Category: tv reviews

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Marriage Vacation’ by Pauline Turner Brooks

Marriage Vacation

Marriage Vacation by Pauline Turner Brooks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“Marriage Vacation” by the fictional Pauline Turner Brooks is from “Younger” on TV Land, one of my favorite shows surrounding the literary industry, but this book was not what I expected from the Millennial imprint as in it’s not up to par.

Background on the show is it’s about Liza, a 40something woman who’s masquerading as a millennial at a publisher because she had trouble reentering the workforce after raising her daughter and going through a divorce. She works with Kelsey, an actual millennial, on the Millennial imprint that produces books targeted for millennials, but they took a chance on “Marriage Vacation” conveniently by their boss’ ex-wife, Pauline Turner Brooks. And now the novel is a best-seller — on the show.The book is about a woman similar to Pauline who abandoned her Upper East Side life along with her two daughters and publisher husband to save her sanity and found herself in the jungles of Thailand at a retreat. She spends her days helping a local doctor from Australia with her Doctors Without Borders clinic. She becomes besties with the doctor and the doctor’s younger brother as well as bonds with a refugee mother with two girls who’s looking for her husband in the city. So Pauline goes into the city to find the woman’s husband with the doctor’s brother. One thing leads to another as Pauline still tries to deal with her broken marriage.

The story itself is rather boring with the writing maybe a step up from mediocre but not exactly what I would call good though Pauline is a writer with an MFA from Columbia, which is something she struggles with because she abandoned her writing career for housewifery and motherhood. The premise sounded interesting via the TV, and with how the show promoted it, I expected a better constructed story. I liked the emphasis of a mother becoming overwhelmed with sacrificing her dreams for her family. The book does give insight of the Myanmar refugee crisis in Thailand and other useful information, but I had hoped Pauline experienced a more entertaining adventure.

View all my reviews

Categories
what's lit

The ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Well-Read Black Girl Storyline

Netflix

Halloween weekend bingeing was at its height with the premiere of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, the latest incarnation of the beloved Archie Comics character, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. While Sabrina battles demons living in the mortal world as a half-witch, the show managed to insert a well-read black girl storyline.

Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) is adjusting to high school in the mortal realm with her three friends, who are conveniently battling their own demons: Susie (Lachlan Watson) is being bullied by the football players for identifying as nonbinary, Harvey (Ross Lynch) is reconciling flashbacks of a demon he had seen as a child in his father’s mines, and Roz (Jaz Sinclair) is trying to read as many as books as she can before she loses her vision to a degenerative eye condition.

When a black girl appears onscreen in a recognizable story, I get excited. Especially when the comically sweet ’90s Melissa Joan Hart version of the TV series spent a season disastrously failing to make Sabrina have a black friend named Dreama. So seeing Roz in the new Sabrina was a great surprise, and even greater when she asked the school administration to incorporate Toni Morrison’s classic, The Bluest Eye, into the literature curriculum.

The administration says no. Of course, this upsets Roz. She asks Principal Hawthorne why students can’t read such a masterpiece, and the principal rattles off other books not allowed in the curriculum such A Clockwork Orange. Roz leads the gang to the school library where they look for books they feel should be there but can’t find them. The librarian tells them a “purge of bad books” had occurred years ago.

Devastated, Roz later confides in Sabrina and Susie that she’s losing her vision — the reason why she’s fighting for the books. But in a turn of events, Sabrina’s secret witch teacher Mrs. Wardwell helps the girls organize a secret banned book club. 

Schools across the country are still dealing with banned books. This year’s list of banned books can be found here. Many books are by marginalized writers with content surrounding race, culture, sexual orientation and other so-called controversial issues. This clever statement of a storyline spans a few episodes but eventually does get swallowed by the demon haunting of the characters. 

Categories
what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: #LizaToo

TV Land

TV Land’s literary dramedy Younger returned tonight to kick off its fifth season, and finally goals have been reached and secrets have been spilled with the #MeToo movement looming in the background.

Younger is about a 40-something woman posing as a millennial at a publishing house after becoming a divorced empty nester. So her life is a lie.

The episode starts with the Empirical Press’ knockoff George R.R. Martin character Edward L.L. Moore having a soon-to-be-released series surrounding a scantily clad “Game of Thrones”-like princess. But it turns out he directed a sexually charged comment to a female fan in his made-up language at an event. When Liza realizes she would have to dress up again like the princess for Comic-Con, she remembers the author had made some crude remarks to her in the past as well. 

