Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
Bringing you the famous and cheeky SBTB blog for romance enthusiasts. If you're into the romance genre, this is where you want to be. If you're not, avoid at all costs to preserve your sanity. Ha ha. We're just kidding. There are some good things happening in the genre. Stay Golden, Horny Girl!
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A | BN | K Jeff Adams, who you may know as one half of The Big Gay Fiction Podcast, is also a credentialed expert in web accessibility, and he’s co-written a new book, Content for Everyone. This book is for creative people to help ensure that all your online content, from websites to social media posts, is accessible to everyone. We’re going to talk about the top four things you can do to make your web content accessible, and spoiler: they’re really not difficult. Then, of course, we’ve got tv and book recs, because that’s what we do here. Listen to the podcast → Read the transcript → Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:…
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You Were Made to Be Mine You Were Made to Be Mine by Julie Anne Long is $1.99! This is book five in The Palace of Rogues series. Previous books in the series received some rather positive reviews on the site. Are you a fan of the series? In the fifth installment of USA Today bestselling author Julie Anne Long’s charming Palace of Rogues series, a rakish spy finds more than he bargained for in his pursuit of an earl’s enchanting runaway fiancée. The mission: Find the Earl of Brundage’s runaway fiancée in exchange for a fortune. Child’s play for legendary British forme…
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This Rec League comes from Nancy. Thanks, Nancy! I just finished reading Don’t Look Down by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Since I retired I’ve been doing extra work on tv shows that are filmed locally and I really enjoyed that the action of the book happens on a film set. Loved all the details that I’m now actually familiar with. I’d love to have some recommendations of other romances which take place on a film set (not just a story about actors) with the day to day details of what that’s like. A | BN | K Elyse: Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade happens on location Sea Creatures Prefer Redheads Sarah: Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren – and definitely Ship Wrecked!…
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Welcome back to Wednesday Links! Last we talked, I mentioned my wine and cheese class. We had a spectacular cheese made by an Australian cheesemaker and it was made from buffalo milk. It was so good; we definitely brought some home, along with the truffle popcorn they paired it with. My social calendar feels pretty full the next few weeks. I’m one of those people who will make plans, dread it up until the last second, and then go and have a good time (all while thinking, “wow, that wasn’t so bad.” Any fellow introverted extroverts out there? How has your week been? Any engagements you’re really excited about? … Anyone interested in a 24-hour, livestreamed Edgar Allan…
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The Matrimonial Advertisement The Matrimonial Advertisement by Mimi Matthews is 99c. This is the first book in the Parish Orphans of Devon series and it’s a Victorian historical romance. It also has a marriage of convenience. Readers say this has a Gothic element, which they loved. However, others felt the book couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a mystery or a romance. Matthews’ books have been recommended several times. She Wanted Sanctuary… Helena Reynolds will do anything to escape her life in London, even if that means traveling to a remote cliffside estate on t…
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It’s time for another edition of Stuff We Like! This month: your kitchen needs more adorable, whimsical, and useful gadgetry! Want to see? Just click that image above or click right here, and come shop with us! And if you’d like to browse some more, we have a complete Stuff We Like archive, including past Gift Guides and other posts of our favorite items. View the full article
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A Duchess by Midnight A Duchess by Midnight by Charis Michaels is $1.99! This is the third book in the Awakened by a Kiss historical romance series. This is a Cinderella retelling with an “ugly stepsister” as the main character and a marriage of convenience. USA Today bestselling author Charis Michaels concludes her Awakened by a Kiss series with another enchanting romance, this time telling the real story of Cinderella’s stepsister and the man who can’t help falling in love with her. A Former Ugly Duckling… Miss Drewsmina “Drew” Trelayne is a former awkward child a…
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This HaBO comes from First Lastly, who wants to find this romance: I’d like some help with a book title again. I discovered this book in my old junior high school library. It was popular then so this was around 2016-2018ish? All I can remember was that the title said something along the lines of ’ something something Cinderella’. And that the plot was something about a vampire dominated community where humans and vampires co-exist, but the vampires are more lords or royalty. Then the female main character somehow in need got talked into auctioning herself to be fed to a vampire: the male main character. I remember a scene where the MMC figured out she’s a computer geek …
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A Madison Square Murders by C.S. Poe September 28, 2021 · Emporium Press Romantic Suspense Content warning: homophobia I love romantic suspense, but they can sometimes be a little light on the suspense and a little heavy on the romance for me. The mystery plot in this book is strong enough to stand on its own, but my god, does the romance sweeten the deal. Detective Everett Larkin works for the cold case squad in New York. A tree has blown over in Madison Square Park and in its uprooting, a crated skeleton has bee…
