Two Non-Reviews

Love at First Fright
by Nadia El-Fassi
Recommended Ages: 16+

This is not a review of this book. I'm not qualified to write one, because I didn't finish it. But since I put it down, I've slowly gathered resolve not to pick it up again. So in lieu of a review, informed by a complete read-through of the book, I'm just going to explain from my own personal perspective why I'm not going to review it. Maybe, if this concept seems to work, I'll try it out on a number of other books whose spines have been staring me out of countenance, with a bookmark sticking out of them, in some cases for years.

I picked up this attractive-looking novel at my small town's independent bookstore. I was intrigued by the concept of a "cozy paranormal romance," featuring a novelist who can see dead people (and pets), riding herd on the film adaptation of her horror novel, who at first objects to the dashing leading man who doesn't fit her mental picture of the character she created but with whom, against her will, she soon becomes infatuated. It had the hallmarks of a Hallmark Channel movie, with an added touch of ghostliness. I should have read a little more into the word "cozy" in the genre description, however. I'm a noob when it comes to "cozy" fiction and it's only slowly dawning on me that an essential part of the coziness apparatus is a tendency to prioritize representing fringe communities and identities over just telling a great story.

In short, apart from a certain steamy eroticism that overdelivered on my romantic expectations, this book (so far as I read into it) didn't deliver much at all on the spooky front. Meanwhile, it was so on-the-nose about its characters' lifestyle choices that I felt like I was being hectored at by the catechist of a sect whose morality is a retrograde-inversion of the moral code packaged with my faith. If you like, you can read this as the type of criticism that amounts to admitting the critic's blindness. But I'm not known for hurling books away from me on account of a non-heterosexual character or two. I do, however, think "cozy" should mean something better than badly structured, underpowered, and loaded with propaganda for cutting-edge gender ideology. Also, with a cast of characters as large as this book, my willing suspension of disbelief can only weather a certain percentage of individuals each representing his, her, or (choke) their unique shade of the kink rainbow.

It would have served me well if I had read the author's trigger warning in the foreparts of this book. Had I noticed there was a trigger warning at all, I might have hesitated to buy. But she did disclose that overcoming stigma, sextortion and homophobia were themes, as well as the whole dom-sub polarity that I find, after dipping my toe in, really makes my flesh crawl. Put that on me. No, I take that back; keep that off me and don't bother telling me where you do put it.

A couple weeks ago, I drove on impulse to the cineplex at the next larger city to the west of where I live, about an hour each way, just to see this movie, Roofman starring Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage. It's based on a true story that I heard about at the time it was in the news – about an escaped serial robber of McDonald's restaurants who hid out in a Toys'R'Us for, like, six months before being recaptured. Nobody happened to look inside the hiding place that he turned into a micro-apartment, despite a number of items disappearing from stock – including a steady shrinkage of Peanut M&Ms.

I can't exactly blame the movie for it, but at a certain point during the run-time – the scene where Tatum, dining out with members of a church group he has gotten involved with, faces a police officer who is skeptical of his claim to be an undercover agent – I decided I had seen as much of it as I cared to, and went home. Give or take a stop at Taco John's.

I can't put my finger on the reason I dropped out of watching the movie, despite paying full price to see it in a theater. It wasn't terrible. Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst are still looking nice after all these years. They have some good chemistry together. Peter Dinklage was adorably hateable. The situation had a certain pathos to it.

I guess it just made me squirm. The nervousness that ran through me as I watched Tatum's character floundering through his extended prison break started to vibrate at the precise frequency of the sensation that there must be something at home that I needed to take care of. I tried to talk myself out of it, but I finally caved in and left.

Previously, when I've done that, it was because I really hated the movie. That wasn't the case with Roofman. But I didn't love it enough to keep watching it, even when all it would have cost me to stay (over and above what it cost me to be there in the first place) was maybe another 45 minutes sat in a reasonably comfortable seat. It's mysterious. But if I were to assess this movie, based on my incomplete viewing, I guess the final verdict would be, "I just couldn't sit still through it."