Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Hi,

I read this not too long ago and it sounds like ‘Falling for Gracie’ by Susan Mallery.

From Publishers Weekly/Amazon: “In this diverting contemporary romance from Mallery (Someone Like You), wedding cake designer Gracie Landon was shipped off at age 14 to live with relatives when her obsessive crush on 18-year-old Riley Whitefield became a local media item and an embarrassment to her family. Now, 14 years later, she’s back in Los Lobos, Calif., to create a cake for her younger sister’s wedding while aching to be part of the family that turned her out. Her mother is as unloving and judgmental as ever, and both her sisters are self-absorbed drama queens. Despite her family’s selfish demands, Gracie, with all her eagerness to please, bends over backwards to accommodate their requests; sister Vivian demands a fabulous wedding cake that will take weeks of preparation, while sister Alexis insists that Gracie trail her husband, Zeke, whom she believes is having an affair. Since Zeke is Riley’s campaign manager in his race for mayor of Los Lobos, prowling around Riley’s house seems the right place for Gracie to start, but her snooping only puts her and Riley on the front page of the local press. While dirty politics, a vengeful ex-wife and a lot of backstory drama plump up the story line, some readers may find themselves wishing for a heroine who’s less of a doormat.”

yep, i too think the same. Emma bet me to it. I only wish the book was better.

My book ALL THE WAY HOME from Cerridwen Press (also available on Kindle) is a going-home-and-getting-together-with-the-high-school-hunk story. Maggie is a bit neurotic but no doormat :)

Oh man, makeovers rank just below dance-offs on my list of favorite guilty-pleasure plot devices—Grease has both!! Makeovers must be the chick-flick equivalent of a sports training montage in dude-films. Love ‘em!

Makeovers are nice, I long for one IRL, but why would anyone care about their high school crush? I’ve seen some of the folks I went to high school with who treated me like crap because of my weight. They’re still just as shallow and cruel. They never changed. The same privileged brats as adults as they were as kids. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as them let alone involved with them.

Man, the only time I’ve actually recognized a book in the HABO section, and a ton of people beat me to it!

I actually liked this one, and I usually HATE books where anyone has an obsession with anyone else (weird personal quirk, haha). But it’s well worth a read!

Hmm…I know I’ve read lots of these, but the only ones that come to mind are After the Night by Linda Howard and Ain’t She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.  Love them both, but they’re a little edgier than your average hometown girl returns theme (and their transformations were more internal than external).  I’ll have to look through my series books for more ideas…

The classic example of ‘coming back hotter’ has gotta be Sabrina (the Hepburn/Bogie version of course)!  I can’t think of any good romance novels with this plotline at the moment, but I had to mention the movie.

Definitely “Falling for Gracie” by Susan Mallery.  I remember the part where she laid down in front of Riley’s car.

Definitely “Falling for Gracie” by Susan Mallery.  I remember the part where she laid down in front of Riley’s car.

I can see Gracie stole her life motto from Singin’ in the Rain: “Dignity. Always dignity.” *g*

(Actually, I’m not sure I could read this book. It seems like it would be filled with scenes that generate the kind of second-hand embarrassment that gives me a stomachache.)

This is definitely Falling for Gracie.

The Penalty Box by Deirdre Martin has the same theme. I can’t remember if I liked it though…

Sleeping with Beauty by Donna Kauffman has a makeover-for-the-reunion theme, love how that one works out.

Lead Me On by Victoria Dahl does it with a twist.  She never left town, just reinvented herself after a turbulent childhood and is terrified people will find out.

I do like a good “How you like me know?” book, as long as the outer shell is matched with the inner growth.  Living well is the best revenge for high school asshattery. ;)

Forever Blue by Suzanne Brockmann is a twist on this theme.  The guy comes back to his hometown instead of the girl.  Here is the blurb on the back of the book:

Blue McCoy was once the hero of Lucy Tait’s teenaged dreams—quiet, dark and dangerous. After high school he left Hatboro Creek, South Carolina, to join the military. Years later, now a Navy SEAL, Blue was a man who embodied all of Lucy’s fantasies.

