Ex and The City by Sally Clements; Fluffy Rom Com With Some Edges

 

Ex and The City by Sally Clements; Fluffy Rom Com With Some Edges 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: Ex and The City by Sally Clements seems like a fluffy light Second Chance Rom Com/Chick Lit about ex spouses working together on a project. However if you look beyond the formula, there are some deeper edges about toxic relationships, the pressures of fame, and the complexities of balancing a public persona with a private life.

Country singer Stacy Gold needs a new opportunity to branch out and refocus after her career goes into decline. That's where her ex husband, Adam Logan comes in. He is the CEO of Plaxair, an animated production company. His latest film features a singing squirrel and unfortunately his first choice is caught in a scandal so who can he call to fill the role? Why who else but his ex-wife Stacy of course.

There is enough sugar and sweetness in this book to spare but the darker edges keep it from being too mawkish and cloying. It plays with and slightly stretches the formula while sticking to it.

It has the usual Second Chance Romance tropes, so present that even someone like me who hasn't read a lot of them can identify them. There are the dates, intimate conversations, and sexual by play before they completely reconcile. Stacy and Adam go through fights and misunderstanding but clearly still care about each other. 

Another trope explored is the cute endearing couple brought together by outside circumstances, in this case making a movie. It is actually an interesting look at the making of an animated film. Adam and his colleagues watch different shows and movies to match a potential voice to Bibi Squirrel, their film’s protagonist. 

They weigh options as they look for a famous name that will draw in audiences, does not bring objectionable controversy (like Stacy’s predecessor did), and also to find someone who has the personality, voice, and demeanor to play an ingenue squirrel. There are endless voice over sessions where Stacy works alone in a studio and has to keep her energy and Bibi’s character going as she reads the script. 

The behind the scenes details of making an animated film sprinkle throughout the book. For example, Stacy records Bibi’s voice as computer animators model Bibi’s facial expressions and body movements around her. Animation fans might enjoy this inside look at the animation process wrapped inside a Second Chance Romance.

Other tropes in this book are misunderstandings and other people that influenced Adam and Stacy’s breakup. After all, if there were actual potentially toxic reasons like infidelity, addiction, abuse, and so on we would not be rooting for these two kids to get back together. 

In this case most of the break up is engineered by Stacy’s unscrupulous manager, Lester. He isolated Stacy by causing her to doubt Adam's intentions to keep her under his management. Lester is a particularly sinister addition to what is usually a light hearted fluffy subgenre in Romance. He also is who turns the book into a much darker, more layered narrative than is expected. 

He has all of the symptoms of being an abuser particularly with how he arranged Stacy and Lester's divorce. He withholds money and information from her. He love bomb her after she is rejected by her birth parents. He makes her think that he is the only trustworthy person in her life.

 Unfortunately, Stacy is so susceptible to his manipulations that she can't completely cut off from Lester even when she finds out about his duplicity. She considers him a father figure to her and integral to the beginning of her career. It's a toxic relationship that she still can't walk away from personally even when she has to professionally.

In fact within the romance, there is an ongoing theme of Adam and Stacy moving forward creatively. Adam runs his own animation company so he and his staff can make movies that they care about and have a final say in the production. It's clear that he sees animation beyond just a children's medium but a legitimate work of art that appeals to all ages. 

Stacy also has ideas about moving forward in her career. Lester wants her to perform her older songs and look like the girl from her first album. But she writes deeper, more personal songs and matures in appearance. She has grown in age and experience and wants to express that. If she can't do it with Lester, then she intends to do it by herself. Bibi and Adam provide that first step. 

Ex and The City can fall into formula but it also shows how people can change themselves by separating from toxic influences and exploring their professional creativity to form a real partnership.

The Girl From Melodia by Jonathan Toussaint; The Toxic Musician and The Troubled Muse

 

The Girl From Melodia by Jonathan Toussaint; The Toxic Musician and The Troubled Muse

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.

Spoilers: The relationship between an artist and their muse is one that has been discussed, studied, analyzed, argued about both for and against, critiqued, defended, parodied, and recognized. The Artist, usually a man but these days any gender will do, is a tortured soul driven by emotion and is inspired by The Muse, often a woman but again that has changed, who is the source of their art and possibly the breadwinner while they go through their artistic funk. The model for the portrait. The name in the catchy rock song. The disguised protagonist or love interest of the novel. The unattainable unrequited love of the romance film. Despite being named for the Greek goddesses who were the sources of the arts themselves, oftentimes the modern Muse takes a secondary role in creation. 

Think Camille Claudel for Auguste Rodin, Gala for Salvador Dali, Aline Bernstein for Thomas Wolfe, Leila Waddell for Alesteir Crowley, Yoko Ono for John Lennon, Patti “Layla” Boyd for George Harrison and Eric Clapton, Charlotte Gainsborough for Lars Von Trier, and Uma Thurman for Quentin Tarantino. While many muses have had careers of their own, the stereotypical assumption towards them is that the Muses are just required to shut up, stand there, passively inspire, and not actively create their own art. Often if the Artist is a Narcissist, they will agree with that assumption. That is what is at play with Johnathan Toussaint’s novel, The Girl From Melodia.

