her find her way again. Within a year of that realization, her life and heart had been transformed, all because she put pen to paper. Now, Lara firmly believes that writing can completely change your life. As in help you build healthy relationships, open the door to your dream job, maybe even help you finish that project you started way back when.

Now, she’s bringing everything she’s learned to a FREE online summit called Author Your Life: How to Use Writing to Kick Fear in the Teeth, Send Obstacles Packing, and Create the Life You Want.

Lara invited me and, in her words, “20 other experts” (which sounds like she was suggesting that I am an expert which is flattering but inaccurate), to discuss the power of writing to change everything. My area of expertise, of course, is what happens when you start being your authentic self. Also, how to not throw in the towel when you’re receiving nonstop internet hate.

Sign up to hear other actual experts weigh in about writing to unleash change as well as practical how-to advice so you can put this into practice yourself. This includes how to use writing to:

• Silence your inner critic

• Face fear and get un-stuck

• Connect to your community

• Embrace and high-five your authentic self

• Change the story you tell yourself about work

And much more!

This is completely free, so go, sign up, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. www.authoryourlifenow.live

Because, here’s the thing. We might not have the money for therapy or the time to do an hour of yoga every day, but we all have access to a piece of paper and a pen (metaphorically speaking). We can all write something. And that? Can change everything.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapter twenty-nine or “To The Rescue, Eventually!”

Quick update on stuff on my end! Mr.Jen’s injury that I’ve mentioned before is healing through the miracle of physical therapy several times a week. And I’m getting un-depressed. After a wild week, I decided to get out and go. I attended a cast party, a film audition, did some grown-up things that needed doing and now I’m back and ready to roll.

For like a week before I go away to my family’s cabin. I know. I know. But I promise I’m trying to bust through the end of this recap as fast as I can, so we can all get back to our regularly scheduled programing here and I can start writing The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp for your…I don’t know. I feel like “enjoyment” might be tossing the word around loosely. I don’t want you all coming in with heightened expectations.

Anyway, according to Publisher’s Weekly, as of three weeks ago, The Mister had sold a whopping 220,300 copies.

Fifty Shades of Grey has sold over 100,000,000.

That’s a bit of a drop. And yes, the books are almost ten years apart but call me a pessimist…I just don’t think the same hype is there this time, guys.

Content Warning: There are explicit depictions of abuse in this chapter (again) and basically from here on out there’s going to be nonstop rape threats.

We start in Demelssia’s POV, where she notes they’re driving on an autobahn and that struck me as immediately weird because why wouldn’t you just call it a highway? That’s what autobahn means, doesn’t it? It’s just the system of highways? Why would she think of the German word?

It’s a cold, wet, winter day, and the landscape is flat and bleak, reflecting Alessia’s mood.

So, I see this kind of phrasing a lot in books and I don’t know why. I may have even used something similar in the past. But it always stops me to read “this natural thing that occurs with or without my presence is a reflection of my mood.” Like, we should really be saying that our mood is a reflection of the big natural force, right? Why do we do that?

Whatever. New headcanon: Demelssia controls the weather.

No. She feels more than bleak–she’s desolate.

Jesus, one-up the landscape, why don’t ya?

Sleep is what she wants.

I don’t generally ding people for passive voice because I feel like sometimes you can’t avoid it without sounding really stiff and awkward. But sometimes, passive voice is itself really stiff and awkward. This is that time. Just say, “She wants sleep.”

For this part of the ride, though, she just kind of stares at Anatoli and we learn that he’s blond because he has “Northern Italian roots.” The first time she met him, he impressed her and she actually was all into the idea of getting married but she saw some red flags about his temper and treatment of women.

It was at a local dignitary’s wedding, where Alessia was playing the piano, that Anatoli finally revealed his dark side. Two young men, whom she had known at school, lingered when she finished playing. They flirted with her until Anatoli managed to usher her into a side room, away from them and the festivities. Alessia, secretly thrilled, had thought he wanted to steal a kiss, since it was the first time they’d been alone together. But no–Anatoli was furious. He slapped her hard across her face, twice. It was a shock, even though living with her father had prepared her for physical anger.

The story of Anatoli’s abuse continues in an info dump. She remembers the time a male student had asked her a question and Anatoli had tried to break her fingers. She blamed herself and planned to somehow fix things but her mother was like, nah, you’re not going to live the way I did.

Hey.

Maybe her mom should have been the character who snuck in books and taught her English. For like…this very motivation. It would have made way, way more sense.

So, someone mentioned in a comment that Anatoli and Demelssia have more chemistry than Moss and Demelssia. Uh…

Yeah. They go to a service plaza (where her PTSD in these places is suddenly no longer an issue) and he buys them food. But because this is an E.L. James novel, eating stands in for control when the heroine has none, and Demelssia refuses.

“Oh, do your worst, Anatoli. I’m not eating. You bought it, you eat it,” she snaps, ignoring her growling stomach. His eyes flare in surprise, but he presses his full lips together, and Alessia suspects he’s trying not to smile. He sighs, reaches over, picks up her baguette, and takes a theatrically large bite out of it. With his mouth full, he looks both absurd and ridiculously pleased with himself, so much so that an involuntary snicker escapes from Alessia.

Anatoli smiles–a proper smile that travels all the way to his eyes. They regard her warmly, and he no longer tries to hide his amusement. “Here,” he says, and he hands her the remaining part of the baguette. Her stomach chooses this moment to rumble, and when he hears it, his smile broadens. She eyes the baguette and him and sighs.

If I gave you this excerpt right here and you had no idea what was happening in the story, you’d assume this was a romantic comedy and these were the hero and heroine.

The service station, with its large parking lot and smell of diesel fumes, is hauntingly familiar and reminiscent of the journey she made with Maxim–but the difference is, she wanted to be with Maxim.

Call me someone who has read this book all the way so far but last I knew, those places were hauntingly familiar because you were trafficked and you’re suffering untreated PTSD. So, you know. Note that her love for Maxim takes precedence over her personal trauma. Losing him is worse than human trafficking.

In the business-class lounge at Gatwick, Moss and Tom are drinking champagne while they wait for their flight. I know this is supposed to be wealth porn but how obliviously upper class do you have to be to go, “Here is my heroine, tied up in a trunk. Here comes the dashing hero to rescue her…by waiting for a commercial flight instead of just hopping in one of the many cars we’ve heard about him owning. Their struggles and sacrifices for love are of equal measure.”

Maybe she went with him willingly.

Maybe she’s changed her mind about us.

I don’t want to believe that, but doubt is creeping into my mind.

It’s insidious.

If that’s what happened, at least I’ll get to confront her about her change of heart.

Yes. This is a great plan and proves you really care about her. You know her father is abusive. You know the fiance is jealous and abusive. And you’re going to stroll in and reveal the relationship she had with you. There will be zero consequences for her and you definitely shouldn’t have thought of that. You’re so good at being a hero, Moss.

To distract myself from my unsettling thoughts, I snap and upload a few photos to my Instagram.

“How do I make him sound young and hip? I know! I’ll have him Instagram his girlfriend’s kidnapping!”

Once that’s done, I think back over the morning’s events.

Which he goes on to list, so we don’t miss out on anything. He had a business meeting with Oliver. You know. Because THE ESTATE is so pressing that he has to real quick check in on it in the middle of his daring rescue. What was this super pressing matter? Signing paperwork to be included on the “Roll of the Peerage.”

Yes. The man who hates being an earl put being an earl ahead of the women he’s supposed to desperately wish to rescue. The woman he could be driving after at this point but is not. Moss also suddenly remembered that he has a lawyer and that lawyers are needed to do immigration things. So, that ball is rolling now.

Afterward, on a whim, I’d visited my bank in Belgavia, where the Trevethick Collection is secured. If I find Alessia and all is not lost, I will ask her to marry me. Over the centuries my ancestors have amassed quite a haul of fine jewelry crafted by the most prominent artisans of their day. When the collection is not on loan to museums around the world, it is safely stored in the bowels of Belgravia.

I needed a ring, on that would do justice to Alessia’s beauty and talent. There were two in the collection that might have been suitable, but I chose the 1930s Cartier platinum-and-diamond ring that my grandfather, Hugh Trevelyan, bestowed on my grandmother, Allegra, in 1935. It’s an exquisite, simple, and elegant ring: 2.79 carats and currently valued at forty-five thousand pounds.

SEVERAL THINGS.

Your hero should not be doing anything “on a whim” during a time when he should be completely on edge and impatient over a dire situation. He most certainly should not pause in his agonized fretting over his girlfriend’s kidnapping to visit the family trove.

When trying to make something sound fancy you need to not describe it using the word “bowels.”

We don’t really need to know this much about the ring. At least, not at this point in the story, when someone is being actively kidnapped.

Last, and perhaps most importantly:

EVERY SINGLE THING YOU DID IN THIS SEQUENCE WAS SOMETHING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE EITHER ON THE ROAD OR WHEN YOU GOT BACK. YOU COULD HAVE DRIVEN AFTER THEM. THEY ARE IN GERMANY AND YOU ARE IN THE SAME GOD DAMN PLACE YOU WERE BEFORE YOU WASTED ALL THOSE HOURS DOING PAPERWORK AND RIFLING THROUGH MUMMY’S JEWELRY BOX.

There is no tension, no build-up, no sense of any real urgency at all. We’re seeing Demelssia go through all this shit and Moss is carrying on with his regular life but being really, really sad about it. This is like if the Sherrif of Nottingham kidnapped Marian and Robin Hood is like, “Okay, I’m going to go after her! I’m totally going to save the day! First, I just need to restring my bow and polish my sword and finding a new feather for my jaunty little cap because I really want to impress her when I get there! Hope he hasn’t already married or executed her or both!

I pat my pocket yet again, checking that the ring is safe, and scowl at Tom, who’s stuffing his face with nuts.

How dare Tom eat something at a time like this! It’s almost like he’s following the lackadaisical tone Moss set by the several hours of errands he ran earlier in the day.

Tom loves an adventure. It’s why, back in the day, he joined the army. He’s up on his metaphorical white charger, ready for the fray.

But Tom has PTSD from the war. How did he suddenly become bumbling sidekick adventure man, jamming nuts in his face faster than Andrew Zimmern at a Rocky Mountain oyster eating competition?

Yadda yadda yadda, they’re gonna rescue the girl.

Over in Demelssia’s POV, they’re still in the car. So fuck it, I guess we’re going to experience this book in real-time now. Get a sleeping bag.

Anatoli asks Demelssia why she wanted to leave Albania, but she can’t say much without knowing what he thinks the situation is. We learn that Magda’s message wasn’t a horrible betrayal after all:

“What did my mother’s friend say?”

“Your father intercepted the e-mail. He saw your name and asked me to read it for him.”

“What did it say?”

“That you were alive and well and were going away to work for a man.”

So, this is something that needed to be cleared up the moment Anatoli got there. There should have never been any doubt to any of us or any character in the story that Magda wasn’t simply looking out for her friend. It was distracting and confusing for Magda’s motives to go suddenly ambiguous. This conversation should have been part of their first encounter or at least taken place before they left Moss’s house so there was never that, “Huh?” moment when Magda’s actions were brought into question. I would have gone so far as to add something about Magda knowing how Demelssia’s mother worried, etc., to make it explicitly clear that Magda had no intention of leading Anatoli back to London to look for Demelssia.

Anatoli has no idea what happened with the traffickers but he also didn’t bother to ask Demelssia’s mother about any of this because she’s just a woman. Demelssia calls him “prehistoric” for not considering that her mother might have wanted to know that he was going to drag Demelssia back to Albania.

“You are a man from another century. From another time. You and all the men like you. In other countries your Neanderthal attitude to women would be unacceptable.”

He shakes his head. “You have been in the West too long, carissima.”

“I like the West. My grandmother was from England.”

