Hand In Glove by Anne Stuart
My rating: 2/5 cats
hand in glove, the sun shines out of our behinds. no, it’s not like any other love, this one is different because…of puppets. and nazis. and so many oversized t-shirts.
i was told to read this because it was terrible. and it is, but there is still an unexpected charm to it. it’s like opening a time capsule to the 80’s, with its reeboks and its tab soda, and its phil collins in the car’s tape deck (which means a character is listening to phil collins by choice) and its pageboy haircuts…
which i always thought was this:
but apparently, it is some kind of hairstyle that is long enough to braid. sexily.
if you have it in you to track down a harlequin intrigue from 1987, (# 59 ), then you should probably not read this review because i am operating under the belief that series romances; the numbered ones that come out monthly, which women will align their menstrual cycle with, and which are out of print in six months, are not the kind of thing one reads except during that six-month window. these are short, disposable, escapist nothings that have no lasting allure, so i’m just going to pretend we have all read it, although i will refrain from giving away the super duper big ending. just in case.
so this is our heroine:
who may look and dress like grace kelly, but she rebuilds cars in her spare time, and gets hired at the puppet factory (which is FIVE-STORIES!! for like nine employees!!) after she fixes the AC, getting her linen suit all greasy-lube-y in front of the boss. he admires her greasy face, mmmmm yeah.
and our hero is a hot puppeteer. hang on, let me GIS “hot puppeteer.”
yeah. pretty much what i thought.
so she’s a trilingual former gymnast bryn mawr graduate who comes from money and social standing, full of poise, whose occupation is… writing a fix-it column in the philadelphia mirror. kay. and one night she receives a call from her formerly close friend lacey, from whom she has grown apart, mostly because her friend is kind of slutty and insane with the married men and the irritating drama. and she’s all, “ryan smith is trying to killlll me!!” and judith is all, “dude, it’s three in the morning” and lacey is all, “no but killing me! scary puppet factory!!!” and judith is all, “you are bonkers, girl, seriously.”
and then lacey dies. at the puppet factory.
so judith decides to go all investigative girl reporter on the situation and singlehandedly find out who murdered this girl she doesn’t even really care about anymore.
and she may be able to fix any machine ever invented, but she’s a really shitty detective. who gets out of the pool and starts snooping around someone’s house in their bathing suit, not noticing what must be sheets of water sluicing off of her in order to so clearly mark her passage through the house in about twenty minutes time?? who repeatedly goes off on solitary walks and “business trips” with the main suspect, unarmed?? she is terrible at this.
as a mystery novel, it is pretty unsatisfying because, really, anyone can figure out who the naughty person is from the beginning. as a romance novel, it is perplexing because the first kiss isn’t even until page 156/253, and most of the time, the two romantic leads are largely avoiding each other suspiciously; without even any of the slow sexual tension buildup that would be expected in a book like this. and so when they do decide to fall in love, it’s a big “who cares…” but also – “why?”
here’s a fun game:
Q: what is, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…“??
A: this is what the gentleman says after he climaxes when they have sexual intercourse for the first time. (p. 191)
gross, right? but considering a lot of the courtship is enabled through puppets in this book, this is oddly less creepy just by comparison. yup. puppets. there is a lecherous dragon puppet who talks about the things he wants to do to all the ladies in the book, and a young boy puppet who “falls in love” with the ladies and flirts with them. but whoooo could be operating the puppets?? because it changes; no one knows who is behind the puppet’s woooooords. but no matter whose hand is shoved up in the body cavity, it is still creepy and gross and wrong. and people just have conversations with the puppets like it is a normal thing and not batshit crazy. but it is. it is batshit to casually talk about sex with a purple dragon puppet while you are scratching it on the head and its human operator is unseen and you aren’t even positive who it is at the time. and if the dragon puppet on the cover of this book is supposed to be the actual puppet from this book, there is no way that dude is a billionaire with his puppets in museums and a ton of merchandising rights. that is one shitty puppet.
not sexy.
this book also has nazis. and MPD. and a complete waste of real estate, both residential and industrial. please, property owners, make better choices…
there is so much wrong with this book, but it is not as hilariously wrong as i had hoped. it was just…blandly bizarre. i know i shouldn’t hold these monthly releases to any sort of literary expectations, but at the very least i would like that characters to make sense and be consistent.
it’s dumb. but harmless dumb.
and it was only a dollar.
but sarah montambo probably wouldn’t like it!
