25 Days Of Enjoyment

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Robert Downs

600 Hours of Edward by Craig Lancaster
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

For the first time in my life, I actually felt like a hypochondriac. And for a day I thought I had Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, my every movement tracked and accounted for, as my social skills dropped off a precipitous edge, only to return to normal the next day.

Edward Stanton rocked 600 HOURS OF EDWARD like Mick Jagger in his prime. His head (and mine) filled with numbers, as we tracked weather patterns, wrote letters of discontent, and consumed spaghetti and Diet Dr. Pepper with reckless abandon. And like Joe Friday all we’re after are the facts.

The voice jolted through my brain like I was driving down the interstate at 70 MPH with the windows down and R.E.M. blaring through the speakers. Possibly even “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” turned up to maximum volume as we cross the border. It was a beautiful feeling, and I’m sorry to say it ended way too soon.

But it was Edward’s relationship with his father that stood at the center of this novel, defining both he and his dad with every letter and lawyer intervention. Without it, this story would have been a shell of the novel it could have been, even if the words for both Edward and his father didn’t always come out right, or took on new meaning in the course of one social evening.

Since online dating has become the next big thing, there’re even a few amusing bits about what can go right (and then horribly wrong) in the course of one evening. Edward has his timetable that he follows to the letter, and now I have mine: to purchase Edward Adrift when it becomes available on my Kindle on April 9.

Montani Semper Liberi

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Robert Downs

Quiet Dell: A Novel by Jayne Ann Phillips
My Rating: 2/5 Stars

Whenever I hear about a novel set in West Virginia by a West Virginia author, my muse does the happy dance, and I want to party like it’s 1863 (for the uninitiated that would be the year of West, by God, Virginia’s statehood) where our slogan is Montani Semper Liberi (Mountaineers are always free). Even as I reminisced in Fairmont and Clarksburg, with Hagerstown and Uniontown not to be excluded and thoughts of toboggans (the hats, not the sleds) and thuses (instead of pep rallies) danced through my dreams, I found myself staring at a cage filled with dead canaries and staring at a lethal dose of carbon monoxide.

Despite QUIET DELL being set in 1931 and my tumultuous affair with historical fiction and my only connection to this particular time period being that my grand pappy approximated the size of a lightning bug, I set out to love, admire, and cherish this tale, only to slip on a patch of ice and crack my head open wider than a canyon. So what happened? The dialogue approached a haphazard nature, with a peppering of exclamation points and stilted turns of phrase, excess language banging off the page, and diatribes seeping through the exposed pores; the sexual encounters approximated an asexual nature, with additional encounters hinted at but not fully explored (probably the safer bet but somehow still managed to feel a tad awkward, like kissing cousins); the story proved both ambitious and a bit convoluted, with a hazy fog slapped across my eyes, and falling short of its promised destination.

While the writing did show hints of promise, I found myself executing a mad rush to the end, somehow convinced that I had been conned all along, and that I will wake up in Chicago in an apartment with all the lights turned on.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Emotional Rollercoaster

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Robert Downs

Hollywood Forever by Christopher Herz
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

I don’t know if it’s possible to actually be in love with a book, but I’m fairly certain I am in love with HOLLYWOOD FOREVER. I’d say the love affair started at the beginning with the DMV meltdown and subsequent aftermath and continued all the way to the end of the novel. I’m not sure if I’m a better person for reading it, nor am I sure that my life was somehow enriched, but I must say that I’m pretty darn happy that I discovered this book. And I was slightly depressed when it was finished (not Prozac depressed) but slightly disappointed all the same.

Harold Hall became a legend, although he didn’t start out that way. In fact, he wasn’t even the best looking Superman on the street corner, and he was throttled to the point that the Superman with the better muscles was having bills shoved in his direction and stuffed in his spandex while poor Harold was sucking pavement parts through a straw while slipping in and out of consciousness after his head had swelled up to twice its normal size.

Herz knows female characters. By the halfway point of the novel, I’d developed schoolboy crushes on both Eliah and Samantha Parsons. Both women were well fleshed out and stood out from the printed page like rock stars with their mouths pressed against the microphone as the crowd screamed their names.

The prose was wonderful, depressing, hilarious, beautiful, fulfilling, and the emotional rollercoaster never seemed to end. I equate it to being shoved in a washing machine, having the best sex of my life, being punched out by a TV executive while in the middle of my annual performance review, and then laughing so hard that I have cough syrup coming out of my nose. It was one beautiful, miraculous mess, and I was in the middle of one of the best dreams of my life. When it ended, I felt like someone needed to pinch me, and then I needed to go back to recreating the dream.

