Grade: B

When I first saw the cover of this book, I thought it was going to be one of those Red Dress Ink type things about some neurotic (substitute black for white) twenty something girl working in a publishing company as some kind of editorial slave who has wacky adventures sleeping with a plethora of men, gabbing with her girlfriends and gay best friend about dick sizes, and experimenting with designer drugs, while trying to find herself or some shit like that, but I was wrong. This cover is just too damned bright, the font looks like the title font of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and the cartoon woman looks like Old Navy threw up on her. Don’t get me wrong, I like this cover… but not for this type of book. Not for a book that has any of the following: chain-smoking demons, psycho evil exes, a hot guy who is kind of like a vampire but not really, a black girl with super powers… wait a minute, slap a white girl on the cover and this could pass for a Katie McAllister novel. The only difference between this book and ANYTHING by Katie McAllister is that I liked this book. I didn’t love it. I didn’t want to marry it and run away with it to Cabo or anything. But I liked it.

Our heroine Luby Jones—Lubaleen Uniquoncie Jones—is a lawyer. She graduated from Vassar, got her law degree from Stanford, and is currently a junior partner at a prestigious law firm where she is the only non-white woman. Actually, she is the only woman working there. Luby knows she’s smart and talented, but figures she only got the job so her employers could “hit two birds with one stone” on the whole Affirmative Action thing. Luby lives in an apartment complex with her two best friends, Dani and Cat (more on them later) and is a pretty content individual, aside from the fact that she doesn’t date much, her mother is locked up in a nuthouse, and Luby’s grandmother tells her that when she turns twenty-seven, she will receive the same “gifts” that her mother did. One day, while riding the elevator to her floor, she encounters a man who sends her pulse racing and her knees knocking together. Luby considers herself to be a nice Christian girl, but the mere sight of this man, and all of a sudden, she is besieged by naughty, wicked thoughts of what she would like to do with this man. Oh, and he’s white.

Our hero, Jake Kosevo has an unusual talent. All he has to do is breathe and walk around and any woman and man (even straight ones) will want to fuck him. Jake is beautiful on his own (and rich to boot), but he’s got a special something that makes him irresistible to anyone. It is so bad that if he wants to be friends with somebody, he has to sleep with that person first just so they “can get it over with” (umm… does he deal with his male acquaintances in the same way?) In fact, his last girlfriend became so crazy about him that he had to leave the state, and she remained… crazy. Because of this, Jake worries that he will never find anyone who can truly love him because he doesn’t believe that anyone will ever see past his gorgeous appearance. Oh, boo-hoo, cry me a river, whiner!

Anyway, within a day of knowing each other, Jake and Luby jump each other and fuck like wolves. I gotta say, the first (of many) sex scene is very hot, and when I say it’s hot, you can take that shit to the bank. Trust me, when you’ve read as many Ellora’s Cave, Loose-id and Phaze e-books as I have, I know hot like the goddamn sun knows hot. Under the same reasoning, I’ve also become immune to the words “pussy” and “cock”, but Jackson uses these words in a way that makes them loaded again. The word “pussy” literally jumped at me when it normally wouldn’t even have fazed me and that shit means something. Thank you, Ms. Jackson, THANK YOU for making the words “pussy” and “cock” mean something to me again. I don’t know how to thank you! Anyway, Jake and Luby have great chemistry together and it shows in every scene they’re in together. The way Jake looks at Luby whenever he wants to fuck her absolutely sizzles and the way Luby expresses her desire for Jake is just goddamn fabulous and hot. These two go really well together, you know, freaky-dicky blood-drinking freaks that they are. Oh, I love you, you two crazy kids!

Note to self: Maybe the love scenes were especially hot to me because I was picturing Scott Speedman in place of Jake and me in place of Luby the whole time.

If I were basing the grade on these two alone, this definitely would have been an A book, but while strong central characters and a strong story are enough to make a book kick ass, plotting and pacing can throw it out of whack. My main problem with this book is that it goes too fast. Too many goddamn things are happening all at once. It’s like the author has all these great stories that are practically bursting to be told, but she can’t decide which one she wants to tell first, so she tells them all at once. It’s like getting hit with a golf ball on the back of the head and before you can even yell “ouch”, you hear a whizzing sound, so you turn around and find a hundred other golf balls flying at mach-speed towards you. I’m not even sure what the time frame is. When Jake and Luby first meet, Luby was still two months away from her twenty-seventh birthday, but near the end of the book, her twenty seventh birthday had come and gone, and it felt like only a weekend had gone by. I mean, it’s usually a good thing that the story doesn’t drag or feels like a heavy steel ball chained around your neck (ahem, Sunshine), but sometimes, when you come across a story that is really interesting like this one, you kind of want to stay and savor the moment, maybe get a breather before the next big thing happens, but they just kind of come at you like gang-busters. Hell, at one point, the book reminded me of an eager little girl who wants to show me all the cool things she owns, but before I can even absorb what’s going on, she’s already got my hand, and dragging me to the next cool thing she wants to show me.