Now Blue is back in town, and Lucy is not the person he remembered. She’s a no-nonsense police officer—and a woman Blue can’t take his eyes off. But then Blue is accused of murder. And Lucy is assigned his case. Now their brief affair has become part of an extensive investigation, where what’s at stake is critical—Blue’s future…and maybe Lucy’s heart. Is her hero still the man she remembered?

Since Betsy beat me to suggesting the movie, I’ll settle for seconding the motion:

Sabrina, 1954 version.

Ain’t She Sweet is one of the best high school makeover stories of all time.  I just love Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ style of writing the smart woman who chose stupidly and now has to fix it.

This book, though?  Sounds like a major embarrassment.  Laying down in front of the guy’s car to protest something he’s doing?  Oh, yeah.  That ought to work.  Like someone else said above, that’s the kind of thing that gives me vicarious stomach pains.

Urgh! Double post, please forgive!

To me these “Coming Home Only More Hotter” books are a blend of:
1. Ugly Duckling. Hence the make over.

2. OMG You Went and Got Hot! Not necessarily the same as 1, it can be found in best friends become lovers, other types of returning home stories, etc. The heroine becomes hotter because both sides have grown up mentally, and grown into themselves physically. You know what I mean? Did that make sense?

And usually, 3. The small town setting. Which we discussed in the Small Towns and Big Popularity post a couple days ago.

And of course the underlying themes of revenge and closure.

Okay I’m done.

One of my favourites is a old Jayne Ann Krentz called “TheMain Attraction” It was originally written in 1987, but it stands up pretty well. Here’s the cover copy: “Ten years after she had left her hometown as a mousy, overweight, disgraced woman, Filomena Cromwell—now rich and beautiful—returns to Gallant Lake to seek revenge on her unfaithful ex-fiance+a7 and other small-minded townspeople.”

I highly recommend Kathy Love’s 3 book series following the stories of 3 sisters in a small town.  They all have the “reunion”/ugly duckling like storyline:

Getting What You Want
Wanting What You Get
Wanting Something More

I love everyone’s suggestions!  I just made a list to order all these titles inter-library loan!

@Sara - The Penalty Box was the first one I thought of, and I really liked it.  Better than Martin’s other books, which I would normally rate in the C+ to B category.

Try Unlawful Contact by Pamela Clare for a twist.  Good girl looses her virginity to the high school bad boy and it’s “perfect”.  Ten years later, she’s a journalist and he uses her as a hostage to break out of prison.  Loved it. 

But I am a sucker for the “he loved her desperately from afar” kind of plot.  I like my heroes to have a sort of endearingly desperate awkwardness.  Branden Kel-Paten in Linnea Sinclair’s Games of Command is my current favorite.  It’s sci-fi romance, FYI.

The plot where she returns to her hometown hot only works for me if he wasn’t a dick to her back in high school.  And I really hate the cringe-worthy vicarious shame (the kind I think would be inspired by a heroine laying in front of a car).

Christina Dodd did a rewrite of “Sabrina” as a historical in her book “In My Wildest Dreams.” I love the Billy Wilder version of the movie with Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and William Holden. And the book didn’t suck either, even though I had the movie running in my head the entire time I was reading it. I’ve read the book two or three times now, and I still enjoy it. So, job well done there, Ms. Dodd.

Yikes, way to promote healthy behavior! Laying down in front of a car because the guy the heroine is obsessed with doesn’t sound like something from Fatal Attraction at all!

Less being obsessed with Ye Olde High Schoole Days And The Hotte Guye Who Didn’t Notice Me please.

I can certainly see the appeal of this kind of storyline. I’m sure I had some similar daydreams back when I was in high school.

You know what’s funny, though? I never had a crush on any of the popular boys at my high school. Instead, the fact that the popular boys treated me badly seens to have shaped my attraction patterns. I’m not attracted to extremely handsome men, because when I see a man like that, my emotional response is fear and feelings of rejection. I don’t enjoy that emotional reaction, so I avoid men like that, even giving them the cold shoulder if necessary. But I had good experiences, during my formative years, with boys whose looks were a little less conventional and less classically handsome. Those are the men I have good feelings around now and whom I’m physically attracted to.