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A Duke in Shining Armor RECOMMENDED: A Duke in Shining Armor by Loretta Chase is $1.99! Carrie absolutely loved this one and gave it an A: I should have been able to read A Duke in Shining Armor in a day. Instead, it took me a week. And do you know why? Because I purposely kept putting it down once I realized that eventually I would RUN OUT OF BOOK. How DARE this book be over? Not all dukes are created equal. Most are upstanding members of Society. And then there’s the trio known as Their Dis-Graces. Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win pri…
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B+ At Midnight by Dahlia Adler November 22, 2022 · Flatiron Books Science Fiction/FantasyYoung Adult At Midnight, edited by Dahlia Adler, is a creative, inclusive mix of fairy tale reimaginings from a diverse YA perspective. Some of the stories are funny, some horrifying, but all are inventive and subversive. Different people will of course have different favorites, but my favorite story was “In the Forests of the Night.” In this retelling of “Fitcher’s Bird,” author Gita Trelease creates a bloody, v…
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Welcome back to Get Rec’d! We’ve reached forty of these! I can hardly believe it. There’s fiction and non-fiction here, and both older and new releases. While I love introducing long-time readers to new or debut voices, I also love uniting new genre readers to more established writers (especially when they have a backlist to enjoy). Have you received any good recommendations lately? Let us know! Mika in Real Life One of my recent publishing predictions was YA writers dabbling in adult genres and this fits! A bit literary fiction with some romantic elements and a main character who wants to…
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http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/posts/hide-your-wallet.jpg If you’re new to Hide Your Wallet, this is where we list new releases we’re pretty excited for in the coming month. Each reviewer has a book maximum (five per person), and we’ve separated HYW into two parts. The first HYW of the month will cover books that release from the 1st to the 14th. The second HYW will cover books released from the 15th to the end of the month. We also think this will help us feature books from smaller publishers who don’t have buy links up as early as the bigger trade houses. As always, if we missed any books that you’…
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http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/posts/hide-your-wallet.jpg Welcome to Book Beat! Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster. A Tale of Two Florists Author: Brenna Bailey Released: March 9, 2023 by Bookmarten Press Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, …
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The transcript for Podcast 558. The Myths of BookTok, with Chels Ebooks has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article
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The Hollow Places The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher is $1.99! I’ve enjoyed Kingfisher’s first horror novel, The Twisted Ones. If you want something spooky but is light on graphic or sexual violence, it’s worth a try. I haven’t checked out this one just yet, though it is on my radar. A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel. Pray they are hungry. Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and liv…
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B+ The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles March 7, 2023 · Sourcebooks Casablanca LGBTQIARomance The ever reliable K.J. Charles is back with The Secret Lives of County Gentlemen. This is a charming but intense story in which two very different men with very different lives navigate a relationship in the marshlands of Kent, where smuggling is a cultural norm, everything is just a little bit gothic, mystery abounds, and “out-marsh” people are held in suspicion. ‘London’ and ‘Kent’ hit it off in the big ci…
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Chels, who is on TikTok as Chels_Ebooks, has been doing a series debunking the myths of BookTok, and let me tell you, when people say everything old is new again? Myths about the sales power of readers on social media are recycled with every new platform. We’re going to debunk some myths about romance and TikTok, and cover what Chels really loves about TikTok, too. And we have some very special discussions of classic romances and even more classic cover art. Listen to the podcast → Read the transcript → Here are the books we discuss in this podcast: …
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The Switch RECOMMENDED: The Switch by Beth O’Leary is $2.99! Catherine read this one and gave it an A: It’s a very gentle, wholesome sort of book. I read it last week when I was sick, and it was really the perfect book to curl up with if one is under the weather. Eileen is sick of being 79. Leena’s tired of life in her twenties. Maybe it’s time they swapped places… When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly …
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Spin Me Round by Jeff Baena and Alison Brie Duplass Brothers Productions C- Not a Book I love every actor in Spin Me Round. I love the concept. I love the movie poster. I’d follow Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza anywhere. I was primed for a gentle, undemanding but enjoyable B grade range kind of movie. So it is with tears in my eyes that I ask: What the heck happened? The following is a spoiler-filled review of a comfort movie gone as wrong as three-day old Olive Garden salad. The plot is this: Alison Brie plays Amber, a manager of a restaurant chain …