But the disastrous love affair didn’t end with the characters and the prose. No, the ride incorporated the technology monstrosity from which we can never return. We live in an age where we have technology imprinted on our brains as we wait for the next email ping (guilty), updating our Facebook status and Tweeting in the middle of a funeral or while in the midst of a traffic jam, and where reality TV has completely consumed our lives. These are rather interesting times, and Herz infuses all of it with his wit and charm.

While it’s really hard to use such an arbitrary term as best book, since books affect each of us in unique ways based on the uniqueness of the authors and the distinctiveness of the characters and the prose, I’ll dangle myself from an errant tree branch over the middle of Fantasy Park and say that this is the best book I’ve read so far this year.

Staccato Rhythm

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Robert Downs

15819297 We Live In Water: Stories by Jess Walter
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Upon completion of this book of short stories, I feel like I’ve taken multiple personality disorder to a whole new level. First, I panhandled on the street corner watching the BMWs and the Mercedes and the Lincolns drive by; then I slept with a married woman and stole money from my bookie; then I hid in a closet behind my coveralls with the lights off, staking out my kids on my day off from Kaiser Aluminum with a six-pack next to me; next I fished with another man on the lake instead of taking my dialysis treatments; then I decided to stalk my ex-girlfriend, to the point that she went back to her no good ex-boyfriend who had cheated on her with another woman because he was a good listener; then I conned kids into passing out Greenpeace brochures in the middle of a Portland mall; next I was divorced and worried about my son staying with his mother and her druggie boyfriend; then I found myself in the middle of Starbucks-Financial on the verge of the apocalypse witnessing a zombie attack; next I hightailed it to Las Vegas to kill the shithead who turned my sister into a whore; then I had to deal with a senile, racist older woman who liked to use the term nigger like she was at a bridge club meeting and we were back in the stone age; then I picked up trash on the side of the highway with a guy named Ricky who compared futures to black holes; next my mouth watered at the thought of cinnamon rolls and chili and scones and Hot Pockets and pretzels and sandwiches and oat bars and muffins and Sun Chips and pepperoni sticks and I planned to wash it all down with a Dr. Pepper; and last, I sat up in the middle of the night with a flashlight and a shotgun to guard my bike because I’d broken the lock and failed to acquire a new one in a timely fashion.

Instead of having a particular story or two that stood out in this collection, all of the stories in WE LIVE IN WATER: STORIES captured my attention. Each one seemed like the perfect length to tell the tale, the characters coming alive in bursts as short as 2 pages or as long as 24, the staccato rhythm more powerful than machine gun fire, with dark times and dark characters hovering around me like a swarm of bees.

1. “Anything Helps” – If I stood on the street corner long enough, not my usual spot but my second choice, with my hand held out and a pitiful expression painted on my face, I might end up with enough coins and bills in my pocket to buy my son the latest Harry Potter book.

2. “We Live In Water” – If I could just find out what happened to my father and that no good whore who caused him to stray from the chicken coop, when he needed a few bills back in the day and managed to get a little something else on the side, I might set my conscience in the right spot.

3. “Thief” – If I sat in my closet long enough, the air hanging over me like a fog, the clothes shoved against my cheeks, huddled in the back like a squirrel with a mouthful of nuts, the cans of beer getting warm at my side, I might know whether it was little, middle, or the girl who needed a few extra quarters.

4. “Can A Corn” – If I cast my line just right, the air slapping against my face, my friend yapping away at my side, I might actually forget about my fucking dialysis treatments.

5. “Virgo” – If the pissant ex-boyfriend, Mark Aikens, the one who cheated on Tanya because he couldn’t keep it in his pants, ever got wind of my stalker tendencies and my level of intensity, he might renege on the no-contact order and actually move to Mars or Jupiter, and I could get my life back, before I resorted to tweaking horoscopes.

6. “Helpless Little Things” – If I had known I could have Greenpeace and save the whales and keep the scam going until I was a happy man, I might have done a few things differently.

7. “Please” – If I didn’t have an ex-wife who chose loser boyfriends with choppy attitudes and who just happened to be maladjusted members of society, I wouldn’t have had to worry about my son.

8. “Don’t Eat Cat” – If I hadn’t witnessed a zombie attack two years earlier at Starbucks-Financial and been turned down by the government for an operation, I might not have chased after the one that got away.

