First Blood

I had two books last week from publishers that were at polar opposite ends of the spectrum of “gendered” literature. They both sucked.

First Blood is the novel that the movie Rambo was based and is total dick lit. Basically, a war vet with PTSD meets a cop with control issues and they spend the rest of the book trying to kill each other for no adequately explored reason. Head Over Heels on the other hand is quintessential chick lit: fluffy romance with no real conflict, just misunderstanding and miscommunication, but then everybody talks and lives happily ever after. Neither book was badly written, both had consistent pacing and both are reprints which were originally published decades ago. And my hatred for both of them is mostly predicated on lack of balance. There is hardly any conversation in First Blood (entire chapters pass with nobody taking to another human being!) and the majority of the characters only exist to be killed off (I was disoriented by how high the body count was). Head over Heels is all talk and no action and by the end of it I was really wishing somebody would be killed (or, even better, several people), because there are far too many characters who only exist to be a romantic interest.

In a perfect world, Rambo and Sheriff Teasdale are magically transported to Upper Sibley and blow the place to smithereens. Everybody dies, except for Teasdale and Jessie (the main protagonist from Head Over Heels whose relationship with her long-lost love was so inane I nearly puked) who fall in love and build a perfect literary world where people occasionally get killed but everybody talks about it first.

Thank you to the publisher who sent me a copy of this book for review.