Remember Me by Christopher Pike
This 1990 novel is good but was followed by a crap sequel and a 2nd sequel I didn’t bother with. The heroine Shari Cooper is a shallow vapid 18 year old who goes to a party unaware that a fellow guest views her with murderous distaste. The fateful party ends with Shari dead, her murder ruled a suicide. Shari is now a ghost and tries to find out which of her ‘friends’ killed her while learning what the afterlife is like.
Shari has no real concern for her bereaved parents and is pretty flippant toward them. Shari is a bit of a self-involved jerk really. Her awful friends are no better. This was enjoyable even if the horrible clothes and attitudes are bizarre and the emotional effects of Shari’s death are oddly muted.
This book is full of dated things. A woman wears orange trousers and an orange top. The heroine’s boyfriend wears white trousers. The heroine’s brother uses a CRT. The heroine wears a yellow blouse and green trousers while her businessman father goes on about the Japanese. The heroine says far-out a lot. A ghost spies on someone in the shower and this is described as romantic. A nurse has no idea of uniform hygiene. The heroine’s friends don’t care that she is dead and adjust to her absence pretty quick.
There is a dated attitude to suicide. How were two characters never diagnosed with colour-blindness? Did the heroine ever get to brush her hair the night she died? A cop has no concept of chain of evidence. There is a very weird attitude toward the heroine’s relationship with her parents. WTF is call standby or CB? At the climax there is no time for an arrest warrant just incoherent babbling about insulin. A drug dealer wears a chain around his head. WTF?
Best Lines:
“A shadow - that no sun had ever cast.”
“Reputation of failure.”
~
The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen
This is a Tudor alternate universe tale that begins in 1553 and sees Anne Boleyn’s son who is now King of England about to turn 18. William is a surly, sleazy, temperamental jackass. Anne Boleyn now a widow is no better than she ought to be, she has notions and then dies of done falling down.
King William, Princess Elizabeth and their friends Minuette and Dominic face down a plot to un-seat William by questioning his paternity. William yells as an intimidation tactic and engages in petty and escalated retaliation and ill-advised conflict. Someone has evil motivations and doubt is cast over William’s paternity. Anne Boleyn's spawn consistently and persistently undermine Mary as they are ill-intentioned toward their half-sister. There is no reasoned debate and people are hysterical, hateful idiots and the plot makes no sense.
This terrible romance novel crap has inaccuracies like saying Marie de Medici is Queen of France, un-Tudor names, Elizabeth bullying Mary, a slandering of Edward Aylmer, a Mary-Sue main character, a diary and no sign of Cromwell. What became of Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleaves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr? Jane Parker is only mentioned. Cranmer literally does on a walk on. Where are the Wyatts? Why is King Henry IX known as William? Henry VIII wanted to call his son Edward! Where are the Poles? George Boleyn sleazes and plots and this was just DUMB.
Best Lines:
“He needed a son. A son Anne had been meant to give him. She had already failed not once but twice:”
“The once-princess who had lost her mother, her title, and her future when her father married Anne Boleyn.”
“Ubi lapsus? Quid fei?”
“The cost of what was to come-”
“Your position here rests on the fragile base of personal regard.”
“Put her name to evil use.”