Elizabeth Reyes, $2.99
Contemporary Romance, 2010
Forever Mine is a young adult romance set in high school, and I’m sad to report that it’s exactly what I feared it would be: it’s a wish-fulfillment story, operating on the premise that I am a fat, sexually frustrated, unpopular girl whose greatest desire is to read about a better version of my life – in a hotter body, of course – finally getting to nail that hot, popular jock that I have a crush on and am sure would love me back if those WHORES with their BIG BREASTS and SKINNY WAISTS didn’t keep throwing their SLUTTY hoo-hoos to corrupt these jocks and keeping them away from my sweet, sweet pure love… hold on, I’ll be right back.
Oh, right, I’m back. Phew! Killing those puppies with my bare hands sure helps to release all that pressure building up in me each time I think of those SLUTS running their WHORE HANDS over the sweet, tight, muscular abs of those jocks in high school, tainting those masculine temples of flesh with their PROSTITUTE breath and saliva and… hold on, I need a round two with those three puppies I set aside for this very occasion.
Okay, I’m really calm now. I love this story!
At least, that is probably my reaction if I were the very fat, sexually frustrated girl this story wants me to be. Alas, I’ve long outgrown my high school days – I was more on the nerd crew than the too cool for school set, mind you – and I actually think those days, good and bad, helped shape me to be who I am today, so I don’t really harbor much resentment about those days. Sure, I won’t be rushing to attend high school reunions because I won’t mind not seeing a few kids from those days ever again, but those days were bygones. Hence, I don’t need to resent beautiful, skinny women and I certainly don’t want to defeat them in the battle for that hot jock’s heart, so I’m afraid much of this story makes me roll up my eyes.
Right, right, the story. Our heroine, seventeen-year old Sarah, has to live with her aunt and uncle because her mother is going to jail. The gig is up when she arrives at her new school and immediately tells me how much she hates those skinny, hot, big-breasted girls that cling on to the muscular arms of those hot, hot, hot, hot, hot jocks because those girls are like… exist, you know, ugh. She doesn’t hate the jocks, you’d notice, and the reason is simple: she immediately spots the hottest jock in school and town, Angel Moreno, and starts doing the good girl version of that slutty dance where one twirls one’s legs like helicopter blades in action and shrieks for a man to hop on in.
Because she’s the heroine and hence automatically hot, sexy, beautiful, perfect, intelligent, et cetera without actually being aware of how perfect she is, she immediately has Angel sniffing at her. Other girls are jealous, Sarah is all “Who? Me? Y’all think I’m awesome? Me? Really, me? You all love me? Sad old pathetic humble me? Oh, bless you! I finally feel like I belong!” like the disingenuous tart that she is, and that’s basically the whole story. There is hardly any conflict here that lasts for longer than a few pages because come on, the heroine is awesome and perfect just by existing, so conflicts just bounce off her plot armor like squash balls off the wall. All this only makes the heroine’s constant woe-is-me I’m-the-saddest-angst-bucket ever hand wringing even more annoying because it’s all so… so… fake.
The entire plot serves to validate the heroine and puts her on a pedestal, with her epiphany being her blushing and simpering because she finally realizes what we know all along, all this while: she is simply the best, because she exists to be the idealized placeholder of every fat and sexually frustrated woman who couldn’t let go of her high school blues.
I have nothing against stories that serve as catharsis for the reader’s issues, mind you, and I have enjoyed some stories of this sort in the past. Come on, though, it’s the whole insincerity of the story that grates at me. If the author wanted Sarah to mope about how hard her life is, then make her life a truly hard one. Everyone who is supposed to be the good guy takes to and adores Sarah, she never has a really hard time blending in with her new environment, she quickly secures the affections of the top dog in school – and she’s whinging about this “awful” life of hers? This annoying gnat can go gargle on her own urine.