In one respect, it’s good, because I’m not secretly lusting after men who are out of my league; I’m truly attracted to more average-looking men.

It’s bad when it comes to reading romance novels, though, because virtually all romance novel heroes are written to be classically handsome. As soon as the writer describes the hero’s rugged good looks, I hate him. Usually I have to imagine him differently in order to make him more attractive to me. This is frustrating when I write, because I want to write a less classically handsome hero, but probably any editor or agent will force me to turn him into the standard hot guy, whom I’m unable to muster any attraction towards.

I do like the stories where the popular guy is actually a big sweetheart. I get so much guilty pleasure from A Cinderella Story with Hilary Duff in it.

But in real life? Most of the attractive men at my school (the very very few, since most of my village is inbred) weren’t men I’d like to have a thing with. All the decent guys were in the other towns and I saw them at church but of course, the cute decent ones were taken.

And makeovers…love em too. What Not to Wear has taught me all i ever need to know.

I have always theorized that the American Dream is to make everybody jealous at your high school reunion.

I see so many people post “Whatever, it was high school, get over it,” but I think it’s easier to say than to do. After all, we see all the time people who are shaped by their childhoods - and high school/middle school are just the last (and for a lot of us, the most sensitive) part of childhood.

I also think it’s really cathartic to see a story in which “that kid” from high school makes good. To me, it actually helps me get over high school nonsense, because it reminds me how uninformed and shortsighted high school judgements are.

So um… long story short, I love a good “sweeps back into town to show ‘em what you’ve become” story. Does anybody know of a story when it’s the HERO who does this? That sounds awesome.

@Alpha - You too, huh? I can’t stand the Hollywood pretty boy version of handsome for the same reason. All the good looking boys treated me like crap. Well, so did the ugly boys though. Actually, all males except for a few whom were like baby brothers to me treated me like if I was a big old pile of dog puke. Loved to do things like throw food at me and moo or oink. Purposely trip me. Etc.

Heck, I’m so down on handsome men that even though he’s not real, whenever “V’lane” (the Death By Sex fae from Karen Moning’s Fever series) posts something on Facebook about how human women want him I go and post something snarky. I’d never be able to do that if he was a real person and this was the real world. I’d be the one hiding in the corner, expecting him to start chucking cookies at me while mooing for the amusement of all the pretty people and hangers-on around him. Praying he doesn’t ever acknowledge my existence.

I also thought Christine a fool for going with Raoul rather then staying with Erik and Roxanne was a complete moron for liking Christian better then Cyrano.

I see so many people post “Whatever, it was high school, get over it,” but I think it’s easier to say than to do. After all, we see all the time people who are shaped by their childhoods - and high school/middle school are just the last (and for a lot of us, the most sensitive) part of childhood

It’s not so much that I think people should “get over it”. I know, probably better than most people, that the High School years are very responsible for shaping who we become. I personally had a more hellish time there than I want to get into. It’s when we become obsessed about what happened that it gets in the way of our personal and emotional growth. I don’t think it’s healthy.

I’m more of the “I’m going to take these negative experiences and make myself stronger” school of thought than an “OMG I can’t stop thinking about those jerks and wait ‘till I get hot then I’ll show them!” waste of time. Reading about that kind of thing feels petty. I’d rather have a heroine grow and evolve past her High School experiences and have her later relationships become so fulfilling that she doesn’t need to obsess about the HS tripe.

I also thought Christine a fool for going with Raoul rather then staying with Erik and Roxanne was a complete moron for liking Christian better then Cyrano.

Well, Raoul had the not killing people thing going for him, but yeah, completely with you on Cyrano.

I can see the get hot, go home and impress guy from H.S. thing working only if he weren’t a jerk in H.S. but just a good guy who didn’t know that she had a thing for him/thought of her as a friend.  If he blew her off in H.S., I’d rather read about her getting hot, going home, and blowing him off for the nice guy she hadn’t noticed/thought of as a friend.  But this description doesn’t make me think of the former, and obviously it’s not the latter.