 The Girl from Melodia is like a folk song. It's about two people who are looking for their authentic voices and are consumed by a passionate love, a love that ends badly. It speaks about truth, love, art, obsession, and unhappiness all of the things that make a perfect tragic love song, but a very crappy real life incompatible relationship.

Martyn Lockhart is the son of famed English folk singer/songwriter, John Lockhart. He is proud of his family legacy and his father’s reputation but he also wants to come out of his father’s shadow and be known as his own person. In 1992, Martyn encountered Francoise, a French woman at the Tulle Music Festival. To Martyn, the Artist, Francoise is the Muse. She inspires him and the two begin a very passionate romantic love affair that continues when returning to Martyn’s native England. Unfortunately just as quickly as the romance and creativity are set afire, they fizzle out when the reality of commitment, artistic temperament, financial and practical woes, and professional and personal insecurity set in.

It cannot be overstated how unhealthy this relationship is. Martyn is the archetypal Artiste. He is creative, passionate, reckless, iconoclastic, argumentative, self-absorbed, and Narcissistic. Everything is material for his music. His first encounter with Francoise leads him to his latest song and concept album, The Girl From Melodia. 

Melodia is a fictional country that Martyn created as a child that he could mentally retreat to in his imagination when things got tough for him. In many ways, Martyn never left that fantasy and still remains in Melodia even as his real world falls apart around him.

He possesses a romantic ideal of Francoise at first. She inspires him with her looks, carefree attitude, lively spirit, and vulnerability. Like him, she is also a passionate writer particularly in her journal which she describes the headlong sexual and romantic emotions of being near each other and the intellect of two creatives sharing ideas. She is also a musician and songwriter and just as she inspires him, Martyn inspires her.

These are the days of the early lyrics and first juvenilia poems which describe the youthful innocence of plunging feet first without thinking or caring about what comes next. Francoise fills that Melodia fantasy so well that Martyn tries to remain there. He wants to hold Francoise to the fantasy world and image that he created. But he considers Melodia and Francoise as his works and there is only room for one writer and artist in that fantasy.

That all changes when they move to England and their real natures, especially Martyn’s, emerges. Because just like Martyn has all of the positive aspects of an artist like creativity and passion, he also has many of the negative aspects. He is the kind of guy who diss tracks like “You’re So Vain,” “You Oughta Know,” or most of Taylor Swift’s catalog were written about.

Martyn is the type of guy who excites, fascinates, and blinds one with his talent, charm, looks, and artistic fire at first. Then his true nature is revealed to be controlling, absent, egocentric, jealous, volatile, immature, and self-indulgent. Suddenly, his love interest is left with a broken heart, a diminished soul, and a cynical outlook on love to fill at least hundreds of discographies.

One of the ways the narcissism is manifested is when Martyn suffers through writer’s block. As his creative well runs dry, Francoise is activated. She writes, rehearses, and performs. There are even hints of a record deal which makes Martyn furious. 

It is very reminiscent of stories like A Star is Born, which is a film that I thoroughly despise no matter the adaptation for reasons that I won’t go into, despite the original screenplay being written by Dorothy Parker, one of my favorite writers. Martyn feels that he is supposed to be the creative one, the musician, the poet and Francoise is the creation, the inspiration, the model. He can’t live with his partner’s success if it is at the expense of his own and doesn’t have the enlightened foresight to take pride in it. 

To Martyn, the muse is not supposed to drink from the artistic poetic well. She is supposed to guide him to the well and provide him with a cup. He was once interested in her talent when it was hers, but now that’s in direct competition of his own, he sees it as a threat. He behaves irresponsibly, withdraws from Francoise, belittles her, and in one of the worst chapters destroys her demo recordings that she worked hard on for months.

Her songs and journal entries show that she is just as driven, just as passionate, and cares about her music just as much as he does. She shapes Melodia into her own fantasy and Martyn doesn’t want to share it.  

To his credit, I suppose Martyn recognizes these attributes in himself. In the prologue, as he goes over his relationship with others, particularly Francoise, he realizes that he is to blame. He compares himself to a vampire sucking on Francoise’ energy and creativity to survive.

 The novel reveals that she wasn’t the only one who suffered from his egotism and his previous partnership with a former friend produced violent results because of Martyn’s conceit and insecurities. Looking back with regret and harshly obtained wisdom, he comments in the narration with lines like “This still haunts me,” and “I know that I shouldn’t have done this, but..” He knows that he screwed up so has some humility and remorse over it.

Some of those negative attributes can be attributed to his upbringing by his folksinger father, John. John also possessed a similar artistic temperament, penchant for violent behavior, and self-destructive coping mechanisms. Those mechanisms led to the decline of his relationship with Martyn’s mother. 

Martyn saw the creative sparks and emotional decline from the front row. But he only connects to his father through their music. He wanted to achieve the artistic, professional, critical acclaim, and audience adulation that his father had. Unfortunately, he got that and everything that came with it: the temper, the addiction, the mistreatment of partners and didn’t realize it until it was too late.

One could say that Martyn’s regret is more self-indulgence and that he hasn’t truly repented. That may be true. He might find another toxic relationship to inspire then anger him. But he may also see this as a wake up call and finally gain the maturity to improve not only his life but his music as well.