That's a lot of angry tags for such a short book. (Just Necessary Women as a stand alone audiobook.) 

Damn train wrecky accident. I accidentally hit the "borrow" button when I was looking at this book instead of adding it to my list so I could look into it later. So, because it took up one of my borrow slots for the month I listened to it. It's 20 minutes, what's the worst that could happen? 

Welp.

Graphic enough incest, cannibalism, and an unsurprisingly fucked in the head little girl. 

Enough said.

Seriously, fuck everything. I need to take another shower. 

With the imminent release of the movie adaptation of that Twilight fan fiction people will not shut up about it and it seems like people are suddenly falling all over themselves to defend it and its writer. 'It's not her fault if people can't see it's abusive.' 'I don't like it but I can see what others see in it.' 'Abuse is NBD, people, jeez!' 'People just hate anything that elevates female sexuality!' Oh, God, you guys, can we please not?

You know, if this were an actual book I'd maybe feel that way as well. Hell, Twilight was a steaming pile of abusive crap and I was still able to find the fun in it. This, however, is a different story. There's nothing fun about this fic. There's nothing fun about the content or what it's done in the publishing industry.

1. This is fan fiction, not a book. One that is tied heavily to the source material and takes directly from it in many places. Really. Please don't lose sight of that fact.

Long list of links about this thing, but there is a whole section for you to explore the similarities and outright instances of directly taking from the source text.

This is not okay and should not be okay with anyone. Especially real authors who spend their time writing their own characters and stories. The slew of fanfics picked up by publishers in the wake of the success of this thing is not okay. Just think about your book or the books of writers who slogged their way through their own work sitting in slush piles on editors' desks or getting rejection letters while those editors are trolling fanfiction.net and AO3 for stories written from other people's work.

Even if you're going to forgive everything else wrong with this fanfic, if you are on board with how unethical and wrong this is please don't shrug it off.

2. This fic is not a romance. It's just not.

Also, the "hero" of Fifty Shades of Grey does something at the end that is not redeemable by romance novel standards. I won't spoil the story for the three people who haven't read it yet, but bottom line: Not a romance novel, not a romance hero. And that's not because of his BDSM tendencies -- you'll see why if you keep reading. –from here

And while there are a lot of books in the romance genre labeled as romance that are not romances this one is by far the worst because (well, it's not a book) it is so popular and so many people who don't read, and especially don't read the genre, think they are well versed on it because of this fic. Don't we have enough to deal with as romance readers without having people think this is what we read? Or having a bunch of people tell us what the genre is or isn't or should be based on this one fic? We should really all be completely insulted by that.

3. The general insult to BDSM. I was sick of BDSM before this thing got popular. Like with this fic a lot of times it's thrown in as something that has to be corrected for the characters to find their HEA. Or, it's poorly researched and poorly done. So the first insult is using BDSM to make money without having any respect for it. This fic takes it much further in that every practitioner of BDSM in it is a child molester, or mentally unstable, or deeply psychologically damaged. Then they must be fixed. Insult number two. There is only the mildest of kink. Like I can imagine people reading it going, "Wait, that's BDSM? Honey, did you know what we've been doing is BDSM?!" Insult number three. All the fans of this drivel who refuse to bother to find out what BDSM actually is but will attempt to shout down actual practitioners that this IS BDSM and 'what do you know?!' Insult number four. Then there is all the abuse. They were never within the confines of a safe, consensual, and sane BDSM relationship. The story just uses that term to cover up what he was doing as okay. It's not. Insult number five.

4. Speaking of abuse. There's liking something problematic and then there's trying to insist that it's not problematic, or even worse in this case, that it's okay because it's something that you don't understand. And another reason why it's so heinous to call this a romance. We're supposed to be moving away from abuse and rape as romance. You can dig a man who rapes a woman, tortures her without permission as punishment, and leaves bite marks and bruises all over her chest to prevent her from showing skin, but dear God, don't sully an entire book genre or lifestyle with it. It's funny, I remember all the people defending the abuse in Twilight, particularly because it was more insidious and thought maybe the next thing with more overt abuse would get people to understand. And now there's this fic and people are going out of their way to say it's okay. When, exactly, will it not be okay? Yeah, I guess I'm an "asshole" because I think we should be doing better as a society and a genre.

5. People can have problems with this fic without it being a ding on female sexuality. Hell, I don't want my sexuality tied to it in any way shape or form. Do you? By all means, if you see someone applying the "all" label to the genre or to women because of this fic then take them down. (Oh, and that mommyporn thing. That's just insulting to moms. No moms I know like this crap. And, shocker, moms can like well written erotica and actual visual porn, too!) But specific criticism of this fic and stories like it isn't inherently anti-female.

6. ELJ's behavior in fandom and as a *gag* popular "author". Just, ugh.

7. "New adult". Enough said.

8. General disgust for something so poorly written being so popular is totally okay, too. It is objectively bad on every level and we should definitely not shrug that off as okay either. Do we really want people thinking that producing something this bad is fine? Is that really the direction in which we want literature and publishing to go?

