So a detective and a minister walk into a bar: Review of PBS show Grantchester

 

I don't generally enjoy mysteries in any form, whether book, television, or movie, and my taste is a bit too lowbrow for most PBS shows.  So I can't comment  about where Grantchester, a PBS mystery series available on Amazon Prime, falls in the pantheon.  I can say that it is weird, in a way I suspect but don't know that most PBS mystery shows are, and engaging enough that I watched the whole series and actually paid for the most recent season.

 SPOILERS AHEAD

 

 

The first few seasons follow the adventures of Sidney, an Anglican minister is a small town outside of Cambridge, England, and Geordie, a police detective stationed nearby, in the 1950s.  Sidney is an alcoholic suffering from PTSD as a result of the one battle he fought during World War II.  He pines for a woman, Amanda, who pines for him, but, alas, they are star-crossed lovers.  Amanda is married, and then divorced, and -- despite the entire Church of England having been founded because King Henry VIII wanted to get divorced and remarried -- Anglican ministers are forbidden from marrying divorcees.  So Sidney mopes a lot and drinks a lot.  At one point he tries to quit his job (which he seems to spend very little time at), but his housekeeper, Sylvia, and his curate (assistant minister), Leonard, convince him that his tiny little church cannot possibly survive without him.

Geordie, the detective, is an asshole.  He also suffers from PTSD from the war, and also drinks a lot.  He's married with four kids, and is a terrible husband and father.  When his infant son has a potentially fatal fever, he stays away from the house because dealing with the possibility of his son's death is just too hard for him.  Aw, poor man.  So he leaves his wife alone with their dying son.  

Sidney and Geordie team up to drink and to solve murders -- because, like in all TV shows about cops, in this world police solve murders by actual detective work instead of waiting for a witness or informant to tell them whodunit.  And what a lot of murders there are.  It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sunnydale around here.  If Sidney and Geordie were not already suffering from PTSD, they surely would be after they realize that every time they go to a nightclub, party, river, or lecture, someone ends up dead.  At some point you would think that someone would realize that they are the common denominator in all these deaths. 

Sidney gets written off the show after the fourth season, in a way that is an insult to his entire character  arc.  Luckily it turns out that his little church can survive just fine without him.  Along comes Will to replace him, another whiny minister who is somehow allowed to ride along on all of Geordie's investigations. Will is different from Sidney because he rides a motorbike and has a family of origin. Also, he likes rock and roll instead of jazz.  And he's hotter.  The bodies continue to pile up.  Leonard, the curate, and Sylvia, the housekeeper and best thing about the show, get some more character development.   

The show is overall very, very silly but also kind of delightful.  And now that I've watched an entire PBS series (thus far), I can stick my nose a little higher in the air.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Meditation on Mommy blogs, and thoughts on The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

 

 

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a memoir that takes itself seriously by a writer who takes herself seriously.  Nelson writes extensively about philosophers and lectures she has attended and given.  This is not the type of book a blog devoted to smut about naked sex slaves (which I write) and Regency romances (which I read) would typically address.

But it's my blog and I get to do what I want.

To the extent that The Argonauts is about anything concrete in terms of plot, it's about Nelson's relationship with her husband, Harry, a transgender man (or, more accurately, a nonbinary person who was born a biological woman and transitioned to a biological male) who started taking testosterone around the same time that Nelson started to take hormones to assist with getting pregnant.  The love story between Nelson and Harry, although not very detailed, is very sweet.  It begins with a Seinfeld-like scene where, for an uncomfortably long time after they start dating, Nelson is not sure what pronouns to use to refer to Harry.  (He/him, she eventually learns.)  In due course they get married, Nelson becomes a stepmother to Harry's son, and Nelson and Harry have a child together.  The book mentions all this, but devotes much more time to Deep Thoughts (which I do not mean snidely).

Nevertheless, many times as I was reading the book I rolled my eyes and thought, "This is a Mommy blog."  Nelson writes about how pregnancy changed her body, about how giving birth was really, really hard, about how special it is to be a mother of a newborn.  All in beautiful prose, but still . . .