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Welcome everyone! It’s time for Links! I’ll be attending my fourth cheese class of the year on Friday. This one has a focus on “snacking cheese.” I’m very much a grazer and snacker, so I’m pretty excited. My class last time was recreating a five-course meal but with cheese! The winner was the “banana split” course, featuring a softened Fior di Langa cheese from Caseificio Altalanga paired with banana jam and a maraschino cherry. It was so good! Also next week is my birthday! I’ll be turning thirty-four, much to the shock of my co-workers. Some of them are in their mid-twenties and they were confounded that I knew a reference to the Six Flags dancing man commercial. To w…
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An Inconvenient Duke An Inconvenient Duke by Anna Harrington is $1.99! This is book one in the Lords of the Armory series. This historical romance features the “off-limits sibling of a friend” trope. If that’s your particular catnip, maybe pick this one up. Marcus Braddock, Duke of Hampton and former general, is back from war and faced with mourning the death of his beloved sister, Elise. Marcus believes his sister’s death wasn’t an accident and he’s determined to learn the truth, starting with Danielle, the beautiful daughter of a baron and his sister’s best friend. …
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A+ A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers August 23, 2022 · William Morrow Paperbacks Historical: European Sometimes a blurb is so horribly misleading that it does a book a disservice. Certainly the blurb for this book is unhelpful at best. By describing things as ‘ghoulishly fun’ and ‘wickedly whimsical’, it’s clear that the person who wrote the blurb did not, in fact, read the book. There was no ‘whimsical fun’ for me in this book. But there was a lot of absolute brilliance though. This Gothic tale feel…
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American Royalty American Royalty by Tracey Livesay is $1.99! This is a contemporary romance with a royal hero and famous singer heroine. I personally love the cover, but I know on Cover Awe, some felt it had “uncanny valley” vibes. In this dangerously sexy rom-com that evokes the real-life romance between Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle, a prince who wants to live out of the spotlight falls for a daring American rapper who turns his life, and the palace, upside down. Sexy, driven rapper Danielle “Duchess” Nelson is on the verge of signing a deal that’ll make …
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This HaBO is from Maggie, who wants to track down this erotic historical paranormal romance: I’m desperately trying to find a book I bought at Barnes & Noble in Southern California between 2010 and 2015. Things I know: – The cover had a warning on it about the book being sexy. – The protagonist was just learning about her paranormal powers, and the love interest was trying to teach her. – The love interest lived in a communal setting with others of his type of paranormal creature. – There’s a scene where the man has brought the woman home and removes a rod from a cabinet, then sits down on it. – There’s a scene where the love interest is showing the protagoni…
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ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
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The Usherette (Historical Fiction). Meeting Orson Welles
Scene: Chapter Four. Jo returns to New York from visiting Madeleine in Florida after receiving a telegram from Orson Welles asking to meet. He wants to premiere "Citizen Kane" at the Palace Theater and needs someone to show him around. The scene captures Jo's passions and core decency - and why the movies matter to her. He wanted to meet at midnight.docx -
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Demystifying the Blog Tour: A Powerful Marketing Tool for Your Book Launch and Beyond
A blog tour is a marketing campaign that involves coordinating a series of blog posts and online promotions to create buzz and generate exposure for your book. It typically involves collaborating with bloggers and influencers who have an audience that aligns with your target readership. These bloggers will read your book, write reviews, host author interviews, and feature guest posts or excerpts from your book on their blogs. The goal is to reach a wider audience and generate interest in your book within their established community. The Blog Tour Framework Here's a breakdown of the framework for a typical blog tour: Identify and contact bloggers: Research and compile a list of relevant bloggers who cater to your book's genre or niche. Reach out to them via email or through their website's contact form, expressing interest in collaborating on a blog tour. Provide review copies: Offer a digital or physical copy of your book to the interested bloggers, allowing them time to read and review it before the tour begins. Create tour schedule: Coordinate with the participating bloggers to create a schedule for the tour. Each blogger will have a designated day to feature your book on their blog and share their review, interview, guest post, or any other agreed-upon content. Create content: Prepare author interviews, guest posts, or excerpts that you can provide to the bloggers to publish on their respective blogs. These pieces of content should be engaging and relevant to your book, enticing readers to learn more about it. Promote: As the blog tour progresses, actively promote each blog post across your own social media channels and any other platforms you use. This will help generate more visibility and encourage your existing followers to visit the blogs hosting your content. Engage with readers: Throughout the blog tour, make an effort to engage with readers who leave comments on the blog posts. Responding to their comments and answering