I see so many people post “Whatever, it was high school, get over it,” but I think it’s easier to say than to do. After all, we see all the time people who are shaped by their childhoods - and high school/middle school are just the last (and for a lot of us, the most sensitive) part of childhood.

Wow, I don’t buy the “whatever, it was high school” line at all. How many women are still remembered as ‘easy’ YEARS after hs is over?! People don’t forget.

The thing is about the high school bullying - it’s abuse. You don’t tell someone who was abused by a parent to “just get over it”, right? Maybe it was only for a few hours a day but it’s still abuse, plain and simple.

I remember in elementary school our teachers would tell us that being bullied would “Make you a stronger, more confident adult.” And we were not to “tattle” about people calling us names. Even then I thought that was a crock.

Of course, now they know better. It’s just too bad it took kids bringing guns to school to kill their bullies and all those who stood by and never defended the victim to wake people up.

@Estelle - Since Phantom is fiction I like to imagine that the people Erik did kill - when he was no longer under the control of the Sultana - were bad people. Like maybe Joseph ended up in Erik’s torture chamber after trying to do something disgusting to one of the child dancers. I can see someone like Erik, abused, unloved, unwanted, taking cold vengeance on some pervert, can’t you?

Wow, I don’t even remember the guys in high school.  I didn’t even date.  But then, I had some seriously traumatic family stuff going on in my life at the time.  Even if that wasn’t the case, I was so fixated on older men I would have just dated college-age guys anyway.  (I do remember the boys at college vividly.) 

So yeah, I don’t have any interest in these “going back to high school and re-discovering Mr Right” stories because it’s really nothing I can relate to. 

(I did find the 30 Rock high school reunion episode pretty funny though.)

Interesting.  I’m remembering pieces/parts of books, but couldn’t tell you a title to save my life.  Sorry.  Nora had a ‘bad boy who left town’ in her series about the 4 brothers.  Chesapeake Blue was the 4th book and the other 3 have completely deserted me.

I dated a good looking guy in high school.  Unfortunately, his best ‘ass’et and his personality profile matched.  And yes, now I’m more attracted to regular looking guys.  BUT, they must be very intelligent.  Even while we were dating, the ‘mini-crushes’ I had were on the smart guys.  I wasn’t abused in HS, but I don’t look back on them as ‘the best years of my life’ either.  I feel sorry for people that have to go back to those years to remember ‘the best’ times.

Sam

Definitely Falling for Gracie.  And just for those who aren’t familiar with it, the whole “laying in front of his car” stunt was juvenile, because, wait for it, she WAS juvenile.  She was 15 or 16 with all the drama and mad unrequited love gooieness that only a 15 year old can manage.  Years later she’s avoided the town like the plague, comes back for her sister’s wedding and hey guess what—acts like an adult!  Okay, mostly. But it is a romance novel!!  And I liked it quite a bit. No real stomach turning embarrasment, other than a few winces for a melodramatic teen.

I highly recommend Kathy Love’s 3 book series following the stories of 3 sisters in a small town.  They all have the “reunion”/ugly duckling like storyline:

Getting What You Want
Wanting What You Get
Wanting Something More

I agree with what Kelly N said about Kathy Love’s series about the Stepp sisters.  I read these books years ago and really enjoyed them.

Not exactly the ugly duckling returns home story, but She Drives Me Crazy by Leslie Kelly had some pretty good laugh out loud moments.  Here’s the blurb:
When she was good, she was very, very good…
When Emma Frasier returns home to Joyful, Georgia, she’s greeted with the kinds of winks and lusty grins one might offer…an adult film star?
But when she was bad…
Thanks to small-town gossip and citizens who clearly need to get a life, Joyful’s residents think Emma Jean is the “famous star” building a strip club in town. And that her barely concealed…uh, attributes are the ones gracing the new interstate billboard. She was better.
As if being taken for a blue movie queen isn’t rattling enough, there’s Johnny Walker, the local bad boy turned good—a man who tempts Emma to be just as wild and wicked as Joyful thinks she is.