Which leads to the question, why do I sneer at mommy blogs?  I myself am a mommy -- well, now that my kids are older a mom (picture this being said with an eye roll by my teen).  I am the category of mommy who was pregnant and who gave birth and thought it was really special to be with my newborn.  

And yet, I have no desire to read about anyone else's experiences with this.  Maybe because it is all so common.  I can compare and contrast Nelson's pregnancy and childbirth experience to my own, but I don't find doing so particularly interesting.  Even though Nelson writes very nice prose, she doesn't have anything new to say about these things.

Does it matter?  I love reading memoirs, but isn't it also true that one person's early years as the child of an alcoholic are pretty much like another person's?  Certainly Regency romances have only a handful of interchangeable plots and stock characters, and I read them all the time.  

I think, in the end, it's part of the human condition that the bond between a mother and her infant is intensely personal and intensely interesting to the mother who is by necessity all-consumed by the bond -- but it is also so universal that reading about the experience is like looking at Facebook pictures of a blizzard.  It snowed!  Yeah, I know, I can look out my window and see that.  

Is this opinion sexist?  Probably, yes.  But the good news is, you don't have to read my naked sex slave smut if you're not interested, and I don't have to read about your childbirth experience if I'm not interested.  To each her own.  

 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

 

 

Review of terrible Netflix princess movie The Royal Treatment

 

I love a Hallmark Christmas movie and the spinoff Netflix romances as much as anyone.  And I fully understand that part of their charm is that they are terrible.  

But sometimes one of these movies comes along that is terrible because it is charmless.  Take, for example, Netflix movie The Royal Treatment.   It stars Laura Marano, best known for her role in the perfectly okay  Disney show Austin & Ally, and Mena Massoud, who I have never heard of but also has a Disney background and is very cute. 

The biggest problem with the movie is not the standard plot -- commoner with a heart of gold falls in love with doltish but very hot prince, and the prince's butler/tutor/mentor turns out to be awesome -- but Marano's very, very distracting accent.  Her character, Izzy, is Italian-American and lives somewhere in New York City.  The Bronx, maybe?  I guess her accent is supposed to reflect that, but it's a weird mishmash of fake Boston accent, fake New York accent, and fake do-gooder princess accent.  There was not a single time that Marano spoke that I I was not pulled out of the movie by the way she was saying her words.  

Other than Marano's accent, the movie was just standardly offensive.  Happy dancing poor people!  Schools for low-income kids saved by hand-me-downs from rich people!  A hair salon that constantly catches on fire due to dangerous wiring but the health department doesn't care and the landlord doesn't have to do anything about it!  A person with no qualifications or experience offered a job leading a human services agency, because she is nice!  A European chef who is too incompetent to know how to cook spaghetti!  

I understand that the point of movies like this is not to be good.  But they could be.  What if Izzy, a business-owner responsible for the livelihood of several employees, actually understood the first thing about running a business?  What if one or two the people in the slum in the prince's kingdom of Lavania had an actual character trait?  I'm not talking about hard edges and -- heaven forfend -- lefty politics.  I'm just talking about a plot that is . . . a little more plot-like. 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of K-Drama Because This Is My First Life

 

After I watched Squid Game with the rest of the world, Netflix added K-Dramas (South Korean dramas) to my feed.  I was not familiar with the genre and gave Because This Is My First Life a try. The show was a very sweet romcom with insanely good looking actors and  . . . very . . . slow . . . pacing.

The main characters are heroine Yoon Ji-ho, an unemployed TV writer having a crisis of identity, and hero Nam Se-hee, a computer programmer who seems to be mildly autistic but may just be a bit Vulcan-like in his refusal to deal with emotions.  In a meet-cute, Yoon Ji-ho (I'm using complete names in this review because I'm not sure of the appropriate way to refer to them) moves into the spare room in Nam Se-hee's condo without either of them realizing that they are opposite genders.  Yoon Ji-ho would be homeless without the room.  Nam Se-hee desperately wants a good roommate who will help him take care of his cat and make his mortgage payments.  Bowing to family pressures, they enter into a marriage of convenience.  