their questions will help build a connection and potentially lead to more interest in your book. Blog Tour Benefits The benefits of a blog tour can be significant for your book launch or generating interest long after your book has been released. Some potential advantages include: Increased exposure: By leveraging the established audiences of bloggers and influencers, you can reach a wider audience that may not have been aware of your book otherwise. Social proof: Positive reviews and endorsements from bloggers can lend credibility to your book, encouraging readers to take a chance on it. Networking opportunities: Collaborating with bloggers and influencers can expand your network within the literary community, opening doors to potential future partnerships or opportunities. Enhanced online presence: The blog tour generates online content related to your book, increasing your online presence and searchability, which can have long-term benefits for your author platform. When to Plan a Blog Tour Determining the best time to have a blog tour for your book largely depends on your specific goals, timeline, and the nature of your book. However, there are a few general considerations to keep in mind when planning the timing of your blog tour: Book launch date: Ideally, you'll want to schedule your blog tour around your book's launch date. This ensures that the tour generates maximum buzz and attention during the critical period when your book becomes available to the public; however, a book tour can also help reignite interest in your book long after it’s been published.. Pre-launch promotion: Consider starting your blog tour a few weeks before your book's official launch. This gives bloggers and influencers ample time to read and review your book, and it allows you to generate buzz and anticipation leading up to the release. Pre-launch promotion can help build excitement and generate pre-orders or early sales. Availability of review copies: Ensure that you have review copies of your book available and ready to send out to bloggers well in advance of the blog tour start date. This allows sufficient time for bloggers to read the book and prepare their content for the tour. Consider providing digital copies for ease and quick distribution. Audience availability: Take into account the preferences and availability of your target audience. If your book caters to a specific season, genre, or holiday, it might be beneficial to align your blog tour with that theme or timeframe. For example, a romance novel might benefit from a blog tour around Valentine's Day. Other marketing efforts: Consider coordinating your blog tour with other marketing initiatives you have planned. This could include social media campaigns, advertising, or other promotional activities. A coordinated approach can amplify your book's visibility and impact. Blogger availability: Reach out to bloggers and influencers well in advance to secure their participation and confirm their availability for the tour. Keep in mind that popular bloggers may have busy schedules, so it's beneficial to plan ahead and be flexible with scheduling to accommodate their availability. Ultimately, the best time for a blog tour is when you have everything in place, including review copies, promotional materials, and a solid plan for engaging with bloggers and readers throughout the tour. Take the time to strategically plan and execute your blog tour to maximize its impact on your book launch or relaunch. Did you know WOW! Women on Writing offers blog tours as part of our marketing services? If you're interested in exploring professional assistance for your blog tour and other book marketing endeavors, check out WOW! Women on Writing's book marketing packages. We offer comprehensive and tailored solutions to help authors like you navigate the world of book promotion. Our team of experts can guide you through the process, provide valuable insights, and connect you with influential bloggers and reviewers in your genre. By leveraging the expertise and network of WOW! Women on Writing, you can enhance the effectiveness of your blog tour and ensure your book receives the attention it deserves. Learn more here or contact blogtour@wow-womenonwriting.com with questions. (C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!'s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Writing Contests. Open Now![url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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Whatcha Reading? May 2023, Part Two
It’s time to wrap up May with our second Whatcha Reading! It’s also Memorial Day weekend in the States, which seems like a perfect excuse to get even more reading done before the month is over. Sneezy: I’m reading Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin. She takes no prisoners. Sarah: What’s that? The library has the next Veronica Speedwell audiobook? Don’t mind if I do! Currently listening to A Murderous Relation ( A | BN | K | AB ) and having a splendid time. The audiobook performance by Angele Masters is terrific. A | BN | KShana: I just finished a YA romcom that gave me the biggest book hangover, Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert. So much banter and sweetness! I’m now reading The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, and liking it so far. Elyse: I just finished The Daydreams. ( A | BN | K ) Some of it was how awful tabloids were to young female stars in the aughts (Lindsay, Britney etc), but each of the main characters does something really shitty to another so it’s hard to really like any of leads. It was meh. Lara: Elyse recommended Loreth Anne White’s The Maid’s Diary ( A | BN ) and I’m hooked. No romance, but the suspense is phenomenal so far. Whatcha reading? Let us know in the comments! View the full article -
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Book Lovers: Know Your Tribe
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Writing Hot Sex Scenes - Saints Preserve Us!
