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Title: 'Scuse Me While I Kill This Guy
Author: Leslie Langtry
Genre: Contemporary assassin romance
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: Single mom from a family of assassins tries to find the mole in the family while falling into bed with hunky bodyguard who does not present the difficulties he should. She says it's love, I don't believe it.
Thoughts: I'll admit, I pulled this off the library shelf because I thought the title was kinda cute.
My mistake.
I'm going to plow ahead with the spoilers here, since I highly recommend not reading this, and so you will not be particularly spoiled.
The author wants a breezy, ditzy tone a la Bridget Jones. She fails. Miserably. Gin Bombay is the most vapid, self-centered, shallow excuse for a human being to walk the planet. She's useless. She spends several hours lying on her kitchen floor because some hot dude she's known for two weeks walks out on her, justifiably upset when she informs him that she kills people for money. She's incapable for thinking for 30 seconds without getting derailed by thoughts of sex. Incredibly shallow thoughts of sex, of the kind that would put a 13 year old boy to shame. It gets old. Fast.
Other things that get old? Constant tee-hee reminders that she's an assassin. "Guess what my favorite dessert is? Death by Chocolate. Because it has the word 'death' in it, get it? It's because I'm an assassin. Ha ha ha! Sometimes I just kill myself. No, actually, I kill other people. Assassin, hello? Tee hee!"
I'll give a very slight credit for not going to the most obvious plot possible, in which the climax is Gin killing her bodyguard boyfriend's client and her easily discovering that the mole is the obnoxious cousin who is established as evil right off the bat. Now, the mole is in fact the cousin, but the author at least tries a small fake-out first. Annoyingly, a lot of time is spent fretting over the motive for why someone with a gigantic trust fund would betray all of their family. The only conceivable motive they can come up with is that the perpetrator is trying to get out of the assassination business. Given that everyone in the family is inducted into the business at the age of five and required to make their first kill at 15, and if you ever disobey, grandma hunts you down and kills you, that's actually kind of a noble motive. And Gin spends some time agonizing over the fact that her five year old daughter is getting dragged into this bloody mess this year and if Gin's deceased husband had known the truth, he would have been horrified. But, it turns out that the evil cousin totally did it, just 'cause. For the evulz, I suppose. And Uncle Lou, known best for hunting down the last family member to go astray, tries to protect the brat for no real reason, either, just 'cause we don't like him. I guess.
So as a reward for unraveling this all, Gin gets to get out of the family business, hurray! She never has to do the one thing she's actually competent at again, despite the fact that she didn't lose much sleep over it before and only felt bad because the hunky guy she's bedding was upset. Never mind that the rest of her family, including her beloved 5 year old child, is still involved and cannot get out. Everything is totally awesome because Gin the selfish, shallow idiot only has to teach her little kid to ruthlessly kill people instead of ruthlessly killing them herself. Hurray! Oh, and she uses her boon to protect lover boy, instead of just marrying him, without ever considering using it to get her daughter off the hook. Yeah, you're just Mother of the Year there.
Also, in Science: You're Doing It Wrong, another cousin is a super genius inventor whose inventions all break the laws of physics without the author being aware that they do so. Here's some hints: Noise dampeners do not work "exactly the same as" plug-in odor blockers. If you run someone's electronics equipment through an EMP field and wipe it all clean, then your computer whiz cannot simply fiddle with it for five minutes and all the data will miraculously be restored. And I'm pretty sure there's no way to fry someone's brain through their eye by switching their contacts to laser contacts.
So. Useless annoying heroine without a conscience or pair of brain cells to rub together. Evil cackling bad guy with no reason whatsoever for his actions. Incredibly perfect super hunk bodyguard boyfriend who's only slightly disapproving that his girlfriend is an assassin. "Happy" ending that is completely appalling. It's not the worst book I've read this year, but it's pretty darn close.
Author: Leslie Langtry
Genre: Contemporary assassin romance
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: Single mom from a family of assassins tries to find the mole in the family while falling into bed with hunky bodyguard who does not present the difficulties he should. She says it's love, I don't believe it.
Thoughts: I'll admit, I pulled this off the library shelf because I thought the title was kinda cute.