The excerpt totally sold me:
“If someone had told her that within her first several minutes in Joyful she’d be lying flat on her back, with her legs askew and Johnny Walker crouched between them, Emma would have laughed in his face. Particularly if also told half the slack-jawed, gaping town would be looking on.
What’d they call this? Déjà vu all over again? Because this was, pretty much, the same position she’d been in on her last night in this town, ten years ago.”

Omg. A hero named Johnny Walker?  That I have to read.

I have always theorized that the American Dream is to make everybody jealous at your high school reunion.

lmao.  my mom used to joke around that if I lost some weight I could go onto become Miss America, and show all the brats I went to school with that I was better than them.

I don’t think she realized how condescending that was. 

The thing is about the high school bullying - it’s abuse. You don’t tell someone who was abused by a parent to “just get over it”, right? Maybe it was only for a few hours a day but it’s still abuse, plain and simple.

I remember in elementary school our teachers would tell us that being bullied would “Make you a stronger, more confident adult.” And we were not to “tattle” about people calling us names. Even then I thought that was a crock.

I’ve recently moved to Massachusetts, and there was a bill in the State senate about making bullying (and complicity to bullying) a crime because a 15 year old girl committed suicide after being bullied by the “popular” kids.  I heard on the news today that 9 of the bullies were being brought up on criminal charges (although, I don’t know how/why they’re being charged with statutory rape or how they are being charged as adults.  it does not make sense to me.).

Last year, I wrote a paper (for class) proposing that if children knew what it felt like to be bullied that they would not engage in bullying behaviors.  There was a social psychological study done in the 1960’s (or 70’s) in which an elementary school teacher divided her students into categories based on eye color (one day kids with blue eyes were better and the next it was the kids with brown eyes—or vice versa).  In the end, she was able to teach the kids why bigotry and racism are wrong by exposing them to it.  (she did explain that nobody was better than anybody else, and that it had only been an experiment.)  Today, an experiment like this would NEVER be done (there are human subjects protections in place that did not exist when the study was done), especially since it involved young children (one of the protected classes of human subjects in research).

Jane Elliott stopped teaching her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes program to elementary students when she retired from teaching in 1984, but still runs it for adults (http://www.janeelliott.com/), though not without controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott).

I had a “makeover” in my last year in highschool.  I spent most of my high school years overweight but lost weight in my last year.  The people who picked on me for being overweight still acted like jerks.  After I lost weight the girls were bitchily catty and the boys were sexually harrassing me.  I ended up becoming totally disgusted with them and decided I’d wait until college before I dated anyone.

@alex ward
thank you for posting that link…

I’m much better looking now than I ever was in high-school, but alas, my high school crushes would still not notice me, since half (the good half) have turned out to be gay.

I, total geek, left my high school after tenth grade to go to a boarding school and then the first two years of college. I returned home after braces, contacts, maturity, and a roommate who knew how to dress had done their magic on me. One day, as a college senior, I was sitting in the cafeteria with a large group of campus movers and shakers. The girl next to me, who had been immensely popular all through high school, said, “I have so much fun with you. I wish I’d known you in high school.” I said, “You did know me in high school. You just wouldn’t talk to me.” Fortunately, she was actually a nice person, apologized, and we became closer friends.

well, it’s nice to know after she’s gotten herself a makeover the shallow jackass jock now wants to be with her.

Not.

I’m just shocked and appalled.

No one has mentioned Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion yet.

For shame.

I also thought Christine a fool for going with Raoul rather then staying with Erik and Roxanne was a complete moron for liking Christian better then Cyrano.

Sort of off subject but what irks me the most about Christine and Erik is the fact that she thought he was her father for most of it. I always saw the popularity of them more as people preferring the edgy bad boy (Erik) over the decent (if a little foppish) nice guy (Raoul)

There’s a YA version of this by Meg Cabot where the main character reinvents herself during high school to go after the hot jock boy with the help of a book called “How to Be Popular.” Though in this one, the jock is a douche and she realizes that the right boy was the one who was her friend all along.

