{"id":12772,"date":"2019-08-26T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennytrout.com\/?p=12772"},"modified":"2019-08-26T13:00:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T17:00:41","slug":"jealous-haters-book-club-the-mister-chapters-thirty-two-thirty-three-and-acknowledgments-well-i-guess-that-explains-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennytrout.com\/?p=12772","title":{"rendered":"Jealous Haters Book Club: The Mister, chapters thirty-two, thirty-three, and acknowledgments. “Well, I guess that explains it.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have come now to the end of our journey together. Unlike our\u00a0Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> adventure, we’re closing this metaphorical chapter without any movie news. The books have fallen off the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> weekly bestseller list (at least, as much of that list as they show on their site). It’s out of the top 1,000 on Amazon. Don’t get me wrong;\u00a0The Mister<\/em>\u00a0was a hit.<\/p>\n

It’s just not a hit for E.L. James.<\/p>\n

So, will she write another book? Certainly not for whatever advance she received for this one. But since several commenters have pointed out that\u00a0The Mister<\/em>\u00a0borrows liberally from SnowQueens IceDragon’s other\u00a0Twilight <\/em>fic,\u00a0Safe Haven<\/em>, maybe the answer to whether or not we’ll be revisiting our favorite author again lies in whether or not she has some old fanfic lying around.<\/p>\n

I wonder what PBS Masterpiece Theater varnish she’ll slap on the next one.<\/p>\n

CW: Abuse apologia<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So, Mr. Demachi has just turned his shotgun on Moss and commanded him to marry Demelssia.<\/p>\n

Oh, Bab\u00eb, no!<\/em><\/p>\n

Alessia realizes that she hadn’t thought through her lie about the pregnancy. In a panic, she whirls away from from her shotgun-weilding father, desperate to explain the truth to Maxim. She doesn’t want to force him into marriage!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Manufactured drama like this always makes your characters look real stupid if you can’t justify why they’re having this reaction. We’re being asked to believe that there is some question as to whether the man who rushed to Albania to rescue her, who physically attacked a man for hurting her, who stood up to her father and mouthed off a bunch of shit\u00a0while the man was holding a gun<\/em>, actually loves her enough to want to marry her.<\/p>\n

As if these are the actions of a person who was just interested in dating around a little, maybe testing the waters.<\/p>\n

Since we all know the answer already, trying to wring out this last moment of suspense is cheap and makes Demelssia look like even more of a doormat that she’s already been made to look.<\/p>\n

But Maxim is sporting the biggest grin.<\/p>\n

Joy shines in his eyes, evident for all to see.<\/p>\n

His expression takes her breath away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The amount of, “Well, I give up!” on display here is astonishing.\u00a0This<\/em> is how she writes the climax of their romance? Three broad, store-brand, sentences?<\/p>\n

But wait. Just wait for the\u00a0romantic<\/em> proposal. After he dramatically gets down on one knee, Moss takes out the diamond ring.<\/p>\n

“Alessia Demachi,” Maxim says, “please do me the honor of becoming my countess. I love you. I want to be with you always. Spend your life with me. At my side. Always. Marry me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right. Do me the honor of taking the matching title to the one I allegedly don’t want but now clearly define myself with. Oh, and yeah, I love you and want to be with you. But I’m gonna lead off with that countess part because the wealth and status are what our author’s loyal readership really crave.<\/p>\n

Alessia’s eyes fill with tears.<\/p>\n

He brought a ring.<\/p>\n

This is what he came here to do.<\/p>\n

To marry her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, he came to return those sunglasses you left at his house, organized crime bosses be damned.<\/p>\n

He really does love her. He wants to be with her. Not Caroline. He wants her with him, always.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, the way this is written, he wants Caroline with him, always. But I have a little writing tip: if you want to give your heroine a romantic rival, it’s better if The Big Misunderstanding™ about isn’t “I saw her in a shirt at his house before we were together,” and “I saw them hugging on the street.”<\/p>\n

Even if we take into account the whole “Albanians don’t really do PDAs” thing that would have maybe convincingly made the hug a BFD, we’ve heard too much about how well-versed she is in American culture for that moment to have ripped her apart and<\/em> Moss already rescued her from kidnappers once.\u00a0There is no suspense here for the reader because there was never any point at which they would have truly believed Caroline is a threat.<\/p>\n

