Samhain Publishing, $4.50, ISBN 1-60504-233-1
Contemporary Romance, 2008
Head over Heels is subtitled A Cinderella Story, but this is an erotic interpretation of that fairytale instead of a script for the Disney channel.
The most unfortunately named Cyn Elder works at the Glass Slipper, a shoe store owned by her father. The fairy godmother is a drag queen named MeShell, who is Cyn’s friend. The Prince Charming is Parker Maguire, whose normal-sounding name must have made him a prime catch in this story. He is the co-investor and manager of the hottest club in town, DelRay, and we all know how every club owner in this kind of stories is a promiscuous tomcat looking towards settling down with a client who stands out right away despite being across the crowded dance floor from him. It’s just like how David Archuleta would go, “In a sea of people/There is only you/I never knew what the song was about/But suddenly now I do.”
I know, the way this story could be a script for the Disney channel if we take away all that sexual slant can be quite disturbing.
In fact, Cyn behaves exactly like a spoiled brat who has recently graduated from Hello Kitty pajama bottoms to pink thongs. From the first page, she runs around snapping at people, thinking unpleasant thoughts even about her supposed friends, and being a bitch while at the same time insisting that she is praise-worthy because she doesn’t put out so easily (she waits until page 60) and she is a responsible person. Cyn is such a relentless negative killjoy in this story, she is simply not fun and I fail to see the appeal in her as a girlfriend or a good friend. I’m not saying that Cyn should start out full of sunshine and love, but she is negative through the entire story, which makes me wonder whether she has worn her thong in a painfully wrong manner or something.
Parker is a stereotype of a hot club owner whose rocket is aimed straight at the heroine. There isn’t much to be said about him because there isn’t anything particularly inventive about his character. He has a high threshold for self-absorbed me-me-me bitches like Cyn though, so I suppose that says something about him, whatever that is.
Ultimately, Head over Heels, to me, lacks that certain fun factor because the heroine’s bewilderingly negative attitude rubs off on me after a while.
