The Quest for Forgiveness: Have We Finally Reached the End of the Book?

So I dropped off the face of the earth for a couple weeks, but here's a Friday blog and MAYYYYBE someday more blogs will be headed your way! I hope! Anyway...

Last time, Brianna discovered this mysterious soldier was her long-lost adopted brother, which was ridiculous, and everyone was happy.

Brianna's upcoming wedding to the adult man who fell in love with her when she was a high school sophomore is being planned, and she even repurchases her grandparents' ocean home she loved so much. It had been sold to pay off debt, but she buys it back so she can have her wedding there.

Her wedding is apparently beautiful, though she really only has her family and her bodyguards there because these are the only friends she has. We spend about 3 pages talking about how beautiful her wedding is, and it's all very generic and cliched, and that's the end of the chapter.

In fact... that's nearly the end of the book.

What we have left is epilogues. But if I recall correctly, the epilogues still have some delightfully terrible stuff in them, so on we go.

We begin with Sonya. Sonya gets engaged to Sexual-Harassment-Harry almost immediately after Brianna gets back from her one-week honeymoon, so it seems every woman in this book is part of the "Let's get engaged to people we haven't been dating because this is always a great idea" club. Brianna donates money so Sonya can be a lawyer again (finally!) but only do pro bono adoption cases. Eventually Sonya and Harry adopt children themselves and everyone's happy.

We're told about the fates of Brianna's not-Conrad bodyguards, which I could not care less about because I couldn't even remember their names. Bruno apparently becomes the chancellor of Germany's head of security. Jonathan and Cathy become Brianna and Conrad's bodyguards and... chefs? Nothing like hiring the only friends you have to cook for you in your luxurious Caribbean retreat.

Eric and Gabriella (Brianna's adopted brother and his wife) move to Texas, where he starts a Christian band, and then his epilogue segues into a personal ad:

His favorite things to do were moonlight walks on the beach with Gabi, and hunting shells with his children.

Ethan moves into his beach home in Corpus Christi and starts a music publishing company which is like 75% Brianna's music. Then he gets married and lives happily ever after.

And now, finally, to Brianna.

Well, first of all:

One year after her wedding, Brianna Bays faced the press again to make an announcement. She and her husband, Conrad, would be permanently moving to their home in the Caribbean.

Which is a bit confusing because two pages earlier we had this:

A couple times a year Sonya and her family would fly to the Caribbean, or the Texas retreat to visit their close friends, Brianna and Conrad Thompson.

Which led me at first to believe that Sonya's visits to the Caribbean were completely unrelated to any visits to Brianna, thanks to that awkward comma and to not telling us about the Caribbean move until two pages after this. But then as I continued reading I began to think Brianna was living in both homes. But apparently no. Sonya just visits the Texas retreat to see them, which must be disappointing since they're not there. You'd think she'd have learned after going there like twice.

Bruno's section mentions a yearly reunion of the group, and I wondered at first if maybe *that* was what it was referring to, but, nope, that happens in the Caribbean. Maybe Sonya just wants to visit Ethan.

All right. So, terrible continuity aside, there is a section of the epilogues I have major problems with:

Later that year, she bore twins, a boy, and a girl. They named their daughter after Brianna’s mother, “Mira Grace.” Their son they called, “Ethan Jeremiah.” 

Brianna Bays was gone forever. She was Mandy Dawn Thompson now. 

She would never act or perform again, but she would continue doing what she loved best— singing. While she no longer sang for thousands of fans in concert halls around the world, she would perform a limited number of concerts for charities and churches.

Brianna Bays, who has been so obsessed with music her whole life, abandons her career to take care of her kids.

Now let me make this clear. I have NO PROBLEM with moms choosing their kids over their career. People can do what they want. I don't think that makes her less of a person or a weak woman or anything like that, that's ridiculous.

I just think it's wildly out of character.

Shall we review some of the things Brianna has said about music in the past?

“I have my music— that’s all I need.” 

“I find music eases my soul. Ethan... my father, said I have the talent to make music by the way I feel.” 

“I’ve always found comfort in my music. I guess you could call my music my drug of choice.” 

“My music drives me every day— the next song, the next tune, the next lyrics. . . . I don’t think haunt is the right word. However, they do seem to control me. I hear them repeatedly. When I put one down on paper, the next one begins. They just never seem to end.”

Over and over again, the book paints Brianna's relationship to music as something incredibly special and important and comforting to her. Music is her LIFE. Even after she becomes a Christian and finds Ethan, music is still one of the most important things in her life. And as someone who has a very close connection to art -- and not even as close a connection as Brianna seems to have -- I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to almost entirely give up a career doing something I loved that much.

Not that it couldn't have been the right choice for her. Not saying that at all. But the book paints it as the *obvious* right choice. She has no doubts, no concerns, she doesn't miss it once it's gone. The book doesn't even bring up that it *is* her choice. It's almost as if by having the babies, she automatically contracted herself to stay home and take care of them because that's what women do. And with all the work this book has done emphasizing that Brianna's music is her whole world, to dismiss this without even a question makes it seem like her music was never even really that important to her in the first place.

(I'm also not sure what they mean by saying she does concerts but never performs again. What counts as "performing" and what counts as "singing"? Is this new stuff acoustic? No dancing? Tiny venues only?)

Incidentally, no news on what Conrad's doing. Has Brianna made enough money that they're both just going to retire on that (after she's finished buying Caribbean islands and funding an entire law firm out of pocket for Sonya), or is he now living pretty much 24/7 as a retirement bodyguard for some other famous pop star as he did with Brianna?

It's just frustrating, because if there was anything I connected with Brianna with, it was her love for music, and immediately giving up the thing that the ENTIRE BOOK was about her loving so much... is really anticlimactic. It'd be like Natalie Portman in Black Swan giving up ballet via a 5-second clip at the end or Salieri from Amadeus ending the play with the line, "You know, I think actually I've decided to become a plumber." It. Doesn't. Fit.

But all that ranting leads us to our very, very last line:

As for Brianna Bays, her Quest for Forgiveness was fulfilled.

As is ours. And I am finally free from the obnoxious Mary Sues, the ignorant rants disguised as passionate speeches, the glaringly obvious lack of research, and the hilarious dialogue that is nearly impossible to say without laughing.

...Until I grit my teeth and plunge into The Quest for Freedom, of course.

The Quest for Forgiveness: The Mysterious Soldier Who Must Be Lying

Last time, Conrad proposed to Brianna when neither one of them had openly said they were romantically interested in the other. He also made a big deal of reminding her that he fell in love with her when she was 16, so that was all the creepy.

Today's chapter is called "A Shocking Discovery," and I honestly can't remember what that shocking discovery is, so this'll be all kinds of fun. I'll be as shocked as all of you!

The chapter opens with Brianna visiting a hospital for American soldiers in Germany and visits them all and is sad because they are hurt. She is introduced to one specific 19-year-old soldier whose prognosis is extremely bleak. He wakes up just long enough to ask her to take a message to his wife and kids back home. (The message is that he loves them.)

She talks to the guy for awhile and he talks mostly about how much he regrets having gotten his now-wife pregnant at fifteen. He gets super bitter when Brianna says she's an actress and tells her she should try being a soldier, but she eventually Mary Sues him into liking her anyway.

“[W]ho doesn’t know of the great Brianna Bays? Please forgive me, but I have a bullet lodged inside my brain that’s playing havoc on my memory.”

"Only a bullet in my brain could possibly have kept someone from recognizing BRIANNA BAYS."

“You sure can play a mean guitar... for a girl.”  

She smiled.

Ah, sexism. How charming.

Anyway, the soldier goes on telling about how he and his wife eloped when she went off to college, and then his band got busted for drug use, so he got the option of joining the military instead of going to jail. He then gets even MORE bitter when she says she'll pray for him:

“I finally left home and lived on the streets. How could you possibly understand?” He shifted his gaze back to her. “I bet you own five houses around the world.”  

Brianna took a deep, steadying breath. “As a matter of fact, I own seven houses, but five of them are for sale.”

This exchange completely cracks me up. If Rothdiener's trying to make Brianna come across as humble and compassionate, it's totally not working. She just sounds snarky as can possibly be.

The soldier then goes on to talk about how he "lied, stole, and even almost killed a man" while living on the streets. But I can't figure out WHEN exactly he lived on the streets and had time to do all this. He was in his stable home getting his girlfriend pregnant at 15 (his son is three and he's 19, so they were probably both 15, not just her) then he was in a band when he was 16 and hit the road after his girlfriend's parents broke the two of them up. His band got super successful, he got married, they got busted for drugs, he joined the military, he ended up here.

When exactly did he live on the streets? Before he was 15, so his girlfriend was dating a homeless teenage runaway and her parents only objected when he got her pregnant? After they were together but before he joined the band? Somehow while he was in the band? After the band broke up but before the military when he had a wife and kid? NONE OF THESE MAKE SENSE.

I think Rothdiener wrote two separate "Brianna magically cures soldiers with her amazingness" scenes and then mushed them together so one soldier has these mysterious extra years in his life during which he was living on the streets almost killing people. Just like Brianna had those mysterious extra years where she got a black belt in karate.

Brianna tells him about Jesus and tells him she'll only deliver his message to his family if he reads the Bible and forgives his abusive parents. Lovely. He agrees, though. They banter for a bit about why there is evil in the world if God is good, and then she goes, and then...

OH, I JUST FOUND THE SHOCKING DISCOVERY.

The young man was startled when he spotted the heart-shaped mark on her forehead.  

Brianna smiled and turned to leave.  

He stared at the celebrity as she walked away.  

After only a couple steps, the soldier desperately cried out, “Janna?” . . . “It is you, isn’t it? Janna, it’s really you.” He began to thrash around, emotionally out of control, trying to reach her. He shouted, “It’s me, Eric... your brother!”

In case you don't remember, the last we knew of Eric was this:

"Eric ended up getting a fifteen-year-old girl pregnant, shirked his responsibilities, dropped out of school, and ran away. He joined a street gang in L.A. where he killed a rival gang member. Then he just disappeared. Rumor has it... he was killed in a street fight over drugs."

