RATING GUIDE:
5 – A keeper!
4 – Very good
3 – Passable
2 – I’d rather read
a telephone book
1 – An absolute bomb.
Read at your own risk!
If there’s anything I love just as much as books, it’s
music (and chocolate). I love listening
to music and watching concerts, which is probably why my favorite TV show as of
late is this reality show/competition on ABS-CBN called The Voice
(Philippines). In this show, the judges
of the show (Lea Salonga, Apl.de.Ap, Bamboo and Sarah Geronimo) pick men and
women to be part of their team based on one AND ONLY one factor: Musical talent. Unlike other reality-based TV shows where the judges (who don’t
really have sizable talent) show their obvious bias against those without “The
Face,” the judges of The Voice (Philippines) make their selections based on
“The Voice”. They don’t care how young
or old you are, how ugly or good-looking you are, as long as you have a voice
that can take their breath away.
As of this writing, the judges of
The Voice (Philippines) have chosen their team members and pitted them against
each other in what is frequently called a “Battle Royale”. I noticed that some of these Battle Royales
pitted the younger members of the team with their older, much seasoned
teammates. Sometimes, the younger ones
lost, sometimes they won. Now, while I
can’t claim to be an expert when it comes to writing books, I am a certified
book lover. For this book review, I
thought I’d pretend to be a seasoned judge and pit two popular Filipino romance
writers against each other in what I call a “Love Battle Royale”. So, folks, welcome to Love Battle Royale No.
1, where the contenders are two of Precious Pages’ romance writers, the
seasoned writer Martha Cecilia and a relative newbie in the romance writing
genre, Marione Ashley.
Marione Ashley’s “competition
piece” for our Love Battle Royal No. 1 is the K.R.Y. trilogy. K.R.Y. is the name of a “ballad group” (I suppose
she means a sub-group that sings ballads?) of this (fictional) highly popular
boy band/teen idol group in Korea. Each
of the trilogies feature the love stories of three of the band members (Marcus,
Nathan and Jerome) --- all half-Korean and with roots in the Philippines ---
who meet and fall in love with three Filipinas seven years ago, but are forced
to give up their love and focus on show business instead (for reasons I can’t
tell you, or else you’ll call me a spoilsport). However, the three boys are embroiled in a scandal and are forced
to take refuge in the Philippines.
While on vacation, the boys bump into their long-lost loves, and are
forced to confront the heartache (and the women) they left seven years ago.
So, which writer wins this battle?
I have to salute Marione Ashley’s
effort to come up with a trilogy for her fans.
Writing a book is hard work; writing a book that the readers will enjoy
is doubly hard. Now, I am sure that
Marione Ashley’s true-blue fans (who, I am sure, are much younger than I am)
will enjoy this trilogy. However, I
have to be very objective about this (I am a “judge,” after all). I’m sorry to say that Marione Ashley’s
trilogy wasn’t an enjoyable read for me.
I have to assume that Marione
Ashley is a young writer, maybe someone in her late teens or early twenties,
based on the way she writes. Her
dedication page alone reflects her youth --- the way she communicates to her
fans, the music she listens to, her familiarity with anything and everything
Korean and K-Pop. Her heroines are just
like the typical Filipina teenager --- obsessed with everything Korean and
K-Pop. Her heroes are very similar to
the young, cute Korean boys who star in the Korean telenovelas that we
see on TV (and the pirated DVD’s we see being sold everywhere).
Personally, I don’t have a problem with
that. Hey, I’m just like Marione and
all the other Filipina teenagers who get their kilig moments watching
Korean telenovelas (in fact, my Korean boylet of the month is this guy
named Jo In Sung who played Xander on That Winter, The Wind Blows). But since I’m a MUCH OLDER reader who likes
a good, compelling, extra-ordinary story, I look for more than just kilig moments
whenever I read a romance novel. Sadly,
this K.R.Y. trilogy offered nothing else other than kilig … which wasn’t
even that kilig in my opinion because everything --- the dialogue, the
characters, the plot/storyline, the conflict --- seems to be something I have
already seen in a telenovela or a movie, or read about in other romance
books.
In the middle of reading this
trilogy, I kept thinking about this very old song that I used to hear on the
radio called “Tryin’ To Get The Feeling Again”. It’s an old seventies ballad sung by Barry Manilow (if you’re too
young to know who this guy is, find someone who’s much older than you are and
he/she will most likely know about him and this song). It’s a classic. It’s a song about this guy who’s in a relationship with someone
and realizes he’s falling out of love; that’s why he’s desperately trying to
recapture that feeling that made him fall in love with his special
someone. This is the song that
encapsulates everything I felt while reading these three books. Like the words in that song, I kept trying
to get the feeling again … of being young and in love for the first time … of
being heart-broken for the first time, of having a more mature love with that
first love many years after … but sadly, I really just couldn’t find THAT
feeling because as I read the book, I was just lost in the fluff and the kilig. Sweet moments are fine, but when a book is
all sweet moments, it’s a little frustrating and disappointing.