This grandma thing, Lord Jesus. We’re back with dear old Nana. And here, she’s being tied directly to Demelssia’s love of the West as a strong, independent woman’s playground. I still cannot reconcile her grandmother’s feminist influence with selling her own daughter into marriage. Especially when it would have been far more powerful for her mom to just be Albanian and a feminist of her own accord despite her situation in her marriage.

Demelssia tells Anatoli that she doesn’t want to marry him and he’s kind of like, eh, what you want doesn’t really matter.

Alessia huffs feeling aggrieved but brave, too. After all, what can he do while he’s driving?

Beat you one-handed and accidentally cause a fatal crash in his fury?

“You would dishonor your father?”

Alessia flushes. Of course her attitude–her defiance, her willfulness–brings great shame to her family.

If you wanted to write a historical romance, Erika, you should have just written a historical romance. But even if you swapped the centuries, this line of conflict doesn’t work. How is Demelssia the one bringing shame to her family if it’s her father’s possible debt to the local mafia that put her in this position in the first place?

Demelssia then ends the section by staring off out the window and wondering if she’ll ever see Moss again and it feels like it’s the nineteen thousandth time that has happened.

After a section break, they’re in Austria, about to enter Slovenia. Anatoli tells Demelssia that she’ll have to get back in the trunk to cross into Croatia. But he bought more batteries for the flashlight. He also says he doesn’t like putting her in the trunk because he’s worried she’ll get carbon monoxide poisoning.

He frowns, and if Alessia is not mistaken, she would swear he’s concerned. This afternoon at the restaurant, he had regarded her with warmth.

“What is it?” he asks, snapping her out of her reverie.

“I’m not used to concern from you,” she states. “Only violence.”

Anatoli reiterates that he’s only going to hit her if she isn’t obedient and honestly, at this point, I’m like, wait, this is an E.L. James book. Are we sure Anatoli isn’t the hero?

Then Demelssia stares out the window some more while we go to Moss’s POV. They’ve just landed in Tirana.

Tom and I are traveling with hand baggage only, so we go straight through customs and emerge into a modern, well-lit airport terminal. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the place looks like any small airport in Europe, with all the facilities one might need.

You were probably expecting what your author was expecting. Peasants with steamer trunks waiting for their goats to come around on the baggage carousel and street vendors hawking dubious-looking kabobs.

Our rental car, on the other hand, is a revelation.

You thought Demelssia was a revelation, too. Are you going to fuck the car now?

My travel agent had warned me that there were no prestige cars for hire,

Wait. You checked with your travel agent, in the middle of this literal emergency rescue, and you were like, “Are there any prestige cars I can rent?”

so I find myself at the wheel of a car whose make I have never heard of: a Dacia.

Great news! I refuse to believe that Moss has never watched a single episode of Top Gear. I refuse.

For those unfamiliar with Top Gear (because somehow such people exist, much in the way that people who have never seen Star Wars exist), Moss loves cars. Top Gear was the number one auto review program in the world and it was based out of England. It was a worldwide phenomenon. The most illegally downloaded television program on planet Earth, even bigger than Game of Thrones. Moss would have almost certainly have watched it, if not religiously, then casually for sure.

And this compilation video from is why I find it absolutely assinine to write an English hero who is into cars not knowing what a Dacia is:

 

I’m surprised to find myself liking the car; it’s practical and sturdy. Tom christens it “Dacy,” and after some negotiation at the exit to the car park and a small bribe to the parking attendant, we are off.

You…you know you’re trying to rescue your kidnapped girlfriend, right? And details like how much you like the car, how it drives, what your friend nicknames it, all of that is completely unnecessary to your story?

There is also zero explanation of why they had to bribe the parking attendant. I think we’re supposed to take that as a, “Ha, those wacky, thieving, swarthy Albanians.”

They go to their hotel, where they acknowledge that it’s just another three-hour drive to Demelssia’s home. Rather than drive a measly three hours in the hopes of preventing the marriage between the woman he loves and her abuser, Moss is going to catch some sleep. This is certainly a heart-pounding rescue. A “rollercoaster,” if you will.

This arrival at presumably the finest hotel in Tirana is in laughable contrast to what’s going on when we switch into Demelssia’s POV:

In the trunk of the Mercedes, Alessia clutches the flashlight as the car lurches to a stop.

I continue to be amazed by the author’s lack of awareness about her own damn writing. Erika, your heroine is in the trunk of a god damn mobster’s car. Your hero needs to have any sense of urgency at all. Any.

Anatoli and Demelssia get across the border and he lets her out of the trunk. Now, he’s rested enough to assault her.

“Why are you so hostile?” he breathes against her temple. Tightening his hold around her waist, he grasps the back of her head with his hand and grips her hair. In spite of the cold, his breath is hot and heavy between them. As Alessia registers what’s happening, his lips swoop down hard on hers. He tries to force his tongue into her mouth, and she struggles, fear and loathing careening through her body in a potent mix. She pushes ineffectually at his arms and frantically twists, trying to struggle out of his hold. He leans back to look down at her, and before she can stop herself, she slaps him across his face, her palm ringing from the blow, and he retreats. Shocked. She’s breathing gulps of air, adrenaline coursing through her veins, cahsing away her fear and leaving anger in its stead. Anatoli glares at her, rubbing his cheek, and before she can blink, he slaps her hard across her face. Once. Twice. Her head jerks from the right to the left, and she staggers at the force of each blow. With little care he picks her up and drops her back into the trunk so that she hits her shoulder, her backside, and her head. And before she can protest, he slams the lid shut.

“Until you learn to behave and be civil, you can stay in there!” he shouts. Alessia clutches her throbbing head as anger burns in her throat and behind her eyes.

This is her life now.

So, we’ve seen this horrific assault played out for us. I appreciate that she used, “with little care,” to describe Anatoli’s actions, as if there were a loving and caring way to throw someone you’ve just beaten into the trunk of a car. But what happens when we jump over to Moss?

I take a sip of Negroni. Tom and I are in a bar next door to the hotel. It’s contemporary, sleek, and comfortable, and the staff are friendly and attentitve, but not overly so. What’s more, they serve a bloody good Negroni.

Then they talk about how they both had expected wattle-and-daub houses and goats roaming everywhere and honestly, given how Demelssia described the place? I guess that was reasonable.

Now that they’re actually in Albania, as in, bought the tickets, waiting in the airport lounge, took the flight, picked up the rental car, checked into the hotel and decided to go out for drinks, NOW is when Tom asks Moss why he wants to go after Demelssia. They have basically the same conversation Moss had with Caroline. I want to marry her. She is but a lowly peasant. I know but I am in love. That kind of bullshit.

“Just deal with it, Tom. I’m going to marry her.”

He splutters into his drink, spitting red liquid over the table, and I wonder again at the wisdom of bringing him on this journey.

I’m not understanding here. Tom was the brooding, mentally scarred friend. Now, he’s a snobbier version of Beauty and the Beast‘s Le Fou, complete with 2D animation spit-take.

Moss once again brings up the fact that Tom’s girlfriend is “a saint” for staying in a relationship with Tom, presumably a super ableist allusion to the PTSD Tom…IDK, I guess it’s cured like Demelssia’s is now?

Tom is like, hey, maybe you’re falling head-over-heels for this woman because you’re mourning your recently deceased brother and Moss rattles off a list of reasons that sound like a husband who definitely murdered his wife trying to make a convincing statement to the press:

“[…]She’s smart. Funny. Courageous. And you should hear her play the piano. She’s a fucking genius.”

He also makes a point to say she’s not like other girls.

Tom reminds Moss that it’s the job of the Earl of Trevethick to carry on the family name, and Moss is like, yeah, but I want to do that with someone I love. And this makes Tom realize that he’s taking his girlfriend for granted and he should propose to her. So, I’m glad we took time out of RESCUING THE HEROINE FROM A KIDNAPPING to wrap up that side plot that was both unnecessary and which everyone had pretty much forgotten.

In Demelssia’s POV, they arrive at a fancy hotel in Zagreb, where Anatoli casually lets her out of the trunk right in a public parking lot. He has gotten them a suite.

There’s a couch, a desk, and a small table, and through the sliding glass doors Alessia can see one bed.

One.

No!

They slept in the same bed already. Do we really need a retread of “maybe he’ll rape her?”

He tells her to get room service:

The entries are in Croation and English; she scans the selections and immediately chooses the most expensive item on the menu. She has no compunction about having Anatoli spend his money. She frowns, remembering how she resisted Maxim’s attempts to pay….Anatoli has retrieved two small bottles of scotch and is unscrewing the top from each in turn. Yes, Alessia has no compunction at all. She’s a kidnap victim, and he’s meted out enough physical abuse on her body already. He owes her.

And this explains so, so much about Fifty Shades of Grey, doesn’t it? The heroine can be abused, so long as she is compensated with small luxuries. That was the entire premise of those books but here the man doing the abusing is the villain.

No wonder James’s biggest fans didn’t like this book. She made their dream abuser a bad guy.

They order room service and have yet another conversation about whether or not Demelssia is a virgin. I’m summarizing a lot of this chapter because it’s all just repeating what we’ve already seen in the last two. The author has run out of steam before meeting the word count she promised her editors. That’s the only logical explanation.

Anatoli watches the news, then asks:

“So you ran away from me?” he says.

Is he talking about yesterday?

“When you left Albania.” He takes a last swig of scotch.

“You threatened to break my fingers.”

He rubs his chin, thoughtful for a moment. “Alessia…I–” He stops.

“I don’t want excuses, Anatoli. There’s no excuse for treating another human being the way you have treated me. Look at my neck.” She pulls down her sweater, revealing the bruises he left yesterday, and raises her chin, making them conspicuous.

Yeah, that’s only acceptable as punishment for topless sunbathing on your honeymoon. And you have to do it on your yacht.

Seriously, Anatoli reminds me so much of Christian Grey that I’m wondering if the author realizes it and did it on purpose. It’s a good thing her heroine won’t fall for it this time!

“Gëzuar, Alessia,” he says, and she looks up. Anatoli has raised his glass in quiet salute to her, his eyes wide, his expression warm. Her scalp tingles. She wasn’t expecting this…honor!

What the fuck.

Because she can only drink wine with sexy appreciation, Demelssia accidentally turns Anatoli on:

“Mmm,” she says, closing her eyes, seduced by the taste of the wine. When she reopens them, Anatoli is watching her, his eyes darkening, and in his gaze she sees a promise of something she doesn’t want.

Her appetite vanishes.

“You won’t run from me again, Alessia. You will be my wife,” he murmurs. “Now, eat.”

She stares down at the steak on her plate.

And that riveting hook about steak is where the chapter ends.

My Impression So Far: It absolutely stuns me at how many parallels E.L. James has drawn between Anatoli and Christian Grey. This almost certainly has to be intentional, right? Nobody is so unaware of their own creation that they could possibly recreate him in the very role their most vocal critics accused them of glorifying, right? There were times in this chapter that I read with my mouth agape. I assumed that this book would come out and be an instant hit. But more and more, it’s reading like the last gasp of a writer who has no skill in storytelling unless the story was already written by someone else.

Ten Things I Like About Myself

I had a weird, humiliating day yesterday, everyone. My mental health, which was really up and positive on Monday, took a dive. And you know, that happens; I’m really bad at lulling myself into a false sense of security on stuff. So, I’m trying to drag myself up and out of the quagmire by focusing on things I like about myself. Here are some I came up with.