If the jock was a huge douche, I can’t buy it. I like it when they were secretly sweet but if not, I like it to be the cute best friend.

@Ally -

Sort of off subject but what irks me the most about Christine and Erik is the fact that she thought he was her father for most of it. I always saw the popularity of them more as people preferring the edgy bad boy (Erik) over the decent (if a little foppish) nice guy (Raoul)

No, she thought he was the Angel Of Music sent to her from Heaven by her father.

The reason I prefer Erik, actually, is because he would’ve let Christine keep singing. Raoul wanted her to never perform again. He wanted to keep her at home, being the perfect little wife who has no interests outside her husband. I’d rather be alone then be with a man who keeps me from music. Christine would end up being completely unhappy in her marriage to Raoul as he would repress her. Erik would’ve let Christine fly, probably even help her career. She could have all the joy of a man who loves her and will never cheat and the ability to be herself and sing! All Erik wanted was to be allowed to walk with her on Sundays and sing with her at home.

@Liz - I actually remember my 6th grade teacher (who was a bully herself)* mentioning that study when we were reading about WW2.

*Yeah, my 6th grade teacher was a bully. She believes people shouldn’t use perfume, antiperspirant, mouth wash, and should only bathe every 3 days. Because I used those things and bathed every single day she treated me like crap. Used to tell me I was a horrible person and try to make me feel stupid. (She did this to a lot of her students.) Pretty much blamed me for the hole in the ozone layer. (While teaching us that we were all going to die in the coming ice age because of global cooling.) Mom regrets to this day not standing up to her and pulling me out of that class. I went from a A/B student to a D/F student. So, it turns out, LOTS of this teacher’s students. So many, in fact, that they demoted her to fourth grade.

Maybe we should’ve done that study in class and be allowed to bully her.

Did this happen in the book?  Just wondering, because I just saw Phantom on Broadway last week, and Raoul actually encourages her to sing in the Don Juan opera—if only to trap the Phantom.  The Phantom actually struck me as extremely possessive of Christine, and more obsessessed with owning her and her voice than truly being in love with her.

I love a good “sweeps back into town to show ‘em what you’ve become” story. Does anybody know of a story when it’s the HERO who does this? That sounds awesome.

Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie pretty much follows that storyline (with a twist or two).

A bunch of comments have brought to mind a short story by Rachel Gibson that I read a few years ago about a couple getting back together at their high school reunion.  It was in an anthology called Secrets of a Perfect Night.

@MeganB I thought of Rachel Gibson too.  In Not Another Bad Date the female and male protagonists knew each other in college, but break up b/c the hero’s ex turned up pregnant.  The heroine returns to their town (after the hero’s wife dies), and i remember him thinking that she is hotter than she was in college.

@Stephanie - Yeah, I’m talking about the actual book, not the Weber musical. Raoul doesn’t want Christine to sing anymore once they’re married. Erik says they’ll take a little apartment, sing together, and go for walks on Sundays.

Yes, Erik is a possessive stalker and wouldn’t be someone I’d want IRL. But since I sing myself and die a little inside when I don’t get to sing he is preferable to me then Raoul. If given a choice between true love and a music career - music would win, hands down.

OK, I went and got “Falling for Gracie” from the library yesterday after reading this post and I loved it.  I stayed up way too late finishing it.  However, I do have to question the job performance of Los Lobos’ journalists and sheriff’s deputies.

Ok, it has been a few years since my last reread of POTO and I’d forgotten that Raoul wanted her to give up singing.  My new opinion is that Christine should have stayed single.

Heh, I was going to say I was Team Raoul, since Erik was definitely a possessive stalker without the maturity to be a romantic partner. But if Raoul wanted her to give up her singing career, I agree. Team Single Diva :)

Thanks to Jenica and Beki for their recommendations of “Ain’t She Sweet”—I downloaded it to my e-reader this evening and started reading it on the Metro ride in to work.  Boy was I *pissed* when I got to my stop at Chapter 2 and had to stop reading!

