The First Affair by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
My Rating: 2/5 Stars
If you haven’t met an Erica McAlister in your life, then you should consider yourself a lucky bastard. You can whistle a lovely tune, as you march down to The White House, roll around on the eagle’s wings in the Oval Office, and then high-five the Secret Service—the guys with the earpieces and dark sunglasses—before your hands are slapped in cuffs, and you spend the next several years of your life contemplating your own stupidity in a maximum security prison somewhere in the middle of Kansas. This friend Erica has enough problems to cause a psychiatrist to start pounding whiskey faster than he can fill the glasses in the middle of her agreed upon appointment time. She’s a princess, a queen, and the entire court rolled into one; she’s the main attraction; she’s been coddled and worshipped since she was in diapers; this is her universe and everyone else merely gets to play in the sandbox; and she tells you her issues just so you can tell her how great she is and maximizing her sympathy points like stock tips.
But by the end of THE FIRST AFFAIR, she’d somewhat redeemed herself. Not to the point that she and I could have coffee together, but to the point that I didn’t need to wipe her existence from my brain via a metal probe and possibly a soldiering iron.
Jamie McAlister, her younger sister, isn’t without her own issues. Being completely starved for attention, to the point that she would have adopted a pet tarantula if he would just give her a hug, she devoted her time and resources to a completely unattainable man, simply because he had given her a look and possibly melted her thong in the process. She’s a starfucker of epic proportions. The President of the United States (POTUS) may have made googly eyes at her, but she began to view her life as some sort of fairy tale, where she was Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, all rolled into one big happy family. If naiveté were a full-contact sport, she’d have the shoulder pads and uniform and helmet, and she’d be poised for the ensuing kickoff. But, instead, of rooting for her, I felt sorry for her, and the massive number of ensuing missteps that somehow completely enclosed her life. Instead of being a likeable character, she had turned into the princess.
Brooke, Betsy, James, Greg, Lena, Peter, Paul, and Rachelle all lost my sympathy at some point during the novel, or never had it at all, and I sat back and waited for the hammer to drop on their lives. When it did, I took some sort of sick pleasure in their ensuing half-existence.
None of this is to say this is a bad novel. It was light and airy and breezy like a bag of popcorn, and it filled me up about as well as cotton candy.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.