What you see is what you get. There isn’t really a public/private persona to me. Sure, there are insecurities and hardships and inner problems that I don’t wear on my sleeve, but that’s true of everyone. What I mean is, when you meet me in person, you’re meeting the person you got to know here. A person who might not recognize your face from your social media photos but who will be thrilled once they realize who you are.
I’m silly. I can usually find something to be silly about in any situation. Maybe that’s not the best quality for a person to have (especially since it sometimes leads to giggling under inappropriate circumstances). But I like that I’m able to laugh about stuff, usually.
I can usually figure out how to do stuff. You know that phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” that people throw around? It has made me feel bad for years. Why? Because I love to learn to do things–playing guitar, making soap, hand-lettering signs, light demonology, you know, normal stuff–but I rarely devote myself to mastering things with any skill. I usually just want to know how things work. Once I figure that out, I move on. Imagine how pleased I was to learn that “Jack of all trades, master of none,” is not the complete saying. It’s actually, “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than master of one.”
I say “Bless you,” when people sneeze. Even if it was a person on television. Even if it was a scripted moment on television. I am compelled.
Dogs like me. I think that’s possibly the greatest indicator that a person is good. When I doubt myself, I remember that dogs like me, which is way more important than people liking me.
I genuinely enjoy spicy food, but I’m not a dick about it. It’s weird when people like spicy food but they make it into a competition with other people. I like spicy food, the spicier the better (as long as the food actually has flavor and doesn’t just taste like capsaicin and nothing else because that tastes like cigarette butts) but I don’t run around calling people pussies for not consuming something they find unpleasant.
I tried avocado once. It was out of my comfort zone, but I did it. I didn’t like it but I got the courage.
I’m a good singer. Am I the best singer ever? Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be a blogger. I’d have millions of dollars and live in a house on the side of a cliff overlooking the sea somewhere. But I actually am pretty good! Good enough to secure some community theater roles, anyway, and that’s good enough for me.
I’m honest with my kids about my mental and physical health. I’m always open with them about my messed up brain chemistry. It affects their lives, too, and it’s important for me that they know that they’re loved even if mom snaps at them during a particularly anxious day or she can’t get out of bed or needs extra help.
I’m a loyal friend. I wouldn’t say I’m a “good” friend. I’m bad at keeping in touch. I’m terrible at visiting. I probably won’t wish you a happy birthday without you reminding me or I’ll do it on the wrong date. But you know what? I’ll go to bat for you every single time.

These are things I like about myself. Give me ten things you like about yourself in the comments. No self-deprecating stuff, no, “I only suck a little of the time.” No, “There aren’t ten things about me to like.” Even if you have to pick one like, “I can walk on stilts,” I’ll take it.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister chapter twenty-eight or “The Slowest Kidnapping”

No news (as this book has pretty much dropped off the edge of the planet despite staying on the bestseller lists), but a content warning for more domestic violence than usual for an E.L. James book.

Pardon the slowing of the pace with these posts, by the way. I’m still performing in The Wizard of Oz and trying to meet some other deadlines.

The chapter opens in Moss’s POV, where Caroline is like, wtf is happening.

“I think the woman I want to marry has just been kidnapped.”

“Marry?” Caroline blanches.

I believe what you meant was, “Kidnapped?” because that’s the more interesting part of Moss’s sentence.

Obviously, Caroline takes this poorly but sucks up her hurt feelings with ice queen reserve.

“Well, you’d better go after her, then,” she says.

We bop over to Demelssia’s POV

Alessia stares unseeing out the car window, drowning in tears she cannot stop. They flow freely as grief shrouds her misery.

Maxim and Caroline.

Caroline and Maxim.

Max and Ruby! Ruby and Max! Max and Ruby! Ruby and Max!

Was what she experienced with him all a lie?

No! She can’t bring herself to think that.

Like, even the characters are resisting this plot point because it’s so flimsy and unconvincing.

Anatoli says:

“Here. Dry your eyes. Enough of this nonsense, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

So, there’s this thing about idioms. “I’ll give you something to cry about,” is a common phrase in English but that doesn’t mean it’s common or would even have the same meaning in another language. Which is really hard, by the way, when you’re a writer trying to write people talking in a foreign language but using English. So, this is just a heads up to watch out for that when you’re writing because it jolted me out of the story when I wondered, “Huh, is that an Albanian saying, too?”

She knows that she will die at his hands.

And there’s nothing she can do.

Maybe she can escape. In Europe. Maybe she can choose how she dies….She closes her eyes and drifts into her own version of hell.

Right there with you. Because we know there are things you can do. Your author just isn’t willing to let you do them. She’ll tell us all about how brave and resourceful you are but when the chips are down, you have to be rescued or else you won’t fulfill the romantic ideals of her or her Chock-Full-O-Internalized-Misogyny readers.

Back in Moss’s POV, his sense of urgency is put on hold to argue with Caroline, who is still like, yeah, go after her, BUT.

“Maxim, this note doesn’t read like she’s been kidnapped. Have you thought that maybe she’s decided to go home?”

“Caro, she did not leave of her own free will. Trust me.”

Like, a further explanation would have probably been a good idea, since “Caro” has no knowledge of the human trafficking or the fact that this is the second kidnapping in as many days.

“Fucking hell!”

“What now?”

“I don’t have a working fucking computer!”

Moss not having a computer is apparently this huge, tense point standing in his way of rescuing Demelssia. But a phone would do basically everything a computer does, unless he’s looking to photoshop a missing person poster or something. The tension here is like overcooked spaghetti.

Anatoli tells Demelssia that he needs her passport and she’s like, yeah, I don’t have one because I was human trafficked.

“Smuggled? Men?” His jaw clenches and a muscle twitches in his cheek. “What is going on?”

She’s too tired and broken to explain.

The author is on too tight a deadline for her character to explain.

So, at least we know that Anatoli isn’t behind the human trafficking. I was half-expecting that to be the case even though it wouldn’t have made any sense with him not knowing that she was leaving Albania in the first place. I ran out of faith that James wouldn’t just toss that in without regard for what she’d already written.

There’s a section break and Anatoli is waking Demelssia up.

“Get out of the car,” he says. Alessia stares at him, and a small blossom of hope flowers in her chest.

He’s going to leave her here. She can walk back. She’s done it once before.

Yes, Demelssia. He came all the way to London to drive you out to the country and drop you off.

Taking her hand, he hauls her out of her seat and leads her to the back of the car, where he opens the trunk. It’s empty but for a small rolling suitcase and her duffel.

“You’ll have to get in here.”

He tells her they have no other choice if they want to get onto the train to go under the Channel. She tells him that she’s afraid of the dark but he shuts her in, anyway.

She starts to kick and scream as the darkness bleeds into her lungs, suffocating her like the black plastic bag from the last time she crossed the Channel.

She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. She screams.

Not the dark. No. Not the dark. I hate the dark.

Seconds later the lid pops open and a blinding light shines in her face. “Here. Take this.” Anatoli hands her a flashlight. “I don’t know how long the battery will last. But we have no choice. Once we are on the train, I can open the trunk.”

That would be a real dumb idea, considering that someone is gonna definitely see you do that, but okay. He also gives her a blanket.

In her head she begins to play Bach’s Prelude no. 6 in D Minor on repeat–the colors flashing brilliant hues of bright blue and turquoise in her mind–her fingers flexing, tapping out each note on the flashlight.

There’s a second break and Demelssia is waking up again, conveniently having slept through her best option to escape. Mercedes have an emergency release in the trunk. Failing that, she could have screamed and shouted when they went through customs. Customs officers tend to notice shit like someone screaming and pounding on the trunk. But it’s easier to have your character fall asleep and miss this stuff than it would be to write it and give your heroine any agency. After all, how will the author show off her intensive research of Albania if we never go there?

“What took you so long to wake up? I thought you were unconscious!” He sounds relieved.

Relieved?

I mean…she was unconscious. And why wouldn’t he be relieved to find out that she’s not dead? He came back to get her because he wants to marry her, not murder her. Yes, he probably will at some point kill her in a domestic violence incident but other than that he probably wouldn’t be psyched to drive back to Albania with a corpse in his trunk.

Anyway, he’s taken her to a hotel in the middle of nowhere in France.

“Follow me.” He walks toward the entrance. Alessia quietly sets her bag on the ground, turns, and runs.

So, she does finally try to get away but at the most inconvenient and stupid time. She’s been asleep in the trunk of a car for like, a long ass time. The train under the Channel takes like a half hour but when I went it felt like we waited in line to get through the border checks and actually onto the train itself forever, plus they’ve driven even further to get to this totally isolated hotel in the middle of nowhere. Running is not going to be her strong suit. But you know what she could do at literally any point here?

Ask.

Someone.

For.

Help.

Ask someone. If you’re not willing to make noise and raise a ruckus and let law enforcement know you’re being kidnapped, at the very, very least slip a note to someone saying you’ve been trafficked. Because not having a passport and being carted around in the trunk of the car is going to make Anatoli look extremely suspicious and they are probably not going to let him leave with you in tow like a fucking lamp that had to be inspected for heroin.

In Moss’s POV, he’s somehow overcome the hurdle of his computer not working.

Tomorrow I’ll fly to Albania, and Tom Alexander will accompany me. Annoyingly, it’s too-short notice for a private jet, so we’re flying commercial.

Ugh, don’t you hate when you have to forsake luxury on your journey to rescue the woman you love?

Thanks to Magda, we have the address of Alessia’s parents. It’s also thanks to Magda that Alessia’s fiancé found her. I don’t dwell on this information because it makes me incandescent with fury.

No, you don’t dwell on this information because the author knows it doesn’t make sense for Magda to betray her friend’s daughter and she figures if she glosses past it or makes it just not matter to the characters, it’s not really a plot hole.

We’ll pick up a car, drive to Tirana, and overnight there at the Plaza hotel. Tom has arranged for us to meet up with a translator who will come with us to Kukës the following day.

And we’ll stay there for however long it takes. We’ll wait for Alessia and her kidnapper.

Why are you driving to Tirana? The only commercial flights I could find from London into Albania went to Tirana. And why spend the night, if there’s this huge sense of urgency? They’re making this trip way longer than necessary. They’re flying out in the morning, it’s about a three-hour flight, then it would be about another three hours in the car and they’re there. There’s no reason for it to take multiple days to get to Kukës from London if you’re traveling by air.

Not for the first time this evening, I wish I’d bought her that phone. It’s so frustrating not being able to contact her.

Yeah, too bad you didn’t buy that phone. Her abusive “betrothed” would definitely let her take your calls. Oh, and he wouldn’t beat the shit out of her if you called, either. He’s totally cool with men paying attention to her.

I hope she’s okay.

I close my eyes, imagining horrible scenarios.

My sweet girl.

My sweet, sweet Alessia.

I’m coming to get you. I’ve got you.

I love you.

This intensity of like, he’s imagining horrible scenarios, etc. made me realize something really awful. He left her alone for a couple hours twice and both times she got kidnapped. Which means this is going to be used to justify him never leaving her side ever again or pulling a Christian Grey and having her surveilled at all times.

Jumping to Demelssia’s POV, she’s running.

Behind her she hears a shout. It’s him. She hears his footsteps pounding on the frozen ground. Getting closer.

Closer still.

Is he getting closer?

Then silence.

He’s on the grass.

No.

She pushes herself harder, hoping that her feet will carry her away from him. But he grabs her, and she’s falling. Falling.

Is she falling?

Anatoli lies on top of her back, panting heavily. “You stupid bitch. Where the hell do you think you’re going to go at this time?”

That’s what I was saying, Anatoli! Why now? When there’s nobody to notice her plight or help her?

He slaps her and strangles her.

She doesn’t struggle.

She stares at him. Her eyes on his. In their frigid blue, she sees the darkness of his heart. His hate. His anger. His inadequacy. His hand tightens, and he’s choking the life from her. Her head begins to swim. She reaches up and clutches his arm.

This is how I am going to die….

She sees her end. Here. Somehwere in France at the hands of this violent man. She wants it. She welcomes it. She doesn’t want to live a life in fear, like her mother. “Kill me,” she mouths.

