Book Rant: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation [Lauren Willig]

RATING: This book is a farce! A FARCE!

The rather misleading book cover.

The main premise of "The Secret History of the Pink Carnation" is espionage during Napoleon's reign. (Or at least, it's SUPPOSED to be.) Eloise Kelly, a Harvard graduate student, flies to London and delves into research about English spies as her thesis. She eventually finds out that the Pink Carnation is a woman spy. 

I was looking forward to history, romance and feminism. And since the author is a graduate from Yale, and is a PhD from Harvard, I was naturally expecting something written by a modern version of Gaskell or Brontë. I was looking forward to something well-researched and informative yet light and fun to read.

What I got instead was a poorly-written, rather insipid, absurdly implausible romance novel set in the 19th century. The two main characters were hormonally overcharged, unbelievably idiotic and clumsy, to the point where I kept asking myself how the hell they survived as spies. Amy and Richard groped each other wherever and whenever they went, during trips, before and after fights, during surveillance, during missions. Throughout the novel, Amy's bosom was constantly heaving, her bottom constantly wriggling, which causes Richard to have a perpetual hard-on.

The narrative switches between past (Amy) and present (Eloise). Eloise's story is when she's not reading Amy's letters for research, she's fantasizing about Colin Selwick, Richard and Amy's rather snobby descendant who wants Eloise out of his family's private matters. However, the friction between the two modern characters that was supposed to work out as sexual tension - in the hands of a more talented writer, perhaps - simply fell flat on its face. Thus, the narrative didn't work out at all. It felt like two separate novels - "Amy's Heaving Bosom" and "Eloise's Forbidden Fantasies" - being mashed into one.

I have to admit, I didn't finish the book. I COULD NOT. And I cannot help feeling like I was bamboozled. I was conned into buying this indescribably asinine book! (One has to admire its marketing though, what with the author's credentials and all). 

I was glad to have picked up this book for roughly a dollar, because it was intolerable, and if I had bought it full-priced, I would've felt really, really bad. Based on the cover and the blurbs, I was expecting a well-researched historical romance, but ended up with a bodice-ripper - and a poorly written one at that. Thanks to this novel, I am now a FIRM believer of the saying "Never judge a book by its cover."

[12/17/2012]: I just found out that NINE books and TWO novellas have spawned from this INANE drivel! Que horror!

Book Review: Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale [Holly Black]

RATING: I admit, YA isn't my cup of tea, but this was pretty good.

The first time I read this book, I couldn't get into it at all. After two chapters, I called it a copycat of Emma Bull's "War for the Oaks", and chucked it into a random box, where it disappeared for two years until it made its way back into my hands last night. It wasn't so bad after all.

Quite frankly, I am bothered that this book is being marketed to adolescents. Those who know me know that I am no prude, but I’d think twice before letting an adolescent read something where the protagonist is a high school dropout, chain-smokes and gulps down alcohol like water at sixteen.

Or maybe I'm just getting too old. Gah.

Anyway, Tithe is a coming of age/self-discovery story made into an urban fantasy. Kaye Fierch is sixteen, and her mother fronts a struggling rock band. Kaye and her mother Ellen move back in with Grandma when her mother’s boyfriend tries to kill Ellen for no particular reason at all. Kaye later finds out that this incident was set off by the Fey in an attempt to bring Kaye back to Jersey.

Back in her childhood home, Kaye is reunited with both her human and Faerie childhood friends, and finds out the truth about herself and her past. She is drawn into Faerie politics, a twisted plot involving the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, where she falls for a dangerous knight who may be just using her to his own advantage.

I found “Tithe” to be an entertaining light read. The book is easy to gobble up. The plot is charmingly simple, and the pacing quick. The characters are all ridden with teenage angst, which adds to the "badass-ery" of the book. I'd have to say the enjoyment I got from reading this book is akin to watching a low-budget, B-movie with an interesting storyline. It may not be very visually stimulating, but you love it anyway because of the story.

Tithe gets down and dirty. It doesn’t have any illusions of grandeur in it. The backdrop is rough and rugged, and the narrative and dialogue unpolished, making the story exude a certain ragged, blue-collar charm.

I particularly enjoyed Kaye's morbid-poetic introspectiveness. For example, she describes sunset at the beach as “[slitted] wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water”.

I probably would've given this five stars if I'd read it in my "jaded-angst" stage eight to nine years ago. At present, this lola is giving it a 3.5 stars for being a simple, rather nostalgic and - once I got over my prudishness - enjoyable read.