Let's compare that to what he himself just said he was doing after the pregnancy:

“I played guitar in a rock band when I was sixteen, but when I wasn’t permitted to see Gabi, I hit the road. . . . The band spent a year in California, and then went to New York. Had a successful gig there. I managed to save enough money to fly back to get Gabi and Weston.”

So... that year in California with the band was when he joined a street gang and killed a rival gang member? Or "almost killed," as Eric put it? He was out in California with his band, lived on the streets, joined a gang, killed a gang member, and then went with his band to New York, where somehow people just magically couldn't find him despite the fact that he was trying to publicly make a name for himself and should not have been that hard to find? Was the rest of his band in a gang too? Was his whole band a gang all to themselves? Was the rest of his band homeless? What is going on here?

There are two different versions of this story here (three if we count Ethan's story, Eric's band story, and Eric's on-the-streets story which doesn't fit with the band story in the first place). I am pretty sure Eric just made up his band story, because it's the one of the three that doesn't belong. He probably never even had a band.

I peeked ahead in this chapter to see if Eric offers any, "Oh, so you thought XYZ happened to me, but ZYX did instead!" comments, but nope. They all just celebrate and cry and yell miracle. Eric recovers completely from his injury. Brianna flies to Germany twice a week while still touring the rest of the world just to check up on Eric.

And that's where that chapter ends. We only have two more chapters and five more pages left. We are SO CLOSE to being done with this horrible excuse for a book.

The Quest for Forgiveness: This Romance Chapter Is Not Romantic

Last time, they transported Brianna's mom back to the U.S. and then Brianna went on tour, and now she's in Paris and she and Conrad are about to go for a walk. I think romancey things happen here. The romance writing in this book is the worst, so I don't anticipate that this will be a fun ride.

So Brianna and Conrad start off this chapter by going to the Eiffel Tower and racing each other up the stairs, because apparently there's nobody else here to see it that day. Conrad marvels at Mary Sue-ness:

He was always amazed at her physical fitness.

He catches her on the second floor (a little less than halfway up the Tower, according to my research) and they stare into each other's eyes for awhile before just looking at the view. Conrad is nervous from staring into Brianna's eyes so he tries to talk about French history, and it is Brianna's turn to be impressed.

Conrad asks Brianna if she has any opinions on anything, and she says not unless she can write about it. She talks for a little while about how her music drives her every day and is pretty much her whole life. (This will be important for you to remember later, readers. IIRC, there is a distressing retcon around the corner.)

Conrad then asks her if she'd put as much effort into a relationship as she does into her music, and she refuses to answer at first and just touches his face instead. Then she says, yes, she'd put her all into a relationship and slow her entertaining schedule, which, I mean, is probably a good idea just for her health, given that I'm pretty sure she's been touring full-time for almost a solid two, two and a half years at this point. She has to be exhausted.

Uh, then this happens:

Conrad released her hand, and slipped out of sight.  

Brianna turned to see where he had gone.  

Conrad, the man who had protected her since the beginning of her career, was on one knee in front of her, holding a spectacular diamond ring.

DUDE HOLD YOUR HORSES YOU'RE NOT EVEN DATING

Granted, she has been flirting with him for several years (though she's REALLY bad at it), but, people, you do not just run off and propose to people when you haven't even openly admitted you have a romantic interest in them. That is such a terrible idea.

When Jacob and I first started dating, we were in a pretty marriage-obsessed environment of Christian college kids and, no joke, I started getting asked about our marriage plans like two months in. We ended up with this running joke that he was going to propose to me any day now, but every time after we made that joke, I reminded him that if he did that I would say no. It took about a year of dating him to decide I wanted to marry him. If he had just straight-up proposed to me that first day he told me he liked me, I would have laughed out loud because I'd have thought it was some weird joke because proposing to people you've NEVER BEEN INVOLVED WITH ROMANTICALLY is a thing that only works out well in rom coms, and I make fun of it then too.

“Brianna, as your bodyguard, I have been near you day and night, hardly ever leaving your side the past seven years. The moment I saw you, I fell madly in love with you.[”]

Um, 'scuse me, can we all take a second to remember that when Conrad first met Brianna, she had JUST turned 16? The book claimed he himself was "in his early twenties," but given that he had had time to not only have a significant military career but also firmly established himself as a bodyguard to the stars, I'm pretty sure he has to be older than that, so maybe he just looked like he was in his early twenties and was really like 30. Either way, for him to cheerfully confess that as an adult he fell in love with a barely-16-year-old... it's far less romantic than this moment is apparently supposed to be.

“This morning I asked your father for your hand in marriage, and he kindly gave me his blessing. It meant a lot to me when he said he would be proud to have me as his son.”

Ugh.

So this has to be an offshoot of the more extreme versions of the idea of Christian courtship. For most people I know who talk about courtship, they mean 1) their dating is focused on finding a marriage partner, not just for fun, and 2) they make a lot of use of parents or other authority figures to guide and advise them during this time. Occasionally it means the couple only interacts in the presence of other people. I don't have a particular problem with any of this if this is how people want to do things, even though I think it wouldn't have worked particularly well for me.

However, there is an offshoot of this in which relationships are formed in a way that is uncomfortably close to an arranged marriage. The kind in which the woman's preferences aren't of particular interest to anyone, and benchmarks in the marriage are arranged between the man and the woman's parents.

This doesn't feel like that because he talked to her father about proposing. My husband did that too. This feels like that because he talked to her father about proposing before he had even talked to her about romance at all. It's like he saw her in a shop, decided he wanted to buy her, and negotiated with the shopkeeper without ever talking to her about it. It just icks me out.

But clearly the book advocates this kind of unsettling arrangement, because Brianna happily agrees.

“I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, too. . . . I knew you were the right one, but I had to get my life in order first. I’m sorry it took this long.”

"...I'm also sorry we didn't get married when I was 16"? She didn't have to get her life in order as much as she had to become a legal adult. Frankly, I'm not even sure she could have gotten married when they first met. In Tennessee, where she was living, she'd need approval affidavits from her parents, who weren't around and she wouldn't have tried to locate them anyway, so I'm not even sure who could have signed for that. These are the kind of questions that come up when you gloss over the fact that an adult man fell in love with a girl who would've been a high school sophomore.

That's the end of this chapter, and thank goodness, though the next one is called "A Shocking Discovery," so that's gotta be good.

The Quest for Forgiveness: A Funeral and a Tour

Last time... well, last time Ethan uncovered a nonsensical conspiracy theory and Rothdiener gleefully reported Susan and Alana's well-deserved horrific deaths, because miraculous forgiveness doesn't save you once you've hit the point of no return for not attending church anymore.

So, I forgot, this is where we remember that Brianna is a rich pop star who can do anything:

After using their political pull, and at the request of the President of the United States, Iraq agreed to release the body of Brianna’s mother.

Because of course the President is going to spend his time demanding that an Iraqi family ship their daughter's body off to the U.S. on a pop star's whim. That seems like an excellent move for relations between the Middle East and the United States.

Ethan, Brianna, and her bodyguards flew to Iraq on the star’s private jet.

...Better yet, Ethan, Brianna, and her bodyguard are apparently going to bring her mother's remains back themselves. In a private jet. That seems awesome.

After visiting her mother's grave, they visit the hospital where Brianna was born. They find a nurse who smuggled Brianna out of the hospital and they all reminisce together and it's all quite boring, or maybe I'm just not in a snarky enough mood.

We abruptly switch to them leaving Iraq. We learn that Brianna's grandmother has left her husband, who was then killed along with her two sons, and she inherited all his money. I don't have the energy tonight to look up whether that would be an actual thing allowed in their area of the world, but it is a nice tidy solution. Rothdiener opted to kill off everyone who wasn't a Christian by the end of the book.

Brianna's grandmother reveals that the charm Brianna found in her box of her mother's things is a 2500-year-old charm where every gem in the charm is one of the rarest gems in the entire world. Because Brianna definitely couldn't have a charm that WASN'T outrageously valuable. That would imply that her goodness wouldn't always lead to wealth, and that would be ridiculous.

So then they fly back to Colorado and they have a little funeral for Brianna's mother. They fly in that pastor of that church Brianna got saved in to do the service. Brianna and Ethan sing.

That's the end of the chapter. I'm not stopping there for this blog because, uh, nothing happened. All of this is so BORING. But at least it's not infuriating like the last chapter was, so I guess that's a step up. Either way, let's keep going.

(This chapter begins with this verse, quoted exactly here: "Now then, stand still and see this greet thing the LORD is about to do before your eyes!" This... what thing? I hope the Lord is about to teach us a new handshake. That would be a good greet thing.)

Brianna releases her new CD, which, of course, "quickly raced to the top of the charts," and then she goes off on a year-long tour while Sonya steps down as her manager for... no reason. Just that "it was time for the attorney to begin a new life of her own." Good luck going back to work as a lawyer after leaving your successful law office to work as a tour manager and personal assistant for seven years. Those fields are not terribly connected.

Everybody is sad and says bye to Sonya, although Rothdiener reminds us that "with modern technology she would only be a phone call away." Yes, so different than when we started this story in the 19th century.

Ethan takes over managing Brianna, because "[h]is people skills and knowledge of the world made him a perfect fit for the job." Yup. People skills and knowledge of the world are pretty much all you need. We don't want anyone with actual managing experience involved apparently, Brianna's career pretty much drives itself.

Brianna shares her conversion with everyone on tour, and everyone's happy because she's SO open with them that it makes them think of her as a family member. (I don't quite get that reasoning, but that's what our author is claiming.)

Ethan and Brianna also go to Paris together as part of her mega tour. But then...

After the final concert in Paris, Ethan said he was tired and going to bed early. Brianna thought it strange, and was afraid her father was ill. He had looked slightly pale. “I’m fine. I’m just very tired.”

What? Ethan's a Christian. He can't die. Only the non-Christians die in this book, and they die horribly and with no possible hope. I can't actually remember if he dies, and he might just be faking it, because he suggests she and Conrad go see the sights, and I KNOW she and Conrad have gotta get together at some point, so it's probably here.

