_Turn Me Loose_, Anne Calhoun SPOILERS
May. 31st, 2017 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutSeriously, I _always_ include spoilers, and if someone is going to recommend I read or watch something and they won't supply spoilers, I will either go find a plot summary or just ignore all their recommendations. That's who I am.
Everyone gone? Okee dokee, then.
There are a bunch of somewhat contemptuous phrases designed to capture the idea that a fictional product (TV episode, movie, book, etc.) has somewhat crudely built a story around a problem or trend currently in the social consciousness: disease of the week, afterschool special, ripped from the headlines. I'm sure you can come up with some that aren't decades old.
This book checks some boxes: urban farming / food desert (especially in the context of helping kids with underprivileged backgrounds experience Real Food; this heroine captures the full range), cancer (the hero is a non-hodgkin's lymphoma survivor, IIRC), the rise of opioid addiction in suburban/white neighborhoods and communities.
It's generally well done; I'm not complaining. But when I run across a book that hits several fairly high profile trends, I do wonder what it is going to be like rereading it in a few years. Some of this stuff really doesn't age well at all. Others do just fine. *shrug*
In the previous book I read (Hidden Legacy #2 by the Ilona Andrews writing team), the SKEERY EVIL FAMILY MEMBER was an unknown grandmother. In this book, the SKEERY EVIL FAMILY MEMBER is psychopath dad. And _that_ part of the story worked really well for me.
So, what happens. This is a flashback-y, series entry that can be read alone, story of second chances. The two first encountered when he busted her for selling drugs. He flips her and uses her as a CI for a while and after the trials they part. They meet up again when he basically tries to use one of the underprivileged young people she is in the process of rescuing at the farm and associated restaurant in the way he used her and she objects. It is at this point that she finally coughs up something she sort of never got around to mentioning earlier (oh, yea, btw, I was fronting for my dad when I was dealing).
I particularly liked the idea that Dear Old Dad is so awful, but in such normal ways -- he's emotionally abusive, but it's pretty subtle stuff, and in a lot of ways, Riva is lucky to have found a guy who immediately picks up on what a monster Dad is. Calhoun has even embedded some clues as to why Dad is such a horrible person.
I'm still trying to figure out whether the many pieces of the two main characters really gelled, or if they are still fragments of real people. Do I really believe that Ian spent a bunch of time getting blacked out drunk and dancing all night long and picking up random strangers and taking them home? I don't know. It's a solid way to connect Riva and Ian -- they are both presenting a front of being on the straight and narrow and their history together and separately makes that really not the whole story.
In any event, reading it was an enjoyable enough experience I now sort of want to go back and reread the earlier entries of the series.
Oh, pretty much all the entries have some kind of SEAL connection, but it's the weirdest SEAL romance series I've ever encountered, in that so little of the story has much of anything to do with the military.
Everyone gone? Okee dokee, then.
There are a bunch of somewhat contemptuous phrases designed to capture the idea that a fictional product (TV episode, movie, book, etc.) has somewhat crudely built a story around a problem or trend currently in the social consciousness: disease of the week, afterschool special, ripped from the headlines. I'm sure you can come up with some that aren't decades old.
This book checks some boxes: urban farming / food desert (especially in the context of helping kids with underprivileged backgrounds experience Real Food; this heroine captures the full range), cancer (the hero is a non-hodgkin's lymphoma survivor, IIRC), the rise of opioid addiction in suburban/white neighborhoods and communities.
It's generally well done; I'm not complaining. But when I run across a book that hits several fairly high profile trends, I do wonder what it is going to be like rereading it in a few years. Some of this stuff really doesn't age well at all. Others do just fine. *shrug*
In the previous book I read (Hidden Legacy #2 by the Ilona Andrews writing team), the SKEERY EVIL FAMILY MEMBER was an unknown grandmother. In this book, the SKEERY EVIL FAMILY MEMBER is psychopath dad. And _that_ part of the story worked really well for me.
So, what happens. This is a flashback-y, series entry that can be read alone, story of second chances. The two first encountered when he busted her for selling drugs. He flips her and uses her as a CI for a while and after the trials they part. They meet up again when he basically tries to use one of the underprivileged young people she is in the process of rescuing at the farm and associated restaurant in the way he used her and she objects. It is at this point that she finally coughs up something she sort of never got around to mentioning earlier (oh, yea, btw, I was fronting for my dad when I was dealing).
I particularly liked the idea that Dear Old Dad is so awful, but in such normal ways -- he's emotionally abusive, but it's pretty subtle stuff, and in a lot of ways, Riva is lucky to have found a guy who immediately picks up on what a monster Dad is. Calhoun has even embedded some clues as to why Dad is such a horrible person.
I'm still trying to figure out whether the many pieces of the two main characters really gelled, or if they are still fragments of real people. Do I really believe that Ian spent a bunch of time getting blacked out drunk and dancing all night long and picking up random strangers and taking them home? I don't know. It's a solid way to connect Riva and Ian -- they are both presenting a front of being on the straight and narrow and their history together and separately makes that really not the whole story.
In any event, reading it was an enjoyable enough experience I now sort of want to go back and reread the earlier entries of the series.
Oh, pretty much all the entries have some kind of SEAL connection, but it's the weirdest SEAL romance series I've ever encountered, in that so little of the story has much of anything to do with the military.