Naturally. misunderstandings and love follow, but there is more to the story.  Yoon Ji-ho thinks through what she really wants from  a partner and from  life, and decides that she is not willing to settle for less.  Nam Se-hee works through an old trauma involving his parents and a prior love.  Their character development is sweet and well-done. 

There are two other couples the show also follows, all friends of the two main characters.  The standout is Woo Su-ji, a friend of Yoon Ji-ho who absolutely dominates the screen every time she appears on it.  She has a crappy corporate job where she puts up with daily sexual harassment in the hope of professional advancement.  Her love interest, Ma Sang-goo, who is Nam Se-hee's friend and boss, is incredibly supportive and helps her come to believe that she both deserves and can have a better career and a better life.  

As much as I liked the characters, actors, and intertwining plots of Because This Is My First Life, I would have liked the show a lot better if each episode was half the time.  It seemed like each shot was done twice, each piece of dialogue repeated.  I grew so bored with the pacing that it was a struggle to finish watching. 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of Regency romance How to Survive a Scandal by Samara Parish, a promising first novel

 

The trend in Regency romance novels is for the heroines to be outsiders to the ton, the clique of titled, usually very rich families who spend their time going to balls and trying to marry off their debutante daughters to equally rich, titled men. Some of those outsider heroines are untitled women with actual jobs (or at least are apparently untitled); others have the requisite pedigree but are socially awkward or are more interested in creating dictionaries or editing feminist magazines than getting married.

How to Survive a Scandal by Samara Parish refreshingly goes in an entirely different direction.  Its heroine Amelia is at the top of the ton's heap, a diamond of the first cut (as they say).  At the beginning of the book, she is one of the mean girls that wallflowers in other books hide from.  She can overpower anyone with a raised eyebrow.  She can destroy an aspiring debutante with a cutting remark.  When she tries a new dress style, everyone copies her.  Most importantly, she has every expectation of marrying a duke she does not know well, and she is absolutely fine with that.

When, due to circumstances that are never really explained, she is rescued from freezing to death by  apparently untitled factory owner Benedict Asterly and found in an accidentally compromising position with him, she is forced to marry him, move to his country house, and adapt to his non-titled ways.  

I was rooting for Amelia to absolutely lean in.  It really seemed that she was going to take the talents she had developed her entire life -- the ability to run a huge household, to bend people to her will, and, in short, to be an absolute boss -- and apply them to her new life.  And she does, kind of.  She updates Ben's house, opening closed rooms and hiring and training better servants.  She brings her organizational abilities to Ben's factory and vastly improves it.  

But the book never quite lets Amelia be as amazing as she could be. The second half of the book focuses on Ben, the much less interesting character, and his whining about, oops, he's titled and super rich after all.  

The book also has very murky politics.  The French Revolution and the reign of terror serve as a backdrop to the action.  The English nobility is sorta kinda evil because there's one old titled guy who sexually harasses maids and is going to take away farmland from tenants.  Ben is -- sorta kinda -- presented as the better alternative, with his factories that will provide jobs to people.  Yet there are random scenes that show his employees almost dying because the factory's working conditions are so dangerous.  And what is the profit that Ben will make compared to how much he will pay his workers?  

How to Survive a Scandal also has less complicated plot points that are never resolved.  What's really going on with the sexual harasser lord next door?  Is he behind the sabotage on Ben's factory or is his role just coincidence?  Why is Amelia's former fiancee such a jerk to her?  (It's obvious that the sequel will be about him and his love interest, but does that excuse him from never having a frank conversation with Amelia?)

This book is Samara Parish's first novel.  She has definite promise.  Just like I hope for Amelia, I hope that Parish leans into her strengths.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of generic Regency romance Love is a Rogue by Lenora Bell, and meanderings about a book whose title I can't remember

 

When I read the back cover of Regency romance Love is a Rogue by Lenora Bell I thought it said that heroine Beatrice Bentley's passion was entomology, when it actually said etymology.  So for much of the first chapters I was waiting for Beatrice to run out to the gardens and dig up insects.  (The book does include a dress decorated with real butterflies, so I wasn't entirely disappointed.)   

