Camille LaGuire

Well. That was three or four hours of my life utterly wasted. When you look back on the books you’ve read over the year, there is undoubtedly one, if not two, perhaps even three, that stand out because they’re outstanding and one (or more) because they are…not so outstanding. This one was the lemon for my year so far.

It’s a western. Two young (very young) gunslingers, Mick and Casey, are hired to keep a rather precocious little girl, Laurie, and her aunt safe, as her Daddy is an unpopular bigwig in town. Needless to say, the job doesn’t go too well and there’s a lot of shooting, dead guys, deceit, betrayal and sore heads. Moreover, there’s something very unusual about a certain box of toys that belongs to Laurie, that seems to cause quite a lot of interest.

The whole thing is confusing and a mess. The characters are like cardboard cut-outs: the story is so ‘told’ (not one bit of ‘show’), I got no emotion from any of them and couldn't, therefore, afford them any in return. The story was poorly written: it lacked maturity (or experience), there were a number of typos and missing words, and the author seems to have no grasp on how to use the correct tenses.

This was unputdownable for all the wrong reasons: I couldn’t wait to finish it and get on to a good book. The only commendation I can give is that the author sat down and had a jolly good try.… (més)

This is an example of stumbling across an author in an entirely different setting, checking her out, and for purely non-literary reasons picking up one of her books.

I’m glad I did, for this book was a charming read. It’s about a young married couple of gunslingers (certainly a unique premise) that had been mentored by a famous lawman and who now offered their services - to the good guys. The relationship between Mick and Casey is marvelous.

I think she was seventeen. She wouldn’t tell me her birthday, but she’d said she was sixteen a year ago, when we’d met. And she looked younger, even with all the gear she wore: a little hazel-eyed girl with a dark braid, wearing two silver pistols on a big silver gunbelt, and a big hat and spurs. Me, I was twenty, and looked maybe a little older, which was fortunate because nobody wanted to hire a pair of kids as gunslingers. And no outlaw was ready to respect a kid as a bounty hunter. At least not until Casey had put a couple of holes in his hat. She was good at that. A regular sharpshooter. . . .Case and me do things kind of backwards sometimes. First we got married, then we introduced ourselves, then we commenced to fighting, then we had the honeymoon, and now we’re courting.

They have been hired to accompany a young woman on a journey as her protectors (of her body and the large collection of toys she has.) Needless to say numerous adventures result and Mick and Casey are left holding the bag, so to speak. I won’t recount the plot as I’d have to stamp “spoiler” all over this note.

Chinese lady came in with some lemonade and some little walnut tarts, which I was glad of because breakfast had been thin. They were spiced and sweet and gooey, and I could fit two in my mouth at one time, although I didn’t because then Casey would try it and then I’d have to fit three in, and then Montel would call us unprofessional. Which shows how little he knew about gunmen.

Read this book. It’s just plain fun.… (més)