Review: Kulti by Mariana Zapata

5 stars

All Sal Casillas wants to do is play soccer. It's her life, and if she works hard enough, she can help her team to the top of the Women's Premier League. The last thing she wants is a distraction, especially when it takes the form of Reiner Kulti, retired soccer icon and Sal's new assistant coach. As a girl, Sal plastered her room with his pictures, but the man who watches her from the side of the field each day is nothing like her childish imaginings.  He is, in short, a bit of a bastard. On the rare occasions he speaks, it's to put someone down. Sal's the only one brave enough to tear a strip off him, and when she does, a tentative friendship emerges. As Sal gets to know the man beneath the tight-lipped and intimidating exterior, she realises he might be an egotistical, arrogant, stubborn pain in the ass, but he's also vulnerable and alone.  

Mariana Zapata's Kulti was atypical; longer than most romance novels, and with protagonists who had a platonic relationship for the majority of the book.  But the pay off was definitely worth it. Watching Sal and Kulti circle around each other was an engaging and refreshing change from compressed storylines and insta-love.

Pulling off a book of this length wouldn't have been possible without excellent characterisation. Sal was wonderfully developed, kind but assertive. Perhaps more importantly, she was witty and funny, a necessary foil to the taciturn Kulti. I also really appreciated that Sal wasn't reduced to a zero-sum tomboy stereotype.  She played soccer and worked in landscaping, but also loved 'feminine' stuff like face masks.  

And Kulti.  I didn't want to like him, I really didn't. He could be insensitive, but he was also a little bit like a lost puppy who followed a child home from the park and refused to leave. He was an enticing and interesting mix of contradictions and in the end, his dedication to Sal and her career won me over. I try to keep my reviews from being too fan-girly, but honestly, the way Kulti called Sal Schnecke got me every time.  Gotta love a good German endearment.

In fact, in light of the effect this book had on me, I'm going to issue a caveat emptor: if you buy Kulti, you may find yourself daydreaming your way through the morning commute and end up using your data allowance to google the German soccer team.  It was a sacrifice I was more than willing to make, but if you are looking to invest minimal time and effort in a book, save Kulti for another day.

Review: Captive Bride by Bonnie Dee

3 stars

Captive Bride by Bonnie Dee is a short and sweet historical romance set in San Fransisco in 1870.  Huiann was given away by her parents in China, with the expectation that she would be taken to America and marry a wealthy Chinese-American businessman.  But after a long steamship trip, she  quickly realises their naivety. She is not to be a wife, but a whore. When Huiann escapes from the luxurious brothel where is imprisoned, she is taken in by Alan, a local shopkeeper. Despite their lack of a common language, he offers her a position as his housekeeper and they build a relationship.  

I did enjoy Captive Bride, but I couldn't help but feel that it never really achieved its potential. It was largely memorable for its setting.  Having the two protagonists not being able to communicate in a shared language is always tricky, but I felt like the relationship between Alan and Huiann was rushed, and neither's characterisation was as strong as I would have liked. To me, this kept it in the realm of 'good' rather than 'excellent'. I also have some doubts about Huiann's protrayal, which I can't really put into words.

While I may have my doubts about the central relationship, the setting of the novel was deftly drawn and made for fascinating reading; I found the author's note that outlined the context of Chinese-American relations in this time to be one of the book's most interesting parts. 

Review: The Shameless Hour by Sarina Bowen

5 stars

Sarina Bowen's The Shameless Hour popped up on my Amazon in the 'New for You' section, and I was instantly drawn in by the beautiful cover:

Even more intriguing was the fact that, out of 16 reviews, there was only one person who hadn't given it 5 stars. I bought it to find out what kind of super-book could manage that, and stayed up waaay too late to finish it. The madness continued when I mass-downloaded the rest of the Ivy Years series, which I devoured during Sydney's so-called Storm of the Century. (Coincidentally, a century is also the estimated time before my teleco gets my internet working again. I think they must be using hairdryers to get the water out of the cables or something.)

But moving away from my #firstworldproblems and back the the topic at hand, I think it's fair to say that I was very impressed with The Shameless Hour. The last time I remember being this engrossed in a New Adult book was Trade Me, which was the not only the first review I posted on this blog, but also the impetus for starting it. As with Trade Me, it was the layers of the characters - and the way these embodied the struggle of the modern, diverse world - that I really loved.

The protagonists, Rafe and Bella, live in the same building at the prestigious (but fictional) Harkness College. The night they meet properly, Bella invites Rafe - devastated and drunk after finding out his girlfriend has been cheating on him with some Rolex-wearing jerk - into her room. One one-night stand later, Rafe's lost his virginity. Bella, not understanding why he's so awkward after their encounter, decides to avoid him. And she does a pretty good job, until Rafe's the person who discovers her at the lowest point in her life. She's been drugged by a frat and had profanities written across every inch of her skin in permanent marker. Even worse, it's all across the internet.  Realising Bella has no-one else, Rafe steps up, refusing to let her live out the rest of the semester from beneath her duvet cover.

As that brief rundown of the plot suggests, The Shameless Hour was refreshingly different from the bulk of romances, New Adult or otherwise. For one, Bella's no shrinking violet of a heroine. She goes after what she wants and her transformation from sex-positive feminist to reclusive hermit and back again is supremely affecting. Rafe is such a caring and thoughtful hero, there's a jaded part of me that wonders if he's more closely related to leprechauns and unicorns than your average college-aged guy.

Rafe is not actually descended from little green men; he's of Dominican extraction, and no one ever heard of a Dominican leprechaun.  But his ethnic background isn't just a sop thrown in to appeal to a wider market. It's integral to his character, the reason he's still a virgin at twenty.  His mother, having being knocked up and then abandoned by Rafe's dad at the tender age of nineteen, brought him up with the old tenet of if-you-don't-want-children-don't-have-sex, as well as a healthy respect for women.  It is partly Rafe's experience of what happens to good Catholic girls who fall on hard times that makes him so compassionate toward Bella.  The result is an interesting reversal of one of romance's most long-standing and pervasive tropes: the sexually experienced man and virginal woman.

The Shameless Hour was a truly 21st century novel. It tackles some serious social issues, but does so in a way that is remarkably un-judgemental and keeps the reader engaged. Even as the slut-shaming Bella was put through made my heart break, another part of me was going 'yes, finally someone's talking about this stuff, making it clear that we don't bring it on ourselves, that it's a problem and not just our cross to bear'.  I honestly can't stress enough how much it meant to me to read about a heroine who was as sure of herself and her beliefs, and in a stunning example of why we need these characters who challenge the assumption that women who are not 'pure' have no worth, the very day I read this book Avengers actors Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans called another (female) character in the movie a 'slut' and a 'whore'.  They were, of course, called out and both issued 'apologies' which basically told everyone offended that they needed to learn to take a joke. 

Such is life, but maybe one day - if we have more great books like The Shameless Hour - things will be different.