Our brave, clever heroine who is so brave and clever passed up her best chance for escape, tries to escape again in the stupidest way possible, then is like, eh, I give up.

But knowing she wants to die makes Anatoli release her and he tells her:

“‘A woman is a sack, made to endure,'” he snarls, with a cruel glint in his eye.

Demelssia knows where the saying comes from:

He is quoting from the ancient Kanun of Lek Dukagjini, the primitive feudal code that governed the mountain tribes in the north and east of her country for centuries. Its legacy lingers.

And I’m still sitting here wondering how Demelssia’s mom got caught up in all of that. This code thing is absolutely real and there are a shit-ton of deaths attributed to blood feuds and whatnot after the fall of communism caused a resurgence of these beliefs. But again, her grandmother came to Albania from the West, as a missionary during communism. Okay, so she’s Christian, and yes, Christian missionaries do often influence the locals in shitty ways like going, “Hey, you know how your country used to have these horrible fucking rules back in the middle ages? You should do those again and kill all the disobedient sluts and the gays!” Sure, Nana is probably pretty traditional. But she snuck in English books, including the Harry Potter ones, which is like an absolute no-no for hardcore Christians. She just doesn’t seem like a woman who would have been like, “You know what would be great? If we went back to feudal codes of honor and my daughter just rolled with it and raised my granddaughter that way despite the values I tried to instill in both of them.” Sure, there are reasons this could have happened, but they haven’t been provided and they don’t jibe with what we have seen on the page, anyway. Why is that?

Because James is only interested in showing Albanian people in a negative light. We hear about how wonderful English Grandmama was, but her Albanian-born daughter is apparently forced into a marriage with a monster of an Albanian guy who beats his wife and kids and sells them in marriage. The only people from Albania whom we have heard are not some kind of terrible person are the one who wasn’t born there and the one who wants to run away from there because it’s horrible. We hear a lot about beautiful mountains but the people themselves are portrayed as backward peasants and violent criminals, and the most in-depth research that seems to have been done is all on the most negative aspects of the culture.

But it’s cool. Erika’s husband knows how to make Albanian soup.

Anatoli takes her inside and they get a suite. He tells her to go get cleaned up and then casually threatens to rape her.

Her eyes meet his, and he smirks. “Ah, carissima, I should make you mine after the stunt you pulled outside.” He reaches for her chin and she flinches as his fingers graze her skin.

Don’t touch me.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs, as if he’s speaking only to himself. “But I don’t have the energy to fight you. And I think it would be a fight. Yes?”

Then, he tells her she’ll eventually love him and she thinks no, she’ll only ever love Maxim. Anatoli tries to get her to take her clothes off, figuring she won’t run if she’s naked. Honestly, she won’t run at all. She has to wait for the hero to arrive and rescue her.

I’m going to skip a lot of the dialogue between the two of them because it’s all Anatoli threatening her and then being like, eh, I’m too tired to carry out my threats. They get into bed with Demelssia fully dressed and he puts his arm around her, warning that he’ll know if she tries to get up.

Alessia stares into the darkness she fears and wishes it would swallow her up. Her tears refuse to fall. She’s all cried out.

What is Maxim doing?

Is he missing me?

Is he with Caroline?

She sees Caroline in Maxim’s arms as he holds her close, and Alessia wants to scream.

So, she’s laying there, not thinking about escaping because her heart is just so broken by seeing Moss hugging someone. She just wants to die.

So brave. So strong. So clever.

After a section break, she wakes up and hears Anatoli talking on the phone to her father. He’s upset because he doesn’t know what happened with Moss or why she left Albania in the first place.

“Yes. I will bring her back to you. I will make sure she’s unharmed.”

Demelssia thinks about how that’s a lie, but honestly, would a man who beats the shit out of his daughter not just consider routine DV injuries “unharmed” anyway?

Anatoli tells Demelssia that they’re going to leave and at first, she defies him until he mentions her mother.

Hey.

If Magda was the one who told her parents where she was…wouldn’t her father and Anatoli already have figured out that her mom knew where she was? Since Magda is her mom’s very bestest friend? Why didn’t the thought of her mother’s safety come up earlier?

Demelssia goes to take a shower and finally, her fucking brain starts working again.

She has her money. Maybe she should return to Ablania. She can get a new passport–and a visa–and return to England.

Maybe I should stay alive.

Ya think?

She will get back to Maxim. And see for herself. See if everything they shared was a lie.

Oh good. Her primary motivation is not to escape a violent man and gain her freedom. That would have made her seem. You know. Strong and brave and all the shit we’ve been outright told she is. Glad that can be avoided.

My Impression So Far: I wouldn’t be so pissed off about the number of times she’s had a chance to escape if we hadn’t heard over and over about how courageous and resourceful Alessia is. Is her freezing-up reaction realistic for a victim of trauma? Sure. But this is fiction and this is a character we’ve seen react bravely before. She ran back to the apartment thinking she would protect Maxim when the traffickers came to his house. She managed to survive on her own to escape them. Yes, she can be traumatized but let’s note that the only reason she stopped fighting for herself was that Maxim took over protecting her. That’s the point in the story where she becomes weak and cowering. That’s the point where she can no longer take care of herself. And that’s what makes her characterization so maddeningly inconsistent.

The fiancé plotline is bizarre, as well. There’s absolutely no reason for it to be there beyond creating a reason for Maxim to be able to rescue her again. It’s unnecessary in the extreme and it only makes the backstory with the grandma and the uber-traditional family seem even more inconsistent. Let’s look at the plot point-by-point on her side:

Alessia is going to be married to an abusive man.
She was sold to him by her abusive father.
Her mother sent her away to escape the abuse.
During Alessia’s escape, she is trafficked.
She escapes the traffickers and goes to live with Magda, who is aware of the fiancé situation.
The traffickers follow Alessia
Maxim protects her and she eventually fesses up about the traffickers.
The traffickers try to kidnap her and are apprehended.
But Magda rats her out for no motive that’s been presented so far.
The fiancé shows up and kidnaps her.

But consider how this could have been written, which would have avoided all the inconsistencies and unexplained motives that are driving me up a fucking wall:

Alessia is a student at the university (because she was written that way in the book already).
She answers an ad for au pairs or whatever.
It’s a trafficking scam.
She escapes the traffickers and finds Magda, who is unaware of the trafficking situation.
Alessia is afraid her family is in danger because the traffickers have her address on her passport.
The traffickers follow Alessia.
Maxim protects her and she eventually fesses up about the traffickers.
The traffickers try to kidnap her and are apprehended.
Alessia wants to stay with Maxim but realizes that she has to go to Albania to protect her family, so she leaves him.
He goes after her and they manage to take down the whole big trafficking ring.

The book still has the trafficking plot. It can still unroll exactly as it already has. It just doesn’t have the tacked on fiancé or the strange disconnect between the grandma and the medieval blood-feud code thing. It doesn’t have Alessia’s only ally turning on her for reasons that aren’t explained and which we’re directly told won’t be examined in the text because it just makes the hero so ding-dang angry.

But you know why the book couldn’t go that way?

Because it would have given Alessia agency. And that’s not the audience that’s being written for here.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapter twenty-seven or “THE BIG MISUNDERSTANDING”

Last week, the Toronto Star ran an interview with E.L. James. There are the usual claims of people not liking her because she’s a woman and that she went above and beyond the call of duty to research Albania but it also included a brief, interesting look into which fandoms she‘ll be stealing from next enjoys:

She recently rewatched the first Harry Potter movie, which prompted her to buy the rest of the films, and now wants to read J.K. Rowling’s series again.

Somewhere, Cassandra Clare is already on the phone to her legal team.

Maxim is “storming” away from Caroline’s house.

I need a drink to help me calm the fuck down. I snatch a look at my watch. Alessia’s not expecting me back until seven. I have time.

This is interesting. Probably not on purpose. But ever since they went to Cornwall, Moss has been obsessed with being at Alessia’s side every moment but when he’s upset at Caroline he has to medicate himself with alcohol and that need overrides that concern about leaving Alessia alone. This is a very alcoholic thing to do and that’s an interesting thing that definitely won’t be explored because there just isn’t enough book left.

I cannot believe Caroline’s reaction.

Can’t you? You sat there and told us she’s a vapid, soulless fortune hunter.

Or maybe I knew it would be that bad.

Did I? That bad? Throwing-me-out-of-the-house bad?

Yo, that’s not why she threw you out. It was all the other stuff you said around the thing with Demelssia. I mean, Caroline wasn’t thrilled about Demelssia but you didn’t get thrown out until you were like, You picked my brother over me for his title!

What will Caroline say when I tell her I want to marry Alessia?

Probably nothing you want to hear but I’m not sure why you have to clear it with her in the first place. That would have been my last conversation with her.

What will my mother say?

Marry someone with money, darling.

Kit chose wisely.

So, I didn’t really get the idea from the lunch with dear old mommy that she approved all that much of Caroline, anyway.

My dark mood grows darker still as I stomp into the night.

Like a toddler in Batman pajamas.

We go back to Demelssia’s POV, where Anatoli is trying to force her to leave the grocery store with him. He grabs her arm but she pulls away from him.

His mouth presses into a hard line. “I came a long way for you. I am not leaving without you. You are promised to me by your father. Why are you dishonoring him?”

Alessia flushes.

“Is it the man?”

“Aha!” you may be thinking. “Anatoli was behind the trafficking scheme!”

“That friend of your mother. She sent an e-mail. She said there was a man.”

Alessia is dumbfounded.

So am I. What was Magda’s motive here? Why is Magda the villain suddenly?

While Alessia is “dumbfounded,” Anatoli leads her like a sheep out the door.

Meanwhile, in Moss’s POV, he’s drinking.

The amber liquid sears my throat, but it calms the violent storm as it pools in my stomach.

Okay, he’s problem drinking. But at least he’s problem drinking a violent storm and not alcohol?

I’m a fool.

A priapic fool.

Guess who has a Word-of-the-Day calendar?

I knew that bedding Caroline was going to come back and bite me on the arse.

And here’s the thing. It was always going to. But this is the most boring way possible. You fucked your brother’s grieving widow. “She doesn’t like the girl who’s marrying me,” is not the lede here.

Time for the big revelation:

I’ve never thought beyond my dick. Until Alessia. And then that all changed.

Changed for the better.

It’s not like that type of behavior can get much worse.

I’ve never met anyone like her, someone possessing nothing–except her talent, her resourcefulness, and her beautiful face. I wonder what I would have made of my life if I’d been born in lowlier circumstances.

Is she what Mr. Darcy would call “accomplished”?

There’s so much that I take for granted. I’ve been coasting through my life, everything handed to me on a plate, nothing affecting me and doing exactly as I pleased. Now I have to work for a living,

But do you, though?

and several hundred people depend on me and my decisions. It’s a daunting task and a huge responsibility that I have to accept if I want to maintain my lifestyle.

You literally have a business manager who’s been running all this estate shit. So far, it seems like the only thing required of you in any real capacity is knowing what’s going on.

In the midst of this turmoil, I found Alessia, and in an indecently short time I’ve come to care for her more than I’ve ever cared for anyone.

Thank you for the recap? Is this entire section meant for people who bought a copy of the book with the first eighty percent missing or something?

I have to admit that I hate arguing with Caroline. She is my best friend. She has been forever. My world feels out of kilter if we’re at loggerheads. It happened occasionally, when Kit was

Dating, engaged, and married to her?

here to mediate, but she’s never thrown me out of the house before.

This fixation on being thrown out of the house is really disconcerting. Why did he want to even stay? So she could keep insulting this woman whom he allegedly cares about more than any other person in the world? Even more so than himself? He just wanted to sit there and listen to Caroline hurl abuse about the woman he loves. Okay.

