Bwahahaha. Someone finally took the concept of food porn seriously. This is a cookbook parody of the supremely lame 50 Shades series. The recipes look doable, the writing leading up to each recipe is much better than the books it lampoons, and overall this wasn't bad at all.
I found these as a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon. I don't know what made me decide to buy them, but I did. WOW. The plotline is fairly dark- Jack is a former cop turned private eye. Book 1- Nightfall- tells how Jack left his former career and how several years later he finds out that not only was he adopted, his biological father was a Satanist who sold Jack's soul to the devil at birth. Now he regrets the deal, has committed suicide, and left everything he has to Jack in the hopes that he can use it to get himself out of the deal. People close to Jack begin dying horrible deaths at an alarming rate, demons are stalking him, and Jack has to make deals with a devil to save his soul.
Midnight- Jack has survived the battle for his soul and is trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of his life and go on. Then another bequest from his bio-dad makes his life worse. Turns out that dear old dad not only sold Jack's soul, he sold the soul of a little sister Jack never knew he had...and if Jack survived past the date he was supposed to die, Dad wants him to try to find/save her too. The problem? Jack finds his sister...and she's in a mental institution as it's believed she's a serial killer of children. And she thinks he's the crazy one when he explains what is happening.
Nightmare- Jack has survived deals with devils, retained his soul, freed his sister and saved HER soul, and is once again hoping to get on with his life. Sadly, the devils he outsmarted in their deals are out for revenge. Adding to the confusion, the ghost of Sophie, a little girl Jack was unable to save when he was a cop, keeps appearing and asking him for help. The only way to help her? Another deal with a devil, of course. The fallout from that deal makes the whole series worth it. Yes, there is a sort of happy ending...after all that darkness, Jack needs it!
I wasn't going to read this one because I don't like following the rest of the sheeple in the world, but several authors I like (with similar tastes to mine) had put it on their recommended lists, so I thought I'd try it.
Wow, are these characters screwed up! The story starts out normally- boy meets girl, boy & girl get married. Then boy & girl both lose their jobs in NY, her parents go broke and have to take the money from her trust fund to pay debts, his parents are dying, and they move back to his childhood home in Missouri. She's not happy about it, but is trying to stay positive. He uses the last of her money to open a bar with his sister and thinks everything is peachy...until he comes home on their anniversary to find signs of a struggle and his wife missing.
Then it gets interesting.
The police ask the usual procedural questions. Her parents come to help with the search. Friends and neighbors start looking for the missing woman. And parts of the story don't quite add up. Neighbors paint a different picture of his life than the one he gives the police. Weird things show up, and the 'hero' is shown to be hiding things from the world...things that don't put him in a good light and make matters worse...like the affair he's been having...
Now he's accused of killing his wife and hiding her body. And while the police are trying to find evidence to put him away, the husband is trying to prove that his wife set him up to look like he killed her. As he grasps at straws to save himself, the reader is shown how the missing wife isn't quite the sainted angel she's been cast as.
I won't spoil the ending, except to say that it wasn't entirely satisfying, but in a way, most of the characters got what they deserved.
This made me laugh like a loon. The cartoons are brilliantly twisted and warped. The entries made by the 'stalker' aren't quite as amusing, but it's still a great read. I'm copying several of the pages in this book and putting them up on my bulletin board at work- if that doesn't scare my bosses, nothing else will!