However, I'm pretty sure I can't stomach reading more awkward flirting between Brianna and her bodyguard who was flirting with her back when she was barely-16 and hasn't gotten any better at it since then, so I'm going to call it a day and try to tackle the rest of this next week. Sorry nothing happened in these chapters.

The Quest for Forgiveness: The Worst Chapter. THE WORST CHAPTER.

Last time... three months ago... Brianna and Ethan found Susan to "confront" her only to find out that she had lost her hair, her teeth, and her mind because she and her kids stopped going to church after Ethan went to jail. That is only a very slightly exaggeration.

Brianna and Ethan start feeling bad for Susan, as they should because OH MY GOSH SHE IS A MESS.

She manages to stay coherent long enough to tell some sort of weird narrative about how she was going to "destroy" Ethan and Brianna by telling the courtroom that Brianna was Ethan's daughter, but that she changed her mind when she saw him:

“When I saw you in that courtroom, a broken man who had done nothing wrong, I realized that it was I who was wrong. I decided I could not hurt you by telling the truth about Janna and her identity. I realized you were doing what you had to as a father— protecting your child. At that moment, I understood.”

Yeah, too bad NONE of that came through in the trial, where she worked as hard as she could to testify that Ethan and Brianna had an inappropriate relationship going on.

She then talks for awhile about how great her life was after the trial, how she never had time for her kids, and how she somehow accidentally told Brianna's evil uncles about Brianna being Ethan's daughter.

Then we get this revelation.

“I never thought they would hurt your dad. Days later, I heard the news of your father being killed while he walked to his car. The report said it was an accident, a hit-and-run driver. The newspaper reported that a black truck with two men hit him and fled the scene. I knew it was the same men because I saw them leave my house in a black truck.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

OK, so apparently I wrote up to this point on this blog and then just left it and walked away because I could not process that ridiculous twist. It's now approximately three weeks later than it was when I started writing this blog, and when I reread where I'd gotten to on my draft, I still can't process it.

First of all, it's nice that there's only one black truck in the world. Makes it easy to figure out when the people in it are murdering people.

Secondly, apparently Ethan was right to be super worried about Brianna's family, because turns out they were all completely movie-serial-killer-obsessive about hunting her down and killing her, to the point where they just murdered her grandfather out of nowhere...

...but thirdly, that murder really makes zero sense. There was no reason to think that that would lead them any closer to Brianna. Why did that even happen? It's not like they got a hold of either Ethan or Susan and said, "Bring Brianna to us or this will happen again." Why was randomly killing her grandfather without telling anyone about it part of the plan? How was that going to help them? Were they just mad that Brianna had a grandfather?

The conspiracy theory goes deeper:

[Ethan] thought about the man of Arab descent who stabbed him in prison. Everything began to make sense. “They came after me too, didn’t they?”

Because apparently EVERYBODY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST is involved in a vast conspiracy to kill Brianna's family. And prisoner-on-prisoner violence is, of course, so rare that for a man of Arab descent to stab Ethan, he must be connected to them.

I think here I have to quote myself talking about The Quest for Skye, because here we're running into one of the same problems that that book had (well, a lot of them, because Rothdiener's just as crappy a writer no matter what the story is):

There's a movie I really love (which I'm not revealing the name of because I have to get super spoilery here to make my point). The basic idea is that an extremely paranoid man ends up getting very close to a very lonely woman, and by the end of the movie, the relationship has gotten all psychologically tangled up in the paranoia, which she has kind of latched onto in her mind as a way of relating to him. The final scene is this completely terrifying scene where he helps her create this enormous conspiracy encompassing nearly everything that's ever happened to her, making it fit, making the inexplicable facts of one person's life fit someone else's. It's a horrifying almost-monologue as you watch her just spiral and spiral and spiral into madness. 

That is what that paragraph was like.

The paranoia and Islamophobia and ridiculous leaps of logic they have to take to make everything fit here ("They drove a black truck!" "An Arabic man once stabbed me in prison!") are just utterly incomprehensible. And I want to give up and consider this blog post done because, whoo, ranting about that was intense, but we only have a couple pages left in this chapter and maybe we'll find out MORE stupid conspiracy theories, so I'm charging on.

Brianna reassures Susan that they won't come after them anymore:

Brianna finally spoke. “A few months ago, I confronted them. Conrad told them in no uncertain terms that if they ever tried to harm me, or anyone I love, they would have to face his wrath, and that of the United States military.”

I forgot they'd threatened them with the entire military. During this reiteration, though, I am extremely amused that Conrad felt he had to include himself in there. Like, "The military went after you... and also ME." This theme continues:

Susan asked, “Who is Conrad?”  

“He’s my bodyguard . . . ”  

“It’s really over?” Relief showed on Susan’s face.

"Because, of course, if a BODYGUARD threatened them, I'm sure these guys who wandered around America killing people and have been rabidly hunting Brianna for 20 years will back off now. Should've thought to have a bodyguard threaten them earlier!"

Ethan forgives Susan while musing how sad it is that she will remain in her own locked little world forever, because he's apparently decided there is to be no real redemption for Susan and no mental healing whatsoever, so that's pleasant.

OH WHAT AND APPARENTLY HE IS RIGHT because in the next scene Susan kills herself.

Wow.

WOW.

Way to bring closure to what is clearly supposed to be an inspirational story about forgiveness by having them forgive someone who hurt them significantly, only to have that person consumed by guilt and overdose on pills.

And then Rothdiener just casually throws in that Alana (Susan and Ethan's daughter) died of a drug overdose, too, though that one was probably accidental.

We end the chapter with this grave sentence:

Alana was like many of the young people in her generation, she thought she had time... but her time ran out.

Neither Susan nor Alana are mentioned again in the last few chapters of the book.

This is the worst "uplifting" Christian book ever.

The Quest for Forgiveness: Become a Christian OR ELSE THIS HAPPENS

Last time, Brianna held a press conference to tell everybody about the crime she committed as a kid, the crowd turns on her, and Ethan shows up to save the day. That's basically the end of the story but for some reason we still have 43 pages left, and I don't know what... oh. Wait. Crap. I remember what else happens in this book. It's gross.

So, to get away from the press, Brianna and co. retreat to Brianna's private island in the Caribbean. Yup, four years into her career, she's already wealthy enough to buy an entire island. And thought it would be an important thing to do so. But for some reason Sonya's still running all Brianna's errands by herself with no help at all.

Oh, wait, they then get into the story of how Brianna bought the island. Apparently a Mexican drug lord sold it to her because he had gotten arrested and was in jail in Arizona (maybe he knows Ethan) and didn't want the government to seize it. And also he was a fan of Brianna's music, because everyone in the world is.

Ethan smiled at the story. He looked proudly at his successful daughter. “God protected you all along, didn’t He?”

"I'm so glad God protected you from... not having a private island by getting a Mexican drug lord to sell you his."

Seriously, that sentence doesn't make any sense at all after that story.

Brianna then reveals for the first time in the book that she likes to write music on her private island. And then... weeks pass. Brianna and Ethan bond. Then they realize 1) they need to visit Brianna's mother's grave again because her time in Iraq went so well before, and 2) they need to "confront" Susan about... something. What did Susan do to them? Susan was a crappy wife and a crappy mom, but it is entirely Brianna and Ethan's fault that Ethan went to jail. Why not just let the woman be?

Because this book has to show off its heavy-handed morals about what happens to you when you're not a Christian, that's why!

That was the entire twentieth chapter, so let's continue.

They find Susan, but can't find Ethan's other living child, Alana (in case you don't remember, one of Ethan's sons died in a gang fight and the other died of alcohol poisoning because everything got really abruptly bad once he went to jail).

They go visit Susan, who's living with her parents. For some reason, their yard looks terrible now, because when you make bad life decisions, your yard just starts to look awful, like some kind of reverse Dorian Gray situation. That or they're too busy being Bad People to take care of their lawn.

Susan's parents open the door and recognizes Brianna as Janna from the past.

There was no denying it, the black hair and bright blue eyes gave evidence of who she was.

Because nobody has ever dyed their hair black or worn bright blue contacts to change their appearance. Nor has anyone else ever had that combination of features. I mean, they should be figuring out it's her, but more because she showed up at their door and less because she happens to have the same hair color and eye color as the girl they knew like six years ago.

Ethan spoke curtly. “We would like to talk with Susan.”  

“So would we,” the man replied sadly.

Now, uh, I assumed this meant Susan wasn't there or that she was dead, but apparently it just means that she is "a shell of a human being." Her parents spent their whole life savings on "Susan and her problems" and her bad life choices, which can only have started six years ago because Susan was doing just fine before then. She was married (if not well), had kids (if not well), and had an extremely successful job where she got to be a model and a marketing expert. But apparently in the last six years, everything went ridiculously wrong and her parents spent all their money on her and now they are... too poor to mow their lawn, I guess.

“Please, just get her. We want to get this over with, so we can get on with our lives.” Ethan’s voice grew impatient.

Yeah, this sounds like a GREAT idea. Here's a novel concept: How about you find closure without hunting down and "confronting" your ex-wife? That's what most people have to do.

They go see Susan, and she is a mess -- feeble, malnourished, losing her hair, her teeth are decaying, and her mind is broken. Then we hear her story: She had an affair with someone at her cosmetics company and they got fired but started their own cosmetic company, only for him to cheat on her two years later, take their money, and run, so Susan's parents had to cover all that money.

So all the stuff that happened to her really has happened in just four years. (Maybe five, I'm losing track of how much time has passed.) In that time, she became an anorexic, bulimic alcoholic, got married two more times, was beaten by both those husbands and almost died in the hospital, and then moved in with her parents. Now she's just completely broken and mostly incoherent.

They ask about Alana.

“Your children were too far gone when we realized they were headed down the wrong path. After your divorce, they never went back to church. They just seemed to drift on their own.”

UGGGGGH.

This entire section is all about "If you don't go to church and be a Christian, you will never be able to make a good choice again and your life will fall apart completely because that's just what happens."

Guys, I have friends who are not Christians. I have friends who have left Christianity. I have friends who are still part of Christianity but don't go to church. *cough*sometimesthat'sme*cough* Do I think that they're only seconds away from becoming gang members and alcoholics? Uh, no. Not even a little bit. That's insulting and stupid and doesn't seem even remotely realistic.