Meanwhile, the Millennial imprint gets snubbed on the “Marriage Vacation” novel with an Empirical badge on the spine. The novel is written by the estranged wife of Charles, the senior editor at Empirical, who Liza is clandestinely in love with though Liza worked with his wife on the book. And the novel is real complete with the fictional author’s name on the cover. 

image

TV Land

Amid the book announcements, the company has to undergo sexual harassment training. Before the session, Liza, like in many episodes, runs into someone who knows her as a suburban New Jersey mother. It turns out to be her daughter’s roommate’s father. At the salad restaurant near her office. So it’s no surprise when the father shows up as the lawyer conducting the training back at her office. She hides under the desk and crawls out to the restroom. 

At Comic-Con dressed as Princess Pam-Pam, Liza receives another crude remark from L.L. Moore. As she assembles other women dressed in the same outfit who were previous princess performers, she asks the group if they heard any off-color comments from the legendary wheelchair-bound 60-something author. They say yes. So Liza breaks the news to Charles, and since it doubles down on the earlier accusations, he postpones the book in front of the fans upset by the turn of events. 

Though the princess series is canceled, Liza finds a way to alter the three-month Times Square advertisement to promote “Marriage Vacation” instead. But L.L. Moore, busy with his legal team, does an investigation on his accusers and presents evidence to Charles. With Liza’s birth and marriage certificates in hand, Charles can’t believe the millennial publishing assistant he’s fallen in love with is actually an age-appropriate liar. 

Liza’s secret is revealed! 

To Charles, the boss she’s in love with! But, of course, the episode ends, so Liza’s reaction to be continued. 

Categories
what's lit

‘Jane The Virgin’ TV Review: Chapter Seventy-Three

Michael Desmond / The CW

After a hiatus on the book-related themes, CW’s Americanized telenovela Jane the Virgin returned to having Jane go into crisis mode over being a published author. This time, she’s dropped by her publisher then eclipsed by the book offer her son’s father’s other baby mama gets.

The episode starts with Jane announcing to her family that her publisher dropped her since her first book wasn’t selling (the episode of her mediocre reviews was a few months back) to the point where the publisher declined the option for a second one.

This storyline is all too real as the success of being an author, or even publishing that second book, is low. 

Then Jane’s rant turns to the hardship of being a published woman of color author. “We don’t get a second chance like our peers,” Jane cries. Again, too much truth. As a novelist querying my work, it’s disheartening to see authors — sometimes 50+ — on a webpage of a literary agency with everyone being white except maybe one racially ambiguous author. 

But Jane recovers! Rafael, her son’s father as she was artificially inseminated which is the premise of the show, gets his ex-wife, Petra, to hook Jane up with a meeting with a book agent friend. At the meeting, she fails to capture the book agent’s attention with her first two ideas in the romance genre — one with reincarnation and the other with vampires — rejected because they already had authors writing those ideas. Then she comes up with a “Fifty Shades of Grey”theme with a character reversal of the heroine starting the erotic adventures. The book agent says sure to the idea until Petra appears. 

Petra is also Jane’s hotelier frenemy. The book agent recalls her Ocean Drive feature to his business partner, and they coin her the “non-evil Ivanka” while casually offering her a lifestyle book deal. 

Of course, this creates a rift between Jane and Petra since Jane is already a published author who had writing dreams forever while Petra has never written. As Petra tries to make peace with her “moral compass” Jane, she offers the gig to ghostwrite her book. Jane agrees. This again happens to authors where the second book idea still needs baking so they take a ghostwriting job in the meantime to pay the bills. 

Will Jane actually do the ghostwriting? Will Jane’s second book idea come to her in the next episode? Will her old publisher somehow change its mind and take her back? Stay tuned. 

Categories
what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: The Gift of the Maggie

TV Land

Though this week’s episode of Younger — the TV Land series surrounding a 41-year-old woman lying about her age to enter the publishing industry — was about main character Liza’s artist roommate Maggie slashing a millennial rival’s interpretation of her artwork, it really put a spotlight on the romance genre.

The episode started at a photoshoot for models posing for a romance book cover for a famed romance novelist who unexpectedly died in the previous episode. Then the conversation turned to finding her successor, or a ghostwriter to continue her stories under her moniker. Interviews ensue with all the wrong candidates until one walks in — a Columbia professor with kids heading to college — who expresses her wish to kill the HEA aka “happily ever after.”

At the art show where Maggie slashes her repurposed art, Liza runs into her ex-boyfriend Josh and asks that he stay in her life (even though she cheated on him last season). It inspired her to tell her boss Charles that readers need HEA. 

But does HEA need to be in every romance novel? 

Many argue yes. It’s a part of the formula of creating a romance story. With my next idea entering that genre, I came up with a new plan that would incorporate HEA, which has been nonexistent in my other stories. So it was a sign to start the romance novel sooner than later. 

Also, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books got a shoutout, so not only did viewers get insight on romance, they also learned about a new blog/podcast. 

