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I think this is meant to be a fun romp, mindless chick-lit* crossed with urban fantasy, with all the usual tropes - nice everygirl doing a makeover of her life, the sassy best friend with a bad love life, the hot gay friend with the fashion sense, quirky flaky maternal figures, the pursuit of the wrong guy whilst leaning obliviously on Mr. Right, and prodigious use of baked goods, ice cream, and fruity alcoholic mix as consolation and bonding.
It was - light, easy to read, quick to barrel through. And I'll grant it some points for not having a phantom income -- though the solution for where to live on a reduced income is absurd in the extreme (Most libraries don't have a convenient historic building in their back, especially not one that is dirty from years of neglect but lacks of problems with plumbing, outdated electricity, leaking roof, etc.), it *does* technically free up enough other money (No rental fees or power/water bills) to not make me blink too hard at the little spending she does.
Two problems.
1) I don't live in the same universe as this book.
This shouldn't be a problem. I'd rather most protagonists not be me, not be like me, and I like it when some of them don't live in the same philosophical universe as me. Sort of the point, right?
Except. This book is written with the clear assumption that of course the reader is just like this woman, if not in the exact details, than in shared culture. This is supposed to be an every-white-middle-class-North-American-woman. And I am all of the above.
The problem is that the tropes it invokes for everywoman are taken from other chick-lit, or from Sex and the City, without consideration of their reality, or people who aren't just like every other white chick-lit heroine. They feel like they're assembled from a checklist, not from actual people. It has the same feel as those people who try to write a new Magic Quest Trilogy based on reading Terry Brooks and watching the Lord of the Rings movies, without researching medieval England (never mind thinking of the possibility of basing it on some other culture or geography than some feudalesque cod-medieval place), or reading widely enough to get the idea there might be other things happening in fantasy, without considering why they need to be looking for a Magic Doodad to defeat the Dark Lord and his mindless faceless horde.
I think the only decision the main character makes in the entire book that I agree with is to stick with a job she likes in spite of a terrible pay cut, especially with alternate housing offered.
There's also a certain amount of action by the protagonist where she fails to look more closely at the world she's in, think about things, make connections. She fails consistently to ask questions. (At least it's consistent.) She's not quite TSTL**, but for a research librarian, she fails to research an astonishing number of things. She finds a room of magic books, *accidentally* wakes up a familiar, and then kind of hides from the books and fails to ask a lot of questions about how it all works. She doesn't even Google. She inquires even less deeply of her intended paramour (Not asking his relation to the woman she sees with him is Just ridiculous, especially when she does ask a couple of more vaguely probing questions. That she's seen successfully researching grant applications just makes all the times she doesn't ask things she should, or read further, just stand out more. The thing with this is, while there are plenty of people who don't ask questions they ought for many reasons to ask (Actually, everyone has individual blind spots they refuse to think about, often about things central to their life), and so maybe gives her more in literal common with other chick-lit protagonists and with a probable subset of readers, it makes her LESS sympathetic. People like it when a character they're meant to sympathize with is clever and observant.
(There's also a whole side of all this unconsidered following of tropes, and unthinking unquestioning protagonist that brings up the idea of Privilege, of how most people who have Privilege don't even see it. Because yup, this is a book of Privilege. See problem # 2.)
Oh, and virtually every guy in the book who isn't either the Gay Buddy or Mr. Right cheats. Almost every relationship past a disastrous first date is broken up by the guy cheating. There is NO other motivation for things not working out. Again, not my universe.
2) Her familiar.
The familiar she wakes up at first comes in the shape of a black cat, but, in spite of maintaining a tendency to purr, a deep fondness for canned tuna and an inclination to try and eat her pet fish, quickly takes the shape of a gorgeous gay man with perfect fashion sense and a desire to give her a makeover. He's very quickly welcomed into the otherwise all-girl circle of people commiserating over bad boyfriends, and joins in Mojito nights. Aside from one nod that he's one of the two not-cheating decent guys around, he's one of the girls.
The flagrantly gay buddy is another common chick-lit trope, and I roll my eyes hard at how badly stereotypical poor Neko is. As probably my second-favourite character of the lot after the grandmother (in spite of rather than because of his stereotypical features) he deserved better than to be a girl in guy drag.
But let me repeat this. A gay man is her FAMILIAR. The beast who channels her magic. And only the roughly one-in-twenty-nine chance that she summons him on a full moon means he can even leave the vicinity of the magic books. Oh, and he belongs to whomever owns the magic books. However they treat him.
What the Fuck I don't even.
And there's a real question of whether this is mitigated or made worse by the fact that the protagonist did it by accident and didn't ask a lot about the consequences.
Just...