My mistake.
I'm going to plow ahead with the spoilers here, since I highly recommend not reading this, and so you will not be particularly spoiled.
The author wants a breezy, ditzy tone a la Bridget Jones. She fails. Miserably. Gin Bombay is the most vapid, self-centered, shallow excuse for a human being to walk the planet. She's useless. She spends several hours lying on her kitchen floor because some hot dude she's known for two weeks walks out on her, justifiably upset when she informs him that she kills people for money. She's incapable for thinking for 30 seconds without getting derailed by thoughts of sex. Incredibly shallow thoughts of sex, of the kind that would put a 13 year old boy to shame. It gets old. Fast.
Other things that get old? Constant tee-hee reminders that she's an assassin. "Guess what my favorite dessert is? Death by Chocolate. Because it has the word 'death' in it, get it? It's because I'm an assassin. Ha ha ha! Sometimes I just kill myself. No, actually, I kill other people. Assassin, hello? Tee hee!"
I'll give a very slight credit for not going to the most obvious plot possible, in which the climax is Gin killing her bodyguard boyfriend's client and her easily discovering that the mole is the obnoxious cousin who is established as evil right off the bat. Now, the mole is in fact the cousin, but the author at least tries a small fake-out first. Annoyingly, a lot of time is spent fretting over the motive for why someone with a gigantic trust fund would betray all of their family. The only conceivable motive they can come up with is that the perpetrator is trying to get out of the assassination business. Given that everyone in the family is inducted into the business at the age of five and required to make their first kill at 15, and if you ever disobey, grandma hunts you down and kills you, that's actually kind of a noble motive. And Gin spends some time agonizing over the fact that her five year old daughter is getting dragged into this bloody mess this year and if Gin's deceased husband had known the truth, he would have been horrified. But, it turns out that the evil cousin totally did it, just 'cause. For the evulz, I suppose. And Uncle Lou, known best for hunting down the last family member to go astray, tries to protect the brat for no real reason, either, just 'cause we don't like him. I guess.
So as a reward for unraveling this all, Gin gets to get out of the family business, hurray! She never has to do the one thing she's actually competent at again, despite the fact that she didn't lose much sleep over it before and only felt bad because the hunky guy she's bedding was upset. Never mind that the rest of her family, including her beloved 5 year old child, is still involved and cannot get out. Everything is totally awesome because Gin the selfish, shallow idiot only has to teach her little kid to ruthlessly kill people instead of ruthlessly killing them herself. Hurray! Oh, and she uses her boon to protect lover boy, instead of just marrying him, without ever considering using it to get her daughter off the hook. Yeah, you're just Mother of the Year there.
Also, in Science: You're Doing It Wrong, another cousin is a super genius inventor whose inventions all break the laws of physics without the author being aware that they do so. Here's some hints: Noise dampeners do not work "exactly the same as" plug-in odor blockers. If you run someone's electronics equipment through an EMP field and wipe it all clean, then your computer whiz cannot simply fiddle with it for five minutes and all the data will miraculously be restored. And I'm pretty sure there's no way to fry someone's brain through their eye by switching their contacts to laser contacts.
So. Useless annoying heroine without a conscience or pair of brain cells to rub together. Evil cackling bad guy with no reason whatsoever for his actions. Incredibly perfect super hunk bodyguard boyfriend who's only slightly disapproving that his girlfriend is an assassin. "Happy" ending that is completely appalling. It's not the worst book I've read this year, but it's pretty darn close.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 02:25 pm (UTC)From:And man, that's a scary gramma. I'd want out of the business at that point, too. But man...yeah, screwed up priorities in terms of not protecting her kid, if she's so damn upset about it all.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 02:34 pm (UTC)From:Her name is Virginia. Everyone in the family is named after locations. Uncle Lou is actually Louisiana, Richie is Richmond, brother Dak is Dakota. Isn't it cute and clever?
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 02:36 pm (UTC)From:So very clever I want to strangle someone.
And...wow. "Oh, no problem having a homicidal toddler. Just don't YOU go murderin' anyone anymore, okay darlin'?"
no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 02:56 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-11-22 03:04 pm (UTC)From: