Digital Review: Tanya

I enjoy reading Rebecca Rogers Maher for a lot of reasons but the big two are: 1) she writes well "short" and 2) she slathers on the angst.  I'm an angst junkie and I like novellas.  This is a marriage made in heaven, truly.  Tanya is a follow-up to The Bridge, which was one of my favorite reads of 2013.  Tanya is what I've lovingly begun calling "the drunk sister's story."  The heroine from The Bridge?  Tanya would be her sister, who was largely missing in action in the previous story thanks to her alcohol problem.  Well now Tanya is back in Christa's life, just in time for her wedding, and wouldn't you know it?  Tanya makes a mess of it by having hot, sweaty, anonymous sex with Christa's future brother-in-law.  Oops.

Tanya is in recovery, having been off the booze for two years.  That doesn't mean she's living entirely sober however.  She's taken to anonymous pick-ups, and on the eve of her sister's wedding she finds herself in a bar sizing up a guy who cannot seem to sit still.  She propositions him, a good time is had by both, and it's not until the very next day at the ritzy mountain lodge where her sister is getting married that Tanya meets Jack, future brother-in-law, and giver of amazing orgasms.

Jack can hardly believe his luck.  Home from the Peace Corps, at loose ends, he's attending his brother's wedding when he meets a captivating woman.  He's floored by Tanya's boldness and wants more, but naturally she scurries off before he can coax a name out of her.  Finding out she's his future sister-in-law's sister?  He's not going to let the opportunity go to waste.  Now he just has to convince her to stop running scared.

Stories should stand on their own and I dislike critiquing one read based off a former one, but darn if that's not what I'm going to do here.  Tanya is good.  It's very good.  But I'm not going to lie, I was a little disappointed that it didn't give me that same emotional heft of The Bridge.  I think part of the problem is that this story is tied directly to the previous romantic couple.  I was so intrigued by Christa and Henry, was even happy to see them here, but having them on page did detract a bit, for me, from the new romance - Tanya and Jack.

Also, while I found The Bridge to be wonderfully self-contained and perfect for a novella, with Tanya I just wanted more.  I wanted more exploration of Tanya's self-destructive, sabotaging tendencies.  Great, she's not drinking anymore - but these random sex pick-ups she's doing smack of trading one addiction for another.  I "get" why she does it, but does she "get" why she does it?  That's the question.  I also wanted more of why Jack felt the need to avoid, running away to the Peace Corps, and his guilt over Henry's depression and suicide attempts.  More angst, more blood on the page, more, more, more.  As it is?  I felt like the surface gets scratched, we get some emotional sex scenes - but it never quite came together as a whole meal for me.

Which sounds like I'm not being fair to this story.  Maybe I'm not.  But hey, this is still a really strong read.  Maher as a way to writing highly damaged characters and somehow making me believe in the happy ending.  Tanya and Jack are far from perfect, but I think they'll be OK.  Likewise, while both Christa and Henry tried to kill themselves?  I totally bought into the idea they'd be getting married and would be able to build a life together. 

So really, the author has done her job.  Hey, that works for me.

Final Grade = B-

Digital Review: Everybody Hurts

Rebecca Rogers Maher might be one of the more exciting author discoveries I've made this year.  The Bridge is the second self-published novella I've read by her, and while it certainly does have "triggers" in it (just as Hurricane Lily did), it's really gutsy. Whether those guts are going to work for other readers is, well - up to other readers.

There is no meet-cute in this story.  Henry and Christa meet each other on the west tower of the Brooklyn Bridge in the wee early hours of the morning.  Both of them are there to commit suicide.  Henry because he's tired of pretending (he suffers from depression) and Christa because her breast cancer has come back for a sequel.  Funny thing about trying to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge though - neither one of them can go through with it now that the other one is there.  So they decide to grab some breakfast - and over breakfast they decide to spend the day together.  They'll spend 24 hours together, trying to convince the other one that life is worth living.

Yeah, it's not exactly Sunshine Happy Land - but the emotional heft of this story is really great.  Henry was born into a privileged world and has a privileged life - which has made his depression a struggle for those around him to understand.  By contrast, Christa is on her own.  Her mother dead from a drug overdose, her sister an alcoholic.  She waits tables for a living and has a failed marriage under her belt.  She's already had one mastectomy, and they've just found a lump in her other breast.  She's alone, broke, tired, and not willing to go through breast cancer yet again.

