Vulnerable by Amy Lane

Meet Corinne Carol Anne, otherwise known as Cory. Cory is a sad, chubby, little goth girl. She's also a bit on the white trash side of the fence and just happens to work the graveyard shift at a Chevron station. Cory, who absolutely hates herself, her life and her town, is not a very lovable character. She is rather on the pitiful side.

After a few paragraphs of smack talking and descriptions of herself as a tough chickie...the book veers right into statements that only halfway make sense and hint of knowledge but actually do not reveal anything. The writing tries to be verbose and mysterious but it just is confusing. Cory spouts off statements, like if I knew then what I know now...and all these back and forth jumbled thoughts that just left me in the dark, instead of gearing me up for the big reveal.

The second character is then introduced. Enter Arturo, a mexican fairie that works as a short order cook at Denny's. You see Arturo just happened to be an Aztec god in a former life, but now is content to be #2 to a sex fairie, and eek out a meager existing serving greasy bacon and sausage to humans - even though he himself is a vegetarian. Great character, well though out (sarcasm).

Arturo is described by Cory as someone she is definitely interested in romantically, but when he touches her, he opens something within her. He also inadvertently ignites some kind of elfstruck thing which has her itching for a day or two. This wasn't thought out also, because later in the book, elfstruck is said to happen when someone touches and elf/fairie without their consent. Arturo touches Cory and inadvertently opens her up to the whole world of the paranormal.

The book goes down hill from there. Arturo quickly moves form a romantic interest to a "brother", especially after she reacquaints herself with bad boy vamp, Adrian. The book then turns into erotica, with a bit of a plot thrown in there.

I did try to hang throughout this novel, and I hoped that maybe at some point it would make an upward turn. Once I made it halfway through the novel I knew, there was no way this book could redeem itself. For one, the editor should be flogged and then fired, but since this was self-published I'm figuring that she didn't have it proofed, because the writing was terrible. I WISH I COULD GET MY MONEY BACK. Here are two sentences from the book that show exactly how poor the writing was:

"On Friday, the twentieth, we decided that on Saturday night, Litha, the day before Midsummers Eve, we would to send Arturo and Phillip to Folsom, in the daylight, to leave a message that we would meet Crispin and Sezan's people by the slag heaps and rock quarries below the railroad, Midnight, the day after Litha."

"I almost ran into him, trying to it, the curled ends, the coarse, melted texture, and I felt tears, again, sliding down my face."

Secondly, the novel starts on in first person from Cory's POV. Later on throughout the book it switches to Adrian's first person POV - and then to a third character, Green it takes a 3rd person POV. Horrendous writing, bad grammar, childish characters...and it worsens and the "plot thickens."

Once we get into the meat and potatoes of the book it takes a nice little turn into debauchery, cloaked in pure wholesome pollyanna love. Cory's character morphs form a self-loathing little do-gooder, lets call her Bella - into a raunchy, lover of multiple men, whom I like to refer to as Anita. She strips the dye from her hair, the contacts from her eyes, loses some weight, dresses in GAP and now all of sudden she's some kind of weird paranormal creature. I never did figure out what she was, maybe you figure it out later in the series, personally I don't care, and I will not buy another one of these books.

There is a reason Amy Lane self-published, no one would touch this book. I can't even comprehend why so many reviews gush over this novel, but hey opinions are like...you know what I mean. I'm upset that I paid 10 bucks for this, but since it was such a terrible read it took me a week to get through, normally I read a book in 2-3 days, which averages to about 25 bucks a week...so thanks Ms. Lane for saving me 15 bucks. In tribute to you, I will not proof this review.

8.25.09 Please see the post for Tuesday, Aug 25 for the author's response to this review.