Love is Love by Donna Barnes

Publisher:                   Alpha World Press

This book is so poorly written that there is no point in wasting time summarizing it.  The story itself isn't bad, although it's been told many times before in lesbian literature. A writer falls in love with a movie star she has a crush on and the movie star is afraid to admit her feelings because it might ruin her career.  

The problem is that the reader can't get through a page without finding a mistake - words left out, words spelled incorrectly, wrong verb forms, wrong forms of words like they're/their, your/you're, double words like "She they decided...." It's not a matter of three or four errors in a whole book, which can be excused, but every page. And the dialogue is terrible. If the reader had to listen to two people actually talk this way, the reaction might be to either wonder what planet they dropped from or to want to get away from them. When the couple finally makes love they refer to body parts by their scientific names.  It was like listening to a lecture on the female anatomy.  

This is one of those books that it's just painful to read because of the mistakes. Save your money and invest in some of the other, much better written, books out there that tell the same story.  Read this at your own peril.

 

The Trouble With Emily Dickinson by Lindsey D'Arcangelo

Publisher:                   Alpha World Press


Josephine (JJ) Jenkins is an excellent student at the private Sampson Academy where she doesn't exactly fit in. She's a secret poet, but also quite obviously a lesbian, which successfully bars her from being one of the "in crowd.” This doesn't concern her until she discovers that she has been assigned to tutor "the" most popular girl on campus Kendal McCarthy, campus beauty, cheerleader, leader of the "in crowd" and straight as an arrow...supposedly. 

Kendal is normally a good student, but poetry and how to interpret it are totally beyond her abilities. She'll do anything to pass English, including spending time in the library with JJ. As the two girls work together, they build a friendship and discover they have more in common than either thought possible. Kendal tries to help JJ gain the confidence to overcome her stage fright and bring her poetry into the open, while JJ discovers, to her horror, that she's falling hard for a girl she believes she can never have. Both girls begin to try the patience of their respective friends who can't understand why they want to spend so much time together. Confusion reigns as the girls begin to realize that they are developing more than a friendship and neither of them is sure she can deal with the situation.

The Trouble with Emily Dickinson is a humorous, yet tender, look at young love and the difficulty a teenager has dealing with being so "different" from her peers. Much of what the girls go through will strike familiar chords with women who have already passed through those experiences. It's a coming out story that can hold the attention of older readers as well as young. It has the added bonus of containing a character who keeps the story light when it could bog down in teen angst. 

Queenie McBride is JJ's loyal friend and an outrageously out lesbian way beyond her years in experience and attitude. As the heir in an old Virginia family, she delights in driving her parents crazy with her antics and her wild spending sprees. She may seem superficial, but her devotion to JJ is absolute and she is the first to realize that her friend may be setting herself up for a great disappointment. Everyone will wish she had a friend like Queenie.

Stories about teenagers might not appeal to older readers, but they should give this one a chance. If the reader forgets the girls' ages, then The Trouble With Emily Dickinson becomes a story about discovery, friendship and self realization. It only takes a few hours to read it and you might find it's worth it.

Porte des Morts by Ronae McGuire

Publisher:             Alpha World Press


Sometimes when you read a book expecting one thing, what you discover is a gem that has been sitting under your nose for some time. Then you wonder why you didn’t pick it up and read it sooner so that you could have had this experience earlier. Such was my experience with Porte des Morts by Ronae McGuire.

There is definitely a mystery at the heart of this story. Carly McCray’s yacht blew up in front of her, killing her lover Susan, and Carly suspects it wasn’t an accident. As the president of a very successful software company, Carly can afford to hire a detective to investigate discreetly into what happened and her lawyer sends her to Jesse Ferren. Jesse has been roaming around the country with her dog Harley trying to escape from a tragedy in her life, but she hasn’t been very successful at it. She doesn’t really like Carly when she meets her, but Jesse is running low on funds and the job seems pretty simple...at first. 