9. “The New Frontier” – If my best friend Bobby hadn’t chased after his sister Lisa like some half-crazed loon, collecting nudie cards from snappers like they were government handouts, visiting every strip club within a ten-mile radius until “my balls feel like they’re going to explode” and I lose “my sense of chivalry, having a constant erection,” I might have enjoyed myself a bit more in Las Vegas.

10. “The Brakes” – If the old bitty had developed just a bit more sense and my fellow mechanics had seen a bit of integrity instead of dollar signs, I might have been able to shield my son from the ensuing madness.

11. “The Wolf And The Wild” – If I hadn’t been forced to volunteer for sophomores and second-graders with names like Megan and Drew and J’mar and Tania and DeAndre and Macro, I might not have realized the shitty state of our educational system.

12. “Wheelbarrow Kings” – If I hadn’t been forced to wheel a TV that was five feet by five feet by three feet, in a wheelbarrow with a bum wheel with a friend that had arms the size of pool sticks on a muggy day, I might not have scored my latest bump and some Sun Chips.

13. “Statistical Abstract For My Hometown Of Spokane, Washington” – If I had left Spokane, Washington in a timely fashion, like the 2,632 illegal aliens that had been deported, I might not have had my bike stolen twice, been stalked by some crazy-assed man that liked to punch himself for fun and not been surprised by a bad neighborhood every three blocks.

But, then, I might not have discovered and enjoyed this book.

A Gay Day

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Robert Downs

17138311 The Suite Life by Suzanne Corso
My Rating: 3/5 Stars

With this novel, I’m willing to hold my pencil in my right hand and my ballot in my left hand and make a noncommittal commitment and say this was an average read for me. It reminded me of hayrides and meandering joyrides. It provided insights into a world where affection proved at a premium and offered up sexless marriages and ambition and ego that overshadowed all other experiences and problems. It filled me with broken promises and unfulfilled dreams.

Suzanne Corso lets her love of Brooklyn and “The Big Apple” and Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, congestion, population overflows, toll roads and toll bridges and bountiful high rises and dollar bills and cab rides, limos, Mercedes convertibles, and BMWs and stock options and Wall Street and Main Street shine through on the page. What would a novel that includes the NYSE be, though, without acquisitions and mergers and accounting irregularities and power and authority and reckless greed and constant excess and careless abandon and penile injections and horny dogs and $20K a day porn stars. In that regard, THE SUITE LIFE reminded me of Congress and the DC area.

But this novel proved to be a bit more than just A Gay Day. Sure, it had the syrupy air and atmosphere of women’s fiction, but I enjoyed the somewhat loose connection to a Wall Street powerbroker with a private jet and helicopter and his Long Island compound, even if Alec DeMarco did like to shoot himself full of HGH, testosterone, steroids, alternative and natural medicine, designer drugs, and popped the occasional Percocet.

Since I could practically live on food and finance and books and movies, I didn’t mind all the references to stocks and bonds, trading companies, investment firms, and real estate and restaurants and shows, clubs, strippers, hookers, and escort services and porn, pot, and pills. But keep in mind, this book does have the occasional college age floozy and loose women who strive for more.

It proved to be a relatively light read where I could park my brain at the door and forget who I was for a few hours. And that was A-OK by me.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

New Literary Superhero

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Robert Downs

11323841 Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

Tom Violet is my new literary superhero. This man is fan-fucking-tastic. He’s a god among the rest of us mere mortals with his smartass attitude, literary pedigree (his dad is Curtis Violet, the greatest writer of the modern era, at least according to himself), ability to attract women more than ten years his junior, obsession with great exit lines, and he’s capable of more one-liners than a basket full of fortune cookies. His dad may have a bit of a drinking problem, but he’s a Pulitzer prize-winning author, who ends up being handed literary awards the way children are passed ice cream cones. And his old man seeks out love with a passion better reserved for one woman, yet he’s constantly trying to one-up himself in the love department.

Despite being in his sixties, his old man’s latest discard (stepmother Ashley) could be next month’s Playboy centerfold with a killer body and an attitude and freakish personality to match, even going so far as to stalk Curtis in a skintight black tracksuit and faking her own death. She’s the human equivalent of plutonium, but she’s just one in a laundry list of characters strong enough to celebrate her own novel, yet relegated to the confines of secondary character status.

As for Tom, since DOMESTIC VIOLETS is really his nirvana, he keeps a file of Gregory’s HR complaints in his desk drawer and reads them when he’s bored or needs a little pick-me-up, which at least for him, is apparently better than Red Bull. He also manages to please himself and confuse his insurance company by name-dropping a different rock star’s real name with his doctor’s secretary before each visit. Last time he was Gordon Sumner (Sting); this time he transformed into Paul Hewson (Bono). And this is just one of many gems contained in this dastardly funny read that had me laughing so hard I was glad I wasn’t drinking at the time.