This post is very interesting thanks for the post

@Liz Is Not Another Bad Date good?  I couldn’t make myself read it, even though I read the others in that series.  I was just too afraid it would be like Daisy’s Back in Town, which I completely hated.  I love most of Gibson’s other books, though.  See Jane Score is on my all time top 10.

Speaking of high school harassment, have you guys seen this?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011483076_bullies31.html

A 15-year-old girl had a “brief relationship” with a popular senior boy, and was so severely harassed afterwards (called a “slut” and other things) by her classmates that she killed herself.

Aside from the fact that the relationship she had appears to have been statutory rape and was thus a criminal offense by the boy, why is it always the girl who is shamed for having sex? This is so horrible. It just infuriates me.

I actually liked HS and I don’t really get these books either. Being popular in HS is not the be all and end all of achievement in my mind. And I personally HATE make-over story lines. If the heroine gets “ugly” again, that HEA is screwed.

So many, in fact, that they demoted her to fourth grade.

JamiSings: Because what they needed was to expose her to even younger children. *rolls eyes* I had several teachers who were bullies (not to mention the pedophile) and the schools - despite numerous complaints by students and even sometimes parents - never did anything about it. It’s disgusting.

Bullying is such a huge deal, and its treated like its a harmless joke. And oh yeah, sex-shaming for girls is a big one.

@Orange - They couldn’t fire her so they thought if they gave her younger kids then they’d have two years to undo the damage she did to them.

I should also mention the son she was always bragging about - the same son who was a drug addict and living on the streets. She kind of made up stuff about him to make him sound great but everyone knew the truth.

I’m surprised people think Raoul would actually “allow” Christine to keep singing. He was a Viscount, he wasn’t even suppose to marry her. Remember, his older brother Charles who was drowned in the underground lake - presumably by Erik - kept the lead ballerina as a mistress and he was encouraging Raoul to keep Christine as a mistress, but not marry her since she was just an opera singer. And he basically does tell her she won’t be singing anymore once they’re married.

Let’s face it, had they been real people, their marriage would’ve ended up very unhappy. Raoul would be screwing anything with a vagina. Christine would be stuck at home with their kids and nursing raging STD infections Raoul had given her. Eventually she would’ve died of one or gone insane because he denied her music.

Erik might’ve been a psycho stalker, but he never would’ve given Christine the clap!

@ Alpha Lyra

Heh, I was going to say I was Team Raoul, since Erik was definitely a possessive stalker without the maturity to be a romantic partner. But if Raoul wanted her to give up her singing career, I agree. Team Single Diva :)

I think I’m gonna have to agree with you. Though if it came to a choice between the two, I’d still say Raoul.

Well, I’m still Team Erik. In the world of fiction better to be married to a psycho stalker who’ll let me sing then a creepy viscount who’ll expect me to stay home and be his slave.

@Chicklet

Actually, I’m not sure I could read this book. It seems like it would be filled with scenes that generate the kind of second-hand embarrassment that gives me a stomachache.

I thought I was alone with that particular problem!! It’s good to know someone else can’t handle extreme second-hand embarrassment (great term, I’m stealing it).

@Alpha Lyra, that link you posted is the same case Liz was talking about, that has Massachusetts considering a tougher law.

Hey, we’ve got a team now!  Although I suppose she doesn’t literally have to stay a single diva forever.  She could always meet an acceptable third option after the canon story ends.

@Estelle - I can’t help it, I feel bad for Erik. Maybe it’s because I was - and still am - bullied so much because I’m fat, I can’t help but feel bad for him. I know what it’s like to be so crappy because of how you’re treated you actually want to kill yourself or your bullies to make the pain end.

That’s why I like to imagine Erik as more an avenging angel. Perhaps he killed Joseph because he found the creep trying to rape one of the kids in the ballet. Perhaps Charles (Raoul’s big brother) beat the crap out of his mistress for fun.

Erik was forced to kill by the Sultana. (Something else from the book not in the Weber musical - Weber cut out “The Persian” all together, in fact.) It was kill or be killed. His mother rejected, probably beat him. He was kept in a cage as a side-show freak - doubt he was treated well then, might’ve even been prostituted in other ways. You can’t go through all that in pre-therapy days without ending up pretty messed up in the head.