Of course, I do want to take a second here to point out that Brianna wasn't a Christian for quite a lot of her musical career, and she catapulted to super stardom, but the book knew the whole time that she was gonna get saved. The book says at one point that she hit "rock bottom," but... has she seen what happened to the rest of her family? If being tremendously wealthy and famous and talented without any substance abuse problems, with a loving support system is "rock bottom," then what in the world do you call Susan's life?

This is just going to get worse and more awful and more explicit about the stuff it's only hinting at now, so I'm going to call it a day and take a break before I have to plunge back in next week. Whee.

36 pages to go.

The Quest for Forgiveness: Misunderstanding the Legal System... Again

Last time, we were plodding through Brianna recapping the past 242 pages for us at a press conference, but with 50% more preaching! Whoo!

Brianna talks some more about her personal relationship with God (at which point we get this odd aside: "Many reporters had microphones," which, yes, makes sense if they're recording her speaking in any way).

She talks about how she sent Sonya on a quest, though she's already talked about the results of that quest, so this seems redundant. She sees a teenager "in the front row with the reporters," because I guess teenagers just wander into press conferences sometimes and scoot their way to the front, and she's filled with guilt and gives this speech:

“Although I tried to be a good role model, I had dark secrets from my past. I have not been the example I should have been because I have not been totally honest.”

Which seriously bugs me, because I don't think a celebrity has a responsibility to dredge up the secrets of their past and share and comment on them with their public. That's just not the public's business, frankly. If it came to light, then, sure, she should comment on it but nobody except for sleazy gossip sites (certainly not the news media at large, who seem to be weirdly interested in Brianna's life) will pressure her to start listing all the wrong things she's done in the past. Her decision to not share all her bad decisions with the entire world doesn't make her a bad role model or a bad example -- it just makes her a normal person who would like some privacy, thank you very much.

Now, I get that she wants to atone. I get that. But that's her choice. It's not because if she dealt with it quietly she'd be a bad role model. I have a horrible feeling that value for privacy was something that disappeared once she became a Christian, because once you're a Christian, apparently you need to confess all your sins to everyone.

Then Lawyer Carol apologizes:

“I did everything in my power to destroy Ethan Anderson. I went out of my way to convict him and send him to jail. When his case came up for review, I did everything in my power to have him sent to state prison. My actions were appalling, and I deeply regret them. I owe Mr. Anderson an apology. I also apologize to you, the public. I am sorry.”

She is apologizing for the wrong thing. She did exactly what she should have done, especially considering she was convinced Ethan was guilty. She fought to send him to jail because she thought he had abused a child. This is going back to what made me crazy in the courtroom chapter, where apparently just the act of wanting a child abuser to go to jail is seen as "malicious," when, really, there was no compelling evidence to the contrary. She made a mistake, yes, but that wasn't her fault. It was Brianna's and Ethan's.

Her apology should be one of not digging deeply enough, or the sorrow she feels at mistakenly sentencing an innocent man to jail. But it shouldn't be "I'm sorry I tried to convict a child abuser." Trying to convict child abusers is a good thing. She made the best, most moral decision she could have based on the information she had. Not that she should be defending that choice either -- saying "I was just doing my job" is obviously the wrong move here -- but she really should be focusing the apology on what she actually did wrong.

They explain that Brianna's not going to be prosecuted, but that Ethan could sue her (even though, as we have established, that is not actually a possibility). The crowd seems to be very annoyed that Brianna won't be punished for this, so maybe they'll sue her.

Then the crowd gets super hostile and starts asking questions like, "Do you think he could ever forgive you?" and freaking out when Brianna is too busy crying in Conrad's arms to answer, when Ethan shows up and is all, "I believe I can answer that."

Dun dun dun!

Ethan comes up and says horrible things like this:

“I don’t blame all of what happened on my daughter. Society and the justice system let me down. The assistant prosecuting attorney did all she could to put me away, not because I was guilty, but because I was a man. The system was stacked against me from the beginning.”

Hooooooooooly cow.

First of all, Ethan, are you forgetting the fact that you completely shot yourself in the foot with this too by refusing to comment? He let all the evidence pile up against him and never once offered any kind of rebuttal, and then complains that the system was stacked against him? He refused to use the system! That's like someone complaining that a fast food place wouldn't serve him a drink because he wouldn't use the soda fountain.

Secondly, how the heck does he know that Lawyer Carol was against him because he was a man and not because he was guilty? He (and, I think, Rothdiener) apparently has no idea how incredibly guilty he looked. Man or woman, all the evidence was a giant neon arrow pointing right at his head, and he's out here being all, "It's because I'm a maaaaaaaaaaaan."

(Lawyer Carol nods along with this, but, honestly, how did he know this? The only theory I have right now is that he's psychic and assumes everyone else is psychic too and that's why he knows Lawyer Carol was malicious, because she read his mind and knew he was guilty but tried to convict him anyway!)

Ethan then gives a sermon about forgiving because God forgives, and they all leave the press conference happy, even Lawyer Carol, who says this bit of nonsense:

“I made a case against you with no real evidence. You’re right... I was biased because you’re a man. Let me assure you, it will never happen again. I have learned a good lesson. In the future, all evidence will be weighed and evaluated fairly.”

NO REAL EVIDENCE?

What does she think counts as real evidence in this kind of case, if not testimony from the witness and expert opinions that concur with that testimony? What was she expecting?

And, worse... she's been practicing law for like 10-12 more years now. Does this mean that right up until this moment, she has been perpetually weighing and evaluating evidence unfairly and she'll only stop doing it "in the future"? And nobody's been like, "Hey, stop doing that"?

*headdesk*
*headdesk times a trillion*

And then Ethan and Brianna go to the beach. There's a happy ending for this insane chapter.

87% of the way through, 45 pages to go. I honestly can't remember what happens in these last 45 pages. She's done about everything I remember. I guess the romance can get wrapped up. We'll just have to see!

The Weird Literary World of Pride and Prejudice Fan Fiction

Last week, I was browsing through a bunch of Kindle sale items, when I started seeing a strange pattern. Way more often than I expected, I'd see a book with "Darcy" or "Pemberley" or "Bennett" in the title. Yes, it looks like this month the Kindle sale was (maybe unintentionally) highlighting some of the best offerings of the Pride and Prejudice fan fiction world.

I found, in this sale collection alone, six different books that were overtly P&P fan fiction or adaptations. And those are only the ones I could identify by their title. So I figured I'd look at them one by one and see if any of them look like they'd be worth reading.

1. Letters From Pemberley: The First Year by Jane Dawkins

Synopsis: In this continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, one of the best-loved novels in the English language, Elizabeth Bennet finds herself in a very different league of wealth and privilege, now as Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy and mistress of Pemberley. Writing to her sister, Jane, she confides her uncertainty and anxieties, and describes the everyday of her new life. Her first year at Pemberley is sometimes bewildering, but Lizzy's spirited sense of humor and satirical eye never desert her. Incorporating Jane Austen's own words and characters from her other works, the book is a literary patchwork quilt piecing together the story of Lizzy's first eventful year as Mrs. Darcy.

Reader reaction: So far, 4/5 stars with 115 customer reviews. The most recent 5-star review says, "With Pride and prejudice I felt stuck at the end. This was good and filled the void." The most recent 1-star review says, "Ugh. Gag me with a spoon."

Looking inside: Elizabeth writes a letter to Jane about how Darcy is letting her decorate however she wants, probably because his friends think he married down and he thinks she'll be able to "hold her own in the face of any resentment" if she feels comfy. She's grateful for that but doesn't talk about it with him "it is yet too delicate a subject to embark upon." And then she talks about how much everyone loves Darcy.

Will I read it? Nope. Just because the author's name sounds vaguely like "Jane Austen" if you say it fast and slur it does not mean this will make any sense, and I'm also pretty sure from the first few pages that it is a lot of sitting around not communicating and just guessing what the other person thinks and feels, which, to be fair, is probably what Lizzie and Darcy would do, but that doesn't mean I want to read about it. Besides, I'm more vehemently opposed to sequels than prequels, pre-ending spinoffs, or modern-day reboots. Endings mean nothing if you then go on to have an entire story about what happened after them.

2. Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys (The Pride & Prejudice Continues Book 2) by Marsha Altman

Synopsis: In this lively second installment, the Darcys and Bingleys are plunged into married life and its many accompanying challenges presented by family and friends.
With Jane and Elizabeth away, Darcy and Bingley take on the daunting task of managing their two-year- old children. Mary Bennet returns from the Continent pregnant by an Italian student promised to the church; Darcy and Elizabeth travel to find the father, and discover previously unknown—and shocking—Darcy relations. By the time Darcy
discovers that there's more than one sibling of questionable birth in the family, the ever-dastardly Wickham arrives on the scene to try to seize the Darcy fortune once and for all.

Reader reaction: 4/5 stars with 33 customer reviews. The most recent 5-star review says, "Is it completely true to regency era...I'm sure it's not...but it's close and it's a lovely fun story." The most recent 1-star review says, "It is a book like this that makes me bristle at extensions of classics to begin with."

Looking inside: The book starts with Darcy being super depressed for vague reasons and Georgiana trying to comfort him. We then learn that Elizabeth had one child and miscarried a lot, but I don't think that's what Darcy is melancholy about, as he goes in and thinks glumly at his son, "You have no idea, the burden on your shoulders someday." Then Georgiana tells him that their mother had trouble having children too, and then everybody walks around being sad for awhile, and THIS IS SO BORING.

Will I read it? This is not nearly the crazy exciting soap opera drama promised to me in the synopsis. This is a full chapter of Darcy moping. NOPE.

3. A Weekend With Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly

Synopsis: Surrounded by appalling exes and fawning students, the only thing keeping professor Katherine Roberts sane is Jane Austen and her personal secret love for racy Regency romance novels. She thinks the Jane Austen Addicts conference in the English countryside is the perfect opportunity to escape her chaotic life and finally relax...
But then she encounters a devilishly handsome man at the conference who seems determined to sweep her off her feet. Is he more fiction than fact? Or could he be the hero she didn't know she was looking for?

