The Laughing Listener
Format: Ebook
I actually spent three whole dollars on this. *Shakes head*
Rating: 1 Star

Wow... What the actual fu*k did I just read? This was a buddy read I did with my best friend and after hearing her awful first-hand accounts (since she started reading it first) and seeing some of the hilarious reviews, I just HAD to read this to see if it was as crazy as it sounded. I signed up for a hilariously awful, twisted paranormal romance and uhhh, well, that's what I got??? Maybe???? We've lovingly nicknamed this "The Trash Fire" and I wish I could just transcribe all our texts about this novel on here because they were amazing, unlike this book.



THE REHASH

Merry is half fairy, half human. People in the Unseelie court were trying to kill her for some reason, so she ran off to live a normal life in LA three years ago and is now working as a paranormal detective. She works a case that reveals her location to the Unseelie queen (who's her aunt) and gets dragged back to court. The queen reveals that she wants Merry to inherit the Unseelie throne—apparently for no reason at all—despite the fact that the queen is an immortal who will out live Merry by centuries. LOGIC. The only problem is the Queen's son Cel, a completely dickhead that has just as much right to the throne as Merry (probably more since he's her son??). In the end, it's a race to see who can make a baby first and continue the bloodline. Whoever makes a baby first will be crowned king or queen.

That is literally the entire plot. Half-human girl lives in LA. Half-human girl gets dragged away to make babies.

THE UGLY

Oh my god, where do I even start? FIRST OF ALL, this is soooo so so terribly written. I'd say a middle schooler wrote this if the subject matter weren't so incredibly screwed up. The following is my interpretation of her writing style:

I live in Los Angeles. There's smog everywhere. I don't know how the fey can stand living here. This isn't where I'm from, but I can't go home because I'd be killed. Jeremy is my boss. We flirt a lot, but don't worry, it's just how fairies are. He dresses in nice clothes. My skirt today is really short. I have to wear high heels to make my legs look longer. Now I'll spend five paragraphs describing the color of my red hair.

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! *Throws book out a window*

Hamilton also spends next to NO time explaining the universe she's created and I was so confused THE ENTIRE TIME. I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW INFURIATING THIS WAS. I already had a very basic knowledge of fairies going into this, so I could kinda follow along, but I had so many questions. She uses the word "Sidhe" every other damn sentence, but god forbid we ever get a solid definition of what the hell it means. And does the general populace know about the paranormal stuff going on?? Merry casually references a few government laws that pertain to magic and they even recruit the police to help with certain cases. There's practically a whole chapter about how Hitler tried to recruit the fey to his side of WWII. I mean, the Unseelie court has a damn publicist! Merry even spends the last half of the book running away from an angry mob of journalists. But then they have to glamour themselves all the time when they're out in public? And at one point Merry goes into a description of fey hunters who are people that lurk around the gate of the Unseelie court to try and "catch a glimpse" of them. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!?! Aren't there fey all over the media if so many journalists are after Merry?? Can't humans just open a god damn newspaper to "catch a glimpse" of the fairies??? Do normal humans know or not?!?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!

Eh, whatever, it doesn't matter right??? Instead, here's two pages describing how amazing Merry's breasts look in this push-bra! WHY ARE YOU OVER-EXPLAINING THINGS THAT DON'T MATTER? GIVE ME ANSWERS DAMMIT.

And for a romance novel, this was shockingly devoid of sex. There's one confusingly weird scene in the beginning and one lame sex scene at the very end, but the middle is nothing but heavy flirting and awdward foreplay that never goes anywhere. Whatever, I don't need sex in my books. It would have been fine if the plot weren't filled with gaping holes and could carry the story on it's own, but it couldn't. Instead I found myself annoyingly bored, reading scene after scene of Merry doing mundane things like flying on an airplane and talking to her grandma. I waited ten chapters for Merry's confrontation with the queen. TEN. And the payoff was sooooo not worth it. We wait the whole book for Merry to get the queen's permission to get freaky with these hunky fey guards AND THEN NOTHING HAPPENS. The last chapter is a shitty rush job that just made me wanna light this book on fire.



Also, Merry is a narcissistic bitch (#SorryNotSorry) and I really don't understand why everyone fawns over her as much as they do. All the men she speaks to are like OMG, YOU'RE SO HOT. HOW CAN I POSSIBLE RESIST YOU?! And she's all, I KNOW RIGHT?!?! Merry spends the entire book making off-hand comments on the different ways she's better than everyone else. My hair is beautiful, by boobs look great, my eyes are amazing, my clothes are awesome, blah blah blah. I think I was suppose to see her as a strong, independent woman, but to me she was just annoyingly egotistical. At one point, her boss Jeremy says something like "She really doesn't know how beautiful she is does she?" I LITERALLY laughed out loud. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? Are we talking about the same person?!

THE GOOD

I liked most of the secondary characters that we glimpse in the beginning. Uther is the shit AND DESERVED BETTER. I mean, did Uther ever find a lady friend to fill his lonely nights?? I'M VERY CONCERNED.

Oh, I also liked when it ended.

FINAL WORD

Nope.