As the investigation proceeds, Jesse is constantly frustrated by a client who won’t tell her the whole truth, people who keep turning out not to be what everyone thinks and someone who is attempting to kill Carly, but keeps hurting Jesse. The story develops in a “Big Bang” scenario as Jesse uncovers evidence of computer fraud, embezzlement of huge sums of money, false identities and an ever increasing number of Carly’s acquaintances who just might want to kill her. 

What bothers Jesse more however is her increasing attraction to Carly and the realization that Carly feels the same way. Neither one of them wants a relationship and certainly not with each other, but they’re having a difficult time fighting their feelings. As they come to know and understand each other, it becomes clear that they might have a chance for a future, if someone doesn’t kill them first.

Porte des Morts is a well told story with a plot that flows smoothly and characters that are interesting and appealing. The best parts though are the very funny scenes that spring up unexpectedly and add a little twist to a rather serious tale. Without giving away too much, the reader will want to watch for a discussion about tomatoes that is a classic in misunderstanding what is going on and there is a story about the dangers of having a guinea pig for a pet that is hilarious. 

The only true negatives to the book are some that seem to be recurring for books from Alpha Press. The company uses a larger font and double spaces between lines, which is easy on the eyes, but it means the story isn’t really 322 pages long. The other problem is that there are sentences where words are left out, most often “the,” and a couple of places where the paragraph suddenly jumps down a line. Though this doesn’t ruin the book, it is a little jarring to be reading along in a good scene and have the tempo disrupted when you realize something is wrong. The author deserves to have a better production job done on her work.

Porte des Morts is listed as the first in the Jesse Ferren series. If the rest of the books are like this one, a very promising new series has arrived in lesbian literature.

Meditative Rose by Lynn Gravbelle

Publisher:             Alpha World Press

When Emily Fields is murdered the police suspect her partner Carla Reed, but Detective Bobbie Kerry doesn't think the woman is guilty, so she hires her friend and ex-partner Paula Graham to investigate the case.  Paula’s life fell apart when her partner of thirty years died and then she walked out on her next lover Elizabeth.  She left her job as a police officer in Boston and is finding it difficult to move on from any of this, so she devotes her time to her antique shop and investigating on the side.  As Paula delves into the case she learns about Emily’s friends and family, including her powerful father who hates lesbians.  Carla disappears, complicating the situation, but Paula is so distracted by her day dreaming about Elizabeth, that there is a serious question as to whether she’ll be able to find out who the real murderer is.  As she plows her way through a multitude of characters the real mystery is if Paula will be able to put aside her personal problems to do the job she was hired for.

Certain parts of this book are extremely well researched and developed.  Unfortunately, the research shows up in the book in irrelevant details about an autopsy, how to make Cloissone jewelry and needless side stories about the characters.  None of that has any relevance to the book at all and it clutters up the story.  Ironically, with so much information, the characters end up being flat and undeveloped.  More disagreeably, everyone in the book is always yelling at and hitting each other.  These people are supposed to be in their 40s and 50s, but they act more like children.  The book tells everything and leaves little to the reader’s imagination.  At times Gravbelle shifts person in the middle of a page and following the story is difficult.

Mystery lovers may find this book trying.  The plot remains suspenseful only because there is so much to plod through that distracts from the basic story.  The story itself isn’t bad, but the book would have benefited from a more discerning editor.  It’s lengthy and a shorter, tighter story would have made it a much better book.  One point in its favor, it has really nice cover art.

Femme Noir by Clara Nipper

Publisher:      1st ed - Alpha World; 2nd ed - Bold Strokes Books

Note:  I feel obligated to say that I was asked to review this 

           book.  I wish I hadn't been.

The review is based on the 1st edition.

