A Werewolf in Manhattan by Vicki Lewis Thompson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


What can be more self-indulgent than a werewolf romance writer writing about a werewolf romance writer getting it on with a (hot, rich, super smart, practically a prince) werewolf?
Normally, I have a giant soft spot for self-indulgent novels.
I can even live (though not for long) with the whole ‘(reluctant) cinderella’ concept (as old and stupid as it is), where a woman suddenly needs to be introduced to all the riches and luxuries by some kind of protective prince charming, but she’s also going to bitch about it on every step. And with the overly-fantastical romance scenes. They do give me a toothache, but I can live with them as long as the book doesn’t take itself too seriously and there’s enough humor to cover it up.
So normally I would’ve given this kind of book a higher rating, if there wasn’t one substantial problem… of the main character turning from ‘egoistically stubborn’ to ‘utterly idiotic’ towards the end of the book. The whole ‘Werewolves are very much against being discovered by public. But I’m a writer so I’m going to remember every detail about their lives and write about it’ and ‘Now that I saw the real thing I will only want to write exactly how it is and you can’t censor me!’ <- is one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever read. She’s a fantasy romance writer for fluff’s sake, not a documentary journalist. The ‘I will write the reality and present is as fiction’ attitude is no better than plagiarism, it’s like saying ‘I don’t want to use my imagination anymore if I can just observe and describe you and then tell people I made it up’ and as a representation of a fantasy writer is frankly nothing but insulting. And then there’s also ‘oh, they took my laptop so I’m going to snoop around people’s private offices until I find it because I’m the most important one here!’ Seriously though, I know how it is to be hysterically protective of your writing laptop, but unless there was a valid possibility that people were going to go through it or destroy it before they could be stopped (which was not the case in the book), there’s no way any human being with a brain would’ve handled the situation the way the main character did.
Nothing turns me off and away from a book as characters who make me scream ‘why in hell do you need to be so stupid??!!’ in my head…
Also, on my quest of combing through all sorts of ‘comfort literature’, I’m getting increasingly sick and tired of the representation of heroines that makes you pity the heroes for having to put up with all the selfishness and blindness to everything but themselves…




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