Book Review: UNSCREWED by Ren Alexander

UNSCREWED

by Ren Alexander 

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Greg Rodwell.

The myth, the man, the legend.
Yeah. I’m none of that crap.
Okay. I’m a man. There’s that much.

Almost everyone calls me Rod, whether I like it or not. I’m the guy others look to for a laugh, a dirty joke, a distraction—the office clown. Even my best friend, Hadley, laughs.

It’s just that, I’m not always laughing. Not even on the inside. Nobody knows the real Greg or the agony I hide with humor. My recently dead sister had a clue, but she’s in no position to blab. I screwed up big time—then and now—but it’s all my undoing. Through everything, Hadley’s been my cure and my curse. And I fell in love with my married best friend. But she wasn’t always married, and I wasn’t always broken.

I had a millisecond of a chance, but I blew it, siding with morality. What guy does that? And sailing that sinking ship all the way down, I sacrificed my wants for her needs. Doing that, I fathered a kid with the office trouser troll. Stupid? Hell to the yes. Because now, regardless of the grand total, I want something I can’t have. Integrity and my sanity be damned.

But nobody, especially Hadley, can know the real Greg Rodwell, my tortured soul, my unashamed love, or my darkest truth, because it wouldn’t just blow her mind.

It would rock our damn world.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Do Jewish vampires avoid the Star of David? Does killing time damage eternity? Do you need a silencer if you shoot a mime? Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane? If a person dies and then rises from the dead, do they get a refund for the coffin?

...our new receptionist is denser than a lead coffin and no doubt couldn’t write dialogue for porn.

…her Legal Eagles shirt is knotted to the side, calling attention to her belly button. She also cut a V into the collar of her shirt, showcasing her tits. It’s low enough that you can almost see their price tag.

Gloria laughs, and I’m stunned. In all the years I’ve worked with her, I’ve never seen that humanoid crack a smile. It’s like witnessing an alien abduction or playing cards with a ghost. No one would *ing believe me.

You’re like fogged glass I can’t touch. A solar eclipse I can’t look at. Forbidden fruit I can’t eat.

My Review:

Ren Alexander is an evil minx and seems to have bewitched me.  Her word voodoo is strong and quite bawdy.  But, hmm, I am deeply and irrevocably conflicted about this one… I am not sure what genre to use to categorize it, what to rate it, or even how I honestly feel about it.  I’m all over the place with this book. The storylines captivated yet also made me itch and annoyed me greatly - yet I remained intrigued and highly invested and couldn’t seem to put my Kindle down.  Amazon listed Unscrewed as a Romantic Comedy, but I have to disagree.  There was no romance other than a fantasized one, and while there was a considerable amount of clever well-honed humor, the overriding tone was one of tension and angst - sigh.  I had enjoyed and admired the irreverent and razor-sharp wit as well as the overall enigmatic persona of Greg Rodwell in the author’s previous Wild Sparks Series, but I found him rather exhausting in this book.  I don’t believe a new reader could fully appreciate Greg without first reading the previous series.  Greg deserves the exalted title of the Sultan of Snark, as while his humor was rather juvenile it was also keenly clever and highly amusing.  However, when his life took a spiky downturn with a series of highly unusual and unfortunate events, his rapier wit twisted into a more caustic and abrasive outlook and took on a cruel middle-school mean-girl quality, which broke my heart. 

But I also had empathy and sympathy for the Gregster as his life was in a meteoric downward spiral, which had me bracing for a total meltdown.  Poor Greg was circling the drain, in constant turmoil, and fronting on overblown bravado while drowning in angst.  He was also as sexually frustrated and randy as a pubescent teen; his inner musings were consumed with his constant and painfully erect appendage and his secret obsession and unrequited love for a married woman.  Yet a good portion of this mess was not of his making and I empathized with the obnoxious twit while I also want to administer a few swift slaps to the head. And then there is the thorny issue of a cliffhanger. ;(  I am hooked, and appalling so. Yet my conflict remains firmly rooted… 

Empress DJ

About the Author

Ren Alexander was born in Wheeling, West Virginia. She graduated from West Liberty University, where she received a B.S. in criminal justice. Although interested in that field, her true passion was reading and writing. She currently lives in Detroit, Michigan with her husband, two daughters, and two cats.

Ren's novel, "The Keys to Jericho," was chosen as an "Official Selection" in the Romance category of Apple Literary's 2017 Annual Book Awards.

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