SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: July 2021] Crazy for You
Clooney Coyle is an Irish actor on the Irish language soap opera Brú na hAbhainn.
He is vain but amusing. He is invited to his best friend Isla’s house for a party. Isla is a school teacher and she is inviting the staff over for a Halloween party. Unfortunately an insufferable volunteer named Vonnie insisted that she be invited. Isla has complained to Clooney about Vonnie many times and he is tickled to meet someone so obnoxiously self-assured and assertive,
Vonnie arrives and she is a horror show. It’s a shame, though, that O’Donoghue had to make her fat and ugly in addition to loud and obnoxious. But she walks into the party, insults the host, insults the guests, takes wine that isn’t hers (she didn’t bring anything to the party) and is a general nightmare. But Clooney is intrigued by her and decides to treat her nicely.
When he was younger, he was picked on for being gay in rural Ireland so he understands the need to shine when others put out your spark. And soon enough he pledges that they are friends for life.
Vonnie has the best line ever: “As an adult, I am an artist.” She says this all the time and everyone looks at her the same way…. wtf does that mean. She means that all children are artists, but she is an adult who is an artist. She also has a gallery which Clooney promises to go to. Her art is terrible and she charges him admission. When she insists that he sit for a portrait, and them charges him a sitting fee he still manages to say that they are friends for life.
And that’s what sets her off.
Vonnie becomes insanely jealous. And that’s when the book goes from the outrageous to the ridiculous and all believability is lost.
She follows Clooney on a trip and tries to kill a woman she is jealous of (this was wholly unbelievable–there’s NO WAY no one would have seen her). Then she actually does manage to kill somebody! There is NO WAY that would not have gotten back to her.
And somehow Clooney doesn’t suspect.
But when she feels that Clooney doesn’t care for her anymore, she takes her revenge on him. First with a public humiliation, which AGAIN realistically it could not have escaped who did it. And then with an absurd twist that turns into a reality show.
I don’t usually rate books low, but this book was painful. It started out so funny with the best pretentious comment about a character, who describers herself “as an adult, I am an artist.” Hilarious. But then this character is so unfathomably unbelievable. At first it’s funny that someone could be so over the top nasty and self absorbed. Even though, realistically someone would certainly have called her out on it years earlier.
But then her bad attitude turns violent. And she starts hurting people–without anyone suspecting? 100% unbelievable, and not in an amusing I can’t believe this way. I feel like as th ebook gets more serious (dangerous) it needs to be more believable–but it goes in the other direction.
Then there was the writing. Multiple chapters in a row ending not with foreshadowing but with blatant explication: Here’s the final line of several chapters in a row
-He had escaped. But only temporarily.
-However, thanks to his new friend for life, it was to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
-Not one of [them] could imagine anything about this … trip that wouldn’t be to their liking. Although they soon would.
-If he’d known who was then halfway across the Atlantic, Clooney might have paid a little more heed to the old adage: be careful what you wish for.
I mean, for heaven’s sake, we get it. But I kept reading, because I was intrigued by how he would end this. I expected a kind of cheesy hero saves the day ending–which would have been satisfying.
But the author chose to do something else. And the ending made me want to do to the book what the cover picture suggested.
Good lord. I was so mad when I finished this.
I feel the need to say a few positive things because nothing is all bad. I enjoyed the stuff about the soap opera and the reality show–particularly the wicked revelation. And Clooney and his friends were really kind of enjoyable too. But when the main character is a nightmare of overwritten cliche, it’s hard to overcome that
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