Reader reaction: 4/5 stars out of 70 reviews. I'm beginning to think star ratings may not be a reliable indication of a book's quality. The most recent 5-star review says, "Very enjoyable book" and then gives 10 sentences of synopsis. That's it. The most recent 1-star review says, "This 'author' writes men that act like women."

Looking inside: Katherine Roberts is an Oxford university lecturer, maybe something to do with literature, and spends most of the first few pages being ashamed that she likes to read trashy romances. A male student drops in and Super Flirts with her. Her ex shows up to yell at her about how she doesn't live in reality anymore, and the fact that she's going to some sort of Jane Austen Con is proof of that. Katherine mumbles about how she doesn't trust men who don't read. And she walks away feeling smug, and that's chapter one.

Will I read it? Well, to its credit, this looks like it's not ACTUALLY Pride and Prejudice fan fiction, it just happens to be about somebody who loves Jane Austen, and it is amusingly ridiculous in its first chapter. I could totally see me reading this to laugh at it if I got it for free... but, no, I wouldn't pay money for it.

4. Mr. Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange

Synopsis: The only place Darcy could share his innermost feelings was in the private pages of his diary...
Torn between his sense of duty to his family name and his growing passion for Elizabeth Bennet, all he can do is struggle not to fall in love.
Mr. Darcy's Diary presents the story of the unlikely courtship of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy from Darcy's point of view. This graceful imagining and sequel to Pride and Prejudice explains Darcy's moodiness and the difficulties of his reluctant relationship as he struggles to avoid falling in love with Miss Bennet. Though seemingly stiff and stubborn at times, Darcy's words prove him also to be quite devoted and endearing - qualities that eventually win over Miss Bennet's heart. This continuation of a classic romantic novel is charming and elegant, much like Darcy himself.

Reader reaction: You guessed it, 4/5 stars, this time with 193 customer reviews, so it's the most-reviewed of them all so far. The most recent 5-star review says (in its entirety), "SO good. A super easy read as well." The most recent 1-star review says, "I didn't like this book at all. The way it was written was not like I love. Glad it's over."

Looking inside: Well, it jumps RIGHT in with, "Have I done the right thing in establishing Georgiana in London, I wonder? This summer is proving to be very hot, and when I visited her this morning, I found her lacking her usual energy. I think I will send her to the coast for a holiday." That is our entire first entry, and after that abrupt opening, it just gets boring, so I give up.

Will I read it? Nooooope. Fanfic that is basically the exact same story told in diary form from the other main character -- not even a side character who could have, you know, subplots going on -- sounds like the most boring thing in the world to me. It's one thing when multiple perspectives are interwoven into a story, it's completely different when it's like, "Oh, you like that story? How about THE EXACT SAME STORY but with a less likable protagonist?"

5. Pemberley Ranch by Jack Caldwell

Synopsis: When the smoke has cleared from the battlefields and the civil war has finally ended, fervent Union supporter Beth Bennet reluctantly moves with her family from their home in Meryton, Ohio, to the windswept plains of Rosings, Texas. Handsome, haughty Will Darcy, a Confederate officer back from the war, owns half the land around Rosings, and his even haughtier cousin, Cate Burroughs, owns the other half.
In a town as small as Rosings, Beth and Will inevitably cross paths. But as Will becomes enchanted with the fiery Yankee, Beth won't allow herself to warm to the man who represents the one thing she hates most: the army that killed her only brother.
But when carpetbagger George Whitehead arrives in Rosings, all that Beth thought to be true is turned on its head, and the only man who can save her home is the one she swore she'd never trust...

Reader reaction: 4/5 stars out of 49 customer reviews. The most recent 5-star review says, "You could tell Mr. Caldwell knew what he was talking about and just 'knew his stuff.'" The most recent 1-star review says, "For Mr. Darcy & Miss Elizabeth to continually speak as though they knew nothing of the good King's English is an atrocity."

Looking inside: A good chunk of the "looking inside" section is a map of Pemberley Ranch and then an extensive list of characters. But then we get into the action, during a battle, where Darcy is wounded and meets Bingley, who is an army doctor. We then flash to the Bennet house, where we learned that the oldest Bennet, the only boy, has been killed in the war, which is a kind of interesting take on it, and Elizabeth vows revenge on the rebels.

Will I read it?: Actually, I'm kind of intrigued by this one. I'd much rather read a creative retelling of a story than a continuation, and this is an interesting setting for it. The opening pages read well, too. This one is still on sale for $1.99 as I write this, and I just might have to check it out.

6. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star by Heather Lynn Rigaud

Synopsis: Fast music, powerful beats, and wild reputations-on and off stage-have made virtuoso guitarist Fitzwilliam Darcy's band into rock's newest bad boys. But they've lost their latest opening act, and their red-hot summer tour is on the fast track to disaster. Now Darcy and bandmates Charles Bingley and Richard Fitzwilliam are about to meet their match...
Enter Elizabeth Bennet, fiercely independent star of girl-band Long Borne Suffering. Elizabeth, her sister Jane, and friend Charlotte Lucas have talent to spare and jump at the opening band slot. Elizabeth is sure she's seen the worst the music industry has to offer. But as the days and nights heat up, it becomes clear that everyone is in for a summer to remember.

Reader reaction: 4/5 stars, with 78 customer reviews. So basically if you write Pride and Prejudice fan fiction and it doesn't get 4/5 stars, you must've done something wrong. The most recent 5-star review says... well, I'm going to have to share most of this one: "This is a good book. It's about 2 bands. It was good from the begin to the end. It a long , good book. Didn't want to put the book down. Too, bad Lizzy and Will didn't have the babies at the end. But it was a good good ending," The most recent 1-star review says, "It started out with promise, but suddenly it seemed that it was a draft that was printed."

Looking inside: The prologue is a transcript of a documentary about Darcy and Bingley's band which includes the fantastic prompt "Photo of Darcy, looking broody." It is, however, THE LONGEST PROLOGUE IN THE WORLD and I skimmed it. And then it switches to everybody at a concert. The other two people in Darcy's band fall in love with the other two people in Elizabeth's band, and then DarcyBand invites LizzieBand to go on tour with them, much to Darcy and Elizabeth's annoyance.

Will I read it? Nope. As entertaining as the premise is, the writing is pretty sloppy, and the characters are pretty annoying, so this is not great.

Which one of these (if any) would you read? What's your favorite retelling of a Jane Austen story -- Pride and Prejudice or otherwise?

The Quest for Forgiveness: The Most Boring Chapter in the World... Part 1

Last time, Brianna tried to turn herself in and the lawyer who was now a Christian was like, "Well, WE'RE not going to prosecute you," and so she decided to call a press conference.

Everyone's excited about the press conference. It's not right before a concert or anything, so there's no obvious reason she'd be having one.

Gossip was running rampant among the media, many expecting a wedding announcement, or perhaps the release of a new CD or movie deal.

ANOTHER new CD? We haven't even found out yet whether her last one outsold Thriller as everyone was predicting!

Some people predict it's drugs, but then when Lawyer Carol is there, everybody is confused because apparently if Brianna got in trouble with drugs and had possibly broken the law there'd be no reason to have a lawyer there at her press conference.

“I used other names to hide my identity, but it has been in recent months that I discovered my real name is Mandy Dawn Anderson.”

It has JUST clicked for me that she's taken on the last name Anderson not because of when Ethan adopted her but because he's her real dad. Even though I have no idea if legally that would've been her last name, given the weird circumstances of her birth.

She tells her story and this is basically pages and pages of her just regurgitating the entire book right back to us with frequent pauses to say things like "A fresh batch of tears stung her eyes" and "Silence reigned over the anxious crowd." IT IS SO FREAKING BORING, so let me try and pull out some highlights -- anything to get me through this chapter.

Well, for one thing, she makes a brief mention of accusing Ethan of abuse, but then zooms right past it, which is weird because I thought this whole thing was about her making amends for that, but instead she spends a lot more time talking about when she ran away and lived on the streets.

She talks about finding her real parents, confronting her mother's murderers, finding out Ethan was her real dad, and her family trying to hunt her down.

Brianna hesitated for a second, and then pulled back her hair exposing her birthmark. “Only my closest friends knew about this birthmark. No one has ever captured it on film. So... here is your chance. Take pictures if you want. No more secrets!” Some reporters gasped, obviously stunned by the entertainer’s disclosure. Six years, tens of thousands of photos, and it was never detected. Cameras were snapping everywhere. The media would not miss the opportunity to share photos of the mark on the mega star’s forehead, or shoot close-up photos to add interest to the shocking story. What an account it would be!

Guys... THIS is not the most interesting part of the story. No one's going to lead with the headline "Mega Pop Star Has Surprise Birthmark." If they are, they're missing the way better "Mega Pop Star Beats Up Powerful Iraqi Leader" and "Mega Pop Star Lied to Send Her Father to Jail" or ANYTHING ELSE in this story.

Brianna then goes back to talking about putting Ethan in jail after a reporter is like, "Can we go back to that?" Her answer is along the lines of, "Hadonno why I did it. Everybody else had parents." (?)

I know this is the tiniest blog in the world, and I'm sorry, but I've been slogging through like six pages of this with almost nothing to show for it because this chapter is just the most boring of all time. So I think I'm gonna have to give it a break for now.

The Quest for Forgiveness: Musicians Who Hate Music and Lawyers Who Don't Know the Law

Last time, we found out Ethan was Brianna's real father! Which made him a huge idiot. He's still really mad at Brianna for lying.


Brianna decides she needs to go to Mesa, where she and Ethan are from. She asks for some alone time and her bodyguards let her go for a walk.

Conrad didn’t like it, but he understood. He gave her an Arizona Diamondback cap and sunglasses to wear on her way out the door.

That is the foolproof method for hiding inconceivable beauty.

A couple people ask if she's Brianna, but she gives her birth first name + Ethan's last name instead ("Mandy Dawn Anderson"). She apparently wanders around the city for several hours fielding these questions, and finally lands opposite the courthouse. She calls Sonya and decides she's going to turn herself in for falsely accusing Ethan.

Sonya is uncertain, but Brianna is ready -- ready with a Christian platitude, that is!

“I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I’m sure who holds tomorrow.”

