A Girl Walks into a Bar

author: Helena Paige

A Girl Walks into a Bar is a choose your own romance book, and I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe this format either isn’t for me, or doesn’t particularly work in the genre. I’ve reviewed two similar books in the past. One, I hated. Another was cute and fun, but the awesome options were heavily skewed toward one direction.

The first decision you’re asked to make in A Girl Walks into a Bar is what type of underwear you should put on to meet your friend Melissa at a bar. The options are something comfy, a control top pair, a g-string, or go commando. It was also the first cringe I gave the book.

Because you make choices that affect your “character,” it’s hard to get a romance from start to finish in the traditional sense. There’s no “plot” and the choices typically end up in sexual situations. So I’d label this story as more of a “choose your own erotic scenario.” There are a breadth of characters from a sexy photographer, a charming bartender, and a mysterious bodyguard. Plus, there are heterosexual and lesbian pairings. The variety is probably the best aspect of the book.

Where it fails for me is how it seems to try so hard. A lot of the scenes and interactions reminded me of soft-core stuff you’d see late at night on HBO or Cinemax. It was like The Red Shoe Diaries in book form, which isn’t a label I’m using to deride the book. But everything felt shallow in the sense that each interaction with a potential partner read more like a cliche fantasy. For example, you meet a woman in the bathroom at a bar and she sexily helps fix your eyeliner. She hands you a flier for an art exhibition. If you decide to go, you realize the woman you met in the bathroom is a photographer and her exhibition consists of photos of nude women. Lots of up close vagina shots and the photographer alludes to sleeping with her models. Do you see what I mean? Step by step fantasy fulfillment, but not much character development.

That being said, the one bright moment was dramatically reading the options aloud to my boyfriend and letting him choose. Maybe save this one for drunken, party fodder when you’re all tired of playing flip cup.

– Amanda

Romance

Elements: Fire

author: Taneka Stotts

Elements: Fire is an anthology of short comics by creators of color. All of the art is in black and white, with red accents. The result is visually striking and gives the anthology cohesion while also demonstrating a variety of art styles. All of the stories involve speculative fiction, including non-European-based fantasy and some “smash the dystopia” style science fiction.

The best thing about this anthology is that it showcases so many artists and writers. There are twenty-three stories, and all of the writers and artists were new to me. The stories are rich in visual and artistic storytelling, and intensely empowering. Most of the protagonists are women. Not all involve romance, but several do.

Unfortunately, all of the stories are just a few pages long. It was hard for me to get involved in any one story because by the time I got into it I was done. Standouts included “Breathe” by Kiku Hughes, “A Burner of Sins,” by Jy Yang, the very funny “‘D’ is for Dunkin’ and Doughnuts,” by Orunmilla Williams, and the sweetly romantic “Red Light,” by Aatmaja Pandya.

Even though the stories were too short to get me emotionally invested in them individually, the anthology as a whole was a great starting point for me in terms of expanding my reading. I expect to return to it often, looking for new artists to follow!

– Carrie S

Science Fiction/Fantasy, Comic, Graphic Novel

The Vanishing Season

author: Joanna Schaffhausen

The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen is a psychological thriller with a twisty-turny beginning, but a failure to stick the landing. Trigger warning for rape and violence.

Ellery Hathaway is the only living victim of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. Now an adult, and a police officer, Ellery has changed her name and moved to tiny Woodbury, MA where no one knows about her terrifying past. Then three people vanish from her small town, each on the same date in July (Ellery’s birthday). They don’t appear to be linked and all three are individuals that the police can easily dismiss as runaways (an alcoholic, a woman in a controlling relationship, a man with suicidal ideation). Ellery suspects they are linked, however, and when someone sends her a horrific package with Coben’s calling card inside, she starts to wonder if the past has come back to haunt her.

So, that all sounds great, yes? It really is, until you get to the middle of the book. My big issue is that even when it was clear that there was a link to Coben, Ellery didn’t divulge her true identity to the police handling the investigation. She did have an FBI agent (the one who found her many years ago) working with her, but keeping her identity and link to the serial killer a secret meant she was hindering the official investigation. I understand that Ellery doesn’t want to be forever known as a victim, but she’s putting people’s lives in jeopardy by not being honest. Like people who have been kidnapped. People who might be murdered because she wanted privacy. It felt so irresponsible and drove me so nuts that I ground my teeth through the last half of the book.

Regardless, this book isn’t for the fainthearted. There’s dismembered body parts, references to rape, violence, necrophilia and, yeah, dog in jeopardy

So this is really a book for hardcore thriller fans. Unfortunately the main character’s behavior kept me from really engaging.

– Elyse

Mystery/Thriller