I've been trained. It works! -
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Crucial Self-Editing Techniques - Don't be Hostage to a Line Editor
If you knew how many writers this has positively impacted, you'd say, it's no wonder. Fundamentals like this are too often neglected. -
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Podcast 564, Your Transcript has Bunny Ears
The transcript for Podcast 564. Bunny Aliens in Space: Cover Design with JL Logosz has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article -
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Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener Doesn’t See the Forest for the Trees
Master Gardener is the third in Paul Schrader’s “God’s Lonely Men” trilogy, in each film of which a weary middle-aged man who has previously experienced alienation from mainstream society contends with his haunted past and hazy future, reflecting on these things, and his rote daily existence, via diary-keeping—a technique that suffices until his world is challenged by knowledge of something greater, and tested by a newfound bond with a distressed young person. Via these characters, the films in this trilogy tend to pair and interrogate the relationship between two normally unrelated topics: religion and climate change (First Reformed, 2017), gambling and the War on Terror (The Card Counter, 2021), and horticulture and racism (Master Gardener, 2022). Schrader is an accomplished, highly literary storyteller and his interests (particularly the the masculine-coded concepts of destruction and violence) have produced some of film’s most fascinating inquiries into the ills of modern society, from Taxi Driver to Affliction to American Gigolo, to First Reformed and The Card Counter. First a film critic and then a screenwriter (responsible for classics like Raging Bull and Obsession and famous for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma), Schrader’s later work as a director is epitomized by the triad of films about “God’s Lonely Men,” three anti-social anti-heroes in crisis: a self-loathing pastor, a troubled gambler, and a secretive gardener, all reckoning with the sudden collision of themes, lives, selves once kept at a distance. Many of his protagonists, but especially these three, can be read as homages to Alain Delon’s Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film Le Samouraï: cool, reserved, highly-competent professionals whose whose adherence to rituals and observances leaves them unprepared to confront unforeseen cataclysms. It’s almost never useful to compare films in a director’s oeuvre to one another; despite similarities, each is its own discreet contribution. But Schrader’s films are designed to reference each other—or, really, The Card Counter and Master Gardener are designed to reference First Reformed—so please forgive me while I place them all side-by-side for a moment. In First Reformed, Ethan Hawke plays Ernst Toller (no, not that Ernst Toller), a cheerless reverend at a small antique church upstate who keeps a diary of his own stark life the year he happens to encounter a distraught climate activist who opens his eyes to the ravishment of God’s green earth by greedy corporations, as well as the ways God’s own church is influenced by corporatization to the point of disregarding the stewardship of the planet. That film, a simmering hagiography of a soul in turmoil, provides the blueprint for Schrader’s subsequent two films, not only thematically, but also stylistically, in the terms I mentioned in the opening paragraph. The films are dark, lonely meditations into their protagonists’ natures, told via their floridly-written, allusion-rich journal entries, as they finally confront aspects of their lives and their worlds they have kept at bay for so long. The Card Counter inherits the framework of First Reformed, but reworks it enough for it to feel distinct; Oscar Isaac plays William Tell (no, not that William Tell), a former military interrogator and now card-counter, who carpetbags from casino to casino, living out of austere motels, until he meets a young man who informs him that he knows his true identity, as a soldier who served jailtime for his role in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and asks for his help committing an act of revenge against one of Tell’s military superiors. This film slowly explores the human capacity for both empathy and cruelty, teasing out the relationship between “keeping one’s cool” and “losing it.” I don’t have as conclusive a reading of the forces at work Master Gardener, arguably the film in this trilogy with the toughest conceit. Joel Edgerton plays Narval Roth, a taciturn head gardener of Gracewood Gardens, a privately-owned