And now that we've all crossed that off our Cute Christian Phrases bingo cards, Sonya asks Brianna to wait until she gets there. Brianna agrees, and plays one of her songs in her head to calm herself:

You were there all along, 

Waiting to pick me up... 

You came shining, 

Just as I knew you would.

"You came shining"? That's a terrible line.

I'm sudden bugged by how Brianna-centric Brianna's music is. Not in the Taylor Swift sense where she can only write songs about herself, but in the sense that she literally doesn't care about any music that's not her own. She claims to be so in love with music, but she doesn't actually listen to music (of any kind that we know of) because apparently only hers is actually good enough. When she listens to music, it's her own. Even on the few occasions when other songs might be playing, such as in a church service, she only ever hears her own music.

Do those people even exist? Even musicians with massive egos must be fans of other people's music. If they weren't, if they really only listened to their own songs, we would laugh at and mock them like I am for Brianna right now. I'm not even sure how you would get to be this tremendously talented, passionate musician without ever giving a crap what other musicians are making. "Nah, I'm pretty sure no one else's music is as good as mine."

Conrad suddenly shows up, and Brianna realizes he was following her the whole time. Then Sonya shows up and they all go into the courtroom together, where she introduces herself again as Mandy Dawn Anderson, until people recognize her as Brianna Bays.

“My name is Mandy Dawn Anderson. Brianna Bays is really someone else... someone I once knew. As a child, I was Janna Anderson.” Her piercing eyes showed the gravity of the situation.

"Next week, I'll be known as Lucretia Dorgalorp. Who knows who I'll be next month. And by the way, note how piercing my eyes are? GRAVITY-LEVEL PIERCING. That's how you know I mean business."

Brianna meets with the Evil Woman Prosecutor, who remembers her and comments on putting "that pervert" away.

Brianna’s heart sank when she heard the negative accusation about her father.

"Oh, no, not you too! Did EVERYONE believe the super convincing lies that I told? I thought you'd have just realized the truth by now!"

Brianna confesses and explains it's because she's a Christian. Prosecutor Carol says she's a Christian now, too, and, ya know, I thought she might be because she still had a job and was healthy and didn't lose everything by virtue of Not Being a Christian like some of the other characters in this book.

Sonya asks that the charges be dropped because 1) Brianna was a kid, 2) people claimed things Brianna didn't say (even though they really didn't), and 3) statute of limitations even when "the law is vague," because I guess perjury isn't a well-known enough crime for that to be legislated or anything.

Prosecutor Carol agrees that she has no idea how the statute of limitation works:

“There is what we call a statute of limitations. That means a person cannot be tried for something that happened more than seven years ago. It’s been over ten years. I’m not really certain if that would apply in this case, but as the prosecuting attorney, I am the one who submits the court cases.”

I feel like she should be aware of this. She's been practicing for over a decade. It's not like nobody's ever lied and put someone in jail before. The only thing that makes this unique is that they're finding out about it later, and because Brianna turned herself in rather than because she got caught.

At least Arizona's statute of limitation laws are clear. Nearly all felonies are seven years, so kudos to our author for getting one detail right, even though his desire to present Brianna as a Mary Sue who has Such Unique Legal Problems makes the super experienced lawyer sound awfully stupid. She probably wouldn't be this stupid if she'd only become a Christian earlier.

Prosecutor Carol says they're not going to pursue legal action because there'd be an internal investigation and it'd reflect badly on their department. (Way to pursue justice and Christian ethics.) But she points out that Ethan could still sue her.

Now, hold up. There's a statute of limitations on civil suits, too, and Ethan is definitely way beyond that. False imprisonment and slander (the best two options he has here) both have a statute of limitations of one year for a civil suit. Absolutely nothing stretches 11 or 12 years back. He knew she was lying way back 11 years ago, and he's been out of prison and aware of her public identity for at least four years, so I'd say he way lost his chance to do it. Even if she turns herself in now, I'm pretty sure he can't legally pursue it. (I could be wrong on this, so anyone who knows more about this than I do can feel free to correct me.)

But Prosecutor Carol knows zilch about any of this, so Brianna's just like, "Oh, hmm, OK, maybe Ethan will sue me then."

Brianna decides she needs to call a press conference, possibly to confess. But we'll end it there on that cliffhanger because I cannot read this anymore.

84% of the way through the book. 53 pages to go. We're chugging along!

The Quest for Forgiveness: Secrets Revealed (Some Stupider Than Others)

Last time, Brianna surprised Ethan with a visit and found out that not only is his life terrible now, but EVERYONE'S life is terrible now. All because he and Susan broke up after she lied. I seem to remember getting very annoyed with this part of the book, so, uh, we'll see what happens.

Ethan continues to update Brianna about his crappy life, about how his dad was killed in a hit-and-run and immediately had his identity stolen, and then what was left was paid in back taxes.

“Dad was always there to help America. In the end, they were there for him, too.”

...I don't even know how to categorize someone who is "always there to help America." I don't think I've ever thought that about anyone.

Turns out the police constantly come to ask him about missing kids or abused kids, because I guess he's the only known child abuser in all of... Wyoming, is that where he lives now? Well, that may be possible, because Wyoming has like six people in it. He's apparently also had police "break down the door" in the middle of the night and arrest him while he was sleeping which is completely illegal in this instance, and Brianna may want to look into getting him some compensation for the Wyoming police's apparently frequent unlawful arrests.

Brianna finds a scrapbook of herself on the table and then she and Ethan have a very casual conversation about how much he loves her because she's his daughter, which is a huge shift from the furious, raging, sarcastic guy he was just a minute ago. She gives him her guitar, and he's very touched for a second, or, as our author puts it:

The scene was moving, but just as quickly was over!

I don't know why that random exclamation point cracks me up so much, but it does.

Ethan demands to know why she lied, although she already told him. So she tells him she hated Susan and that she just wanted her parents. Then we get a twist that I'd completely forgotten about: Turns out Ethan is her real dad.

He tells her a loooooong boring back story of how he and Mira met in Paris, and how they would stand for hours at the top of the Eiffel Tower each night watching the city, which sounds romantic but also like it would get very old after awhile. He got her to become a Christian, but when she told her parents, they sent her brothers to bring her home. They got married super quickly so that he could take her home to America with him. Then she was kidnapped and taken back to her home, until she found out she was pregnant and escaped to live with a couple she knew. When her brothers came to kill her in the hospital, that mysterious nurse who wouldn't talk to Brianna swapped out Brianna for a baby who was already dead, so they all thought she was gone.

“Money can buy a lot of information.” 

“Don’t I know that!” Brianna stated emphatically, realizing that is how she received all her information— she bought it.

This is such a weird little exchange. On one hand it sounds like Brianna's being emphatic just because she wants to emphasize she has money and can buy information, but on the other hand... she's just realizing she buys all her information? Especially about her family? She's been tossing money at people left and right all book for info, and that's just hitting her now?

Eventually Ethan found her at the orphanage where she was and adopted her. This whole section is very long and dull, and there's not even much to snark at because it's just boooooooooooring.

Brianna is excited that she finally knows why Ethan... never took her to work with him or introduced her to his business associates? Ethan teaches at a college. So did my father, and he didn't routinely take me to work with him or introduce me to all of his "business associates" when I was a kid. That shouldn't have been some big mystery. It just doesn't make sense for a child to be running around a college campus if she doesn't need to be.

Wait a minute.

I backed up for a second to find out what she understands about that. Why didn't he take her to work with him, since this is apparently a thing in Rothdienerland?

“Her evil relatives found out later you were in the United States. My father showed me a flyer written in Arabic. They had sent it to all the mosques in America, searching for a girl with a heart-shaped birthmark on her forehead. I could not risk anybody else knowing you were here. The fewer people who knew about it, the safer you would be. It was extremely difficult since I worked with people of the Muslim faith at the school... that was all the more reason to be secretive.”

...What.

What on earth was his plan for the rest of her life? Was he just going to have a secret child forever? Did he assume there would be no Muslims at, say, Brianna's school? If their town has a big Muslim population, there probably would be.

That's also a lovely bit of Islamophobia, that he assumes that the murderous Muslims are in cahoots with the American Muslims (or maybe he thinks there are no non-murderous Muslims) and will all work together to kill a four-year-old girl. I mean, maybe they were just advertising that she was missing and the American Muslims would turn her in out of goodwill toward her... but he doesn't trust any of his Muslim co-workers with that information? Isn't it going to be much more suspicious when it eventually turns out he's had this child all along?

OH MY GOSH, what on earth did they think when he was suddenly put on trial for abusing a preteen daughter nobody even knew existed? That can't possibly have been good for his reputation.

Ethan explains why he didn't stand up for himself in court:

“It would have been nationwide news. Word would have leaked out about the birthmark.”

Yes, because the birthmark (which was not even seen by anyone there because Brianna never testified in court and none of the witnesses talked about it) was the most newsworthy and therefore most oft-reported aspect of that story.

The books claims Ethan was paranoid after he left jail, but, um, I'd say it started well before. He kept his daughter a secret from everyone (while somehow giving her a fairly normal childhood?) and allowed himself to be put in jail and lose everything because he worried that an extremely wealthy Muslim family was spending their time combing American newspapers for random cases that featured descriptions of Muslim girls with heart-shaped birthmarks because newspapers always report on the physical features of young children who are not even present for the story they're reporting.

Ethan points out that he protected her like God protects her, but I'm pretty sure that's just his way of saying, "My decisions weren't so stupid after all," when, yeah, they kind of were.

She asks for his forgiveness, and he says, "How can I forgive you?" which I thought was a rejection but the book seems to treat it as a non-rhetorical question, as Brianna then runs out of the house "never giving her father a chance to reply, or to extend his forgiveness." Ethan prays, and that's where this chapter ends, and my gosh, am I ready for it to end.

81% of the way through. 61 more pages. Whoooo, the countdown continues!

The Quest for Forgiveness: The Sad Lives of People Who Are Not Brianna

Last time was the worst, most arrogant, entitled, STUPID chapter ever, and I don't really feel like recapping it. So I won't.

