[Book Review] Doing It Right by MaryJanice Davidson

Song of the week:

Zoom by Fat Larry's Band.

Very simple but beautiful song. (definitely more beautiful than the book. Lol)
It fits the feeling I got when I was reading the first half of this book, coincidentally (as from Jared's point of view on how he sees the love of his life.) The melody is magnificent, and the synthesiser sound is very, very lovely. The beauty of songs in the 1980s simply cannot be matched....

Zoom, just one look and then my heart went boom
Suddenly and we were on the moon 
Flying high in the neon sky, oh
.....
Smack, just one kiss and I was outta whack 
All at once there was no turnin' back
Oh so far above the brightest star, oh...

You could play it and enjoy the music while reading the review!! Ha ha ha :D

~

Soooo, I was loitering around the COL section stealthily like a fool as usual when BAM! This book from the opposite shelf caught my eye (Literally. It was bright pink.) Apparently, this book is my first step to freedom from addiction to paranormal romance! (Not really, i'm just lying to myself.)
Anyway, I decided to try this, since the amount of historical and paranormal romances I've read far outnumbers the contemporary ones. Also, an attempt to curb my obsession with Immortals After Dark. (hee, hee)




This book is separated into two parts - 'Thief of Hearts' and 'Wild Hearts', each with different characters and storyline, but in the same universe. The individual storylines eventually link in the second part to give us a more complete and satisfying ending to the first (if you thought it wasn't satisfying enough per se.)
You have to read the book to understand the link between the characters (well, duh; I took a while to get it though)

Synopsis:

'Thief of Hearts'
Dr. Jared Dean can hardly believe he's watching the woman of his fantasies beating the crud out of the city's biggest, toughest mobster. Kara never meant for her latest revenge stunt to land the gorgeous doc on a hit list, but there's only one thing to do: guard Dr. Jared's extremely fine bod until she can figure a way out of this mess for both of them.

'Wild Hearts'
When free spirit Kathie Wechter meets car thief Chester "Chess" McNamara, she can't get the tall, devilish bad boy out of her mind -- or her heart. Chess knows that messing with the D.A.'s (District Attorney) sister is crazy, but Kathie's touch burns hotter than a V-6 engine going full out, and his thoughts are just turning downright illegal...





[Review]

Overall Rating : 2.5 / 5


I had to borrow this book twice. I even extended the loan time from 3 to 6 weeks the first time, but still couldn't complete it... Thief of Hearts (the first story) wasn't exactly effective in keeping my attention some of the time and some parts seemed to drag especially near the end. I was scraping through the ending only for the sake of finishing it and to not leave my poor soul hanging. Only when I borrowed it the second time (which happens to be today) to complete the entire book did I touch Wild Hearts.

As I've read from some reviews, many of the books MaryJanice Davidson writes are loaded with humour. Though a few attempts fell flat, I have to agree I was laughing like a silly fool to myself half the time while reading the book. The summary itself at the back (as above) already implies the light-hearted atmosphere prevalent throughout both stories. MJ-D often glosses over numerous scenes that would have been depressing or serious with funny dialogue and/or actions that never fail to make me laugh. It almost seems like she's mocking her own characters at times (in a good-natured way, of course) with her descriptions of them.

Thief of Hearts first:

"Do you know the story of how the wonderful Dr. Dean saved my only son from hideous death?"
"He probably would have been able to cough it up on his own," Jared mumbled. 
"Please tell me," Kara said politely.
"It's not that big a deal," Jared protested. 
Ishiguro ignored him. "There he was, my poor Yoshi, gagging and turning blue and staggering, and we pounded on his back and prayed an ambulance would come, when Dr. Dean leaped from his chair, over the table--"
"I did not."
"--And with a squeeze of his mighty arms--"
"For God's sake." 
"--forced the offending fish from my son's throat. Ah! He breathed, he lived, he is first in his class at Harvard Business, he is married and his lovely wife is pregnant with my first grandchild." 

I have no idea how this scene contributes to the overall plot and story, so I wouldn't consider it a huge spoiler there, but it sure made me laugh my ass off with my comedic vision of Jared flying over the table and saving the young boy with an intense expression on his face. The more silly you imagine it to be, the more you will laugh.

