Yes. Johnny. Danger.
And if you think it possibly couldn't get any more absurd? The heroine's name is Juliette Jauntie.
If you've made it this far into the review, congratulations! Now, on to the pertinent details - you know other than Johnny. Danger.
Juliette is an accountant who has her own firm. Well, of sorts. She's the firm, being a one-woman operation. She's very small potatoes. She's hired by a soon-to-be-ex judge's wife, to do a valuation of their assets, in what is supposed to be a fairly amicable divorce. The fly in the ointment? Johnny. Technically her competition and not small potatoes. His ritzy boutique accounting firm is upstairs in the same building and he is representing the judge's interests as a favor to his business partner (a close, personal friend of the judges').
This could be Juliette's big break, and admittedly she's excited to maybe take Johnny down a couple of notches. So she ends up working through Christmas, realizes there's something rotten in Denmark, but....screw it. She's pissed that Johnny Danger would just assume she has no life (OK, so she doesn't - but he doesn't need to know that), so once she turns in her mic-drop-valuation, she hits the nearest ski resort.
Naturally Johnny is unthrilled with Juliette's findings, as are the clients. The directive? Find her and bring her to heel. Tracking Juliette down at the resort however leads to a lot more than burning the midnight oil over financial records. For one thing these two crazy kids stumble on to a mystery and for another? They want to rip each others' clothes off with their teeth.
In some ways this story is kind of a mess. I have no idea exactly who Johnny is other than a guy with an absurd name. He's this weird combination of accountant, lawyer and fixer all rolled into one. For a while I thought he was just an accountant - but then...other stuff comes into play and frankly he smacks of another Romance Novel Gazillionaire Who Does Everything For A Living.
Juliette was an easier sell for me. She hasn't been handed anything in life and she's worked really hard to get where she is - to the detriment of friends, having a life, doing anything other than working with numbers for a meager living. Even if she wasn't pissed at having to work over Christmas, it's not like she has any better options, which is just sad.
This all makes it sound like the book was ho-hum for me. If you can roll with Johnny. Danger. it's actually pretty good. The suspense subplot was interesting, although probably could have been fleshed out more thoroughly (this is a category length novel), and the sex scenes are hot enough to peel wallpaper. The first one at the ski resort, in particular - ooo la la!
Was it borderline silly at times? Sure. Was it still fun to read? Hey, I didn't DNF it and I literally inhaled it while sitting on an airplane. And honestly? All the accounting stuff, the talking about numbers - well, it was kind of hot. You'll just have to trust me on this.
It does end on a happy-for-now and it's obvious that Johnny. Danger. has commitment "issues." Which means, you guessed it, a second book in the series is in the works. Which I get that some readers find annoying, but hey - at least this first book doesn't end on a cliffhanger.
Final Grade = B-
Note: There are two versions of this book. Seriously. The first-person edition (that I read) and a third-person edition. I have a lot to say about this. Most of it involving frothing at the mouth and staring dumbly at the Amazon page in disbelief. Authors - write the damn book how you want to write it. How you "conceive" it. For every reader that intensely dislikes first person, there are an equal number (seriously) of us who love it. You can't please every reader, all of the time and this smacks (to me) of trying to do that. Seriously. Please don't let this become "a thing." I probably shouldn't hate it as much as I do (really, it's a silly thing to "hate on") but ugh - it just annoys me. Write. The. Book. You. Want. To. Write. Trying to please us readers all the time - well, that way lies madness. And I say this as a reader who acknowledges that I have my own nutty quirks when it comes to likes and dislikes.
2 comments:
I'm going to join you in the frothing at the mouth side of the line.
I am not a writer, nor do I have ambitions/aspirations to ever be a writer. However, I've been reading for a number of decades (you don't really need to know how many, and I'm not volunteering), and I'll tell you: readers can tell when the book was planned one way, and executed a different way.
When writing in first person, the reader only know what the narrator knows, and in the way the narrator sees events unfold.
When writing in third person, you have different perspectives, and different people having access to different parts of the whole.
Or you could have several different points of view, not just two, which also changes how the story feels to a reader.
Just changing from first person to third (or viceversa) will not change the basic structure of the story, unless you completely rewrite the book--and how does that make sense?
(I have not read any of the 50 shades books, but I think that's what the author is going for with the last one, yes?)
AL: And she employs dueling first-person narration - so it's not like the reader is totally ignorant of what's in Johnny Danger's head - although yes, the bulk of the story is told from Juliette's perspective.
It smacks of having your cake and eating it too. Also of whiny readers being whiny. Look, I get that not every reader loves first person, nor do I think they should. But I also think it's unrealistic (and fruitless) for authors to turn themselves inside out trying to please every reader. 1) It's not possible and 2) even if it were possible I would hate for authors to stress out over something that is simply "nutty readers being nutty." Write the book YOU want to write. Some readers will like it, some readers will not. Facts of life.
All I ever expect from an author (EVER!) is for them to write the best book they are capable of at that moment in time. Period. And I reserve the right to not like it (or like it).
Sigh. As for why - not sure. The first person narration version has been out since 2014 (gah, my TBR!), while the third person version did not launch (according to Amazon) until July 2015. Entirely possible that this was an experiment by the author? And I could totally see someone who LOVED the book wanting to read both version. I was just fine with the first-person version however, so honestly not curious in the least of tackling third-person.
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