In the end it didn't really make a difference.  Whether Beatrice loves bugs or words, she is a typical "quirky" Regency heroine who has a -- gasp -- interest outside of going to balls.  Also she suffers from a slight birth defect that makes her face droopy. 

Need I say more?  Along comes a man who is not appropriate to Beatrice's station but is hot and kind and likes that she likes big words and thinks that she is beautiful.    

The man is Ford Wright, a carpenter.  They bond over tearing out floorboards.

I guess this is kind of a spoiler (although it doesn't give away anything about the book's plot, except the predetermined happy ending), so be warned:

These are the last three paragraphs of the book:

 She loved him.  More than she'd ever thought it possible to love.

 Their love was strong and solid and true.

Built to weather storms.  Built to stand the test of time.  

At first reading I rolled my eyes at this generic language.  Is there any romance novel, Regency or otherwise, that could not end with these words?

On second reading I saw the metaphor: their love is like the houses that Ford builds, strong, solid, true, etc.  

But that metaphor not earned.  While some of the plot of the book involves carpentry, that's all it is -- plot.  And where is Beatrice's love of the study of words and their origins in this ending?  A few paragraphs earlier she calls Ford, "Malapert rapscallion.  Scurrilous scoundrel."  But that's conversation, not metaphor.  

Years ago I read a modern romance whose title I can't remember.  Sandcastles, maybe, or Castles in the Sand.  I'm not finding it on Amazon.  The central metaphor was that the heroine liked to build sandcastles and then watch the waves wash them away.  She bumps into an old boyfriend (I think) and makes up a story about her life, figuring they'll have a fling and never see each other again.  Of course the romance lasts, and the truth comes out.  The hero forgives her when he watches the waves wash away a sandcastle, and he understands that the sandcastles are supposed to be fun and are not built to last, but the beach itself is there forever.  The fling, the lies, were the sandcastle, but their love is the beach.  The fact that I remember that metaphor years later -- that's one that is built to last. 

Love is a Rogue has not earned its metaphor, leaving it a generic, fairly dull book. 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of West End Earl by Bethany Bennett, the gender-bending Regency romance that isn't

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

These are the characters in Regency romance West End Earl by Bethany Bennett: 

Ophelia, a woman who lives as a man. 

Calvin, who knows Ophelia cross-dresses, and is in love with her.  

Emma, Calvin's sister, who marries Ophelia knowing that she is a woman.  

A random male servant who has a hidden talent for doing women's hair.

So far this sounds like a pretty great romp, right?  Maybe along the lines of the gender-fluid Regency romance, the The Perks of Loving a Wallflower, but a bit more light-hearted with a farcical Shakespearian wit?  

Alas, no.  This book bends so far backwards to make the reader understand that all of its main characters are one hundred percent not gay, not transgender, not in any way queer, no siree bob, that it's in danger of getting sciatica. 

Ophelia, the cross-dressing heroine, is a cisgendered and entirely heterosexual woman.  She does not yearn to be a man in any way.  At her most extreme, she prefers men's shoe because they are more practical for sustained walking.  Other than that, her deepest desire is to go back to wearing women's clothing.  She lusts only after men.  Her cross-dressing is strictly a matter of necessity.

Calvin, the hero in love with cross-dressing Ophelia, is a  cisgendered and entirely heterosexual man.  He never felt any attraction to Ophelia when he believed her to be a man.   When he learned that she was a woman, he desired her because he now noticed her womanly features.  There was no frisson added by Ophelia presenting as male.

Emma, Calvin's sister, who marries Ophelia knowing she is a cross-dressing woman, is a cisgendered and entirely heterosexual woman.   She is in no way attracted to Ophelia and Ophelia is in no way attracted to her.  They're friends, that's it.  The marriage is simply for convenience. 

As for the servant:  Okay, he's an open question.  When he learns that Ophelia is a cross-dressing woman he doesn't bat an eyelash. The origin of his uncanny skill as a woman's hairdresser -- a skill one would not think a butler would ordinarily develop -- is never explained.  What's his (her? their?) story?  We never find out.

On a very positive note, despite all foreshadowing to the contrary throughout this book, the climax does not involve a kidnapping.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.