Thief of Hearts's premise is fundamentally clichéd (duh), but I really enjoyed the role reversal between the two leads. Kara is way more street-smart and agile than the bumbling and clumsy but sweet, sweet doctor Jared. And I prefer it that way. It's love at first sight for Jared when he sees her, not so for Kara though...
Jared isn't like most male leads I've read in books before that are usually cool, aloof and almost never show their shock -- he literally screams and squeaks when something catches him off guard, and does so very often (that I find extremely hilarious and love). He's a little childish, but not in an irritating way. He's quite possessive, but sweetly so. (Well, I guess i'm in love then.)

Kara is outwardly headstrong and tough though it's definitely not so inside, and she has many insecurities. I don't dislike/hate Kara, but there is something that constantly bugs me about her. She's fickle. Fickle is not good. A while she's thinking he'll only break your heart, Kara... and the next moment, SEX! Repeat cycle for about 5 times, and you basically get what happens in the story, minus fighting and awkward situations. She's the conventional contemporary romance heroine, plus a few tweaks here and there.

The story didn't make much sense half the time, and numerous parts of the story seemed to be thrown in from nowhere. I didn't understand how these parts actually served to lead up to the climax of the story. There is a main villain in each story, but when the confrontations do occur, they end up being anticlimactic. The romance aspect in this story is brushed over very easily. More efforts seem to be directed towards the sex/
Conflicts are essentially purely physical -- there are essentially no emotional conflicts between the two leads. (At least there was no third party. I hate third parties.) <Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night> The romance is perfunctory, no epiphanies, deep conversations or anything. Thief of Hearts is fast-paced, everything happens rather quickly, and you could almost say the characters don't really think much. They react. (Lol.)


Moving on to Wild Hearts: ~

I mentioned Thief of Hearts was fast-paced. Make this rocket-paced, then.
It's described as a 'tidy summary' to Thief of Hearts. Okay. Perhaps the reason for everything happening too quickly was due to the fact that.... errrh, I don't know. Is there a page/word limit MJ-D had to adhere to? Looking at the length of this story, it seems to me that either there was a limit, or the story was just written to 'fill the space'. I'm not criticising MJ-D, but it doesn't look like much effort was put into writing this story. (Not many stories are able to pull off a particularly striking romance in a day like Before Sunrise, you know.)

The synopsis-summary of Wild Hearts up there isn't accurate, or even close. (Okay, I was lazy to edit it myself. Deal with it.) The revelation of who he actually is comes very early in the story (well, considering it's ten chapters with 50 pages...). They're physically together throughout the story -- literally, for it happens in the span of twenty-four hours. That doesn't give much space for 'getting him out of her mind -- or heart' (at all.) Lastly, they don't actually 'touch' until the end of the story. I don't deny the 'illegal thoughts', however these thoughts are pretty mild anyway...

I couldn't decipher the personalities and traits of the characters either. It was like reading about supporting characters in a harlequin romance where they are largely if not completely undeveloped in terms of character. The only trait I could get from Kat (Katherine, the female lead) was that she was supposedly a daredevil and the 'black sheep' of her very uptight family. And the guy Chess is similar to Jared in terms of personality... oh dear. Hit the stock character alarm there.

The romance aspect here is the same. It's based on purely physical lust, and probably no real emotional connection between the two characters either. Humans are fickle beings, you know... The romance wouldn't last.

The redeeming factor: it was really, really funny. I couldn't stop laughing, a laugh every two pages. I finished it in an hour thanks to detention, and was giggling madly three-quarters of the time. Unfortunately, despite how funny and effective the book was in making me laugh, it wasn't enough to save it from the impending disaster in the romance sector. I'd read a comedy novel if I wanted laughs to redeem a book.

------

One important thing I noted about this book in general is that to actually enjoy it, you're not supposed to take the book seriously (at all). The scenarios and situations the characters are thrown into, the actions taken by the characters (including the very much useless villains) all show that the book is pretty much a tongue-in-cheek script written just for laughs. It's not realistic; the characters in both stories fall in love in an extremely short span of time (a day for Wild Hearts -_-), which made me wonder how long the relationship would actually last in reality -- but, the point here is, you're not supposed to wonder. You're just supposed to read this work of fiction, enjoy it, and perhaps have a few laughs along the way.

Overall, the sex was okay, enough to get a young girl heated up (I guess.) Descriptions were mostly effective and some scenes were downright ridiculously funny plus sexy. Not bad at all! MJ-D definitely has a great imagination with pickles* and all that... hahaha....

So, there we have it, Doing It Right.