I really wanted to get wowed by a book and then this little beauty came along. It knocked me on my ass, kicked me in the crotch, and then stole my lunch money. If I ever meet Matthew Norman in real life, I’d probably attempt to hug him, at which point the men covered in riot gear and dark sunglasses would tackle me to the ground, tase me, and after I’m done twitching like a dying cockroach, I’d be handcuffed and shoved in the back of a police cruiser.

The novel introduced me to new words and phrases like the anti-boner, morning missile, cock with narcolepsy, Cubeland, douche-baggery, flash fantasy, tractor beam of sucking, corporate communications turd, and probably my personal favorite: Darth Gregory.

He may have a mild case of erectile dysfunction, but at least he can consume a little blue pill and still manage to keep his sense of humor about the situation: “My normal, average-as-can-be penis has been replaced with something cartoonish and chemically altered, like a penis from the future.”

This probably tells you all you need to know about his mother: “When I was fourteen she tried to tell me about condoms and I nearly choked to death on a Nilla Wafer.”

His rivalry with Darth Gregory is the stuff of legends and during an otherwise productive lunch, he manages to toss Greg’s love of buzzwords back in his face: “Everything at lunch was going well until I said that I was going to leverage a strategy that could create a synergy between my chicken sandwich and my iced tea.”

A professor’s thoughts on capitalism that I found entirely entertaining: “According to him, there are only a handful of jobs that actually fuel the American economy and the rest are wholly orchestrated boondoggles designed to keep people in offices all day or in malls buying shit on weekends and not rioting in the streets.”

Describing his stepmother’s (Ashley) emotional range: “She’s a complex bomb in a movie about terrorists, ticking steadily toward zero in a crowded train station full of children and nuns.”

His exit line: *BEGIN SPOILER* “On my way out, not quite handcuffed, but definitely escorted, I invited everyone within earshot to the Front Page Bar and Grill a few blocks away for a happy hour.” *END SPOILER*

If you like to read, I’d say you should buy or beg for a copy of this emotionally charged laugh parade, but my view may be slightly tainted by my own euphoria.

Spins An Enjoyable Yarn

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Robert Downs

16148382 Spinning Out by David Stahler Jr.
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

If I were a high school stoner, who wandered the halls aimlessly, managed to somehow get high every five minutes, pulled every prank imaginable in a pertinent effort to stick it to the man, the principal, and the school board, I would have considered this the crème de la crème, as I laughed giddily for nearly an hour, and then had a serious case of the munchies. But I was a massive nerd in high school, who held a certain amount of respect for the man and authority, probably didn’t even truly comprehend the concept of acting out, actually wanted to excel in my classes because I understood that it would affect my future, and tried real hard not to stand out in a bad way, already grasping that I was a bit different than the majority of my classmates and that I didn’t need to further emphasize the point.

Either way, or even if you fall somewhere in between these two extremes, this novel spins an enjoyable yarn and provides lifelike characters with profuse problems better suited for linoleum floors and locker-lined walls. And it works, all of it. The struggle for an identity, the friend turned love interest, and the rebels trying to sing a different tune could have felt forced in less capable hands, instead these all felt real to me, and I was transported back to simpler times, minus the copious amounts of weed.

SPINNING OUT filled my head with a hazy fog and had me twirling in a multitude of directions, happily soaking up the pages the way a beach bum might soak up the sun’s rays. Despite this read lacking volume, instead becoming easily consumable like Pop-Tarts, it packed plenty of sentiment and brought to mind the phrase stoners with heart. Stewart and Frenchy may have out smoked Cheech & Chong, but these two knuckleheads decided on a plan to leave more of a legacy than a few roaches and a men’s bathroom filled with the lingering effects of the sweet-smelling smoke.

But every dynamic duo needs a Kaela. She was adorable, accomplished, admirable, available, articulate, attentive, adept, approachable, apt, addictive, awesome, and amazing. And if I were to describe this compelling novel, I could use many of the same terms. If you want a deep, thought-provoking, look-up-every-other-word-in-the-dictionary type of read, you may want to look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for amusement and the opportunity to get high for a few hours, and I mean that both literally and figuratively, you may just find yourself having a smokin’ good time.

