Hello everyone. You might remember that a number of years back I did a series of writeups on shitty novels and how shit they are. Books Hazelnut Read So You Don't Have To.
Well, yesterday I was on the thunder box in work and casually flicking about on my phone while defecating and all of a sudden the Algorithm Gods suggest me a video on Youtube by a certain Beth Reekles, whose novels The Kissing Booth and Rolling Dice I trashed in those writeups. I believe other than John Norman, the author of the destined never to end Gor series of planetary romance BDSM stroke-fics, she was the only author whose works I trashed more than once in those writeups. Still, I digress. The video was about the worst reviews she ever got for her novels and since I needed to take my mind off the remains of last night's Burmese curry burning up my filthy freckle, I clicked it.
Well, about a few minutes into her video, which was completely awash with jump cuts (why oh why can't vloggers plan what they're going to say in advance and actually deliver it without having to chop it about to make it coherent?), she referred to "a guy from London" who was "some sort of corporate type" who "didn't even like Harry Potter" having posted a link to a review that obviously he'd written on her Facebook page. And lo and behold, it was my writeup on The Kissing Booth. She thought it was absolutely brutal and described the book as a "Category 5 cliché tornado." She claimed she thought it hilarious and sent it to everyone she knows. Yet despite thinking it hilarious, she is still clearly so triggered by it that she makes a video moaning about it seven years later.
For my part, I hadn't thought of her or her novels since 2013. I remember in 2018 seeing a YouTube advert for a Netflix adaptation of The Kissing Booth, and wondering what hideous payola had taken place to make this be so, but other than that, I had honestly not given it another though. I also don't recall actually posting a link to my review on her page.
There is apparently a brace of sequels to The Kissing Booth, named Going the Distance and The Beach House, I have now learnt. I am curious to see if her writing is still as hopeless as it was before. With a bit of luck her being a decade older means she might actually have discovered character development. Time to fire up the e-reader.
(Also, lol @ her disgust at me not liking Harry Potter. It's like it's a mark of extreme moral turpitude or something, but then a lot of millennials seem to think that. Fuck, I hate my generation.)