estate with gardens that are open to the public. Narval manages a team of polo-clad young people, overseeing their work but also instructing them in the history, philosophy, and science of horticulture. He answers to no one, except Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver), the wealthy owner of the estate, who throws his carefully cultivated world out of order when she demands he take on an apprentice, her grand-niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell). Maya is biracial, the daughter of the “wayward” daughter of Norma’s sister, who left the family and “fell in with a bad crowd,” as Norma purrs. Maya seems to be her only relative left, so she is eager to draw her into the family—but not enough that she doesn’t insist that she work on the family’s land, first. Maya is a curious, intelligent twenty-something, surprisingly accepting of the fact that she’s a minimum wage worker on her great aunt’s estate. Norma wants Narval to educate her, teach her about the maintenance and culture and theories of horticulture, so that she might be able to pursue a career in the field in the future. Maya takes kindly to this earthy finishing school, especially because she appreciates the softspoken and passionate manner of Narval, her teacher. The movie appears to take place in the South (it was filmed in Louisiana), and the house looks like a plantation estate, so it seems like there might be some interesting explorations into contemporary white supremacy, the way Norma insists that Maya be fashioned into a more refined version of herself in order to be welcomed into her family tree, and simultaneously wants this self-improvement to take place as a farm-worker beneath her, and literally in the dirt. But the film wobbles from here on out, mostly because we learn about the haunted, Narval’s past as a soldier of a Neo-Nazi army, before turning state’s evidence against them and going into witness protection. Under his clothes, he is covered in White Pride and Hitler-fandom tattoos, which he looks at disparagingly in the mirror. He likes his current life as a peaceful caretaker of the Gracewood Gardens, is glad to have distanced himself from the silo of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and violence in which (he explains) he was raised. That Maya and Narval form a bond, while he also has flashbacks to things that his proud boy/hillbilly cult leader told him about how his job is to “pull out the weeds,” suggests that Master Gardener will become a thriller about the insidiousness of white supremacy, juxtaposing it with a reading of gardening as a kind of fascism (or at least, a way to disguise it). In other words, perhaps Narval’s solitary salvation in gardening for a racist white lady becomes an outlet for the very impulses that allowed him to thrive in a fascist cult in the first place. Master Gardener doesn’t till this ground, though, which is fine, but it also doesn’t do anything else productive with all of these rich, ripe, and (productively) thorny thematic concerns. What begins as an incredibly fruitful plot soon wilts and shrivels into a wandering love story; and the kind of discipline and restraint that Narvals brings to his gardening becomes, exactly, the element missing from the story itself. Master Gardener quickly forgets its powerful portrayals about white supremacy and racism when it becomes interested in whether or not its protagonist can be redeemed, can be saved, and, in giving him some way to carry this out, represents Maya as needing to be saved by someone, too. If this narrative shoot were to blossom into a meaningful development (unlikely as it is), we would need a clearer understanding of Narval’s life or background, a focused explaining of how he has come to be changed in the first place. But more importantly, this whole angle not only misses out on saying anything thoughtful about race in America, but also robs Maya of the opportunity to be more than a plot device, perhaps (especially in light of Swindell’s elegant performance), the greatest sin of all. What results is a confusing film, overgrown in some areas and under-seeded in others. Instead of becoming as thoughtful and risky an exploration as The Card Counter, Master Gardener becomes like a game of 52-card pickup. It’s as if Schrader has a deck of cards and instead of laying them out strategically, throws them all in the air and lets them come down where they will. Instead of become the focused sermon of First Reformed, Master Gardener becomes one of those themed themed refrigerator poem packs. It has a lot of terms on the table, but shuffles them around until they say almost absolutely nothing. View the full article
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