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I have read my first Jennifer Crusie! It's Maybe This Time, which I understood to be a rom-com novel loosely based on Turn of the Screw but which IN FACT, hilariously, turned out instead to be straight-up Turn of the Screw fanfic.
So Our Heroine, Andie, gets tapped by her stressed-out lawyer ex-husband North to go take care of his wards who refuse to leave their creepy and potentially-haunted house.
Andie has a semi-hemi-demi-fiance and ... hypothetically an actual job that she's just quit at a moment's notice? I guess? I'm not sure if it's even mentioned? .... but suspension of disbelief is not relevant here, what's relevant is THESE TERRIBLE CHILDREN NEED AN ADULT WHO LOVES THEM and also maybe ghosts, and two of the maybe ghosts are, spoiler alert, named Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, because this house was literally ported over stone-by-stone from England by an eccentric millionaire SOLELY IN ORDER to allow for hilarious Turn of the Screw fanfic.
Andie bonds rapidly with the terrible children, and is actually pretty OK with handling the maybe ghosts! She is less OK with dealing with the sudden screwball comedy home invasion in the second half of the book, featuring:
- the semi-hemi-demi fiance
- the ex-husband
- Andie's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend's cameraman
- the long-suffering professional ghost debunker hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the even more long-suffering medium hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
PLUS the two terrible children! PLUS all the maybe ghosts!
For the most part it is all generally rollicking good times except for one EXTREMELY JARRING thing which is when one of the ghosts possesses an unlikable character and then uses her body to sleep with several men in what the character thinks is a dream, which -- I mean, it is explicitly called out as rape, which I guess is something, but I did not expect that in the middle of my screwball comedy. :/
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/447934.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
So Our Heroine, Andie, gets tapped by her stressed-out lawyer ex-husband North to go take care of his wards who refuse to leave their creepy and potentially-haunted house.
Andie has a semi-hemi-demi-fiance and ... hypothetically an actual job that she's just quit at a moment's notice? I guess? I'm not sure if it's even mentioned? .... but suspension of disbelief is not relevant here, what's relevant is THESE TERRIBLE CHILDREN NEED AN ADULT WHO LOVES THEM and also maybe ghosts, and two of the maybe ghosts are, spoiler alert, named Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, because this house was literally ported over stone-by-stone from England by an eccentric millionaire SOLELY IN ORDER to allow for hilarious Turn of the Screw fanfic.
Andie bonds rapidly with the terrible children, and is actually pretty OK with handling the maybe ghosts! She is less OK with dealing with the sudden screwball comedy home invasion in the second half of the book, featuring:
- the semi-hemi-demi fiance
- the ex-husband
- Andie's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's terrifying force-of-nature mother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend's cameraman
- the long-suffering professional ghost debunker hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
- the even more long-suffering medium hired by the ex-husband's irresponsible baby brother's new unscrupulous reporter girlfriend
PLUS the two terrible children! PLUS all the maybe ghosts!
For the most part it is all generally rollicking good times except for one EXTREMELY JARRING thing which is when one of the ghosts possesses an unlikable character and then uses her body to sleep with several men in what the character thinks is a dream, which -- I mean, it is explicitly called out as rape, which I guess is something, but I did not expect that in the middle of my screwball comedy. :/
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/447934.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.