Bookworm in the City

No. 8: A book with bad reviews
Find her / Tessa Bailey

This book was handed to me with the warning: “you’ll regret reading this because it’s time wasted that you’ll never get back”. Spoiler alert: these words were proven right.
I just also checked Goodreads where there are a lot of one-star ratings (2.5 average score), which makes this book a solid for the category.
Although starting off, it has to be said: this might not qualify as a book.
What this is, is a special edition publication to celebrate the Week van het Engelse boek, or English Book Week. Technically, that still makes this a book, of course. But, at 56 pages I struggle to define its category and I don’t want to go so far as to count the words, so I’m taking the lazy way out and say that this is either a novelette or novella.
(The binding has a total of 90 pages, but almost half of that is space for an introduction, and an excerpt from a soon to be available new title.)

56 pages to tell a story is not a lot, and so we jump right in.
The story is about Holly, who lives with older brother Wyatt. Wyatt and Holly both love the music of Citizen, a world-famous cool rock band. In case you’re wondering how famous and cool: they’re hanging-out-with-Mick-Jagger-and-Keith-Richards-level famous and cool. (This gets mentioned quite a bit, so weird.)
When the band comes to town, the siblings make sure to get tickets to see the show. They end up on the front row, and when the band enters the stage and Holly sees the lead singer, Johnny, for the first time, the sight of him (“a god”) practically sets her girl parts on fire. If you as a reader are caught off-guard by that, you’re not alone: Holly is very surprised about it too. It’s even worse for Johnny, who is on stage and spontaneously forgets his lyrics when he catches sight of Holly in the crowd. It’s lust at first sight for these two and it’s uncomfortable to be a witness to it all.
Johnny makes sure that Holly receives a backstage pass and when they meet there, he is instantly jealous of the other men in the entourage watching her. Thus, he takes her into his dressing room and locks the door so they can make out in private. I can’t remember where Holly’s brother was at this point but I can’t imagine him waiting patiently on the other side of the door. Especially because the two of them end up almost sexing up against said door.
This all happened by page 12 and I was snorting at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The reasons I continued this instead of quitting there and then, was because of the reading challenge, and the fact that I figured: only 44 pages left to go, I can do this.
But it got worse because Johnny finds out that Holly is a virgin. That puts a stop to the proceedings, and Holly rushes out of the dressing room. Johnny quickly realizes she basically is the Holy Grail of women (gorgeous, willing, and untouched), so he rushes after her to prevent her from disappearing forever.
At this point I took a deep breath, told myself to stay strong, and powered through, ever hopeful of things improving. Improving, things did not.
The two of them decide to get to know each other a bit before getting physical again, and within an hour of meeting, Johnny has told her his deepest secrets, from the pressure of fame, to suffering from writer’s block. Not sure why, because Holly only asks Johnny everything any interviewer already would have asked him. She shows him her favourite place in the area, which is an open field with a tree in it. I guess it meant to indicate Holly’s unpretentiousness and wholesomeness.
An hour is all these two need to know they are destined to be together, and they can’t imagine ever being without the other person again. So, they’re giving sexytimes another go. And there’s a lot of it: a disproportionate number of letters in this story is dedicated to sex or the mentioning of body parts.
When they’re not touching or breathing hard, Johnny reminisces about a ranch in Wyoming where the band once shot a music video, that he wants to move to with Holly, because he knows she’ll like it, and it’ll be a wonderful place to grow old together.
Holly’s down-there must be magic because spending the night with her is not only the best physical experience of Johnny’s life, but it also solves his writer’s block as a bonus. In return for all that, he promises to take her along for the remainder of the tour. (Well, demands it: he “needs to keep her”, yikes.)
When he finds her missing in the morning, he figures something terrible must have happened, because there is no way she would have just walked away from him. Johnny does not have any self-esteem issues (he really doesn’t: he sings his own song during sex to relax Holly). So, he drums up the security team, the band manager, and anybody else who’ll want to listen, to yell at them that his girlfriend is missing and they need to start a search party asap. When one of the security guys admits he thought Holly was just one of the many groupies that had tried (and it’s implied: succeeded) to get into Johnny’s room, Johnny punches the man on the nose, pushes him aside, and rushes off to find the woman with the magic vajayjay. Problem here is threefold: he doesn’t know where she lives, what her phone number is, and he’s only wearing sweatpants. Well, that last one would be a problem for anybody, but not for Johnny, who rushes out of the hotel barefooted and bare chested.
The paparazzi waiting outside the hotel have a field day, but he uses them to his advantage, speaking directly into the cameras about his lost girlfriend that he’s trying to track down and can she please stay put until he finds her, because he will find her.
Of course, Holly sees this, and when she hears he’s roaming the street still barefooted and bare chested, she rushes outside and forgives him. They proclaim their love for one another and he carries her off into the sunset. For reals. Fortunately, this is immediately followed by the words The End.

It was all so over the top and strange, and seemed more fan-fiction than romance novel.
I rolled my eyes at it all until I had a headache. I snorted and laughed out loud.
I’m guessing the size of this story was the main cause of the problems, but to be honest, if the story had been longer, I’m not sure the characters would have been able to carry it much better. Holly is a bland good girl: a virgin orphan who works as a waitress but hopes to become a social worker. Also, she seemed incredibly young. Johnny is…borderline red-flag problematic. The way he talks I’m guessing is meant to sound macho and cool, but is rough and dominant, especially compared to Holly’s innocence. He plans their future without asking Holly’s input, claims her as his girlfriend after one night, and is possessive and aggressive.
Technically the story contains a beginning, middle, and ending. There’s even a conflict / misunderstanding and a big gesture, as there usually are in a romance novel. But compressed to a story this size, it leaves out the character building and growth, along with the emotions. What’s left are two horny cardboard figures that we’re to believe end up living happily ever after.

I hadn’t read anything by this author before, but I’ve seen other titles in bookshops and from some surfing on the waves of the interweb I learned that she is pretty popular and people love her work. Therefore, I’m guessing the full-sized books are better, but after this experience I won’t be keen to try that theory any time soon.