I'm not sure why there is so much positively toward this thing happening now, but this is definitely not one of those times where it's deserved. It especially perplexes me seeing it from real authors. All P2P and P2Pers should be ostracized from the real book community. Or maybe it's too much to think that there should be consequences for people's actions. Of course it is. I mean, how many books have I read that should have made the bajillions this woman has made from cobbling together other people's work and calling it her own? Anyway. I'm not going to take the finger-wagging. If you want to make all of this perfectly okay, that's your business but I am certainly not going to follow and I hope I'm not alone in that.

Posting this because I just remembered it and think you guys will love it as much as I did:

When Chase and Amanda first had sex (and keep in mind she was reticent to date him in the first place because of his ~playboy~ lifestyle) he pulls out the condom then says, 'I've always used one of these, but I don't want to with you. I promise I'm clean.'

. . .

. . .

. . . 

obligatoryfacepalm.gif

Ah, dammit. This was so promising. Even with all the tell and no show. I was a fan of the hero, Chase, trying to get the heroine, Amanda, to date him. Even though it was semi-stalkery his staking out her restaurant and kind of being a pest. But he's a famous baseball player! I was a fan of her apparently being a double digit size and not going on about being fat. It was barely mentioned! I was a definite fan of them going out on a first date and doing nothing more than a kiss at the end. Then they went out for a few weeks before sex happened! WHA–THAT'S LIKE PERFECT ROMANCE FOR ME!

And then Stephanie Evanovich had to ruin it.

I knew the BDSM kink was coming because, like I said in a previous post, it was introduced in Chase's POV really early. I was not looking forward to that, but because of all the stuff I was liking above I was willing to power through because the story had earned that chance. I do not understand what in the hell Evanovich was thinking here . . .

Chase believes he has found the perfect woman in Amanda, but he doesn't want to scare her off with his spanking kink. So he doesn't say anything and it builds up in him until he's an insufferable crankypants and she calls him on it. She gets so pissed off at his attitude she curses at him and he grabs her and starts spanking her. Just like that.

Er, I say again, NOPE.

That is not how you start that kind of relationship. You don't just grab someone and start hitting them with no prior conversation or consent. That's not kink, or BDSM. That's assault. That's domestic violence. After grabbing her and smacking her on the ass once, then dragging her off to his bedroom to keep going, he says something like, 'you can stay or call the cops after but this is happening.' I . . . what the fuck? That's so . . . not okay. Not at all. He doesn't stop until she starts crying and then I don't even know.

And of course she stays and fucks him instead of calling the goddamn cops!

The next morning is he apologetic? Is he contrite at his behaviour? Does he sit her down to try and talk through what he did and why and would she like to do it again? Try to come to an agreement on this lifestyle? No, of course not. He's smug as shit about it because he got what he wanted and she stayed. He has a total cavalier douche attitude about the whole thing. Even when she starts to cry. He acts like any concern on her part is ridiculous. She's the one who has to start the discussion about what happened, and he's doesn't really feel like it's something that needs to be discussed. Turns out he likes to spank, sometimes as a sex-thing but not necessarily all the time. He will turn her over his knee at his discretion when he believes she's been "naughty". And his belief is that his woman should act like a lady. I shit you not. He says this. So if she does anything unladylike, especially uses profanity, he'll spank her. And apparently if she's too disobedient? I didn't get that part. She can argue with him up until a point and then he'll spank her if she goes too far? And she is not given any choice in the matter if she stays. What the shit kind of relationship is that? None of this is okay! Safe. Consensual. Sane. Say it with me, people! It's really not that hard a concept to understand.

Then Amanda starts acting like that chick from Secretary and baiting him to spank her because, just as he said she would, she likes it and wants to get him to do it. Sigh. Then, as he wanted her to do initially as a weird excuse to get around the spank!kink, she hires a manager for her restaurant so she can trail him around the country. Because she's a spineless weenine and I fucking nope on out of this story at this point. I would have earlier, after the morning after, had I not been in the shower. I looked up some spoilers of the rest of the book and just thank God I have the wherewithal to ditch this mess because the rest of it sounds terrible. Most of it about the damn spanking, and then some stupid occurrence later on.

Screw this book.

Screw these characters.

Screw the goddamn kink bandwagon. Why is it something showing up in what is supposed to be romance and not erotic romance??

You can do better than this, Evanovich.

Neville Roscoe née Julian Delbraith:

London's Gambling King

London's Gambling King

London's Gambling King

London's Gambling King

London's Gambling King

London's Gambling King

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

LONDON'S GAMBLING KING

YES, WE GOT IT. DAMN.

There is so. freaking. much. repetition in this book of so many things but especially that freaking phrase. SHUT UP ALREADY. SHUT. UP. 

And speaking of shutting things up, there has been so. freaking. much. sex in this book. I've completely lost count of how many sex scenes there has been at this point. And some of them are so goddamn tedious and interminable. There'd be about ten minutes of story between half-hour slogs of overly descriptive sex. . . . why?! STOP FUCKING AND FORGE A REAL RELATIONSHIP. JESUS CHRIST. 

*Now waits to be mocked on Twitter by some ~edgy authors and bloogers, too*