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Spotless (Spotless, #1)

Camilla Monk

Start date: July 1, 2020

Finish date: July 31, 2020

Why we're reading this: July Free for All Book of the Month Winner
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Jul 13, 2020 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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Lots of fun with a truly original genre-bending story. It's a fast-paced, action-packed adventure full of violence and humor that sends up as many plot devices as possible from the familiar world of romance novels, especially of course the ones with a bad boy hero and a naive, virginal heroine.

The heroine in question narrates the story, and the reader is definitely stuck with her point of view as she tries desperately to figure out what's going on and how she can survive the whirlwind that's bl Lots of fun with a truly original genre-bending story. It's a fast-paced, action-packed adventure full of violence and humor that sends up as many plot devices as possible from the familiar world of romance novels, especially of course the ones with a bad boy hero and a naive, virginal heroine.

The heroine in question narrates the story, and the reader is definitely stuck with her point of view as she tries desperately to figure out what's going on and how she can survive the whirlwind that's blown her humdrum life apart. She's a bright, lonely young IT tech and math whiz whose love life has remained for years between the covers of bad romance novels, and math and romantic fiction are the resources she draws on in crisis after crisis. There's a touch of Monty Python in her quirky thoughts, reinforced at the beginning of each chapter by a hilarious quotation from a fake romance novel. One example gratis:

"He had given up on love to lose himself in the never-ending night of crime. Only she could save his dark soul with the purity of her innocence." -- Tracey Hurricane, Hit On by a Hit Man

There are 35 chapters with headings like that one--enjoy!

The blurb tells you a lot, so if you haven't already, scroll up and read it. Yes, her name is Island Chaptal. She starts the story by saying she could explain why her parents named her Island but she suspects no one really cares, and sure enough we never find that out. We do learn that her mother was French, and she was shot by a sniper while driving a car in Tokyo. Island was fifteen at the time and was riding with her, and there's a great deal that Island has yet to discover about her mother because her memories of their life in South Africa, France, and Japan are so incomplete.

And one very realistic element is that people involved in serious criminal activity don't talk about it any more than they have to. That's the primary set-up that makes everyone else mysterious to some degree, because we're firmly lodged in Island's puzzled mind.

Island is kidnapped and then kidnapped from her kidnapper more than once and any rescues are really her being kidnapped back before any police can get involved--she's not only caught between two criminal organizations that deal in torture and murder to gain wealth and power, but she gets caught in conflicts between members of the same organization, all while not really understanding who's who, and that includes her prime kidnapper aka the parody of the romantic hero (see blurb).

Island's attempts to be the successful heroine of a romantic thriller include a genuine Perils of Pauline scene (updated with nudity) and an appropriate number of TSTL moments: she'll do something stupid that makes everything worse, and then she'll do something stupid that saves the day. Repeat, several times. Do bring your sense of humor to these occasions. Some of the villains are distinctly worse than others (one of them is truly scary), so you see she has a romantic choice between them. And the way this book ends bends the tropes of the romantic thriller genre in at least two unexpected directions. You've been warned.

By the way: Island is bilingual in French and English and knows enough Japanese and Afrikaans to give us translations of all the short foreign-language segments she quotes. I enjoyed the rather salty idiomatic French, and the English versions were what an English speaker would have said in the situation; I can't speak for the Japanese or the Afrikaans, and longer dialogues in each language are just written in English with a note of the type "He said in French..."

Strongly recommended for a unique blend of suspense and comedy. ...more

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