The biggest trigger in this story, I think, will be Henry's depression.  It's something that isn't easy to understand (and live with) in "real life" - so writing about it isn't exactly a cake walk.  Like all tough subjects, I suspect readers will either actively dislike him (for being "selfish") or maybe say the author "got it wrong" (that's not how depression is in my personal/my friend's/my relative's experience).  As an average layperson who has extremely limited experience with depression, Henry worked for me.  And honestly, I found Christa to be a perfect foil for him.  They're opposites on one side of the coin, and have a lot in common on the other.  Even given the shorter novella format, I understood how these two people would be drawn to each other and develop feelings - even on such an abbreviated time table.  I also loved that the author told this story in first person, alternating chapters between the two different points-of-view.  We're inside both Christa's and Henry's heads - which makes both of them easier characters to crawl around inside of and "understand."

The fly in the ointment here is obviously the ending.  The book starts out in a dark place, and it is a romance - so how does the author end it with hope, but without descending into Sugary Fairy Tale Land?  Well, she's brings in an outside event.  It's not entirely successful for me, but it does work - and honestly mulling it over in my own head, I'm not sure what else could have been done.  The story does end hopefully, and it also ends with, what I felt, were realistic expectations.  Henry's depression isn't just going to magically go away.  Christa's cancer is something she's going to have to deal with for the rest of her days (and how many days will that be?).  But I don't feel sad for these people in the end.  I'm happy for them.  I'm  happy they've found each other and made a meaningful connection.  I'm not sure all readers will feel this way, which will make for some intriguing discussions (hopefully!).  Maher is setting herself up to be an author who won't be for everyone, but that everyone really should read.  Her voice and her risks are that intriguing.

Grade = B+

Digital Review: She's Come Undone

She was thirty years old, all but unemployed, holed up in a falling-down house she couldn't step out of, and the best thing she'd done with her life in years was to give the general contractor an unusually good blowjob.

As a general rule I don't read a lot of self-published work, but when I do it tends to be by authors who also have a backlist either with traditional print publishers or respected e-publishers.  To a certain extent, yes - I totally buy into the "gatekeeper" argument.  Even if I haven't read them before, the author is a "known commodity" and has enough experience with writing and publishing that I'm more confident that I'm not going to get total crap.

I'm sure some people like to wade through half garbled manifestos, but heck - if I wanted that I'd spend all my time reading my own blog.

Which is how I came to read Hurricane Lily by Rebecca Rogers Maher.  I liked the plot description of the novella, and the author included the tidbit of information that the story was edited.  By an actual real-life editor with like credentials and everything!  Sold!

The simplistic way to describe Lily Sawyer is that she's a neurotic poor little rich girl.  She's got anxiety issues, which has led her to hole up in her late mother's ramshackle cottage on Cape Cod.  She's convinced her father that the place needs fixing up, and given that he's the sort to throw money around to "fix" problems, and honestly if Lily is on the Cape she's out his hair, he writes the check.  She's got enough canned preserves and emergency supplies to survive a hurricane, now all she needs to do is get the house up to snuff.  And for that she hires Cliff Buckley.

Cliff is a poor little working class boy who went to Vassar on scholarship, so basically that means he feels it's his right to be angry all the time, play Working Class Hero, and sneer at rich people.  Never mind that he makes his living as a general contractor fixing houses on the Cape for, you guessed it, rich people.  He takes one look at Lily and immediately jumps to all sorts of conclusions.  She takes one look at him and wants to hide under her bed for the next ten years.

I really liked this story.  I probably shouldn't have because honestly the characters start out on a very rocky road.  Cliff is a sneering hypocrite and Lily is just.....not well mentally.  I mean, really - she's not well.  Heroines like this don't need romances - they need shrinks.  Several of them.  In Lily's case, probably a venerable army of them.  But a funny thing happens on the road to epilogue - the author shows and creates her characters, warts and all, and then actually has them transform before the reader's eyes.  Cliff eventually realizes he's being an ass.  Lily eventually realizes that she can't hide away from the world, refusing to leave a falling down house on Cape Cod.  And the best part is?  Neither of these characters are instantly cured by the Magic Penis or Mythical Hoo-Ha.  Yes, they're better people together, but they don't suddenly morph into Perfect Pod People at the finish line.  They're better.  They're working on a relationship together, and working on their respective baggage.

I really liked the style, voice, and tone of this story and I appreciated that the author gives readers complicated characters as opposed to "types."  Yes, it certainly would have been easy to have Lily be a cookie-cutter Poor Little Rich Girl With Daddy Issues - but she's more than that.  And yes, it would have been easy to have Cliff be the Studly Handyman With The Blue Collar Chip On His Shoulder - but he's more than that.  It's a good example of one of my favorite types of romances - the nontraditional kind.  Interesting, different characters with interesting different baggage.

Final Grade = B