Categories
what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: Post Truth

Younger / TV Land

TV Land’s Younger is a sophisticated dramedy about a 40-year-old recently divorced single mom who returns to the workforce to realize entry-level book publishing jobs are going to millennials, so she becomes one — by docking 14 years to become 26. This week was the summer series’ fourth season, and Liza has been lying about her age all this time but finally ’fessed up to her boss, 26-year-old Kelsey, as they head the Millennial imprint. But now that Liza is technically not a millennial, they have to collaborate amid the drama to make the public believe Liza can represent the brand.

The takeaway from the episode is the self-branding. Though Liza is not a writer, more of a writer hunter, she has to be attractive online for writers to find her. Her imprint signs millennial writers, so after one who’s an entertainment reporter discovered last season that Liza wasn’t honest about her age, she threatened to blackmail her — with forcing Liza to buy her novel told from the point-of-view of her labradoodle. Yeah, Kelsey turned that one down, but Liza saw her dream job slipping if her secret got out.

To throw other millennial writer sleuths off their trail of fabrication, Kelsey concocted a plan to create Liza’s online brand. She didn’t have one, which wouldn’t sit right with the average millennial. 

It’s the same way for writers to find book publishers and agents. We have to up our social media game in our obsessively connected world to find each other and get a feel for a personality through a screen. As Liza’s secret unravels, it’ll be interesting this season to see how it will impact the Empirical publishing house as a whole and the budding imprint for youngish writers. And if any self-branding mishaps ensue, writers should take note.

Categories
what's lit

‘Jane the Virgin’ TV Review: Chapter Sixty

Tyler Golden / The CW

After a weekslong break in the sultry telenovela spoof, Jane the Virgin returned with another author dilemma that agents and publishers just recently started talking about: social media.

Jane’s romance novel finally comes out to the tune of 10,000 units. This makes Jane nervous since, like most new authors, she assumed more books would be published. With the underwhelming number of books available, she worries about the marketing.

The marketing team tells her she needs to get book buyers with unveiling her dramatic life — from being accidentally inseminated with a hotelier’s sperm by the hotelier’s ob-gyn sister while a virgin to losing her police officer husband in a twisted drug ring scheme associated with the hotel. These events and more — as you can imagine — were documented in the local news, therefore her notoriety could attract readers. It’s not the classy way Jane wants to find an audience. 

Though Jane doesn’t want to share her life, her publisher tells her she needs to do just that through social media to get 20,000 followers to qualify for the Miami book festival. Yes, that many to talk at a book festival. And her social media channels are lacking, but luckily her father, a telenovela superstar with thousands upon thousands of followers, plans to help her. The romance department opens up for Jane with her father’s younger hot co-star actually getting her the followers by faking a public breakup.   

The episode ends happily with Jane chatting about her life on stage with her favorite author, Maria Semple of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, autographing three books, and having 5,000 more books published.

Again, Jane’s novelist life comes together so well with some real-life hiccups. When I heard the advice from literary agents about upping social media to market your book last year at the Los Angeles Times book festival, I couldn’t believe the added amount of work to be an author. It’s a new phenomenon to use social media to fetch book sales, even before there’s a book. Modern technology makes life harder sometimes. Now, back to Twitter to see if my latest post attracted any followers. 

Categories
what's lit

‘Jane the Virgin’ TV Review: Chapter Fifty-Six

Scott Everett White / The CW

The CW’s “Jane the Virgin” is one of my fave TV series about an aspiring novelist. In its third season, main character Jane Villanueva had a normal trajectory to novelhood with being a student then a teacher then a literary agent assistant while mostly being a hotel waitress. Magically, last week after finishing her romance novel based on her dead husband, she gets a book deal. Now, her career really sounds like made for TV. 

Within one episode, she turned her work into an author showcase and received a book deal totaling $50,000. What she does wrong seems like a teachable moment: Don’t quit your day job until you cash every check.

Despite her luck, Jane doesn’t seek consultation about the financial side of the deal and quits her job with the demanding literary agent she’s been working with only for a few episodes, or technically a span of three years. When the publishing house sends the contract of the breakdown of the money, she learns it’s not all in one check but in increments over time until the book is published. 

Crisis mode. She needs her job back. Cycling with her ex-boss and making the extravagant promise of luring an author back to the firm doesn’t work. In the end, she’s back to waitressing at the Marbella hotel. It’s an easy fallback choice with familial connections, but she had a desirable position for a budding novelist. She messed up. Or the effect of her error may melt away once the book is published in a year, or at the end of the season this spring in TV time. 

The telenovela-inspired show likes to factor frantic moments into Jane’s life, so this book deal may see more dings before blossoming into her dream.