Buckle up, buds!

Cuz it’s time for another rip roarin- edition of the Big Kitty Litter Box in the Sky Awards. 

What’s a Big Kitty Litter Box in the Sky Award?  Tip: You sooo don’t want to get one! Cuz these are titles you can skip and not miss a blessed thing.

Here’s the short list of qualifications for a Big Kitty Litter Box in the Sky award (subject to change whenever we feel like it):

1. A pointless slog to the Middle of Nowhere littered with unsympathetic cardboard characters we don’t know, don’t want to know, and could care less about.
2. Poor writing littered with spelling and grammatical errors and typos.
3. Brittle, wilted writing that’s as inspiring as a plate of wilted arugula. Or week-old sushi.
4. Political polemics disguised as fiction.
5. Badly overwritten, tedious and mundane. Dull as a box of rocks and twice as dense.
6. Does not enrich, enlighten, educate or inspire in any way.
7. Gratuitous violence and/or profanity.
8. A snoozefest.

So listen up, class. In addition to the above, if there’s one thing that’ll get you a one-way ticket to the Big Kitty Litter Box In The Sky (BKLBITS) faster than you can say “Meow Mix,” it’s a book that’s a faker. A poser.

You know the type. It’s a book that *pretends* to be one thing but morphs into something else without full disclosure up front.

 

This usually happens when a political polemic or an “issues” book tries to camouflage itself as fiction. A few chapters in and you realize it’s got an Agenda. And you’ve been had.

Well, hawk up a hairball. Cuz we hate that.

If we want an “issues” book with an Agenda, we’re perfectly capable of finding one on our own, thank you very much. But if we’re reading fiction, we want to read fiction. As in entertaining and engaging, not sermonizing. We’re just funny that way.

So if you’re pitching your Issues book as fiction without saying so up front, you better be ready to get catapulted into the BKLBITS. In fact, you’ll be first in line. Like:

The Librarian of Burned Books

By Brianna Labuskes

This “historical fiction” set around WWII sounded intriguing. What could be better than fighting a bad idea with good ones – like those found in some books? Too bad the author just couldn’t resist injecting Issues into the story via her triumvirate of female leads. Meow, meow.

The Littlest Bigfoot

By Jennifer Weiner

Well, dadgummit! We actually liked this juvenile *fiction* book about a big girl with unruly hair and a little bigfoot with an insatiable curiosity. Both are misfits in their respective social circles. They meet in the forest and become friends.

So far, so good. But in the closing chapters the author lurches into lecture mode on the “let’s everybody play nice and be kind” theme. We got it, okay? We got it the first 263 times you brought it up. No need to beat us over the head with it. But she does it anyway.

Somebody pass the Tylenol.

The Black Magician

By KayCee Jones

This book has potential. But it’s littered with so many typos and errors in basic mechanics, it made our teeth ache.

So step away from Toni Morrison Wannabe mode. Come back when you get yourself a decent copy editor. Preferably one who’s cleared fourth grade.

For our full review, click here.

Come Back To Me

By Leslie Hatchel

Well. That’s four hours outta our lives we’ll never be able to get back. Another hunka junk that scores an Epic Fail in the Full Disclosure Department.

We took on this load of horse hooey as part of a blog tour. It was proffered as a time travel love story thingy kind of like Somewhere In Time. We hit Eject when it morphed into soft porn. What part of “G to PG-13 ONLY” do you not understand? Barf-o-rama.

Sunny’s Secrets

By Robin Jay

The story follows Sunny, a nurse who’s lost her husband, John Sullivan, to a suicide bomber while he was on a deployment mission in Afghanistan. Sunny becomes a “switcher” who swaps “life forces” with people who do and do not want to die. Or… something.

Cuz this book is really just a crash course in Buddhism 101 with a Reincarnation chaser. It moves at glacial speed. On a cloudy day.

And to think we coulda been watching grass grow…

This Bright River

By Patrick Somerville

This load of cow pucky is supposedly “A compelling family drama and a surprising love story” set mostly in Wisconsin.  It’s really just incoherent, rambling blather with bad lighting about some foul-mouthed loser who needs a mommy very badly. Didn’t make it past chapter two before reaching for the nearest barf bag.

Got this loser at a library book sale. For 25 cents. Might ask for a refund.

Char-lama and Agent Spirit: The Fallen Ghost

By Debbie Alston

This hackneyed pile of you’re kidding, right? is supposedly about “how two powerful superwomen joined forces to rid a community of a menace to society” and a drug kingpin named Chance. It’s really just one giant run-on sentence loaded with one typo after another. Ditto enough errors in basic grammar and mechanics to choke a camel. Examples:

• “Capricorn was able to allude capture.”
• “Chance was levied.” (The correct word in context is “livid.”)
• “A man without a conscious.” Oops.
• “Spirit grasped with the reality…”
• “… his instincts had never stirred him wrong.”
• Chance… had become a shallow of a man he once was.”

The whole book is like that. Cringeworthy.

Adding insult to insult (that’s not a typo), the author doesn’t seem to have Clue 1 about how to write dialogue. Or basic paragraphing and shifting POVs. Nor has she ever heard about “Show, Don’t Tell.” Cuz Alaskan-sized swaths of this dud do the exact opposite, leaving readers reaching for No Doze.  

The title is as misleading as the synopsis. Per the latter, you think you’re getting a “thriller/suspense” novel about two butt-kicking Amazonian-type women who are gonna take down a criminal enterprise and make the world safe for truth and justice. What you really get is a one-trick pony, Spirit, aka: Starr, with “Char-lama” the “investigative reporter” as an afterthought. And a mighty thin one at that. In fact, all the characters are straight out of central casting. Or off the back of the nearest oatmeal box.

Char-lama and Agent Spirit: The Fallen Ghost is billed as a “thriller/suspense” novel.

And I’m the Easter Bunny.

+++

So, dear authors. In case ya missed it the first 428 times, you now know what NOT to submit here. Unless you want to see your title in the next edition of the Big Kitty Litter Box in The Sky Awards. Are we clear?

Kimber: I’d listen up ‘fize you! And load up on extra crispy bacon. (It can’t hurt. Works for me!)