Caught in a Bad Romance: Saving Mrs. Claus

Source: Andrea B. &
Kindle eBook sharing

Remember how I said I was going to devote February - the month of Valentine's - to romance novels? Like, especially Bad ones? Well, it just so happened that my dear friend Andrea recommended and shared with me a Christmas romance novella via Kindle. I guess there is no season for awfulness. She found it on Amazon.com for free - probably because it was the Christmas holidays at time. But you know what else is free? Herpes. Luckily for you guys, now that Christmas is over, you get to pay for it!
I just want to take a little moment to mention that we live in a time when it is so easy for anyone to get their stuff out there. And that's great. The only problem is that we live in a time when it is so easy for anyone to get their stuff out there. Have no fear, fellow readers - the ebook market isn't likely to kill literature as we know it - so long as there are publishers who are willing to muck through the worst to bring us the best, we have nothing to worry about.

That said, I can't believe Andrea got me to read this. It really is as bad as you'd expect - but I'm going to be really generous and say that that's part of it's charm. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the cult classic movie Troll 2 - it's as riddled with plot-holes as a minefield is with death and distruction, the writing is so bad I'd swear that English is the author's 2nd language - either that or she sat down with a thesaurus and misused every synonym she could, and it is so blissfully unaware of it's self that it is unintentionally hilarious. This novella gave me headaches - it is a prime example of what Dorthy Parker meant when she said: "This is not a [book] to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
So you can probably gather that this is a romance novel about the origins of Mrs. Claus. The way Andrea sold it to me - it's about a girl who is so obsessed with Christmas that she is destined to marry into the Santa family line. We all know people who are obsessed with Christmas - heck, I know of a girl who walked down the aisle to Christmas carols during her fall wedding. I know people who had rooms built into their renovated homes just to keep Christmas decorations. Apparently, this girl puts all of them to shame. But this is also set in the beginning of the end of the world. And there's only one way that Kris Kringle can convince her to marry her: that they can save the world together.
When focusing on what made it terrible, I keep coming back to the blessed Engrish it seemed to be written in, but there's more. There's always more. Take for example (I'm going to go ahead and spoil the story for you, okay) There's a mysterious character known as Apocalypse Boy. Apparently we're supposed to know all about this little fucker from childhood fairy tales. I mean - come on! You can't tell me you don't remember "Apocalypse Boy and the Four Horsemen"? Hm. Well, it was dark. Probably German. Did I mention the dragons? You think I'm kidding about the dragons. There be dragons. And by the way, I don't mind telling you this, but the only way that they can save the world is by having sex together. If only that's really how sex worked. 

I would grade this book A for Atrocious - it's a shame, because the concept is really cute and if it had been worked over a little more it could have improved it so much. This is why you never sell your fist drafts, people! I probably still wouldn't have picked it for myself - I'm not the most Christmassy. But, eh.

Bonus Cover Critique! Okay, for as bad as the story is, the cover isn't actually that bad. Someone dropped some serious moolah-kaboolah on the cover art. I can see how browsing along on Amazon someone might pick this out of a dozen poorly photo-shopped jobs. But as they say, don't judge a book by it's cover.