Book five: Hello, Gorgeous!

Hello, Gorgeous! (2005)
MaryJanice Davidson

Rating: 0.25*/5

I wanted to read something light-hearted, funny. Something that wasn’t too serious.

Unfortunately, this had too much emphasis on the ‘not too serious’ and was completely lacking the ‘funny.’

It’s about a woman who is killed in a car accident and turned into human cyborg, worth approximately 9 billon dollars U.S and is forced to work for a government agency.

Okay, fine. Good. I can work with that premise.

It could be funny.

But not if the main character is completely vacuous, with no sense of moral obligation, let alone intelligence. One of the things that annoyed me most about this book, were they kept going on and on about how smart she was. But that’s all it was: people saying how smart she was, without any actual evidence of this intelligence in her decision making, thoughts or personality.

The characters in the book also spent a lot of time going on about how charming she was. Hmmm, I can’t say I found her charming, and no matter how many of the characters tried to convince me with their thoughts, I just couldn’t see it.

Basically she pissed me off to the point that I was just skimming after about the third chapter. I kept reading because I was again the victim of a Blurb that Knows Too Much, with one of the main characters and events mentioned on the back cover not occurring til approximately p.70. I kept hoping that it would get better.

Aside from this, the beginning was very choppy. I’m not sure if this was just because I was waiting for the stuff to happen, or if it was because it jumped all over the place in terms of time and the characters were kind of wandering around the place, talking and going places, with no real plot driving them.

After the hook was revealed, the ‘plot’ was almost non-existent, with the characters getting distracted from the murder they were supposed to be investigating by their own lives. Or in the case of the main character, other people’s lives. The majority of the last third of the book – where the murderer was revealed – was actually spent with her bitching at everyone about another character’s relationship with someone, that had nothing to do with her.

I feel guilty saying bad things about a book that the author spent months writing, possibly years planning, but… I don’t know, what’s the point if I can’t write the truth? I highly doubt anyone will every read it. And, if someone who did enjoy this book happens to stumble across this, you are not alone. There are plenty of positive reviews out there, so maybe it’s just me.

Actually, the thing that had me skimming at chapter four was the main character’s reluctance to work for the government organization she was created by. I found this both unrealistic**, and I don’t know, I guess ungrateful in a strange way. They bring her back from the dead and she won’t even listen to them.

Perhaps if the beginning hadn’t been so choppy, we could have seen her thought process, been present for the initial events after she was changed. I’m not sure why the author skipped over this, but she seemed to back away from the serious questions that are raised by the situation.

If you are bought back from the dead by a secret government organization, are you obliged to do there bidding? We don’t actually learn that much about the organization, so the question of whether or not they are working for the ‘greater good’ or if she agrees with what they do, or what they actually do are never answered.

And even more basic than that, is she still even human? Can she still feel? Is she the same person she was as before?
Which begs the question, am I being too deep for a Brava Contemporary Romance?

I don’t think so.

I think it can be done with both seriousness and humour, while exploring the society and including very cool technology***. In fact, I’ve read it. And maybe if I hadn’t spent the whole time comparing this to Keeping It Real: Quantum Gravity Book I by Justina Robson, I wouldn’t have been so disappointed by the lack of exploration of the deeper issues.

I guess I am being hypocritical, I said I wanted to read this book because I was after something light-hearted and funny, that wasn’t too serious, than complained that it wasn’t serious enough.

I guess I’m saying that the premise didn’t fit the tone. It was too choppy and the author left us to assume too much. Not to mention the main character was just a freaking bitch.

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* It gets 0.5 because there was nothing wrong with the grammar or spelling. What a recommendation.

** I’m sorry, but if you’d dropped 9 billion dollars on something, you’re not just going to let it wander back to its life and forget about it. You are going to track it down, and either force it to work for you through threats and intimation, or hell, I don’t know, they had all that technology they could probably reprogram her into something resembling a human (or at least threaten too). You’re a secret government organisation, not the local Girl Guide chapter. Come on, surely they can get people to do stuff for them – isn’t that the whole point of a secret government organisations in the first place? Actually, come to think of it, her on the run from the people she didn’t want to work for would have made an interesting (and possibly more realistic) book.

*** The only reference made to the technology, are that it is like The Bionic Woman and a brief reference to The Terminator. Perhaps I am too young to understand the Bionic Woman references, and I have to admit my memories of Terminator are a little dim… but I think it was a mistake to let the technological aspect slip. What was it like for her to wake up with machine parts? What were the machine parts anyway? It’s never even mentioned, apart from the fact she could run faster, was stronger, and could ‘scan’ people. It was just disappointing.