PS. Caroline is Tanya from the Denali clan who had her sights on Edward in Twilight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, of course, Demelssia says yes and Moss jumps to his feet and lifts her into his arms and we go into his POV.<\/p>\n

“I love you, Alessia Demachi,” I whisper. Setting her down, I kiss her. Hard. Closing my eyes. I don’t care that we have an audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fairness, it would have been weirder if you kept your eyes open, making deliberate visual contact with all these people.<\/p>\n

Right now. Here. In Kuk\u00ebs, Albania, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Happiness? In Albania? In this economy?<\/p>\n

So, they stand there frenching for an uncomfortably long moment until her father clears his throat and motions them apart by\u00a0threatening them with his shotgun.<\/em><\/p>\n

No shit, he points a shotgun at his presumed pregnant daughter and the man who just proposed to her.<\/p>\n

Mr. Demachi is confused about the countess thing, and the translator tries to help. A couple things about the translator:<\/p>\n

A few people brought up how fucking weird it must be for the translator to be sitting here during all this violence and people drawing guns. Now, a marriage proposal involving English nobility.<\/p>\n

And this whole time, his girlfriend is waiting at the car<\/p>\n

He’s going to have to try to explain all this shit to her on the ride back and she’s going to be so perplexed that she won’t know whether she’s angry she missed it or angry that her boyfriend was put into this danger in the first place or both. There is going to be shouting in this car on this long ass ride. Some of it will probably be directed at Moss and Tom.<\/p>\n

Anyway, remember when I said the thing about how we didn’t need the whole backstory of these minor characters and that was shitty writing and ha ha, E.L. James, what a shitty, shitty bad writer you are?<\/p>\n

I had to look up something in one of my own books for consistency and I did the exact same thing. I have this character who I must have found real interesting because I gave him a husband and a passion for surfing and all sorts of details that were fully unneeded because he’s just a random guy the hero is talking to at work in a conversation that is only there to get interrupted by an emergency.<\/p>\n

I was like, “Fuck an IceDragon. Jenny, you hackpocrite.”<\/p>\n

Hackprocrite\u00a0<\/strong>(noun): One who criticizes faults in the work of others while being guilty of those same faults, themselves.<\/p>\n

But just to be clear?\u00a0The Mister<\/em> still completely sucks. There’s no escaping that, even if the criticism is coming from an unreliable narrator here.<\/p>\n

To get Mr. Demachi to understand what a count is (because Demelssia refers to Moss being a count), the translator references Lord Byron.<\/p>\n

“Like Lord Byron?” Thanas asks.<\/p>\n

Byron?<\/em><\/p>\n

“He was a baron, I think. But he was a peer, yes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is my favorite part of this book, hands down. It really, really is. When I first read it, I squealed with the most malicious delight.<\/p>\n

Friends.<\/p>\n

The woman who claims to have done such in-depth research on Albania. The one who\u00a0bragged<\/em> about her expertise and the painstaking steps she took to portray the country faithfully.<\/p>\n

Didn’t bother to look up whether or not there were counts in Albanian nobility.<\/p>\n

There are.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Wait. It gets so much better.<\/p>\n

If you read that article, you find out that the title was reserved for Albanian nobility in Italy. How did the Albanians end up in Italy? Skanderbeg, the Albanian hero we learned about last semester. Referenced in that article as “founding father of the Albanian nobility and nation.”<\/p>\n

This is the\u00a0second<\/em> Google search result for “counts in Albanian nobility.” Third for, “are their counts in Albanian nobility.”<\/p>\n

She didn’t even google it. She just assumed that Albanians, with the rich history she painstakingly researched all the way back to the 1960’s, wouldn’t understand noble titles.<\/p>\n

And…<\/p>\n

And.<\/p>\n

She actually has\u00a0Demelssia use the word “count” instead of “earl.”\u00a0In Albanian.\u00a0<\/em>She says she’s a “Kont,” which I phonetically agree with. So writing the Albanians not understand what a count is despite using the Albanian word as an equivalent to earl to explain it to them is just…chef’s kiss. You’ve outdone yourself, SQID.<\/p>\n