Granted, all fiction so we can speculate any way we want. I just can’t help it. Being called ugly and worthless all my life, I feel for him.

Thanks everyone for helping me find Falling for Gracie (which I love, despite the squirmy-embarassing moments)!

and I am so on the Single Diva Team. Just saying.

@SonomaLass:

I thought I was alone with that particular problem!! It’s good to know someone else can’t handle extreme second-hand embarrassment (great term, I’m stealing it).

I stole it myself, from fandom, so make off with it, by all means! *g* I, too, thought I was alone in having second-hand embarrassment for fictional characters, until I discovered fellow sufferers when I got into online fandom. There are lots of TV shows and movies where I have to half-watch certain scenes because characters are humiliated or embarrassed. For example, I literally have not watched the Dazed and Confused scene where Mike gets beat up at the party since I saw the movie in the theatre 17 years ago. I always fast-forward through that scene; it makes me too uncomfortable to watch.

@Chicklet and SonomaLass:

Does that mean that squirm humor is a no go for you in general? Things like the Office and Extras? Or is there something different about reading extreme second hand embarrassment?

@Chicklet and SonomaLass -

I can be like that too. Not always, mind you, but sometimes I just can’t take it. Even if it’s something I’ve seen before like some bone headed thing Barney does on The Andy Griffith Show.

My pet second hand embarrassment:
When “The New Mrs. DeWinter” comes out with the same costume as the dead Rebecca in Rebecca (book or movie), I have a tendency to cover my eyes. It’s just too terrible.

Some people yell, “Get out of the house!” at horror movies. I yell, “Don’t listen to Mrs. Danvers!” at Rebecca.

Let’s not even discuss Carrie.

JamiSings, whenever I think of Erik, I remember this line right here:

“He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

It always makes me sad for him. And then that makes me think of a book that was an apocryphal prequel (who’s title I totally don’t remember) that went something like:

“Such a little thing really, a kiss ... most people don’t give it a moment’s consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh that is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right. I’ve lived on this earth half a century without knowing what it is to be kissed ... and I’ll never know now.”

As I remember it, Christine was a bit on the not so bright side (yes? no?). The Persian and Erik were about a million times more interesting than Christine or Raoul.

@Star - Yeah, Christine was actually your typical dumb blond. (Another thing Weber changed. Christine is described as having blue eyes and honey blond hair.) She was also near sighted. There’s a scene in the book from when she and Raoul were children about them looking for fairies and she could “see” them because she was so nearsighted that things far off looked blurry. So she was suppose to be really innocent even though she was an opera singer and an adult. (Honestly, someone might’ve tried something with her at some point if she was really so pretty.)

She really doesn’t wise up until after she sees Erik unmasked and up close. Loses her innocence in that moment.

One of the best alternative versions of Phantom I read was called The Angel Of The Opera. It was a Sherlock Holmes-Phantom crossover. (It’s also the best non-Doyle Holmes I ever read.) Holmes sees Erik as someone deserving sympathy and Christine as a fool.

When I was a teenager I used to daydream that I was one of Erik’s mysterious helpers. (There’s suppose to be other people who have lived their entire lives under the opera house, though we never see them.) Loving him in secret while he chases Christine.

How sad is that? I was a loser even in my daydreams.

@Polly:

Does that mean that squirm humor is a no go for you in general? Things like the Office and Extras? Or is there something different about reading extreme second hand embarrassment?

It really depends on the movie/show in question; I’m usually fine sort of half-watching the scene if I’m also doing something else like knitting. Some properties that depend almost entirely on a character doing stupid/humiliating things (i.e., any Ben Stiller movie) are too much. I just avoid them. (Related: What is UP with that, Stiller? Do you get off on humiliating yourself?)

Books are almost easier, because I can skim through the scenes quickly.

What is UP with that, Stiller? Do you get off on humiliating yourself?)

Books are almost easier, because I can skim through the