Book Review: The Poposal by Jasmine Guillory

Jasmine Guillory has an endearing ability to take you home with her tactile writing and scene incorporation. I was feeeeling summer heat at the ball park from page one. Which came as a welcome contrast to the frost-bitten climate I’m presently caged in.

The Proposal has the ability to really shake-up gender stereotypes, which in retrospect, I admire greatly. The romance genre has a code of clichéd stereotypes strong enough to burst a steel bodice. Okay, I don’t really know what that means, but it sounded good. It just plain feels nice to see someone buck the trend.

With that in mind, I worked to keep my bias in check through chapter one. But after chapter two, I still wasn’t a fan of the main female character. I found myself wondering, if this were about a guy who hated doing things his girlfriend did, hated hanging out with her friends, and admitted that he obviously wasn’t with his sexy girlfriend for the conversation skills, I would have thrown the book against the wall. Which is incredibly more difficult to do with the kindle version.

I read on however, searching for redeeming qualities, but I came up empty-handed after the main character shows no hurt for being ridiculed, and outright laughs at her love interest when he tells her off for humiliating him at the ballpark.

I’d like to say that I kept the candle burning for this book in hopes of the female character evolving into a wonderful, caring individual, but I’m afraid my interest didn’t carry much further than the first few chapters.

The Pretend Achiever Routine

The New York Times recently published an article on how "achievers" manage their morning routine. Being a pretend achiever--a wanna be achievie-oso, if you will, I gave the article a quick once over.

I found that I was so far off the norm (no surprises there) that I decided I'd like to reach out in search of others that may have similar morning habits. My fellow wierdos, I got you!

The article states, the choices you make the moment you wake up will influence your entire day. Fair enough, I'll buy that. But my choices are determined by how well I manage to convincingly bribe myself with a promise of sleeping in on the weekend. Or with food. Food works. Special K with strawberries will get me out of bed.

Stumbling into the bathroom, the searing light that assaults my eyes makes me want to vampire hiss at the mirror. But then I realize true vampires don't have reflections, and mine is scowling back at me, more werewolf-to-the-light-socket than vampire. This hair...

My cat jumps on the bathroom counter and yowls good morning when I enter the bathroom. I wonder how she conquers her high cat achievement goals. Especially after the wild night of murdering the carpet, the couch, then more carpet, and puking on the rug. How do I know this? I heard it. All of it.

Back to the article though... Apparently being a achiever includes doing something that energizes you, which for me, includes the fervent argument of whether or not to go to the gym. I abandoned the public gym years ago, in favor of managing my awkward gym fails at home. This means my gym is less than one minute and sixty-five steps away. But the struggle lives! Shuffling down the creepy staircase to four walls of frigid concrete is only energizing if your imagination is alert.

Alert enough to decide the alpha werewolf is waiting with a machete because he wants his hairdo back.