And it. gets. so much better. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Back in the story, Tom makes a crack about this being a great tale to tell their grandchildren and Mr. Demachi breaks out drinks\u2013but just for the men, because horrible patriarchal Albanian backward peasants, am I right?\u2013while Moss once again describes Demelssia the way men talk about their “missing” wives to the local news before confessing to the murder.<\/p>\n

She shines. Her smile. Her eyes. She takes my breath away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then they toast and Mr. Demachi announces that Moss and Demelssia will be married in a week.<\/p>\n

And that’s the end of a\u00a0three page chapter.<\/em><\/p>\n

We stay in Moss’s POV as we go into the final chapter of the book. A chapter that really didn’t need to be its own chapter so I’m not sure why the hell it is. According to my kindle, it’s only four pages, anyway.<\/p>\n

Moss watches Demelssia run to her mother.<\/p>\n

They embrace and cling to each other as if they’ll never let go, and both begin to silently weep in that way women do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know. In that way. The kind of way where women cry. That kind of woman crying.<\/p>\n

It’s…affecting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Try to sound less impressed by your bride’s tearful reunion with the mother whose life she feared for.<\/p>\n

Then Demelssia approaches her father and Moss is like, ready to fight him again, just in case.<\/p>\n

I hold my breath, poised to intervene if he so much as lays a finger on her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t mind heroes who are willing to commit violence to protect the heroine. I do mind heroes who constantly remind us that they would commit violence to protect the heroine, especially in moments where the tension has broken and things seem somewhat resolved.<\/p>\n

Demelssia, however, has a touching moment with her abusive father who she once feared would kill her.<\/p>\n

Demachi raises his hand and gently holds her chin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That sentence comes directly after “so much as lays a finger on her,” and I laughed out loud imagining Moss tackling Mr. Demachi to the ground.<\/p>\n

“Mos u largo p\u00ebrs\u00ebri. Nuk \u00ebsht\u00eb mir\u00eb p\u00ebr n\u00ebn\u00ebn t\u00ebnde.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Alessia gives him a timid smile, and he leans down and kisses her forehead, closing his eyes as he does. “Nuk \u00ebsht\u00eb mir\u00eb as p\u00ebr mua,”\u00a0<\/em>he whipsers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, her father said not to leave again because it’s not good for her mother, and then he added that it’s not good for him, either.<\/p>\n

I look at Thanas, waiting for his translation, but he’s turned away, giving them this moment\u2013and I think maybe I should, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, first of all? Thanas isn’t a sign language interpreter. He can listen to them speaking Albanian even if his back is turned.<\/p>\n

Second, WHY ARE WE GETTING THIS ABUSE APOLOGY BULLSHIT? This man\u00a0sold his daughter.<\/em> Not even sold! Put her up as permanent collateral on a loan! She ran away because she thought her choice was to either marry an abusive guy or be murdered by her abusive father!\u00a0HER MOTHER HELPED HER ESCAPE THE COUNTRY TO PROTECT HER FROM HER FATHER AND “BETROTHED”.<\/p>\n

I just…<\/p>\n

You know what, we’re going to move along to the next scene, still in Moss’s POV. He’s laying in bed at the Demachi house, where he’s been forced to stay.<\/p>\n

I lie awake staring at the dancing, watery reflections on the ceiling. The patterns that form are so comforting in their familiarity that I grin. They mirror my ecstatic mood. I’m not in London, I’m at my soon-to-be-in-laws’, and the reflections are from the full moon, skipping over the deep, dark waters of Fierza Lake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recalling the Thames motif at this point does not work. It’s been too long since we’ve seen it. They spent too much time in Cornwall to make this anything more than a moment where the reader thinks, “Oh, right. The water thing.” It stops you rather than drawing you in emotionally.<\/p>\n

So, anyway, Demelssia sneaks into his room and gets naked. Sorry,<\/p>\n

I toss back the covers, and she slides into bed beside me, gloriously naked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to my Kindle’s search function, Demelssia is just downright fucking glorious.<\/p>\n