Some of you might remember my… lets say ‘mixed’ feelings about Maitresse P’s book ’22’s Diary’. The book contained some good material, but was fatally hampered by poor presentation, terrible formatting and even repeated tracts of text. As a diary it also suffered from a lack of being organised into ‘entries’ and so it was equally as confusing as it was infuriating to read, which was a shame, because there was some good parts to it…
There was also a couple of other things which seriously got on my nerves, one the retraction of names got so ridiculous that at some parts it was impossible to know who was being spoken about, but the worst thing of all was the substitution of the word ‘always’ when the author used the word ‘just’. And this author used the word ‘just’ all the fucking time.
Imagine this simple passage…
“I’m just off to the shops to buy a packet of crisps and then I just need to grab a paper and nip down the road, it’s just that I need to get some money from the cash machine… I won’t be long just wait here for me…”
As…
“I’m always off to the shops to buy a packet of crisps and then I always need to grab a paper and nip down the road, it’s always that I need to get some money from the cash machine… I won’t be long always wait here for me…”
Imagine that for page after page after page. I can’t believe I actually bothered to stick with it… indeed, I returned it to Amazon once I’d read it because I knew I couldn’t bear to read it again.
So I was rather surprised when the author posted a comment on my blog thanking me for reviewing the book and promising that the follow up was better written, and so here we are… though if it wasn’t for the fact that my credit card gives me Amazon vouchers every month then we probably wouldn’t be to be honest!
So, first impressions aren’t great. Once again the spine and back are plain white, suggesting little care has been taken with the presentation. However, a brief flick though suggests a little more care has been taken with the editing. So that’s good.
Opening the book, I did unfortunately fall straight on something which bugged me in the first book though, but I won’t go into that again (well, maybe later!).
I’ve decided to write this review as I go along. I’ve read about fifty pages now and I have to say, this book is definitely better than the first one. So far there’s been almost no editing errors, no duplicated pages, and the names are present which makes it so much easier to follow what’s supposed to be going on.
Not that it’s all 100% clear, this still reads like random entries in a diary, and sometimes there are bits that appear out of the blue and make no sense regarding the rest of the story. But overall this is a massive improvement, and is a lot more enjoyable to read, which is a relief, because ’22’s Diary’ was the single most annoying book I have ever read in my life!
It’s hard to explain this book, it’s not really something you would read while masturbating. It doesn’t really describe sex like erotic fiction does… it’s more about the dynamic between the husband and wife, which does have an effect on you when you read it but isn’t like one of my stories (for example). There’s a lot of ‘texts’ and ’emails’ between the two and a lot about the ‘angst’ of the husband as 22 pushes him to prove his devotion to her, I guess it would depend a lot on what you’re looking for as to whether this book will appeal. I find it interesting and stimulating rather than overtly arousing. I will read some more and see how things progress.
I’m about half way through the book now and I’ve still only spotted three or four typos, which is not good, but given the state of the first book… it’s a massive improvement. I think at one point someone has used ‘find and replace’ to insert the name Franco instead of Frank, because on one page it says ‘We need to have a Franco discussion’.
But anyway, minor quibbles aside, this book is oddly readable, and almost makes me want to read the first one again – except if I did I know it would annoy the crap out of me. Would you be able to read this one without having read ’22’s Diary’… I guess you could, but it would make a whole lot more sense if you’d read the other one.
The book has taken a left turn somewhere along the way and the dynamic of the relationship between 22 and her husband has changed. She ends up in rehab after disappearing to score heroin and spending a couple of nights in a motel with a dodgy character who steals her car…
So yeah, not exactly jerking material… as I mentioned earlier.
I suppose it’s a testament to the strength of the story though that it remains intriguing and readable despite it’s shortcomings. As the book goes on the way it’s presented becomes less of an issue, but there are still some random ‘diary’ entries which might leave you scratching your head now and again.