I’m just still not buying the “Caroline is important in my life because she’s my bestest, bestest friend in the whole wide world even though she threw me over for my brother because she’s a snobby, title-seeking opportunist” thing. Especially now that he’s so devoted to Demelssia. Can she, the woman you love and with whom you have this unbreakable, instant bond not be your best friend?

What’s worse is that I had meant to ask for her help sorting out Alessia’s legal status in the UK. Caroline’s father is a senior director in the Home Office. If anyone can help, he can.

But that’s out of the question for the moment.

You can’t just call him yourself? He’s your brother’s father-in-law. You must have met before. And even if you can’t contact him, I guarantee you know other people or can buy other people to expedite this process. Demelssia is currently the most well-connect undocumented immigrant in the UK but she can’t even reap the benefits inherent because her main connection is so fucking short-sighted.

Moss notices that it’s now fifteen minutes past when he was supposed to be home, so he leaves the bar and we go into Demelssia’s POV, where Anatoli is taking her to get her stuff from Moss’s apartment.

What if Maxim is home?

Anatoli threatened to kill him.

The thought of what Anatoli might do to Maxim is terrifying.

You know what she should do? Trip the alarm when she comes into the house. Because, you know, we’ve heard about the alarm over and over again. And if she trips the alarm, who will come running? Moss’s army friend.

Magda must have written to her mother. Why? Alessia had begged her not to.

Because god forbid a man be the true villain of the story? Because it would be unacceptable for only one woman to stand in the way of Moss and Demelssia’s true love? Pick a reason.

She has to get away, but Alessia knows she cannot outrun him.

Think, Alessia, think.

Yes. Think. Think of Chekov’s Alarm that we’ve heard so god damn much about.

Anatoli asks Demelssia if Moss is really just her employer and if he’s “had what’s mine.” She denies any romantic relationship with Moss, even when Anatoli goes into the master bedroom and finds a condom in the trash. She tells him that Moss has a girlfriend and both of them are out, and Anatoli tells her to get her stuff.

“Go. Now. I don’t want to wait for him to return. I don’t want a scene.” He undoes his coat, slips his hand inside his jacket, and pulls out a pistol. “I am serious.”

Can y’all just get guns in the UK? And get them across the border real easy? I was under the impression that the opposite was true. I live in a country where I can’t go to the grocery store without knowing at least two people there have guns. Living in a place where every single time I enter a public establishment I am at risk of being shot has warped my perspective on how other countries operate.

Her fate is sealed. She will go with Anatoli. She must, to protect the man she loves. She has no choice. How did she think she could escape her father’s besa?

So, here’s the thing. I get that she has to leave now with Anatoli. But there’s no reason she can’t try to escape later. She escaped from traffickers but she can’t plot her escape from Anatoli? And again, if she’d just tripped the god damn alarm we had to hear so much about over and over again, Moss would know something was wrong, his friend would race over, probably call the police…none of this makes sense. Why set up the perfect escape mechanism that would make your heroine look super clever just to have her go, oh, I am so meek, I am so provincial, lead me like a cow back to Albania?

Demelssia tells Anatoli that she has to leave a note for Moss because it’s only fair to let him know his employee is leaving.

Alessia scribbles quickly, careful with her choice of words, hoping desperately that Maxim will read between them. She doesn’t know how well Anatoli speaks for reads English. She cannot take the chance–she cannot write what she really wants to say.

So, what does she write that’s so careful and coded and that won’t make Anatoli suspect a thing?

Thank you for protecting me.

Thank you for showing me what love means.

But I cannot escape my destiny.

I love you. I will always love you. Until the day I die.

Maxim. My love.

Yeah, no, none of that will tip off Anatoli at all. It’s super subtle.

But it doesn’t matter because though Anatoli reads the letter, he doesn’t seem to know what it says. He takes her out of the apartment and we go to Moss’s POV, where he’s just now approaching the apartment.

When I turn the corner, the road is quiet except in the distance a man is closing the door of a black Mercedes S-Class that’s parked in front of my building.

“Maxim!”

I turn to see Caroline running down the street toward me.

But Moss is torn between paying attention to Caroline’s melodrama and watching the car because something feels wrong. The driver is getting into the car on the wrong side.

“Maxim!” Caroline calls again. I turn, and she runs up to me and throws her arms around my neck with such force that I have to put my arms around her to balance us both and stop us from falling to the ground. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs.

So, Caroline is weeping in his arms as he watches the car drive away.

And then I see it. The small red-and-black flag of Albania on the number plate.

In Demelssia’s POV…well, we all know what’s happening in Demelssia’s POV. She hears Caroline shout Moss’s name and sees:

Maxim is standing at the end of the block–and a fair-haired woman runs into his arms, hugging him.

Who is she?

He cradles her head.

No!

He holds her waist.

And she remembers–the woman wearing his shirt, standing in his kitchen.

Yup. The Big Misunderstanding.

The betrayal is swift and cruel, slicing Alessia into tiny pieces and shattering her faith in herself–and in him.

Him. Her Mister.

So, yeah. In spite of everything he’s done for her, Demelssia knows for certain that Moss’s love is all a lie because…he hugged his dead brother’s widow just weeks after her husband died.

Reasonable.

I’m tired. I’m so, so tired. I’m tired of hearing about how smart and brave and clever this heroine is only to see her make rash conclusions, become paralyzed with fear, and not be able to figure out something a simple as, IDK, even just shouting for help or making a scene when Anatoli grabbed her in the store. Yes, she has PTSD from her earlier ordeal. We all get that. But this isn’t real life. This is supposed to be if I remember the exact wording, a roller-coaster thrill ride or some such shit. It’s not super thrilling to watch the heroine get led around, waiting to be rescued. Like, the solution to this problem was not “add more kidnapping.” The solution was, “let your heroine fight back.”

In Moss’s POV, he abandons Caroline on the street and runs upstairs. And the “abandonment” is, emphasized as Caroline chases after him. For example:

Abandoning Caroline,

and

Leaving Caroline at the foot of the stairs,

Like, we get it. She’s following you and you don’t give a shit about her because she’s the evil blonde and we need to see how much you don’t care about her because not caring about her makes your love more pure and true or whatever but also she’s your very best friend whom you care deeply about and can’t stand to lose. Or something.

They have her. They have her again. My sweet, brave woman. What will those monsters do to her? Her clothes are not in my bedroom. Nor the spare room…

In the kitchen, I find her keys and the note.

Mister Maxim

My betrothed is here and he is taking me to my home in Albania.

Thank you for everything.

Alessia.

WAIT WHAT? That’s right. Despite it seeming very much as though Alessia had written that long thing about how much she loved him, she didn’t really write it. And we, the readers, had absolutely no way of knowing that because of how it was formatted.

“No!” I scream, overwhelmed by my despair. Picking up the phone, I hurl it at the wall. It shatters into pieces as I sink to the floor, my head in my hands.

Overwhelmed by my despair, I break the thing that will reach help the fastest.

Anyway, that’s the end of the chapter, basically. He falls on the floor and thinks about how he wants to cry and it’s over.

My Impression So Far: The other day, I went back and looked at what I’d written in this section in the first two recaps. Oh, what a fucking dumbass I was.

Let’s talk about the three things that bother me the absolute most about this chapter, things that an editor should have pointed out. Things that the author should have thought of in the first place. Things that would have made this scene so much better.

First of all, the alarm. Every time they go in and out of the apartment, we hear about the alarm. It’s as present as the Thames in these scenes (Maxim does mention the Thames at one point, by the way, so don’t worry, it’s still there). The one time the alarm would actually serve a purpose that would justify the author’s fixation upon it, she doesn’t use it. And that’s infuriating.

Second, the note. Alessia wants to make it clear to Maxim that she doesn’t want to go. She wants him to read between the lines. She leaves the note…in the kitchen. Why not leave it on the piano? The piano is another thing we hear about over and over. Why not leave it there as some kind of signal? Some poignant thing? Wouldn’t it be easy to tell Anatoli, oh, they’re super rich, they never go in the kitchen, I’ll leave it where they’ll find it?

Finally, the reader needed to be able to tell that what was printed in italics during the writing of the letter wasn’t what Alessia actually wrote. And there is one tiny change that would have completely fixed the whole situation. One single character.

Instead of:

She cannot take the chance–she cannot write what she really wants to say.

Thank you for protecting me.

We should have seen:

She cannot take the chance–she cannot write what she really wants to say:

There. It’s so tiny, I put it in bold and red so you can’t miss it. Maybe it could have gone further and instead of:

She shows him and watches as his eyes scan the words.

We saw:

She shows him and watches his eyes scan the words she wrote instead.

But even just the colon would have been enough to clear up the confusion.

At this point, my assumption is that there had already been some missed deadlines. I say this because of the interview I linked above the jump. She didn’t grasp Alessia’s character until March of 2018, at which point she began rewriting the novel. And the book came out thirteen months later. In terms of traditional publishing, a book with this much riding on it would have had much more lead time. This explains why the announcement of the book came so close to the actual release. It explains why the media campaign and promotion were so slapdash. And if it was, in fact, a case of too many missed deadlines (especially since there was almost certainly a seven-figure advance involved, possibly higher), even being a hugely bestselling author wouldn’t alleviate the pressure of time as both publisher and author watched the success of Fifty Shades of Grey growing smaller and smaller in the rearview. All of this would explain why the ending of this book is so rushed, why the chapters are suddenly much shorter, and why none of the characters are making any decisions that would lead to having to write an extra few thousand words per chapter. There simply wasn’t time to write a good book.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister chapter twenty-six or “Prelude To (Another) Kidnapping”

This is a short recap because the chapter is really short and whiplash-jumbled in terms of switching POVs. CW: Suicide because this book was lacking plot points and needs to keep bringing this one up.

We arrive at Trevelyan House with Moss. Now, remember, because this is not at all confusing, that Moss’s last name is Trevelyan, the house his sister-in-law lives in is Trevelyan House, Moss’s title is Earl of Trevethick, and his big fancy earl house is Tresyllian Hall. No trouble keeping any of those straight, I assume.

The butler tells Moss that Caroline is in the morning room and offers Moss a drink, which Moss doesn’t take.

I vault up the stairs, turn left, take a deep, steadying breath, and open the morning room door.

Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen next? This is so thrilling. We got absolutely zero indication of Moss’s internal thoughts or feelings during this short exchange, aside from a brief mention of not liking to be called “my lord” but understanding that it’s going to happen because he’s the earl. We’re supposed to hang in suspense from this last line in his POV, but we simply haven’t been given anything to invest in before we jump to Demelssia’s POV.

She had never dared to imagine that one day she might be living here with him. She’d never aspired to live in a place as grand as this. She does a twirl in the doorway of the kitchen, feeling gidding and grateful–and happy. She still has so much to figure out in her life, but for the first time in a long time she’s hopeful. With Maxim at her side, she feels that no obstacle is insurmountable.

Thanks for laying all of that out for us in one big clump like that, rather than putting the effort into actually showing the change in her characterization gradually over the past few chapters so that we could come to these fairly obvious conclusions on our own. The worst part of reading is getting immersed in the story and experiencing all the emotions right along with the characters.

Then, she goes and plays the piano and we go back to Moss’s POV.

Moss’s meeting with Caroline is basically a copy-paste of his earlier meeting with her:

Caroline is sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, huddled in a tartan throw.

Compare this to the beginning of the book:

There I find Caroline, nestled in an armchair, wrapped in a cashmere shawl, and staring out the windows.

Caroline basically just sits around looking tragic, I guess. Which, you know. I would be fine with, considering she’s a widow and all but she’s a fictional widow and we need to see her do at least some work to make these encounters less repetitive.

“Oh, it’s you.” she says.

“Who were you expecting?” She hasn’t risen to greet me and I’m beginning to feel a little unwelcome.

The punctuation error there is in the book, that’s not mine. As for Moss not feeling appreciated enough, I think it’s interesting that he’s 100% like, “I am not an earl! I am a man of the people!” until someone doesn’t rise to greet him.

