In modern romance The Undateable, author Sarah Title is wrong about which character is undateable

 

 

The first conceit of The Undateable by Sarah Title is the idea that women who are frumpy geeks will not find love unless they change.  This is demonstrably untrue.  All kinds of people find love.  Mean people, nice people, well-dressed people, slobs, smut writers . . . .  In general people tend (despite every romcom trope) to fall in love with people who are similar to them.  Frumpy people tend to fall in love with other frumpy people.  Materialistic people tend to fall in love with other materialist people.  That's because we enjoy people who we have things in common with.  If you love looking good, you're going to want to be with people who also love looking good.  If your idea of a great time is playing D&D at a comic book store on a Friday night, you'll be thrilled to hang out with people who agree.  

So, the idea that heroine Bernie (authors, please stop giving male nicknames to heroines who identify as female. It's annoying), who is a frumpy librarian but also has a pretty cool personality and everyone who knows her likes her and she actually does hook up with trivia night people from time to time, is incapable of finding a date, much less love, without a makeover really makes no sense.  

The second conceit of the novel is that hero Colin is worthy of Bernie.  Colin is a manchild.  He lives in his parents' house, rent-free, after his parents have moved out to their retirement home.  (No explanation is given of the parents' financial circumstances.  They must be pretty well off to be able to afford to not sell their first home in San Francisco when they buy a second home in San Diego.)  Colin resents the hell out of his parents insisting that he have a job if he is going to live rent-free in their house.  At his job as a senior writer for a magazine he feels threatened by a 20 year old college dropout -- who may be the most awesome character in the book.  He gets blackout drunk on a fairly regular basis.

Bernie, by contrast, lives in an apartment where she pays rents.  She makes adult compromises -- her landlords don't allow pets so she spends a lot of time with a dog owned by her elderly neighbors.  She is gainfully employed at a job she is qualified for, which she likes and at which she is very good.  Unlike Colin, she has good friends she is not related to. 

Bernie would be far better off with one of her trivia night hookups than with loser Colin.   

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.

Another modern romance in which people go on reality TV to make friends: review of The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun is a charming book.  The plot is silly: A Bachelor-like show somehow casts a bachelor who suffers from fairly severe OCD and anxiety.  I know these shows have all kinds of issues, and maybe such a person could slip through casting as a contestant (is that what you call the women?  I don't really watch these shows), but not as the bachelor.

Producer Dev is assigned to be Charlie's minder.  Dev has his own issues, including sometimes debilitating depression.  

This book deals with all the multi-hyphenate mental health/ethnic identity/sexual preference/gender identity issues exhaustively.  

The conflict in the book is that Charlie is contractually obligated to get engaged to one of the contestants at the end of the season, and Dev is contractually obligated to not get involved with the cast, but Charlie and Dev fall in luurve.  

You can see the happily-ever-after coming from the beginning of the book.  SPOILERS (SORT OF)

Everyone (except for the minor character forgettable villain) works together to transform The Bachelor (or whatever it's called in the novel) into an inclusive show that features Charlie and Dev this season, and next season will have an out lesbian as the main character.  (I know there has been talk of having a gay bachelor but I don't believe anyone has actually done that -- for the obvious reason that the 20 contestants will have no reason to fall in love with the bachelor when they can fall in love with each other.)  

Even though their names are very different (thank you for that) and their hyphenate issues mostly different (Charlie's anxiety versus Dev's depression), I found these characters difficult to tell apart.  I often had to really focus to remind myself whose head we were in at any given time.  They both loved the other and then pulled back, reminded themselves of why they weren't worthy, had best friends who had their backs, and on and on.  

That said, this book was much more sweet than offensive.  

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 Netflix series The Gentlemen, a Regency romance converted to a present-day dark crime thriller

 

SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW 

Netflix series The Gentlemen is simultaneously a crime thriller that follows the descent of a its hero Eddie from decent, honorable man to crime lord who enjoys murder, and -- whether intentionally or not -- a satire of Regency romances.  

The series is set in present-day England.  When the first episode opens, Eddie is a captain in the British army, serving time in Afghanistan, fully in charge of a situation, competently and calmly keeping fights from erupting at a checkpoint.  He receives news that his father is failing and returns to England and his father's deathbed.

His father is a duke, and Eddie is his second son.  His older brother, Freddy (yes, they rhyme, it's weird and annoying and played for laughs) is a ne'er-do-well drug addict.  Upon the death of the duke, the will is read and everything, including the dukedom, has been left to Eddie. (Is this possible?  I doubt it but there's some legal mumbo jumbo by a lawyer that makes it all right.)  

Eddie is soon approached by a mysterious woman, Susie, who informs him that his father had been using the ducal estate to grow pot for her organization, and making a great deal of money at it.

The series follows Eddie's attempts to extricate his family from the drug trade, until GIANT SPOILER GO BACK

he realizes that he was born to be a drug lord, and embraces it.

What could this possibly have to do with Regency romances?

For one thing, every character is a stock Regency romance character.

Eddie is the unexpected heir.  He comes home from a war (as many Regency romance heroes come home from the Napoleonic wars) a solder to his bones.  He speaks like a Regency romance duke -- slowly, and with gravitas.  He acts like a Regency romance duke -- he is the smartest person in the room, he sees all angles of every situation, he will not be rushed, he takes control, and when he is not in control he makes a good plan to take control. The camera shoots him in heroic stances. 

Freddy is the hapless family member the duke would give his very soul to protect.

Susie is the worthy woman.  There is no romance between her and Eddie, but their chemistry is off the charts.  She has been running her father's drug empire for years, without recognition from him.  She is smart and ambitious but held back because of her gender.  Eddie sees, respects, and embraces her competence.

Susie's brother Jack is the boxer who the next book in the series should be about, and who Susie will do anything to protect.

Eddie's mother Sabrina is the duchess who mostly stays in the background but actually knows everything that is going on, is quietly smarter than everyone else, and saves the day in a pinch.

The groundskeeper Geoffrey is the quirky, loyal servant.  He rescues wounded wild animals and keeps them in his house.  

Eddie's younger sister Charly -- well, she's not a well-developed character, but will certainly feature as the heroine in a future installment.

And the plot is an absolutely standard Regency romance plot, except for a few excess murders.  Eddie is an impoverished noble who must figure out how to make his estate profitable, for the sake of his family and his servants and his ancestors.  He tries various schemes to do this, and is forced to team up with a woman who has more access to money.  There are some misunderstandings and double crosses, but eventually Eddie figures out how to make theirs a true partnership.  And they both live happily ever after (with shared hobbies that include cold-blooded murder).

I will add that this is a great and fun show whether or not the Regency romance echoes call to you. 

 

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.