But mainly the frustrating side of it is that things are addressed in one email or text and then you kind of expect this to lead to a ‘scene’, but it never does. So you get a kind of ‘we need to talk about ‘x’ tonight’ and then maybe the next entry is an email saying ‘I wasn’t happy with the conversation last night’, but you kind of feel like you’ve been short changed – because you want to know how the conversation went…
I think if Maitresse P can ever truly get her act together, she could write a superb book. But I think it might take more than a couple of goes, this is certainly going in the right direction though, and I’ll keep on reading…
I’m still reading… I realise this is a rather odd way to review a book. I also realise I haven’t really told you much about what’s going on. So to summarise…
There’s a woman (called 22) who is married to a rich guy with a ‘smallish’ dick. He gets off on a certain amount of humiliation and being cuckolded, but also has other women sometimes. 22 is prone to pushing things and has a thing for black thug type guys with big dicks… she’s also prone to drug taking and getting drunk and making generally bad choices. I don’t want to say too much about the book because I don’t want to spoil it (in case somebody wants to read it), it sounds pretty awful from my description but it’s actually surprisingly engaging.
I’ve read some more now and the book is continuing it’s left turn… and is becoming less and less about the sex side and more and more about the trials of 22 and her husband’s relationship, as the two face up to the fact that maybe they would be better off without each other in their lives.
There was also a slightly odd moment when the author kind of broke the fourth wall somewhat. It says something about ‘thanks to all my readers’ and something else that leads me to think this is basically a printed version of someone’s blog…
Hmm..
My enthusiasm is waning somewhat, as the story is becoming a little wearing. I think I see where this is going and the third quarter of the book seems to be the set-up for the finale, but right now it’s a bit tedious…
It’s hard to know who you’re supposed to be rooting for since everyone is pretty unlikeable. Well, clearly you’re supposed to be rooting for ’22’ herself, but that’s kind of hard since although I guess the premise is that she’s the ‘wronged’ woman, she’s not a very sympathetic character.
I guess we’ll see where this goes, but right now I pretty much know this book is getting sold as soon as I finish it.
Still reading… but it’s becoming a slog now. There just isn’t enough actual ‘sex’ in this book. There’s even less than in the first one I think… there’s lots of talk about ‘what happened last night’ and ‘those niggas really tore up my white pussy’ (seriously)… ‘and he’s really hung and I’m so sore today’, but aside from a few very brief passages it’s all kinda ‘off stage’.
In general the editing seems to have maintained it’s quality, although it’s still not as good as it could have been (just add some fucking diary dates to separate the entries or something!) and there is a peculiar thing that starts occurring about half way through the book. I assume something has been accidentally ‘find and replaced’, because there is a repeated ‘odd’ use of the word ‘Tinder’.
It’s almost like a game, see if you can find the one word which actually fits all these sentences.
“I saw Tinder man today.”
“I saw Chad last night… we had Tinder…”
“She threw a cup at me, I mean it was only a Tinder cup, but even so…”
“I met ‘random guy’ for Tinder.”
At first I thought ‘Tinder’ was some colloquial term for ‘sex’, but I thought that a little strange given the nature of the book and some of the content. The second sentence suggests it means ‘dinner’, but what then is a ‘dinner cup’ and why is her friend called ‘Dinner man’, it doesn’t really make any sense.
And even less sense when later in the book 22 discovers actual ‘Tinder’… so what the fuck was she talking about before?
So I slogged through the last twenty pages or so and right at the end of the book, the very last few pages – we finally get something approaching a sex scene. The one thing this book needed, but it’s too little too late. If scenes like this had been peppered throughout the book it would have lifted it significantly, but alas no. I had to wade through 300 pages instead. Actually I don’t know how many pages there are in this book because it hasn’t got any fucking page numbers, why would it? FFS.
This book is frustrating, despite being an improvement on the first it’s still severely lacking in ‘content’ and still leaves far too much to the imagination. At one point the husband is told to get three golf balls, a new toothbrush and some mouthwash – presumably these form the basis of some perverse sex act – but we never find out what that is, because fuck you reader, you don’t need to know!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHH!
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