The Sweet Life, Volume 1: Bruce Patman is Still Getting Away With Rape

If you wanted your whole face in the picture, you should have made better decisions and been written by an author who respects you. Sluts. Fat sluts. Fat sluts not even wearing any suede.
If I forgot to shame them for something, let me know in the comments. I’m not as good at this as Francine Pascal is. Clearly.

Guest Blogger: Jessica is a twenty-something doing brilliant work who reads questionable books.  She makes her cats watch YouTube clips of Bill Cosby all day, and has a blog that she might update again if you start reading it.  This is the first installment of a six part series written by Jessica, in which she reviews Francine Pascal’s The Sweet Life series.  If you have any expectation of these books being worth reading, you haven’t been paying attention.  Please thank Jessica for reading these so the rest of us don’t have to. 

Our story opens on Jessica Wakefield doing what Jessica Wakefield does best: alienating those around her with her career.  She’s planning the Mean Green Gala (which is a gala that is angry and also eco-friendly), for her green cosmetic company.  She has the earth shattering idea to use body paint to paint the models, but paint zippers and such onto them to make them look like they’re NOT painted.  Everyone (quite inexplicably) LOVES the idea.  Jessica is a star!  Then Jessica’s boss hits on her, which should surprise no one, because no one can resist the beautiful Jessica Wakefield.  But the whole time, Jessica is thinking in her head “OhMyGodImSoLateToddIsGoingToKillMe,” and she resists her boss and flies home, two hours late. Home, to her three-year old son, where we find her…separated from husband.

Yes.  Jess and Todd have separated.  They argue about how nothing has changed since he left her (for always putting her work before him, apparently, which is definitely a good reason to leave someone who has always been like that.  Note to guys: if you bang both twins, and then shack up with one twin, and then secretly love the other twin, and then finally get caught with the other twin and profess that it’s all about love and stuff…I mean.  This is going to happen.  And Ned Wakefield will probably punch your mouth.) and it’s all very dramatic but also very boring.

Lila auditions for The True Housewives (see what she did there?).  She decides to play the “spoiled bitch.”  Readers everywhere laugh in their heads because she will not have to act at all.  She finds out that they really chose her because of her NFL star QB husband (yup, they didn’t divorce after all, YET–see that? Foreshadowing! SPOILER ALERT.)  So she turns up the…er…charm.  She acts extra bitchy (again, this should not be hard).  Meanwhile, her sexy, CURVY (yup, here we go again) costar is putting the moves on Ken.  Lila gets pissed. She says extra bitchy things about Ken on camera, and Ken storms out.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is still Bruce Patman’s girlfriend, but now she’s Bruce Patman’s live in girlfriend.  They’re about to get it on in the bathroom, when Bruce gets a very dramatic cell phone call.  So he interrupts their getting it on (complete with all Francine’s excellent sex scene writing glory) to answer his cell phone, and they are DEVASTATED to find out that some summer intern is accusing Bruce of raping her.  Jessica goes into PR mode, finding celebrities to talk about Bruce’s innocence, and Liz goes into reporter mode, finding people to interview.  All of whom are thin and attractive, of course.  Now I can’t remember in which installment she finds the victim, so I’ll just pretend it’s this one.  Because some of the stories aren’t quite adding up.  Bruce thinks he’s being set up.  But Liz puts her liarpants on, finds the victim, and manipulates her into telling her the whole story. Nevermind that if Liz was ACTUALLY a therapist from church recommended by the priest, WHY WOULDN’T YOU ASK THE PRIEST ABOUT IT?!  I mean, she’s clearly stupid and that’s why she was raped*.  CLEARLY.  And of course, she’s petite, blonde, and beautiful.  OF COURSE.

Back at the Jessica camp: Jessica finds out that Todd might be banging this Sarah chick.  Sarah is a writer and is ripping off Jessica’s stuff (Jessica is a writer?  She was making galas earlier.  Writers don’t make galas.  Jessica can do everything, apparently.).   Jessica reports Sarah to her boss, and Sarah gets fired.  Todd comes in, raging, yelling about how Jessica never really loved him and was manipulating him to get what she wanted the whole time.  Jessica says “WELL FINE GO BANG SARAH THEN JERKFACE!” and Todd storms out, presumably to go bang Sarah.  So Todd and Sarah are about to bang, and Todd is surprised to see that Sarah is naked under her clothes.  BECAUSE REALLY FRANCINE PASCAL?  HOW ELSE ARE PEOPLE UNDER THEIR CLOTHES?  But then Todd freaks out, realizes he still loves Jessica, runs out awkwardly, and sends Jess like 20 stalker texts saying he loves her.  Then he tries to call Jess, but can’t get a hold of her because she’s out on a date with Liam.  DUN DUN DUN.

Jessica has a terrible time on the date because she’s thinking of nothing but Todd, but she gets drunk and bangs one out with Liam.  Whoopsy daisy!  And then she freaks out and demands that Liam take her home, where she sees that Todd texted her (she left her phone at home).  And then somewhere around here, the first one ends with a very horribly played cliffhanger.

Stay tuned for the next installment, where Bruce isn’t doing himself or his supposed innocence any damn favors, but nobody cares because 1Bruce1.

*Mel here.  I wasn’t going to add anything to any of these, because I really feel like Jess has missed her calling and should be reviewing books professionally.  But this shit grinds my gears.  Know why?  This isn’t the first (and probably won’t be the last) rape that Pascal has written in to these damn books.  The first one we encountered was when Bruce tried to rape Liz.  And it bears noting that Bruce tried to rape Liz when Liz was so concussed that she turned into a motorcycle riding jezebel.  And it was then, during the phase of jezebel-Liz, that Bruce made his aggressive and fucking illegal move.  So, along with hating fat people, Francine Pascal hates sluts.  Characters in Francine Pascal books beware: if she writes you into a skirt, you were asking for it.  Or you’re lying about it.  But either way, it’s all your fault.