How To Irritate A Reader 101

You want to know how? Read Olivia Gates’ Strong Medicine.

I was all set to love this book. It was the Bombshell book I’ve been looking forward to by a New-To-Me Author. Calista St. James, the lead character, sounded like a real Bombshell to me.

What she does in the book, I like. Sounds like what my girls would do if they were doctors–the secret project girls, that is. It’s the fact that her book is written in her first-person POV that nearly sent me over the edge and throw it at the wall–something I’ve never in my life done to a book.

That and Dr Gates needs less adjectives, less cliches, and a whole lot less plot holes. Only thing that saves this book is that she actually did do her research, and did it really well. It’d almost be worth keeping the book for research purposes, but the prose irritates me so much, that leafing through it looking for a specific sentence may cause me to throw the book at the wall.

Too much of the book feels as though it was written to fit a preconceived plotline. There’s a thing called plotting. But there’s also a thing called letting the character/book do what’s right for her/it. So Calista does a lot of things that doesn’t seem quite right.

Strong Medicine is a Silhoutte Bombshell (#63 to be exact). It is also a textbook case showing why Bombshells aren’t a hit.

Especially what I consider to be the number 1 cause: Girlifying the Bombshells. Yeah yeah yeah, girlifying’s not a word, but I don’t have a better word for it.

I consider Denise Hamilton’s Eve Diamond, Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan (I’m being impartial here, because I’m not a much of a Lippman fan) or Patricia Lewin’s Erin Baker (okay, not impartial here, but I’m honest about it, which counts in my book) Bombshells. Strong women. Not girls.

I think the editors just don’t get it.

Or maybe I don’t. Because I do not consider Janet Evanovich’s (she’s one of the authors listed on Bombshell’s guidelines as an example) Stephanie Plum a Bombshell. I consider her laughingstock. If ever you’re feeling down for yourself, read them. ‘Cause you’ll realise that you’re not even as dumb as her. That and if you’re a girl, Morelli and Ranger are pretty hot.