Plus, you fucked your brother’s widow whom you have spotty romantic history with and then you up and left without any explanation and ceased contact with her. Like…you need to be a little more humble here.

From nowhere my grief emerges and smothers me like an itchy woolen blanket.

Or is Caroline smothering you with her cozy tartan throw?

Caroline tells Moss she suspects that Kit killed himself because obviously there wasn’t enough going on in this book already. We need to toss in suicide.

“Caro. That’s not true. Don’t think that. It was just a horrid accident.” My eyes meet hers, and I’m trying for my most earnest look, but the truth is–I’ve had the same thought. I can’t let her knkow that, though, and I don’t want to believe it either. Suicide is too painful for those of us left behind.

Back it up. I know people commit vehicular suicide. It just seems like doing so in a garden variety motorcycle accident is a little too slapdash. I mean, you can’t guarantee you’re not gonna get revived and have to go through a long series of surgeries and therapies and I feel like more pain is not the end goal of suicide. If he’d driven off a cliff, maybe?

Moss sits with Caroline for a while, throws another log on the fire, and then they talk about the break-in. Then she asks him what he was doing in Cornwall.

“Escaping from gangsters, if you must know.”

“Gangsters?”

“Yes…And falling in love.”

And back to Demelssia’s POV. Because we’ve finally gotten to the point of the conversation that we’ve been trying to get to but we need to build suspense…by watching Demelssia go through the pantries to find something to cook for dinner.

She has time to go to the local store to find something a little more enticing for her man.

Her man.

Her Mister.

Oh good. She can’t wait to be domestic and doting on her man. We all know how much that appeals to me in a heroine so obviously, I won’t be biased against this whole line of characterization at all.

Anyway, then she heads to the store and we go back to Moss’s POV.

“What?” splutters Caroline. “You? In love?”

“And why would that be so improbable?” I note that she doeesn’t continue her line of questioning about “gangsters.”

“Maxim, the only thing you love is your dick.”

“That’s not true!”

That’s not true! It’s just the personal image I’ve carefully cultivated through years of behavior designed to give you that exact impression! How dare you believe me!

She demands to know who he’s fallen in love with, and her reaction is absolutely predictable for a blonde E.L. James character:

“Maxim. She’s your fucking daily–literally!” And a dark cloud crosses her face; a storm is brewing.

We all knew that she was going to be the evil blonde. There was no escaping that. And the way she begrudged Moss tipping the cab driver earlier in the book was a dead giveaway that she’s a snob. But she goes full soap opera evil here:

“I knew it! That time when I met her. In your kitchen. You were so weird and attentive toward her.” She spits each word out like venom. She’s horrified.

“Don’t be so dramatic. That’s not like you.”

The only time we’ve really seen Caroline is when she’s either wrapped in a blanket and indulging in an emotionless stare or when she’s just finished fucking her dead husband’s brother. These are not exactly the marks of an undramatic person.

Caroline says that she totally is dramatic (because she’s been reading the book), and Moss asks her since when.

“Since my bloody husband upped and killed himself,” she hisses, her eyes glassy with animosity.

Shit.

She went there. She’s using Kit’s death in an argument.

And you used Kit’s death to get into Caroline’s pants.

More of my thoughts on that bullshit later in the broadcast.

“Bloody hell!” She stands suddenly, looming over me. “Don’t give me some bullshit clichéd homily. She’s just a grimy little freeloader, Maxim. Can’t you see that?”

How did you see it, Caroline? You met her for like two seconds and you have no idea what kind of relationship Moss has with her. And when he points that out, she says:

“I know her type.”

“From where? From where do you Know. Her. Type, Lady Trevethick?” I enunciate each syllable, my words echoing off the blue-painted walls and framed artwork of this small drawing room.

I thought you were in the morning room. Also, what the fuck is up with that punctuation and capitalization? That’s not my slippery fingers. That’s just…bizarre.

Equally bizarre is that he seems to be insinuating that Caroline somehow married for money and title? But then later in the argument, he thinks:

How dare she judge Alessia? Caroline, like me, has led a life of utter fucking privilege.

So, either she led a life of privilege or she was a fortune hunter. You can’t really have it both ways, especially when it’s been established more than once that Caroline is extremely wealthy in her own right.

“Caroline, it’s not the end of the world.”

“It is to me.”

“Why?”

She glares at me with a look that’s both wounded and enraged. I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Why is this such a big deal to you?”

“What about us?” she asks, her voice wavering, her eyes wide.

“There is no ‘us.'” God, she so annoying.

EXCUSE THE FUCK OUT OF ME?

I don’t like Caroline. But let’s remember that she recently lost her husband in an accident that may or may not have been a suicide and then two weeks later found out that she wasn’t actually pregnant with a baby she wanted and had been trying to conceive for two years. And in that time, knowing that she was your ex and there was a messy history there, you fucked her.

“What did you think? Us? Together? We had that! We tried that! And you chose my brother!” I’m shouting.

“We were young,” she whispers. “And after Kit died…”

“No. No. No. You do not get to do that. Don’t try to make me feel guilty–it takes two, Caroline. You made the first move when we were both empty and aching with grief. Maybe it was just an excuse. I don’t know. But we’re not a good combination. We never have been. We had our chance but you went off and fucking my brother. You claimed him and his title. I am not your fucking consolation prize.”

Remember how we’ve heard through this entire book that Caroline is his “best friend” despite there being all this romantic fallout or whatever? What the fuck exactly does E.L. James believe friendship is? This is the first we’re hearing about Caroline choosing Kit merely for his title. Which, by the way, doesn’t make a shitload of sense to me. Maybe I’m not hip to the nobility thing but what could the advantages possibly be in this day and age, if you’re already very rich and established in society? I just don’t buy earl-hunting as a plot device in a contemporary romance, I’m sorry. Especially when it comes out of fucking nowhere to create unnecessary drama late in the book.

Caroline orders Moss to leave and he reminds her that it’s his house before he goes because he is a gentleman.

In Alessia’s POV, she’s walking down the street and serving as a walking stereotype:

In Albania, at night, she would be wary of the djinn–the demons that roam the earth after sundown. But she knows that this is superstition.

Wait, shouldn’t she have been worried about the wolves that her father had to go out hunting every night in their small village of sixteen-thousand people?

Demelssia goes into a Tesco and starts browsing the aisles when:

“Hello, Alessia. How have you been?” It takes a fraction of a second for her to realize that the calm, familiar voice is speaking in Albanian. It takes another fraction of a second for fear to grip her heart and her soul.

No! He’s here!

You always run into the damndest people at the grocery store.

Since this chapter is needlessly drawn out with “suspense,” we don’t learn who “he” is right away. We jump back to Moss as he stalks away from Trevelyan House.

How could Caroline think she and I had a chance?

Because you fucked her immediately after her husband died and she’s not thinking real rational because of the grief and such?

We know each other too well. We’re supposed to be friends. She is my best friend.

But why though? If she broke your heart by marrying your brother for his title why are you still friends with her?

But truth be told, I had no idea that she had designs on me beyond the occasional fuck.

Really? Hang on, I have retained receipts:

Shit. It has to stop. I don’t want or need the complication. As I shave, solemn green eyes blaze back at me. Don’t fuck it up with Caroline. She’s one of your few friends. She’s your best friend. Talk to her. Reason with her. She knows we’re incompatible.

That’s from page nine.

Not of this chapter. Of the entire book.

Since page nine of this book, Moss has been aware that Caroline might have romantic designs on him. He knew had to cut things off because they weren’t going to be able to have a successful relationship. He doesn’t get to go, oh, wow, I had no idea on page 421.

We go into Demelssia’s POV where we find out that the next Albanian fiend to try and kidnap her is her ex-fiancé, sorry, her “betrothed,” Anatoli:

“I have been looking for you,” he continues in their mother tongue.

He’s just been out there searching every Tesco in London or something? Or was this a wacky happenstance?

His full lips are twisted in a seemingly casual smile that doesn’t touch his piercing, pale blue eyes. He scrutinizes her, looking for answers. His chiseled face is thinner and his fair hair longer than she remembers.

Jesus Christ, Erika, we get it. You hate blonds.

While Demelssia is terrified into silence and immobility, Anatoli tells her that he’s spent a bunch of money looking for her, that her parents have been worried about her since she disappeared, and Demelssia is like, oh shit, is my mom okay or did he do something to her?

He tightens his hold on her arm. “You should be ashamed of yourself. But we’ll deal with that later. Right now let’s go and collect your things, I’m taking you home.”

And that’s where the chapter ends.

My Impression So Far: I’m torn between whether the Caroline subplot is extraneous or just poorly executed. It is a good subplot but it doesn’t seem to fit into the book. It’s possible that there’s just too much going on already and it doesn’t fit, but I think the more likely explanation is that it’s how James chose to head hop from character to character. If the exchange with Moss took place all at once, then we went to Alessia’s POV and did her scene, maybe it wouldn’t seem so jumbled? But we also needed more internal thought about Caroline while Maxim and Alessia were in Cornwall. Not just, “Oh, we played here as children, ugh, she called me again.” We needed to have this allegation of fortune-hunting introduced explicitly and far, far earlier. And we need to know what Caroline’s motive for wanting the title was. And above all, that plot needs to be written in such a way that Maxim is taking responsibility for his actions rather than being absolved of them. Right now, James is asking the reader to accept Caroline as the villain who covets Alessia’s true love and ignore the fact that the womanizing Maxim continued leading Caroline on during an incredibly vulnerable time in her life.

Of course, we’re also being asked to accept two kidnappings in one book. So.

Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister chapter twenty-five or “Accio, foreshadowing!”

According to Cinema Blend, Book Club 2 is happening. If you missed what Book Club was about, it told the story of four upper-middle-class white senior citizens (played by Mary Steenburgen, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and fervent Woody Allen supporter Diane Keaton) who spice up their boring sex lives through the life-changing magic of the scandalously hot and sexy Fifty Shades of Grey series.

Yes. That’s a whole movie. A whole movie encapsulating the worst stereotypes that surrounded the book while it dominated the zeitgeist. And somehow, there’s material for another? As the article suggests, maybe this one will be about The Mister.

While I would love to see the sequel die a quiet death in development, I would also love to see Book Club 2: Step Up To The Sheets hit the big screen before The Mister. Or instead of.

Now, since I’ve had a few comments here and on social media regarding the horrible names of the characters, while they are indeed horrible, Moss and Demelssia are not their actual character names. They’re portmanteaus of Maxim and Ross and Alessia and Demelza. The latter of both pairs are characters from Poldark, which this novel…let’s just say it pays overt homage to it.

So, let’s get into the recap.

A primal wail disturbs my dream, waking me in an instant.

Alessia.

I like how it’s specified here that he’s aware of who is in bed with him.

Demelssia is having a night terror and begins fighting Moss. He subdues her and she wakes.

“M…M…Maxim,” she whispers, and stops struggling.

I immediately thought of Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda.

“You’re having a bad dream. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

There’s another “I’ve got you,” right on schedule!

She calms down and goes back to sleep.

I close my eyes, one hand in her hair and the other on her back, enjoying her weight and her skin against mine. I could get used to this.

To…helping your girlfriend through frequent night terrors caused by her harrowing human trafficking ordeal that culminated in a violent attack and armed stand-off?

Okay, so it’s obvious that what’s meant here is that he could get used to snuggling Demelssia while she sleeps but this is really not the place for him to be having these thoughts. This is the part of the scene where you contemplate her lying there, trusting you completely, and you think about the terrible things she’s gone through and you wish you could erase it all from her mind, etc. This line belongs after a sex scene or something. Moss is given zero internal reaction to her waking up and screaming. It’s just, oh, she woke up from a nightmare, I’ve soothed her back to sleep, I really like cuddling her. It’s like this book might have at some point been meticulously arranged with all the pieces perfectly lined up but then someone tripped on the way to the book machine and the sentences went everywhere and they tried to stick them all back together in some kind of crude order in a desperate panic because they really couldn’t afford to lose their job.