After beating up her murderous family with zero consequences because she is rich, American, and beautiful, Brianna goes to visit her mother's grave. She chats for awhile with the caretaker, who remembers a young man who visited 15 or 20 years ago and carved a heart into the gravestone.

When she pulled back her long hair and blew at the headstone to clean it further, the morning sun highlighted her birthmark.

(In case you needed a reminder that Brianna is unique and beautiful.)

She is certain that the man was her father, but seems baffled as to why he'd carve a heart on the stone, because there's absolutely no way it could be an expression of his love for the woman who died or anything, that's just ridiculous.

“He knows Mira is buried here, but does he think it’s her baby buried next to her?”  

Conrad’s response was quick and certain. “Brianna, your father might have put that heart on the grave to let you know he was looking for you.”

What? Now THAT is a leap. If he thinks the baby next to Mira is Brianna (as everyone does, including the caretaker), why would he carve a super secret signal to let the daughter he thinks is dead know he's going to look for her? If he thinks she's dead, he knows where she is. And if not... that's a really obscure clue.

Brianna suspects Conrad is right and asks the caretaker to pass on the message to the man if he ever comes back that she is looking for him. She also pays him to take care of the grave, and we are reminded once more how much better she is than everyone else because she is rich:

He stared at the large sum of money, amazed at her generosity.

Brianna and Conrad leave, Brianna full of hope that her father is still alive.

And that is the entire seventeenth chapter, but I'm feeling pretty good, so let's keep charging on through this turd of a book! Whoo!

On the plane on the way back to the U.S., Brianna is haunted by the visit to her family. Not at how awful she was to everybody, but of "the coldness, the cruelty of her family." Which, I mean, yes, they did try to murder people, but she knew all about that going in. Or she should have. Sonya tried to warn her. What did she expect? That she would waltz in, confront them, and they'd crumble, repent, and become Christians immediately?

Actually, in a Rothdiener novel, that's not an unreasonable assumption.

Anyway, Brianna's also stressed about meeting up with Ethan.

The meeting would be a surprise for Ethan, but Brianna and Sonya surmised that would be the only way he would talk to her.

WORST. IDEA. EVER.

Sheesh. Brianna is bad at making amends. If he doesn't want to talk to her, they can't make him talk to her, and surprising him with a visit from the person who ruined his life without his permission is not a very kind or Christlike thing to do. Also, whatever happened to all that (false) stuff about how he can't be within 500 feet of her or something? Did that ever get resolved? Is she going to stand outside his house and yell apologies in through the window?

Brianna muses on how she can't forgive her family, but she's asking Ethan to forgive her, and on the irony of it all.

They pull up in their rental van in front of Ethan's "dumpy trailer" in a "shoddy trailer park," so already we know that Ethan is a mess because he is not rich like Brianna is.

Brianna wiped away a single tear. “I must stay strong,” she whispered.

I'm not sure I can do that without giggling. That action and line sound like... a parody of serious dramas.

Conrad offers to come in with her, but Brianna insists she must face this alone. Conrad tells her to keep her phone on and "press star" if she feels overwhelmed, and that will summon them. So I guess her speed dial number for Conrad is *.

Ethan is listening to her CD when she arrives, and she is certain that he wouldn't know she was Brianna Bays. After all, she's hidden her birthmark for the press! And Ethan would never have recognized her voice or the songs they wrote together or her face or anything! Just like if you put on a mask, you can be a superhero because nobody will know it's you. Who needs elaborate disguises when covering a corner of your face will keep your closest friends from recognizing you?

She knocks, Ethan comes to the door, and we get an unrelated memory:

Her mind was racing. She recalled when the boys came knocking on the door, Ethan would politely say, “Come back in ten years.” She smiled lightly at the memory, and then shook her head to help her focus.

Conrad was into her when she was 17, so he did not wait ten years...

Ethan invites her into his home and is super sarcastic at her, but I think he's entitled to do that.

“My, you sure have become a beautiful woman. I always knew you would be. I had to fight those young boys off with a stick,” he said, swinging his arm pretending to be holding a stick.

Because, yup, nobody can greet Brianna without first noting her appearance.

She is astonished that he recognizes her, but he points out, duh, he recognizes her voice and remembers writing those songs with her. He's not as stupid as she thought he'd be. He also makes an extremely snarky comment about not getting any royalties from the songs he helped her write, which is a pretty dang good point since she started off her entire career with a potential copyright lawsuit. (But then, as we've seen from Morgan in QfS, Rothdiener doesn't have a lot of interest in artistic copyright unless it benefits his Mary Sue. She can rip off anyone she wants, though.)

They both sit down, and like a second later he stands back up and walks over to her to stare at her cross necklace and touch her birthmark. Then he sits back down again. Then he stands back up and runs into the kitchen to get her some water, but she says no thank you and he sits back down again. Well, there's his exercise for the day.

Meanwhile, turns out ALL ETHAN'S KIDS HAVE TERRIBLE LIVES. Because they all lost their father and lived with Susan, who was materialistic and not really a Christian. But instead of being materialistic and shallow like she was, they all have lives right out of an after-school special. One boy joined a gang and died in a gang fight. Another boy became an alcoholic and died of alcohol poisoning. The girl got pregnant, had an abortion, ran away from home and became a drug addict.

What happened?

Seriously, what happened? There's no reason his time in jail should have caused any of that, since they all went far away to live with Susan and her parents, who are all very image-conscious. I have an uncomfortable feeling that this book is trying to make a point about "when families split up it hurts the children," but usually when people say that, they don't mean "all of your children will die and be drug addicts." I wouldn't imagine they'd grow up to be Sunday school teachers or anything, but... even if Susan wasn't a very attentive mother, her parents were attentive grandparents, and they had plenty of support, both emotional and financial.

We then learn Susan is working at a convenience store in Oklahoma, which Ethan assumes is Brianna's fault as well, even though I have no idea how it would be because even if she lost her job at one place because of bad publicity, surely she could go somewhere else or work behind the scenes instead of being the model and the designer all the time -- there's no need for her public image to become a part of this at all, and certainly not after a couple years (if that) when the media died down.

But this is the other part of this book I hate -- it not only emphasizes that Brianna's Christianity makes her even more rich, beautiful, and deserving, but that those without Christianity will become poor, ugly, and be forever miserable. That's untrue and comes off as more than a little vindictive.

So let's leave these unpleasant revelations where they are and come back to them next week.

The Quest for Forgiveness: The Worst Chapter. No, Really.

Last time, Brianna went to Iraq to entertain the troops in a camouflage dress, but really she wanted she sneak off and visit her extended family who wants to kill her. She visited the hospital where she was born and hunted for clues, but then there was a bomb threat and she had to leave, despite running into a nurse who she Just Knows had something to do with her parents.

We start off on a particularly weird note.

The military commanders had given her special permission to go to Fallujah to visit the Murat family. 

WHY?

Sonya is a music industry lawyer in the U.S., and even she was able to dig up the fact that the very rich Murat family was putting a price on the heads of Christians. So it doesn't seem a particularly safe place for a very vocally Christian pop star from the U.S. to be visiting. But I guess the military people are just like, "Why, yes, Brianna, you are rich and beautiful and you sing like an angel and wear seven different dresses at your concerts, so you can totally walk into the living room of what is apparently the Iraqi mafia."

The Iraqi city was still in deep turmoil, so the star had a company of hard-core troops around her, in addition to her four personal bodyguards.

And, ya know, the people she wants to visit are trying to kill off Christians. That's another good reason to send her with the whole army.

Incidentally, if the area's in such deep turmoil, wouldn't it be a good idea to not spend your troops' time on pointless escort missions for American pop stars? It seems like such a waste of time and effort.

They are met at the Murat compound by a guard who asks them what is going on. Then this exchange happened, and not even a full page into the chapter, I lost it and ranted about it to Jacob for like five minutes because THIS MAKES NO FREAKING SENSE.

The guard grunted, “What for?” 

“It’s just a friendly visit. Brianna Bays, an entertainer from the United States, would like to visit with him.” 

“Why?” The solemn guard moved his gun in front of him, a silent reminder to the visitors that he was in charge. 

“She did not tell me.”

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.

They just waltz up to the doors, say, "There's an American pop star here who wants to see you. Nobody knows why," and this makes sense to Rothdiener?

This makes sense to anyone?!?!

Brianna managed to convince the military commanders to send AN ENTIRE COMPANY of troops complete with THREE HELICOPTERS to help her visit ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS FAMILIES IN IRAQ without giving ANY REASON FOR DOING SO.

This is the most completely, wildly inept military ever. The only alternative option is that Brianna is a witch and has cast a literal spell over everybody in the military that makes them do incredibly stupid things without having to explain herself at all.

I can't... I can't even comprehend this. It is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. This is right up there with "Dr. Leontiou is sneaking around the hospital dressed as an old lady," as far as I'm concerned.

Well, Mr. Murat himself gets on the intercom and then says Brianna can come inside, but the rest of the people there for her protecting cannot, which is too bad because I was looking forward to seeing how those helicopters were eventually going to get inside the house. The colonel is like, "Nope." They haggle down to Brianna's vehicle being allowed inside the compound, but no others.

“I’ll be all right. I’m not afraid of them.” Brianna’s reply was straight to the point, decisive. 

“I know you’re not, but you should be. You don’t know these people— they can’t be trusted.” The colonel cautioned.

"Although obviously that doesn't mean we shouldn't show up at their doorstep unannounced with an unexplained visit from a pop star they probably want to kill. That's just how we military folks do it."

So Brianna's vehicle goes on through. Lots of mumbo-jumbo follows about how many guards there are. Eventually they arrive at the door. Brianna has her four bodyguards with her. Conrad tries to convince her not to go through with this because it is a really terrible plan, but she's just like:

“I have been looking forward to this day for years. I want to meet my relatives. In some ways I am excited, in other ways very sad.”

So eventually he just gives up.

Mr. Murat comes to the door and seems to be pleasant with her. He invites her in for tea, but tells her her bodyguards need to stay outside. She insists Conrad goes with her. Mr. Murat agrees, but only if he leaves his gun outside. So now she's waltzing into the house of people who want to kill her with one unarmed bodyguard. Super smart.

