Chance by Grace Lennox (Jennifer Fulton)

Publisher:         Bold Strokes Books

Should a writer only write about things that she knows or has experienced?  That is a question that is frequently discussed, with varying opinions.  The answer is not necessarily, but, if a writer is going to venture into an area that is unknown, the reader might have to expect a book that is thin in some places.  Such is the case with Chance by Grace Lennox.  What is confusing is to read other reviews and wonder if the reviewers are really discussing this book or if they are writing about the author because they know that Lennox is really an alter ego for Jennifer Fulton.  Even the synopsis on the Bold Strokes Books web site doesn't really indicate the direction that this book takes.  The blurb on the back of the book does get closer to the story.

Chantelle (Chance) Delaney is a young lady with issues in her life.  Her job in a lesbian bookstore is a dead end, her romantic life is dormant and she's the adopted daughter of hippies who have doted on her, but she has questions about her birth mother.  Her life doesn't seem to be heading anywhere and she needs to change that.  Everything seems to spring into Chance's life as a surprise.  She leaves the bookstore to go into dog grooming, for which she has no training, but no one seems to mind.  Through that she stumbles into a job in the all woman rock band Virgin Blessing where she becomes the lead singer despite the fact that she really can't sing.  And, of course, they end up with a No. 1 song thanks to a woman Chance met in another very strange situation.  She agreed to help a gay friend fool his family into thinking that they were getting married, only to have the friend and his cousin use her for a different agenda.  Chance has a night of exhilarating sex with the cousin Layla, convinced that she has found The One, only to be betrayed the next morning and dumped by Layla, who later turns out to be a major song writer.  If there aren't enough threads in this to perplex you yet, Chance then plunges into the world of a rock star with access to easy women, easy drugs and a startling romance at the end.  And the discovery of Chance's natural mother and the situation involving her birth tops everything off.

Chance is not a badly written book.  Jennifer Fulton doesn't write badly.  There do seem to be gaps in the story though.  It's as if there was a framework and the story needed to be gone through one more time and more details added, with story lines tied together better.  The story is a readable one, but not one that draws you back to the book with an intense interest to find out what is going to happen next.  Whether or not this is because Lennox (Fulton) wrote about a lifestyle and industry she is not very familiar with would make an interesting conversation.

 

Not Single Enough by Grace Lennox

Publisher:                Bold Strokes Books


Giselle Trulove is having a rough life. Her girlfriend, who is also her boss, has dropped her to date a man in their office and when Giselle tells her, in colorful language, what she thinks of the situation, she loses her job. Her mother, who has acquired great wealth by marrying up several times, is more concerned with her new engagement to a Fabio look-alike than with Giselle's issues and thinks that the solution to all things is to just write a big check. The fact that Giselle never cashes the checks doesn't seem to register with her.

On the way home, Giselle finds a baby that has been discarded in a dumpster and thinks, temporarily, she has found a purpose to her life, until her best friend Sandy convinces her that she will go to prison for kidnapping. Sandy arranges for Giselle to turn the baby over to Dale Porter, a friend who is a homicide detective, and Giselle's life begins to turn around. The women are instantly in love, or lust, or there is some sort of attraction. Dale doesn't think she wants to be in a relationship, but she can't resist Giselle.

As Giselle and Dale begin to form a partnership, Giselle also embarks on a career as an artist and meets someone who could threaten their plans. Francesca is a wealthy closeted art patron who makes no attempt to hide the fact that she would like Giselle for herself. Should Dale fight for her or let her go to Francesca who can provide her with many more opportunities to develop her art?
 
Giselle starts out as an interesting character in a pathetic sort of way. She's funny as she tells about her breakup with her ex-lover and sympathetic as she deals with her deleterious mother and then tries to correct the downward spiral of her life when she finds the baby. The problem is that, once she meets Dale, she ceases to be attractive. She becomes a character who is plodding through the book with very little motivation except to find something that makes her significant. That can be a career in art or a partnership with Dale.

Dale is even more perplexing. She's adamant that she doesn't want a relationship with anyone, takes one look at Giselle and changes her plans entirely. It's never really clear what these two see in each other, except that the sex is plentiful and steamy. The relevance of the title to the book is a total mystery since both characters are single, but don't want to be apparently. No one in the book is trying to be single, so the title seems irrelevant.
 
Jennifer Fulton has established herself as a master craftsman in the romance genre and then in the mystery genre with her Rose Beecham books. The purpose of the Grace Lennox books isn't clear yet. They seem to be edgier and a little more trendy, but the characterizations aren't as well developed. Hopefully, this will work itself out as Fulton becomes more comfortable with this new persona. Not Single Enough isn't the same quality as her other books.