Honey Queen by Christina Mercer
Book: Honey Queen by Christina Mercer
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
Bookdictive Categorization: I'm honestly not even sure.
It would appear that Honey Queen is a character in MarioKart 7 AND One Piece [though two separate characters].
It's like playing a messed up Hot or Not game.
Moving on!
This book. It's not going to be added to my 2014 Bookdictive Beach Reads list.
I didn't hate it. I didn't banish it to Hiatus Hawaii. There were parts I liked. I promise!
And sure, maybe I found the cover moderately disturbing, but I can appreciate how it sort of relates to the book (the crying part, not the crying honey part. Can you imagine? Ew, I'd hate to have honey coming out of my eyes).
But...there's this one theme that gets thrown in your face. Then it repeatedly gets thrown in your face, until bees stop being the focus of the book and something else takes control. It prevents me from giving this book more than 2.5 stars. Please refer to #1 in the list below.
Spoiler-iffic Comprehensive Honey Queen List of WTF
Be advised that you should avert your eyes, lest they be filled with
1) Sex plays a HUGE role in this.
There's a curse, and since this is YA, that's actually the norm. The curse part. Not the sex part. Want to label this as NA? NOPE, SORRY, because she's 16 when the book starts, and even though her 17th birthday happens at some point in the book, she still falls under the YA category. NA, if I recall correctly, features adults of the 18-29 range in adult situations. The main character is 16/17, SO FORGIVE ME FOR NOT EXPECTING SEX TO BE MENTIONED.
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| deeeeeeep breath |
1a) Even more disturbing were the choice quotes like, "His tongue teases mine until the lower half of my body is a river rushing out of control."
WHAT THE ACTUAL BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING NIGHTMARE IS THIS?!?!! WHO WRITES THAT?? I'm not a prude. I read NA, romance, etc. But that reads like bad fanfiction. Bad, gross fanfiction. It's so ewwwwww that I almost want to laugh. That has to be one of THE worst quotes I've ever pulled from a book I'm reviewing.
2) The curse itself is just weird.
I actually thought the mythology was kind of cool since creating mythology is just plain hard to do, but there are plot holes: If the curse was so easy to break, why was she the first one to bother looking for a reason? She may be the Honey Queen, but it's been centuries. CENTURIES. Someone else had to have looked into this, right?? I also can't really grasp why her mom went bee-crazy and offed herself. Why didn't her grandma go bee-crazy like her mom?
3) Her grandma pressures the hell out of her to get it on with a terminally ill guy named Boyd. While this is kind of ingenious (since the father of the conceived daughter dies when said daughter is born), it's also pretty twisted. But I don't think it's done with the intent of being morbid-twistosity. I think it was more of a way to support an unbelievable curse side effect. Anyway, spoiler alert, turns out the sick guy is GAY and the CURSE DOESN'T WORK ON HIM.
4a) I also HATE how he becomes healthy but has to rely on magic honey for the rest of his life. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of being free? Plot hole, maybe, but Boyd gets his own section.
I really can't rationalize this one out. I can't even launch into how much Sam, the love interest, bothered me. This wasn't DNF, and I wasn't filled with disgust (except for that awful quote earlier) after reading it. But this wasn't one of the better ones out there. The writing wasn't sophomoric, but it was also not what I was expecting. In the end, I'd be willing to try another book by this author--perhaps this was a sting and a miss? Ugh, that was a pretty bad one. ;)
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