(Incidentally, they refer to him as "Emir Murat" a couple times, which I figured was a title since he's clearly rich and powerful, so quite possibly someone with nobility or leadership under his belt. But then they stopped calling him Mr. Murat and started calling him "Emir" -- like "Emir did not feel threatened by this woman," and at that point I wonder if it's a name instead? Because it can be a name as well... I don't know. He may be an Emir, he may just be named Emir. Either way, I'll follow suit and call him Emir.)

Brianna gets sneaky and hides the fact that she speaks Arabic. I'm a little surprised she still speaks it well, as she was very young when she left and there's zero indication that she'd been speaking it at all since then. She's most likely gone without hearing or speaking it for nearly 20 years, and she's probably encountering a lot of new vocabulary that she barely heard, let alone learned, in an overcrowded orphanage full of children.

Brianna consciously sat in a low-backed chair facing the doorway, wanting to be aware of everyone’s actions. Through the years, Conrad had taught her how to defend herself, and how to be alert in a crisis.

Unfortunately, they left for Iraq right before his next lesson for her, "Why You Shouldn't Visit People's Homes If You Know They Want to Kill You." Unfortunate timing, there.

We also reveal that Conrad's not totally defenseless. He's got pistols hidden in his sleeves! Which I guess just nobody bothered to check.

They small talk for awhile, and Brianna casually mentions that she looks like her mother. Emir's wife, Miridia, gets really alert at this. Emir and Brianna chat more about her mother, and, uh, then this happens:

“I believe her brothers killed her... but it was called an accident.” She looked scornfully at both of her uncles. 

Emir seemed to have no idea where the conversation was headed. 

“Her brothers? Why would they kill her?” Emir slanted his head. Suddenly, he was interested... very interested. 

“It’s funny you should ask... why don’t you tell me? I come from a country that respects life. We respect people’s opinions, and accept them regardless of what color or nationality they are, or what religion they embrace.” She emphasized religion, and her voice began to escalate.

Look, I understand that she's getting emotional -- this is why she probably shouldn't be doing this in the first place -- but if she HAS to confront them, it's a TERRIBLE idea to start throwing around "My country is better than yours" statements at this point. Like, Conrad should be signaling to her right now, "Stop talking."

She reveals that her mother was killed because she was a Muslim who converted to Christianity. Conrad takes this opportunity to go stand behind the guards with his pistols drawn because A) they're terrible guards, and B) apparently the situation wasn't tense enough as it is.

Miridia breaks down though and starts crying. Brianna doesn't back down:

Brianna’s heart beat faster, and her voice grew louder with each word. “You did not, would not, accept Mira, your own daughter.” She reminded herself to exhale.

She picked a terrible time and place to have a confrontation. Emir's reaction, awesomely, is to calmly complain that she's upset his wife.

Conrad then, uh, subdues all the guards with his pistols, and there is basically no way the Murats can see this as anything but an attack now. If Conrad and Brianna don't die, there's going to be some serious political repercussions for this. You see, U.S. military according to Rothdiener, THIS RIGHT HERE is why you don't just let American pop stars visit dangerous high-ranking Muslim families whenever they want to.

Brianna exposes who she is and Miridia cries a bunch more. What follows is a Morgan Hamilton-level cringe-worthy scene, and I'm not going to share the whole thing, but here are the two juiciest tidbits.

“What kind of a god tells someone to take a life because of his or her beliefs... not a loving God.” Brianna challenged her uncle’s beliefs. 

. . . 

“Get out of my house!” Emir thundered, pointing to the door.

“Get out of your house... your house? I’m your granddaughter. Look at me,” she yelled in Arabic, walking up to him, and standing face-to-face. “We have understood everything you’ve said since we walked into this house.”

Miridia, apparently, had no idea that her sons had killed Brianna's mother. Brianna reveals that she was the infant they were supposed to kill, and this shocks Emir, because... I guess he thought his daughter had another baby hidden somewhere? She'd already revealed she was Mira's daughter, so I don't know what he was thinking that meant.

Her uncles try to make things right by explaining they've been trying to kill her ever since they failed the first time, but Emir is not pleased.

“What do you want from me?” The grandfather’s voice was calmer. 

“Want from you... what does your devil granddaughter want from you?” She walked over to him and slapped his face full force, almost knocking him off his feet. 

He raised his hand to strike her, but stopped. 

“Try it, just try it. I would love to put you down right where you stand. I have a black belt in Karate and could kill you in one blow,” Brianna threatened, meaning every word.

I...

I don't even know what to do with this.

I have no idea what to do with this.

I do NOT think that if Brianna told the military, "Oh, I'm going to this rich murderous man's house to mock their country and their religion, hold them at gunpoint, slap the leader in the face and threaten to attack him with karate," they'd have provided anything they had... although apparently Conrad's totally on board with this.

Incidentally, when did she get a black belt in karate?! That takes time that she does NOT have. Did she take a bunch of classes when she lived with Ethan and then retest as an adult? Did she suddenly start taking classes when she got rich four years ago and zoomed through the process because I guess she just had all this time now in between writing and recording songs and entertaining the troops and doing concerts in America and apparently doing press conferences before every concert for some reason and doing all the volunteer work that she's become super known for? Is she just making this up and she has no idea how to do karate at all?

(When I got to this section, I yelled out loud to Jacob, "I don't even have TIME to address all the things that are wrong with this chapter!")

Emir is apparently shamed by this whole display instead of enraged -- who knew that sneering at someone's religion actually worked? -- and confesses that, yeah, he killed her mother and tried to kill her and her father, but he has no idea where her father is now. Brianna fights with him for awhile again about how he shouldn't have tried to kill anyone. Miridia, apparently, has had enough though:

She started to walk away, but suddenly stopped and spun around, then walked back to her husband. With all her pent-up anger unleashed, she slapped him across the face with such force that he fell backwards.

OH SHOOT.

Given what we've seen of Emir, I DO NOT anticipate that to go well. For one thing, he's been pretty stern and angry at her for being upset about this whole thing. For another, if he believes that Islam demands you to kill your daughter if she marries outside the faith, I doubt it has a high tolerance for wives slapping their husbands.

If something happens to Miridia -- like if something bad happens to her -- I hope Brianna realizes that part she played in this.

Emir is not pleased about his wife hitting him, and he goes to hit her back, but Brianna grabs him and twists his arm behind his back.

An Iraqi guard heard the commotion and ran into the room with his gun raised.  

Conrad sliced his right arm across the man’s neck knocking him out cold.

Is that... is that a thing you can do? Like in my mind he's slitting his throat without a knife, and I don't feel like that should knock anyone out. He's not even punching him in the neck, which I know can take someone out, he's... "slicing his right arm across the man's neck." And I just can't figure out what that is.

Anyway, after Conrad knocks out the only armed guard, who was apparently just chilling outside while all this was happening, he then threatens everyone else with his guns again. Still such a great plan.

Brianna thinks about how much she wants to keep hurting Emir, but eventually she lets him go and just demands her father's name. Her uncle says they never knew his name and he makes a comment about the Americans attacking their country, and he's clearly pretty bitter about it.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about the Americans... you have to worry about me. Remember, I’m part Arab.” Brianna looked directly into her grandfather’s eyes. “I was born here, which gives me dual citizenship. It also gives me part of everything you own.” She chuckled, a mocking laugh.

Brianna is just... the worst in this whole chapter. Also, she might not get part of everything he owns, so I wouldn't laugh mockingly just yet. Muslim inheritance law is incredibly complicated, so I might be getting some of this wrong, but here's what I've found: It looks like Iraq is currently operating under mostly Shi'ite inheritance law, but her family is Sunni, so I don't know how that affects it. In Sunni tradition, it looks like she wouldn't get anything even if her mother hadn't broken with her family by marrying outside of her faith.

Either way, Brianna's either been studying up on Iraqi inheritance law or she just pulled all this out of her butt. I suspect the second. Either way, she's being kind of terrible about it.

“The truth is I don’t want anything you have. Not one thing... you make me sick... all of you!” She spun around and slapped her grandfather again.

I mean, she's already hit him, threatened to shoot him, and threatened to karate chop him to death. Another slap can't make things TOO much worse.

Brianna turned to walk out the door.  

Conrad quickly rendered Emir’s two guards unconscious with a swift blow to the neck.

Yup, just leave a trail of unconscious bodies, best way to go about this whole thing.

Conrad then tells Brianna's uncles that if anything ever happens to Brianna, he'll hunt down and kill all of them.

He stuck one of his pistols forcefully in Odel’s nose.

Well, this just makes me giggle.

Conrad pushed Odel with such force that he went flying over the couch, landing at the feet of his father.

But this is awful. These are the WORST people. They waltzed into their home just to beat them up and yell at them. I mean, it's not a sane response, but it's also not a Christian response. This is, I think, supposed to feel like a satisfying "Yay, the bad guys are getting their comeuppance!" chapter but it mostly makes me hate Brianna and Conrad a lot.

Miridia steps back out and makes this speech:

“You have bossed me around long enough, and I am tired of you calling me ‘Woman.’ My name is Miridia. I am the mother of Mira... and the proud grandmother of Brianna Bays. You can talk to my lawyer.”

So, uh, that's nice, I guess. Although given the murderous nature of her family, again, I just don't think this will go well.

Conrad tells Brianna they need to go, but takes one more opportunity to be terrible and vengeful and violent and stupid:

Without warning, Conrad grabbed Adel and shoved him against the wall. “His name, what was his name?” . . .  

“Barrett! We never knew if that was his first or last name. The only thing we know is that he is dead.” . . .  

Conrad’s temper flared. With full force, he stuck Adel in the head with the palm of his hand, knocking his head against the wall. Unconscious, the brother fell to the floor in a heap.

They run out of the house, Conrad knocking guards out left and right. When they get to the vehicle, Bruno knocks out the outside guards, and they all run away. Conrad thinks about how strong and determined Brianna is. Yeah, I guess that's one word for it.

And we finally end this awful, awful, awful chapter. I feel such a sense of accomplishment at having gotten through it. Between the obnoxious, weirdly childish behavior in the face of a much more serious wrong, and the sheer stupidity and implausibility of every moment of it, this was... a struggle. But we're 74% of the way through the book and only have 83 pages left to go.