The premise here is that poor Lucy is ugly so I was expecting a plain Jane wallflower who becomes a bombshell once you get to know her, but nope. These aren’t scientific measurements but I estimate that 80% of this book is Lucy telling us that she has an ugly face and everyone is mean to her because of it, so right from the start, I don’t like the world that’s been built here. Sure, people are jerks and the world can be a cruel place, but adults going out of their way to discuss her ugliness in front of her and concoct pranks to humiliate her is too cliché to take seriously.
I assumed this was satirical and expected a super funny book where the author went to this extreme to remind us that we’re all beautiful in our own way, but nope. The moral of the story is Lucy’s ugly but she’s okay with it. Nobody ever even attempts to make this woman feel better about herself, not even the man who professes to love her. I wanted to like these characters but it simply isn’t possible. Lucy’s entire identity is being ugly and okay with it. There was nothing else to her. Ford is a stereotypical by-the-book cop who speaks and acts more like a robot than a human.
Every character in the story is a stereotype or caricature — from her shady, wanna-be Goodfellas brothers to the cops who drink too much to the rivalry between the police officer and the firefighters. This was actually painful to read. Lucy’s overprotective brothers appointing themselves protector of her virtue was the cliché that broke the camel’s back. This is the first in a series and the next one stars a woman who is comfortable in her plus-size body so I can only imagine it reaches cringe-level infinity the same as this one.
Butterface on Amazon
Butterface
by Avery Flynn
The Hartigans book 1
Published 2018
It’s true. I’m not what most people would call “pretty” and, well, high school was rough. Fast forward ten years and life is good…
Until a bunch of jerks think it’s hilarious to put the “butterface” (AKA me) on a wedding Kiss Cam with the hottest guy ever—and that old humiliation hits hard.
I recognize him immediately. The sexiest cop in Waterbury and totally out of my league.
But then he kisses me. And we totally forget the room, the crowd, everything.
Then he tells everyone we’ve been dating for months.
Soon everything starts to feel too real, from adorable fights over “necessary” tools to fix my broken porch to surviving a free-for-all dinner with his six siblings to picking up where our last kiss left off.
But there’s something he’s not telling me about why he’s really hanging around, and I’m pretty sure it has to do with my mob-connected brothers.
Because this is not a make-over story, and Cinderella is only a fairy tale . . .