We hop into Demelssia’s POV, where she wakes up early in the morning and takes a physical inventory of the body that got beat all to hell the day before:

Her side is a little sore, and her bruise is still tender, but she feels…good.

She was repeatedly and violently kicked and punched by a guy described as some kind of big, meaty juggernaut, but she feels great because:

No. More than good.

Hopeful. Calm. Powerful. Safe.

Because of this wonderful man asleep beside her.

Fuck Tylenol. Just rub some boyfriend on it.

She loves him. With all her heart.

And what’s more remarkable, he loves her, too. She can scarcely believe it.

He’s given her hope.

This is a heroine who ran from human traffickers and lived on the street until she could find help. This is a heroine who, knowing that she’d been caught up in a trafficking plot, encouraged other women to escape, as well, possibly saving their lives. When pursued by her kidnappers she went out a window and down a fire escape, then back up it with the thought she might somehow be able to protect her boss.

But only now is she “powerful.” Because she got the magic D.

Moss wakes and Demelssia is surprised to learn that she had a nightmare. They have a very brief conversation about it before some fade-to-black boning. This is a tender mercy because I really don’t think I can take much more of this “insert tab a into slot b” wannabe erotica anymore. After a section break, they’re all done.

And the award for most cringe-worthy sentence goes to…

She’s relishing the few moments of quiet after their passionate storm.

Jesus Christ. I had to read that with my own eyes.

Moss and Demelssia have to go back to London, so they go off to shower together and we hop back into Moss’s POV as he shaves.

The bruise on her side looks smaller, but it’s still a livid purple.

She was kicked near to pieces yesterday. Is this bitch Wolverine or something?

A wave of guilt washes through me–she certainly gave me no indication last night or this morning that she was in any pain. She gives me a dazzling smile over her shoulder, and like a sea mist in the breeze, my guilt fades into the ether.

She gave me a look that got me horny so I totally no longer care that I might have hurt her.

Moss wants to high-tail it out of Cornwall before Demelssia can be interviewed by the police. Now, I don’t know how shit works in England, I really don’t. But in America, if the police want to talk to you and you flee to intentionally evade them, that would probably hurt your case in court. Her testimony against the traffickers is like, the only evidence they have at this point that they are traffickers.

Hey, remember how this guy who’s not allowing her to speak to the police about the violent crime committed against her is the one making her feel “powerful?” Yeah, I don’t get it, either.

I do get that she’s in the country illegally and he’s afraid she’ll be deported, but this motive doesn’t fly with me. Moss is the Earl of this village or whatever. He’s known the police sergeant there his whole life and appears to be able to throw some authority around in dealing with him. Moss also has a ton of money that he can use to fast track Demelssia’s case for asylum. Not allowing her to talk to the police “for her own good” is probably hurting her chance to get justice for herself and the other women. And again, not knowing how shit works in England, it does seem like there would be some kind of law enforcement agency above and beyond the local village police who would be automatically called in, right? Here, the FBI would probably step in and investigate and hopefully seek the full cooperation of the Albanian government. One would hope.

It will be a shame to go. I’m enjoying our comfortable familiarity, and I marvel at the change in her. She seems far more confident, and it’s only been a few days.

Losing your virginity tends to make you a “real” woman in these types of stories.

Her newfound confidence is sexy as hell.

Yet again, focusing on the wrong thing here, Erika. The implication is that her sexual awakening is causing this change when really it should be that the knowledge her kidnappers are behind bars has freed her up to maybe be closer to the person she was before her ordeal. Her empty vagina was not the reason she was timid. It was the, you know. HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

In the car, they listen to Rachmaninoff, and this is the scene where the chapter should have begun. We already knew Demelssia has night terrors, so another scene of another night terror did nothing to advance the story. We already know they bang like timpani drums, so the fade-to-black fucking did nothing to advance the story. Moss watching Demelssia towel herself off after a shower and telling her where she could find a bag to pack her clothes was excruciatingly unnecessary because it revealed no information we didn’t already have, couldn’t have been introduced later or was completely unnecessary for the story to progress. The chapter should have begun with the first lines of this section:

Alessia is animated on our drive back to London. We talk and laugh and talk some more–she has the most infectious giggle.

This shows us that her mood is different, especially if it had been expanded on a little. It would have been far more effective than the long block paragraphs of text we got in the last section, in which Moss told us that she was more confident and different because she walked around naked now. Plus, it immediately would have dropped us into the part of the story where something was happening.

While they drive, Moss tells Demelssia about the movie Brief Encounter, mentioning that it’s one of his mother’s favorite films. Demelssia asks Moss about his mother. He explains that he doesn’t have a great relationship with her and that she had basically abandoned her family when he was young. And Demelssia reacts with shock at the idea of a woman leaving her family but again, wouldn’t it have been so much better if Demelssia had learned all of this through actually meeting his mother and observing how cold she is?

Ugh, this book had so much potential and it was just wasted for a copy/paste of Fifty Shades of Poldark.

When they stop for gas, Demelssia freaks out and clings to him until it’s time to go inside and pay. Real question here, not a condemnation or criticism of this trivial detail in the book, I just genuinely want to know: is pay-at-the-pump not a thing in England?

Anyway, while they’re standing in line to pay for the gas:

“It was my mother’s idea,” she blurts, quickly, quietly. “She thought she was helping me.” It takes me a couple of seconds to realize what she’s referring to.

Bloody hell. She’s telling me this story now? A frisson runs up my spine. Why now? I have to pay for my petrol. “Hold that thought.” I raise my index finger and hand the shop assistant my credit card. His eyes shift to Alessia, several times.

Man, she is so out of your league.

Hold that thought about how you ended up getting trafficked and brutally traumatized. I have to make it clear to the reader that you’re sexually desirable to other men while reiterating that I own you.

Like, that whole little moment there is so callous. He already knows that she doesn’t like gas stations because of her journey to England and her flight from her kidnappers. She’s having a response to her trauma because she’s been triggered by her surroundings. And rather than compassion, he expresses irritation at her bad timing.

Sorry her PTSD isn’t running on your schedule, bro.

As we climb back into the Jag, I wonder why she picks service stations and car parks for her revelations.

She…she told you in chapter ten exactly why. She straight up said, in dialogue addressed specifically to you, that they brought her and the other women to a service station to clean up.

Moss drives them to the edge of the parking lot so they can talk more.

Alessia stares out at the leafless trees in front of us and nods. “My betrothed. He is a violent man. One day…” Her voice falters.

My heart sinks. It is as I feared.

What the fuck did he do to her?

Demelssia tells Moss that her “betrothed” is upset by the attention she gets from playing the piano.

“He hits me. And he wants to break my fingers.”

“What?”

She looks down at her hands. Her precious hands. She cups one with the other, holding it tenderly.

This is actually really good on a few levels. She’s not only faced with the loss of her freedom and safety from physical abuse, she’s faced with losing the only escape route she would have in her marriage. It’s not a copy of or lifted from The Piano, but I can’t help but compare the themes. When Ada’s husband flies into a rage over her infidelity, he takes out his frustration on her hands to sever not her ties to the man she’s sleeping with but her relationship with music, the relationship that’s truly threatening him. I mean, spoilers for a movie that came out in 1993 or something but I am a sucker for slow, character-driven drama and that shit is up there with The VVitch in terms of satisfying tone and pacing.

What was I talking about?

Oh, right. So, it’s the same kind of thing here. Demelssia’s “betrothed” (what a pretentious and archaic word choice) is threatened by her true love, music. And wouldn’t it be great if that got explored in here? I hate to get my hopes up but that would be a really interesting dynamic if she was allowed to love music more than or as much as she loves Maxim. That could be part of the glue that holds them together. They’re both in love with the same thing?

Full disclosure, I am incredibly high on my medical right now.

Demelssia tells him about the other girls who were in the truck with her.

“[…] One of them has…I mean–is only seventeen years.”

I gasp. Shocked. So young.

Well, I got some terrible news for you, Shatner.

She tells him about how they were robbed and put into a truck with a bucket for a toilet and a bottle of water apiece.

“It’s okay. I’m here. I’ve got you. I want to know.”

She turns dark, devastated eyes to me. “Do you?”

“Yes. But only if you want to tell me.”

Her eyes move over my face, scrutinizing me. Exposing me, like the first time in my hallway.

Why do I want to know?

Because I love her.

Because she’s the sum of all of her experiences, and this, sadly, is one of them.

Here’s another part that’s really working for me. We have already seen, through a combination of his actions and the author outright telling us, that Demelssia is different from any woman he’s ever met. This is a place where it’s important for us to be told instead of shown and for once, James chose correctly. In Moss’s POV, we’re seeing him have a revelation that he needs to be consciously aware of in order to grow emotionally.

And maybe that’s one of the biggest issues with E.L. James’s style. By doing more telling than showing in first-person POV, her characters become hyper-self-aware filters for her ideas and hooks, instead of fleshed out human beings. When a first-person narrator is able to analyze their own changing character and state these changes certainly at every turn without some kind of revelation, it unintentionally makes everything a revelation, and the actual big, revelatory moments become indistinguishable from everything else.

Demelssia explains that she’s afraid of the dark because the truck was on a ferry on rough seas and the women all had bags over their heads to prevent immigration officers from measuring too much carbon dioxide in the vehicle. This sounds far-fetched, but it’s a real thing. Moss thinks that he regrets not killing the traffickers–okay, weirdly, he fixates on regretting he didn’t kill just Dante–and tells Demelssia that it’s not her fault, or her mother’s fault, that she was kidnapped. He asks her what her “betrothed’s” name is.

I spit the word out. I loathe him.

I mean, you should probably loathe just having to use the word “betrothed” in conversation.

She shakes her head. “I never say his name.”

“Like Voldemort,” I mutter under my breath.

“Harry Potter?”

“You know Harry Potter?”

“Oh, yes. My grandmother–”

“Don’t tell me, she smuggled the books into Albania?”

…She wouldn’t have had to smuggle them. Have you not been listening to the days-long history lesson your girlfriend has been teaching you? Communism ended in the ’90s.

Alessia laughs. “No. She had them sent to her. By Magda. My mother read them to me as a child. In English.”

Why? Harry Potter was translated into so many different languages you can’t really even find an entire list of them. Believe me, I scoured the internet to be petty. But Albanian was one of them. Why did her grandma have to get them in English? Unless it’s like, she got them in English because they came out ahead of the translations. But even so, like…ugh, it’s the little shit like this that gets me. Harry Potter was a worldwide phenomenon. It would be weird if she didn’t know about it.

More perplexing is that Demelssia goes on to explain that her abusive father doesn’t like them to speak English in the home. So…why are we having to do the mental gymnastics to make that work? Nobody really needs to explain how they know what Harry Potter is. At this point, we all just do.

They listen to music and ride along without talking while Moss thinks about how he needs to protect her from her “betrothed” and get her immigration worked out and then:

I smirk as we pass the junction for Maidenhead, and shake my head, amused by my own idiocy. I’m embracing my inner twelve-year-old boy. I glance at Alessia, but she hasn’t noticed. She’s deep in through, tapping her finger against her lips.

“His name is Anatoli. Anatoli Thaçi,” she says.

So, he’s driving along like, ha ha, I devirginized a girl, while she’s been like, maybe I should tell him this painful thing.

“You decided to tell me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he has more power without a name.”

“Like Voldemort?”

She nods.

That’s…the exact opposite of how Voldemort’s name worked but I get it, Snowqueen. You can’t be totally devoted to both Harry Potter and Twilight at the same level, you know?

