It's Not Porn, It's Erotica: Abigail Barnette's Hardball Series

The other day author Jennifer Armintrout aka Abigail Barnette had a giveaway on her blog, because she is a Psychic Baseball Wizard. I apologize for not believing in your sports wizardry, Jen. I was wrong, and I feel shame. ALL OF THE SHAME.

The giveaway was her three baseball-themed romance novels, Long Relief, Double Header, and Triple Play. Now, normally I am not much for romance novels. I just don't care about reading what feels like five billion pages of meaningless angst while Perfect Boy and Perfect Girl try to think of reasons not to get together until the last chapter. I am also not much for baseball. I know fuck-all about the game. It seems kind of boring (now I think that about pretty much every sport, so it's not just anti-baseball-ism). But I've never read any of Jen's books, and I've been getting kind of desperate to because her 50 Shades recaps are just that hilarious and well-written that I already know she must be a great author. So of course when she had her baseball-romance-giveaway-gamble I had to get in on the action. After all, I don't hate romance novels. Or rather, I don't hate them on principle. It's just that it seems damn-near impossible to find a romance novel that I can get through without finishing the book hating the characters. And if anybody can write a good character, it would be the woman who is so skilfully ripping apart the most irritating one ever to be plagiarized every week. Plus throw in an adequately interesting plot to boot. Also I don't care what the hell the genre is at this point as long as I get to read something she wrote.

And yes, she delivered. I was hooked immediately by the first book, because the character of Maggie was spectacularly, amazingly perfect. Neatly avoiding every irritating romance-heroine cliche that made me avoid romance novels, she instead kicked all of the ass. Just this totally badass woman who didn't put up with any shit, actually didn't and not just "I am a Strong Female Character and I don't put up with any shit!" amidst all the shit she is happily putting up with. And the dude of the book, Chris, was also pretty rad. I loved that he wasn't the young hotshot perfect prodigy baseball player, but an older dude with a slightly fucked shoulder who was at the end of his career. And who earned less than Maggie. Not that that matters, but it's just really cool that for once the woman is the one who is rich and successful and business-persony (well, more rich -- he is a pro ball player, after all), since usually it's always the guy who is the distant mysterious billionaire who is perfect in every possible way. I could probably just write a whole blog post on how totally rad these two characters are, but i'm trying to cut down on my excessive word-vomit and actually look at all the books in this post, so I'll shut up about them and get on to Double Header.

Second book! I'll admit, I wasn't as enthusiastic right off the bat (no pun intended), but only because I loved Maggie and Chris so much and kind of wanted to read more about them, and wasn't sure if I would get as attached to the new protagonists. I got into it pretty quickly though, and after a few pages anny attachment-doubts I had were gone, because the characters in this one, the adorably-still-in-love-despite-everything ex-boyfriends Zach and Javier, are just as fun to read. Usually the whole "they both love each other but are too stubborn to say anything/figure out it's mutual already, argh why don't they just FUCKING TALK" plot drives me crazy in a book, but it worked here. I dunno why, maybe it was that Zach was in a sorta-happy relationship situation that he was trying to make work or that they had a previous messy breakup that was throwing up roadblocks for them and so it wasn't just an "I can't admit my feelings yet there hasn't been enough conflict in the plot yet" thing that was doing it, but whatever it was, it was way more satisfying than I would have thought from a summary, had I read one.

Third book, also great! More awesome characters - Eva, the sports reporter who is just as awesome as Maggie, and the two friends Taylor and Jeron who both love her. It's a love triangle that I like, for once. Probably because it's not a "Who should I pick, Mister Perfect or Obvious False Lead?" thing, but a "Who should I pick, Mister Perfect or Mister Also Perfect In A Different Way? Fuck it I'll have them both" thing. Because if you start out with a threesome you might as well end with a threesome. Granted, it's not quite as cut-and-dry as that, there is some very satisfying plot that kept me from getting too impatient for the inevitable end, and with polyamory being not nearly as common or as accepted as monogamy it's not the quick and easy answer that, say....okay my lack of familiarity with romance novels and such mean I can't think of a good example of a plain old love triangle off the top of my head, so I'll just have to go with 50 Shades and say the Ana/Christian/Jose triangle, but it feels really unfair to compare that crap with Triple Play. Actually, Twilight's Bella/Edward/Jacob would work better as a comparison because as bad as Twilight is, at least it tries to pretend for a while (though not very hard) that there's a real love triangle there. Wait why am I talking about these books, I'm supposed to be talking about a good series. Go buy Hardball instead of 50 Shades of Twilight, the end.

I feel like I should try to put in some criticism here, since all I've been doing so far is gushing.  But even the stuff that I should probably criticize seemed good to me.  The books are all very short, I think it took me maybe an hour to read each?  I am not sure, it's hard to guess time after I've finished a book.  But it didn't take me long, because I finished both Long Relief and Double Header at work this afternoon, and Triple Play this evening in a couple of chunks while I did other things, like laundry and dinner.  So they're short, the shortest books I've read in a while.  But I can't really list that as a flaw, because I don't want to spend all day reading a single romance novel.  It's boring.  You know how they end, it's not like romance novels ever have a twist.  I challenge you to find me the romance genre's Fight Club or....whichever movie made M Night Shyamalan famous.  I don't care what he got famous for don't bother telling me, my point is fuck wasting ages on a will-they-or-won't-they when won't-they was never an option.  I loved these books because I never had time to get bored of them.

Let's see, what else can I think of that could be a flaw.....well, a few times the character's families would be mentioned, like Maggie's family who were angry at her for getting the job they thought should have gone to her brother, or Zach's mom, where "Her love for her son was fierce and obvious at first sight," or Eva's super-religious family who are going to assume that she's joined a cult because she's in a monogamous threesome. But again, that's tied into the thing above, where the books are good in part because they are so short. I can't think of how you could add in family drama to the plot without making the plot seem overly long and overly dramatic. That sort of thing seems like it would work better as straight-up sequels, rather than crammed into these stories. Again, part of the charm in this series is it's short and sweet, not long and convoluted and filled with padding.

So that's all I got. Nothing really wrong with the books at all. They're a short, fun read, well-written and very charming. And as for "it's not porn, it's erotica," well, is there much of a difference?  Romance novels are just another type of porn, it's just more polite to read Triple Play on the bus than it is to watch Ass Blasters 3 on an airplane.  Somebody would have to work pretty hard to read a sex scene in someone else's book compared to getting an eyeful of hardcore sex on somebody else's computer screen.

Oh wait, ass-blasters were from Tremors 3. Never mind, you can watch that on an airplane no problem. It's not as good as the first one though, so you should probably watch that instead. Or the second one, that was okay.  The fourth one was crap. You know what? Just go with the first one, you'll be fine. Tremors never needed sequels anyway. You know, I think that might be the only film I've ever seen Kevin Bacon in. Maybe I should watch Footloose tomorrow, it's supposed to be good, right?  What else has he been in?  He's some famous successful actor, he's gotta have been in more than two movies.  To Wikipedia!