Marione Ashley’s characters
supposedly fall in love with each other, break up with each other and see each
other again after seven years. That’s a
pretty long time, and as a reader, I do expect some changes/growth/maturity in
the characters. The changes that Marione
used to illustrate the characters’ growth aren’t really very substantial, and
aren’t very believable. Maturity isn’t
seen only in the changes in one’s looks, or one’s social/economic/professional
status; it’s seen in the way one carries him/herself, or the way he/she
interacts with the world. Though
Marione did make that attempt to make her characters grow up, the effort still
fell short; they just seemed like young people trying to play grown-ups. And if you’re an author, that’s a big
problem, if you’re trying to convince your readers that your characters have
grown up. The very young readers might
not notice or mind if they’re all about the kilig moments, but the older
ones (like yours truly) who want more than kilig will. No amount of kilig moments will cover
up for that shortcoming.
The plots and conflicts in the
trilogy are also quite common --- I’m sorry because I know this is harsh, but
the elements Marione used in this trilogy are gasgas na gasgas na. Surely, there are other more interesting,
unique ways to tear the characters’ relationships apart, and bring them back
together again other than what she used in her stories?
I think this trilogy might have
been much better if Marione had written longer books for the trilogy. I’m sure she would have had more elbow room
to develop the characters and their love stories if she had a longer word count
to work with. Maybe Marione can
consider writing longer stories next time.
I also think Marione’s next books
and stories will be much, much better if she would be a little more adventurous
and experiment with the types of stories and characters she comes up with. As a fairly young writer, it must be easy to
fall into the trap of using tried-and-tested storylines and plot devices to
move the story along; but if she wants to be stand out among her peers, then
she must be able to find her own voice, develop her own style and come up with
unique stories and characters, even though we all know how a romance ends
(happy).
Marione also has to work a little
harder at making the details more logical and believable. For instance, she has to make sure that her
characters sound and act more grown up if she turns them into adults (e.g.,
saying the word “fuck” doesn’t make you a grown-up, or giving the heroine a
managerial position in the company she works for) --- the reader has to feel
the evolution, the maturity in the characters.
And the details have to sound credible.
I had a problem with her basic premise of situating the world-famous
(and I guess, also filthy rich) boys in an apartment in Manila. An apartment that looks shabby and run-down
on the outside, but has hotel-type features and amenities on the inside. There’s just no logical explanation to it,
and just seems contrived … I guess Marione was aiming for anime-type details
(where anything goes) … but if everything else sounds “real,” then that detail
just sticks out like a sore thumb. If
she’s to come up with something as weird like that, then it would be
interesting to see that weirdness in the other characters, as well. Magpapaka-anime rin lang, itodo na.
Now, on to Martha Cecilia’s “The
Wolf and the Beauty”.
Martha Cecilia is a veteran
romance writer who has written many, many, MANY novels. Based on a Wikipedia article (yes, she is
listed in Wikipedia, can you believe it?), she has written more than a hundred
books (wow, if she keeps this up, she’ll be as prolific as Barbara
Cartland!). If you’re a telenovela
fan and you’ve seen ABS-CBN’s Kristine, then you must know that this was based
on Martha Cecilia’s Kristine series.
Martha is listed as someone who
was born in the late fifties (which makes her fifty-something). In “The Wolf and the Beauty,” Martha tries
her hand at writing a book that makes use of the currently popular trend of
using, er, “creatures” as heroes/heroines.
In this case, Martha’s hero is a shape-shifter, someone who can
transform himself into a wolf (though in my imagination, it’s more like a big
dog).
Martha Cecilia is older and more
experienced than many of today’s romance writers, and it shows in this Gothic
romance. If Marione’s trilogy produced
very little in the hundreds of pages she came up with for her story, Martha
produced A LOT in her two hundred and fifty-six page book. Martha places the reader right where the
action is in the first chapter of her book.
The story “moves” right away.
The characters are fleshed out well, and you can picture them in your
mind, including the support characters (In Marione’s trilogy, the only thing
that sticks out is how cute the boys are).
You have a good feel of the characters, what moves them, what makes them
behave a certain way. It’s
action-packed, and you do feel something when the story approaches its climax,
unlike Marione’s trilogy, where you reach the ending and go, is it the ending
already? Marione Ashley can learn a lot
from a veteran writer like Martha Cecilia, in the way stories and characters
are fleshed out and presented to its readers.
But Martha Cecilia can also learn
something from a relatively young writer like Marione, and that’s in learning
about the ways a young man or woman of today thinks, speaks or acts. I can understand that her hero, Lukas, is an
old soul (literally), and so having him behave the way he did in the book is
realistic and believable to me.
However, I had problems believing that her hero, Aurora, was really a
young lady in her twenties. Sure, she’s
young and beautiful, she wears sundresses and Keds, but I didn’t really feel
she was young. Even the way she and
Lukas interacted with each other seemed pretty mature, and also the way they
made love. It just didn’t seem like the
“first time” to me. Anyway,
I think it will be interesting if
Martha Cecilia and a newer writer (like Marione Ashley) would get together and
collaborate on a book. With Martha’s
expertise and Marione’s kilig-producing ability, I’m sure their readers/fans
will have a grand time.
But since we’re in Love Battle
Royale No. 1, I have to choose one winner … and it’s Martha Cecilia.
RATING (Marione Ashley’s
K.R.Y. Trilogy): 2
RATING (Martha Cecilia’s “The
Wolf and the Beauty”): 3 1/2
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