Demelssia tells Moss that Anatoli is some kind of gangster and that her father owes him a lot of money, so basically, she’s been sold to him in marriage to settle that debt. Because of course, he’s a gangster. In E.L. James’s world, all Albanians are either gangsters or rustic peasants from the nineteenth century.

I’m going to transcribe this entire next section:

I pull the F-Type up outside the office, and Oliver comes out to greet me and hand over new keys for my flat.

“This is my girlfriend, Alessia Demachi.” I lean back, and Oliver reaches through the car window to shake Alessia’s hand.

“How do you do,” he says. “I’m sorry we’re not meeting under better circumstances.” He gives her a warm smile.

Her answering smile is dazzling.

“I hope you’ve recovered from your ordeal.”

Alessia nods.

“Thanks for sorting all this out,” I say. “I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.” He gives me a wave and I ease the Jag into the traffic.

That’s it. That’s an entire scene. There is no point to this scene. There is no reason we needed to see any of this, as the average reader isn’t going to wonder if he got new keys or where they came from. The only reason this scene is forced in is so that Demelssia can meet Oliver, which could have happened at some other point if it ends up being absolutely vital the plot, and so that she can issue dazzling smile number two of this chapter.

And frankly, if I were someone whose biggest career achievement to date is ripping of Twilight and shamelessly claiming it for their own, I probably wouldn’t toss around the word “dazzle” too much.

They get to the apartment and jump into Demelssia’s POV, where she and Moss start making out in the elevator because why not retread all that old ground. The doors open and Mrs. B is standing there, so Moss introduces them and they chat about the burglary and then, I get the shock of my life:

“I don’t know how old you are.”

He laughs. “Old enough to know better.”

She frowns while Maxim unlocks the front door.

“I’m twenty-eight.”

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN SOME FUCKING AMAZING INFORMATION TO HAVE WHEN THE BOOK STARTED BECAUSE SO FAR I’VE BEEN PICTURING HIM LATE-THIRTIES AND WONDERING WHY HE’S ACTING LIKE A DUDE IN HIS TWENTIES.

It’s fully normal for someone who is in their late twenties to freak out over being handed responsibility. I was in my late twenties once and it sucked because it was still impossible to figure out how to be an adult. Now he’s got this whole deal going on? I thought he was my age or a little younger and an incurable man-brat. It’s not weird for a twenty-eight-year-old to be dabbling in a bunch of rootless pursuits. He’s practically a baby!

They go into the apartment and Moss gives Demelssia a set of keys

“Welcome home.” He bends to kiss her, his lips coaxing hers. She groans as she responds, and they lose themselves in each other.

and then we hop back into Moss’s POV:

Alessia screams as she climaxes. It’s a cock-hardening sound. Her fingers are clenched around the sheets. Her head tossed back. Her mouth open. I kiss her clitoris as she writhes beneath me, then her belly, her navel, her stomach, and her sternum as she mewls, and taking her cries into my mouth, I ease into her.

That’s the entire sex scene. Fade to black, jump into the middle, fade to black. Why did we need that? What was the point of this micro-scene? It’s super jarring when it pops up and it’s really short. I do not understand like seventy-percent of the choices made in this novel.

So, after a section break, they’re post-coital in bed when Caroline calls. Moss tells Demelssia he has to go to Trenwith to see Elizabeth–sorry, I mean, he has to go see Caroline. Demelssia offers to cook them dinner. The hook of the chapter is…

I don’t tell her that I’m dreading this meeting.

My impression so far: There were two whole moments in this chapter that weren’t high-grade failure fuel. That’s better than the last few chapters have been. But you can probably guess that his meeting with Caroline is going to be the impetus for Alessia to make some rash thought leaps down the line.

Business Centaur: A Long and Winding Tale of Friendship and the Horrors Which Will Befall You All

To tell you the tale of John Gayhart Johnson: Business Centaur, I must first tell you the tale of a book.

Some years ago, while attending a conference in Chicago, I found myself very drunk in a hotel room with Bronwyn Green and Rebel Cowboy, which had been given away as a party favor at dinner. Also given away at dinner were small boxes of elegant chocolates. As I drunkenly tried to put one in my mouth, I dropped it. Despite Bronwyn’s shriek of horror, I picked the chocolate up from the hotel room carpet upon which countless loads have very likely been blown and in a moment I am not proud of…I ate the floor candy.

At some later point, Bronwyn’s gaze fell upon Rebel Cowboy and she noted that the woman on the front “looks like a motorcycle centaur.”

I must make it absolutely clear that no part of this story should be interpreted as mocking the text inside Rebel Cowboy. I really enjoyed this book, it’s a fantastic contemporary romance, and if you’re in the mood for a heroine with a complicated family situation and a hero who’s an ex-hockey player turned llama rancher, you will enjoy this book, as well. Here’s the Amazon link. Consider it my strongest possible recommendation. But the unfortunate angle of the model on the cover really does, in my opinion, and Bronwyn’s, look as though the heroine’s lower body is the motorcycle the hero is straddling:

Through non-stop tears of laughter, we created a ridiculous backstory. The unfortunate heroine had eaten a piece of floor candy and contracted a terrible disease. The only way to save her life was to amputate her lower body and fuse her torso to a motorcycle. About a month later, floor candy and motorcycle centaurs insinuated themselves into the language of our writing retreat.

And then, it happened.

He came into our lives on a majestic wave of inspiration. I was talking about my favorite topic: people whose names are repetitive. Donald Donaldson. Jeff Jefferson. Dick Richards. Names that these people’s parents should have fucking well known better about. And at that moment, one of my friends blurted:

“I know someone named John Gayhart Johnson!”

Time stopped and the room hung suspended in this glorious moment of creation. I don’t remember who said what. But I do know that someone said, “That sounds like a businessman,” and another person, whom I am almost certain was me, shouted, “John Gayhart Johnson: Business Centaur!”

John G. Johnson, Business Centaur, became an inside joke in our group. The next year at retreat, they presented me with this:

 

Yes, that is a John Gayhart Johnson, Business Centaur action figure that Bronwyn Green lovingly created out of one of her kids’ old toys. We had a hearty laugh, especially after they reminded me that it was I who thought up the ridiculous idea of a business centaur, hence the gift. I’m still not sure that’s how that worked out but I guess I have to trust the memories of five other people.

Obviously, the joke had now run its course. After all, once you create an action figure of something, there’s really nowhere to go.

Or so I thought, forgetting that I am friends with writers.

This year, when we all assembled at the cabin, Bronwyn Green, Jess Jarman, Kris Norris, and two other people whose identities I will protect, presented me with two small, wrapped boxes. In one was a John G. Johnson, Business Centaur action figure.

“Why would you make another one?” I asked Bronwyn.

She proudly declared, “I didn’t. That’s the one from your office.”

Bronwyn lives fifty miles from me, yet she waited until she knew I was going to be at a rehearsal, entered my home and took the Business Centaur from my bookshelf. I never noticed he was gone. They gave me another box, this one containing:

“I don’t get it…” I said, before Norris brought this out from behind her back:

 

Every Business Centaur, it seems, needs his Virgin Temp. Please note the attention to detail: those charms are clips containing the initials of both John Gayhart Johnson and Flicka Star, his love interest. My dastardly friends truly went the extra mile with this, going so far as to create a cover flat and a wildly elaborate corporate espionage centaur plot for the singular goal of using as many horse puns as they could think of.

 

I can have any filly in the stable…except the one I want.

John Gayhart Johnson: Business Centaur

My business rival has been trying to put me out to pasture for years. And now, he thinks he’s finally found the means to do it—by maneuvering his sister, Flicka, into position as my new temp and forcing her to steal company secrets. I know I should put on my blinders and hoof it away from her as fast as I can, but I can’t resist horsing around a bit first. I’m hungry—but not for oats.

Lady Flicka Star: Virgin Temp

I know my brother’s using me, but I don’t have a choice. He’s wanted revenge on that stud, John, for years, and I want my freedom. My brother has corralled me for far too long, and I’m a shoe-in for this temp position. So what if I have to pony up and seduce my boss to escape the family barn? It’s not as if I’m galloping headfirst into love—oh, neigh, neigh—never that. Besides, a little foalplay never hurt anyone.

You will note that this is indeed a full cover flat, as if for an actual, published book.

Because that is what they now expect it to be.

I, Jenny Trout, will somehow write The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp. I will have to figure out how to do this without it being about, you know. Getting deflowered by horsecock. That will not happen, this I vow. But since this is so thoroughly ridiculous, so beyond the realm of anything any sensible person would ever want to read, let alone pay to read, I won’t be slotting it into my release schedule.

I’ll be subjecting you to it, instead.

After our recaps of The Mister end, I will set out once again on a marvelous serialized adventure. Through weekly chapters, I will weave you a story of attraction. Of courage. Of love. Of other stuff.

Honestly, I don’t know what this fucking book will be about. But I’m going to write it with the same attention to detail and effort at actually good writing as I do all my other books. I’m going to try to make the absolutely balls-ass ridiculous premise that has been handed to me something that someone, somewhere, might actually enjoy. I will rise to the challenge as is expected of me and I will not let the anti-centaur lobby win. We need more centaurs, especially Business Centaurs. We need John Gayhart Johnson.

The world needs him.

You need him.

And I’m gonna give you all the Business Centaur you can handle.

Patron Appreciation Video!

I’m back from my amazing writing retreat where I wrote so, so many of the words. It’s impossible to fully explain just what a huge difference this trip makes to my work year and how much I rely on it to get huge chunks of my Neil and Sophie and El-Mudad books written. This year, it for sure wouldn’t have been possible to buy my groceries for up there without the help of my super awesome Patreon patrons, so I made this month’s $5 and up Patron appreciation video while on the trip. It just seemed fitting. Thanks for helping me hit the 20k word mark on The Daughter!

 

Thank you to everyone who donates through Patreon or Kofi to keep this site, my books, and my general nonsense going. And thank you for those of you who visit here and spread the Gospel of Trout. Without you, I’d have no job.

State Of The Trout: Annual June Hiatus

Sorry, there’s no recap today. I fully intended for there to be one, but then I went grocery shopping this morning and slept for hours and hours afterward. Such is the life of someone with Fibromyalgia, although I often forget that and spend a long time telling myself that I’m awful and lazy. Where are my chronically ill people? You know what I’m talking about.

I wanted to update everyone on a few things. One, Mr.Jen’s weird ass injury is still being weird as ass. Thankfully, it’s not a broken neck (which was presented way too casually at a follow-up appointment: “We’ll just do an x-ray and make sure you haven’t broken your neck.”) but that also means they still don’t know what the fuck is going on. He’ll be heading into physical therapy in a couple of weeks. I appreciate everybody who has checked in or offered possible explanations from a similar experience or who have just sent good vibes our way. That means a lot.

In other news, every June for the past…I think this is the seventh year? I go on a retreat to Gay, Michigan with my awesome author friends, including Bronwyn Green, Jessica Jarman, and Kris Norris. Every year, we spend a week in a remote cabin right on the shore of Lake Superior. There’s no phone or internet service or children or family and we only each have to make dinner one time all week and we write until our fingers bleed and we laugh until our faces hurt. I’ll be working on the next Sophie Scaife book, The Daughter, while I’m up there, as well as something new I can’t announce yet but which I’m super excited for.

It’s literally the only “vacation” I can take without feeling guilty about not working. Although, I’ll probably come home feeling like I didn’t work hard enough despite writing like 20,000 words or something.

So, this will be the last blog post until Monday, June 24. Wish me lots of words in the meantime, and if I can get cell signal you might see some Facebook Live updates or some Tweets or shit while I’m up there, but to be perfectly honest, it’s rare that we can get signal. Which is kind of the point.

Everybody have a super week otherwise, and hopefully, this year will go a lot better than last year did.