Originally published at well.notes. You can comment here or there.

Forget Me Knot by Sue Margolis

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

We stopped by Borders on Saturday so I could pick up a birthday present for one of the other August 2008 babies. Right in front of the door was the “Buy One, Get One 50% Off” table. There on the table was Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. “Hurray!” I exclaimed (in my head). I quickly grabbed another book that looked cute and would be fluffy entertainment. “Hmm,” thought I, “This looks appropriately light yet not stupid for a ‘ChickLit’ book.” Fast forward to last night, when I needed a new book for my read-to-sleep ritual.

Oh my STARS. What an awful jumble of chicklit clichés and shallow characters. The main character was the too-good-to-be-true Abby, who reads like a Mary Sue from schlocky fan fiction. Every single character is predictable, boring, and shallow. Most of the book describes events, backstory, and character “insights” instead of using dialogue or action to let the characters live, breathe, and develop.

As for the clichés, let’s see:

• meet “cute” with devastatingly handsome and charming man while engaged to another man
• get dumped; surprise meet “cute” again with DH&C man
• gay best friend/co-worker
• forthright female best friend who thinks so main character doesn’t have to
• cutesy occupation for protagonist
• rich boyfriend turns out to be a jerk
• protag’s mother shocks the world and becomes world-famous
• protag almost ruins new relationship with DH&C man because of Secrets
• DH&C man turns out to be rich so we can all be happy while still being socially aware and righteously middle class.

Did I miss any?

Extra non-bonus: sudden appearance of graphic sex scenes in the latter third of the book. Where did that come from?