Nora Delaney is an extremely successful college basketball coach and a well-known womanizer.  When she's not on the court, she's in someone's bed or in a bar and she enjoys her life.  She's not very happy when she gets a bizarre phone call from her ex-lover Michelle asking for help, but she's really shaken up when she finds out the next day that Michelle has been murdered.  Nora decides to take a trip from LA to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to try and find out what happened.  In Tulsa, she learns that she really didn't know anything about a woman she lived with for years.  She also meets a group of women who are extremely eclectic in their personalities.  Nora finds herself torn between chasing after an enticing woman and trying to find out what happened to Michelle.  The closer she gets to the answer to that, the less sure she is that she wants to know what it is.

Femme Noir is meant to be a flashback to the movies of the 1950's that were black and white and peopled by tough guys and tougher babes.  The print in the book is done to look like it was written on an old typewriter to capture that feeling and there are plenty of scenes based around bars, smoking, sex, and tough talk.  The back blurb says that the book is a satire full of cock-eyed optimism.  The satire is certainly there, but it's heavy handed and forced, while optimism is probably not a word the reader will associate with this book.  Dialogue is not witty, but often ridiculous and many of the situations don't seem to have relevance to the plot.  At times it seems that the author isn't clear as to exactly what the plot is supposed to be, so it seems to ramble from point to point.

"In this book is something to offend everyone."  This statement from the back blurb is the truest statement about the book.  Nora Delaney is written to be an African American woman and she makes statements about white people that tread on the edge of being blatantly racist.  The reader might excuse this as trying to see American society through the eyes of a black woman, so it will be a shock to know that the author is a white woman.  There is something unsettling about the words that come out of Nora's mouth when the character talks about whites and then when she talks about blacks and the reader remembers a white woman is writing the words.  

In creating Nora's character, Nipper gave her all of the negative characteristics of the "tough guys" of the noir films.  That means she treats women totally as sex objects and her descriptions of them are phrased in the rawest language possible.  All this woman can think about is sex and how much of it she can have.  She talks like a man and struts like a man.  There are only two types of women in Nora's world, frou-frou femmes, who don't appear to have a grain of sense, or butches who might as well be men.   

Since Nipper's stated goal was to offend everyone, she would have to be considered successful, but this book is not enjoyable to read.  Most of what is in it will probably bother you.

Made For You by Geneva St. James

Publisher:                   Alpha World Press (1^st edition); CreateSpace (2^nd edition)

Julie Bell is dumped by her girlfriend Adrienne and, despite the fact that months have passed and Adrienne seems very satisfied with her new girlfriend Meagan, Julie is determined to get her back.  Julie totally ignores the fact that she destroyed the relationship by spending too many hours at work, ignoring Adrienne and the obvious signs that there were problems.  Instead she believes all she has to do is prove Meagan's low character and everything will go back to what Julie defines as normal.  Julie's emotions are out of control and she does ridiculous things to justify driving by where the other women live, arranging meetings with Adrienne and disturbing them with phone calls in the middle of the night.  Her world is obsessed with achieving her goal and she can't maintain a relationship with anyone else.  Her friends try to get her to give up what she is doing, but she dismisses them because they refused to take her side in this situation and that makes her angry.  Julie is determined that, if she can just show people who Meagan really is, then everything will go back to normal.

What is truly disturbing about this book is that some reviews are saying that it gives an accurate view of lesbian relationships and that every reader will be able to relate to at least one character in the story.  In reality Julie verges on the manic in the way she behaves.  While some scenes may have comedic value, for most of the book the reader probably will want to slap this woman and tell her to get on with her life.  That anyone thinks this is representative of lesbian life is disappointing.

This review is based on the original version of the book which was poorly produced with double spacing between sentences, extremely large print and lots of white space on the pages.  The result is that the story is much shorter than the page numbers would indicate.  The second edition published by CreateSpace may correct these problems, but buying a copy to find out wouldn't be worth it.

Made For You was difficult to read because of the cringe factor.  Some of what Julie does is difficult to read about because it's so embarrassing.  Some of the other characters in the book are much more interesting than the main character.  This might be alright for a few hours of escapism, but, with so many lesbian novels being published now, the money could be spent better on something else.