This book also reads like… well, two books. They are two books that I would like to read and enjoy separately, but here, it’s like the author took these two books, stuck them in a blender, but didn’t press puree. Instead, she pressed chunky. Hell, I don’t even know if there’s a “chunky” setting on a blender (I don’t own one), but there are just chunks of these two different stories that just didn’t mesh together. One book is about three girlfriends who really care about each other. There’s the nice, practical, Christian girl (Luby), the deliciously bitchy friend who is stuck in a loveless marriage (Cat), and then there’s the wacky white girl who dates only black men. Not successful, decent, criminal record-free black men, mind you, but thugs who steal her car and get it impounded. These three women are just so fun, so awesome together, that while I was reading about them, I got a little sad because they’re not my friends, and I can’t hang out with them. The other book, on the other hand, is a really hot, really sexy paranormal romance about a mysterious, ridiculously attractive man, and the sassy, snappy, equally attractive girl who loves him. I’m just so peeved that Ms. Jackson didn’t focus more on one or the other. It could have been a chick lit-y kind of book with paranormal elements, but it also could have been a hot paranormal romance with a chick lit-y feel for it. This book tries for both at the same time, but succeeds at neither.

As for the paranormal elements, it just felt like a slap-dash job. There’s no mythology, no explanation for why anything is happening. I would have liked to know more about Jake and his mysterious family. I would have liked to know more about Jake’s thought processes and how being irresistible to everyone has affected his mental well-being. I would have liked to know more about Luby’s parents and why her mother is the way she is (Ms. Jackson goes into it a little bit, but I wanted more). I would have liked to know more about how she felt about being in love with a man that she literally can’t help but fall in love with (wouldn’t she worry that it was just “the glamour” and not the real thing?). I would have welcomed any scene that showed Luby developing her powers. That’s right, I’m actually asking for MORE exposition. More background. Go ahead, Ms. Jackson, get buck-wild. Pad this shit up! Pad it up like you’re a seventh grader with a flat chest wearing a training bra when your classmates are already shopping at Victoria’s Secret. As Luby likes to say Jake, “Give it to me!” Really, really give it to me. I would have also liked it if Jake’s ex-girlfriend had been more involved in the beginning. If we had more of her, if Ms. Jackson had built her up more to be a formidable villain, if she weren’t just a whiny little crybaby who got dumped, if she had more layers to her, if I thought for one second that she was actually a threat to Jake and Luby, then maybe I would have cared more about the whole thing. SPOILER: As it is, she was just pesky little gnat that Luby “magically” swatted away. And speaking of magic, that was a bit of a deus ex machina, no? It came out of nowhere! It’s like if I woke up in the middle of the night and was too lazy to get a glass of water, but discovered that I now had telekinesis and could fetch myself a glass of water… with my mind!

Last but not the least is the point of view. This is a first person narrative… of three people. First person narrative could be very powerful if used wisely, but here, I think a third person omniscient would have been more effective. Yes, I was interested in Alyssa’s (Jake’s crazy ex) point of view, but I didn’t need it to be told in first person. That was just weird. I mean, she doesn’t show up till the final third of the book and she gets a first person narrative? Dani and Cat are in the book more than she is, but she gets one? As for Jake’s first person narrative, I thought it was hot, but it would have worked better if there were just one person telling the goddamn story. It just felt kind of schizophrenic, yeah?

I know that by the way I’ve been babbling and bitching about this book, I’ve made it sound that I hated it. THIS IS NOT TRUE. In fact, I enjoyed every page of this book. I just wish there had been more of it. You also tell by the way I’ve been babbling and bitching how passionate I feel about this book. I know that there’s a fucking kickass book in here somewhere. With a little padding, some clever editing, this book can be a goddamn grade A book, I know it. I mean, this is an advanced reading copy, for God’s sake (thanks again, Monica!). I’ve heard that a book goes through a lot of changes between the ARC and the final copy, so I’m positive that Ms. Jackson will produce a final product that will kick my ass. She is a truly talented author who can write sizzling, uproarious dialogue (loved the scenes with Cat, Dani, and Luby) as well as positively nuclear love scenes and the fact that I’m asking for MORE PAGES is a true testament to her talent, right? And let me tell you something else: after reading the first three chapters of this book on her website, I practically begged her to send me an ARC because I couldn’t wait for the actual release date of this book. And dear readers? I never beg.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Paranormal, Romance: Contempo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.