High School Voice

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Robert Downs

8606706 The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My Rating: 5/5 Stars

If my high school voice ever appeared in novel form, there’s a good chance it’d resemble Charlie. He’s naïve and precocious and childish and odd and enlightening and invisible and seen and I could have tried pot brownies and would have had no idea I was stoned unless someone told me and I would have wanted a milkshake and I can’t dance but I can do the sway and I could have witnessed a rape and had no idea what had happened because I was in middle school a kid. I could have confided to my teacher about a tragic event that happened at home and I avoided beer like it was the second coming of Satan and I could have written letters to an anonymous pen pal and I did chores to earn my allowance and I wrote poems in high school college and I went out with a girl who had what could be described as low self-esteem and I was totally infatuated with her for a period of time and I like unconventionally beautiful women. I love music and books and I overanalyze and outthink myself on a fairly regular basis and speculate and contemplate and can probably be considered a deep thinker in a world that doesn’t seem to plan or speculate or think too deeply and I can keep secrets and my mom tells me she loves my stories and I type on a typewriter computer and I hate goodbyes and I had a teacher that thought I was special, albeit it was the third grade and sometimes I feel so much that my body has to physically shut itself down otherwise I’d start frying brain cells. I think too fast.

But I didn’t smoke copious amounts of weed and cigarettes or eat pot brownies or trip on LSD and *BEGIN SPOILER* I wasn’t sexually molested and I didn’t spend time with a psychiatrist or spend two months in a hospital because I had a mental breakdown *END SPOILER*.

But I did love THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER with my whole being and I don’t feel as though it will cause me any mental breaks to feel this much and to be totally caught up in Charlie’s world and to feel fortunate for Charlie because he has friends like Patrick and Sam and Mary Elizabeth and that he was able to mail letters to his anonymous friend to help him through his first year of high school and that he was able to go to parties where he kissed girls and spent time at the Big Boy and *BEGIN SPOILER* he was able to stand on the back of the pickup truck with Patrick blaring the music as he went through the tunnel with the city and all of its lights peeking out on the other side *END SPOILER*.

Happy Pills

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Robert Downs

15831621 Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
My Rating: 4/5 Stars

Bernadette Fox might just be the craziest person I have never met. If she consumed enough “happy” pills to actually become a fully-functioning member of society, she’d end up comatose from an overdose and spend the next six years of her life breathing through a respirator. Calling her eccentric gives Randy Quaid, Charlie Sheen, and Courtney Love a bad name. Or to put it another way, Bernadette Fox makes Adrian Monk look like Tom Brady.

Audrey Griffin needs to be treated with electric shock therapy until she ejaculates her back teeth. And her son Kyle (he’s 15), at the age of 21, will be in prison for the rest of his natural life or his body parts will be tossed into storm gutters and unmarked graves. Oh, and Mrs. Griffin probably should experience a form of hell. In her case, she should be forced to sit in front of a TV with headphones on and have her highlight reel played for her on repeat until her ears and eyes bleed.

Holy fuckballs! This may be the most insane novel I’ve ever read. It’s hard for me to ascertain its exact level of brilliance because I feel like I need to be in a straitjacket, hooked up to an electric chair, while wearing a metal helmet and a metal diaper.

Composed entirely of emails, report cards, receipts, random musings, rants, raves, Bee’s voice, Bernadette’s history, and the preparations for a family trip to Antarctica that are being conducted by an Indian named Manjula Kapoor via the Internet, the first several parts had me entertained and enthralled and nearly hypnotized with delusions of madness and mayhem. There’s a dog named Ice Cream, a friend named Kennedy, a husband named Elgie, the astute services of Delhi Virtual Assistants International, a giant mud sliding billboard, traumatized kindergartners (with possible PTSD), psychotic breaks, selfish and self-pitying delusions of grandeur, and the former home of the Straight Gate School for Girls (the Fox/Branch residence) that probably should have been condemned sometime in the past decade.

Like the rest of WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, the ending proved zany and whacky and maybe a bit farfetched. But I didn’t like it. In fact, I hated it with a passion, and wanted to beat it with a baseball bat, and then wait till it stood up, and then proceed to whack it again. *BEGIN SPOILER* You fled to Antarctica and then the only communication with your fifteen year-old daughter is a letter that she never received, and then to dump the entire contents of your life onto her via a large unmarked envelope. And then to place sole blame for all of your marital problems on your husband, while you sleepwalked through an entire marriage. Seriously? *END SPOILER*

So if you like Seinfeld and Arrested Development (and if you don’t, I feel sorry for your loss, and you probably deserve a hug), then you might just find yourself enjoying this novel.

Light And Airy And Breezy

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Robert Downs

16130264 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.