* Not all chick-lit is mindless, so this is NOT a redundancy. And I say this as someone who isn't much of a fan of the genre in its unadulterated form.
** Too Stupid To Live, and it says something about Romance and Chick-lit that this is one of the common terms.
It was - light, easy to read, quick to barrel through. And I'll grant it some points for not having a phantom income -- though the solution for where to live on a reduced income is absurd in the extreme (Most libraries don't have a convenient historic building in their back, especially not one that is dirty from years of neglect but lacks of problems with plumbing, outdated electricity, leaking roof, etc.), it *does* technically free up enough other money (No rental fees or power/water bills) to not make me blink too hard at the little spending she does.
Two problems.
1) I don't live in the same universe as this book.
This shouldn't be a problem. I'd rather most protagonists not be me, not be like me, and I like it when some of them don't live in the same philosophical universe as me. Sort of the point, right?
Except. This book is written with the clear assumption that of course the reader is just like this woman, if not in the exact details, than in shared culture. This is supposed to be an every-white-middle-class-North-American-woman. And I am all of the above.
The problem is that the tropes it invokes for everywoman are taken from other chick-lit, or from Sex and the City, without consideration of their reality, or people who aren't just like every other white chick-lit heroine. They feel like they're assembled from a checklist, not from actual people. It has the same feel as those people who try to write a new Magic Quest Trilogy based on reading Terry Brooks and watching the Lord of the Rings movies, without researching medieval England (never mind thinking of the possibility of basing it on some other culture or geography than some feudalesque cod-medieval place), or reading widely enough to get the idea there might be other things happening in fantasy, without considering why they need to be looking for a Magic Doodad to defeat the Dark Lord and his mindless faceless horde.
I think the only decision the main character makes in the entire book that I agree with is to stick with a job she likes in spite of a terrible pay cut, especially with alternate housing offered.
There's also a certain amount of action by the protagonist where she fails to look more closely at the world she's in, think about things, make connections. She fails consistently to ask questions. (At least it's consistent.) She's not quite TSTL**, but for a research librarian, she fails to research an astonishing number of things. She finds a room of magic books, *accidentally* wakes up a familiar, and then kind of hides from the books and fails to ask a lot of questions about how it all works. She doesn't even Google. She inquires even less deeply of her intended paramour (Not asking his relation to the woman she sees with him is Just ridiculous, especially when she does ask a couple of more vaguely probing questions. That she's seen successfully researching grant applications just makes all the times she doesn't ask things she should, or read further, just stand out more. The thing with this is, while there are plenty of people who don't ask questions they ought for many reasons to ask (Actually, everyone has individual blind spots they refuse to think about, often about things central to their life), and so maybe gives her more in literal common with other chick-lit protagonists and with a probable subset of readers, it makes her LESS sympathetic. People like it when a character they're meant to sympathize with is clever and observant.
(There's also a whole side of all this unconsidered following of tropes, and unthinking unquestioning protagonist that brings up the idea of Privilege, of how most people who have Privilege don't even see it. Because yup, this is a book of Privilege. See problem # 2.)
Oh, and virtually every guy in the book who isn't either the Gay Buddy or Mr. Right cheats. Almost every relationship past a disastrous first date is broken up by the guy cheating. There is NO other motivation for things not working out. Again, not my universe.
2) Her familiar.
The familiar she wakes up at first comes in the shape of a black cat, but, in spite of maintaining a tendency to purr, a deep fondness for canned tuna and an inclination to try and eat her pet fish, quickly takes the shape of a gorgeous gay man with perfect fashion sense and a desire to give her a makeover. He's very quickly welcomed into the otherwise all-girl circle of people commiserating over bad boyfriends, and joins in Mojito nights. Aside from one nod that he's one of the two not-cheating decent guys around, he's one of the girls.
The flagrantly gay buddy is another common chick-lit trope, and I roll my eyes hard at how badly stereotypical poor Neko is. As probably my second-favourite character of the lot after the grandmother (in spite of rather than because of his stereotypical features) he deserved better than to be a girl in guy drag.
But let me repeat this. A gay man is her FAMILIAR. The beast who channels her magic. And only the roughly one-in-twenty-nine chance that she summons him on a full moon means he can even leave the vicinity of the magic books. Oh, and he belongs to whomever owns the magic books. However they treat him.
What the Fuck I don't even.
And there's a real question of whether this is mitigated or made worse by the fact that the protagonist did it by accident and didn't ask a lot about the consequences.
Just...
* Not all chick-lit is mindless, so this is NOT a redundancy. And I say this as someone who isn't much of a fan of the genre in its unadulterated form.
** Too Stupid To Live, and it says something about Romance and Chick-lit that this is one of the common terms.
