Review: Very random!!!!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
There's a famous meme, "Katy t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m," allegedly a post by a young woman who is so "very random" ("!!!!").  It's a delightful example of cringeworthy attention-seeking behavior.  She talks about waving a spork, watching "Invader Zim, and -- of course -- being "random."  Despite the age difference, Phaedra, our heroine, reminds me of this young woman.With her tendency to talk like Sean Connery when she is under severe stress ("Deal with it," she tells the reader, much as Katy tells her audience to "deal w/it"), push cars off of roofs, and dance while she and her boyfriend are under attack, everything about her screams, melodramatically, "CHARACTER."  The book is in first person narrative, so there is no relief from the relentless throb of her constructed personality.So Phaedra pushes a car off a roof because she has the impulse control of a toddler.  As a result, she’s fired from her reporting job at a quality paper and gets work at a tabloid.  Her first major story is to go undercover within the organization of a mysterious and powerful businessman and, because this is a paranormal romance, he is much more than he initially seems.The romance in this book is strictly by-the-numbers (the exception would be that the two of them have much less physical contact than normal) and the plot is a mishmash of shifter and fae mythology, shaken up with a heavy dose of conspiracy theory.  By the end of the book, the various alliances seem to be set, although I am sure there will be some upheaval over the course of the series.  I just don’t think I could stand another moment of Phaedra’s trying-too-hard persona.