Bookmarks: The Ex... in Thoughts On...

This will be more of a stream of consciousness rather than a summary review.

Not sure where this book is headed nearly half-way in.

A date was set for the wedding…finally. Neil is basically retired, and Sophie has started a very successful magazine with Deja (barf). Amazing considering her only experience was assisting Anna Wintour…sorry Gabriella Winters. Oh and those six days being an “assistant beauty editor”. Which really was just testing makeup swatches on her hands and photographing products, so not so much of an “editor”. But, we do learn that her super shallow narcism is why she is “so good at her job”. Rolling my eyes and clenching my teeth at this character could be the reason for my locked-jaw and continuing headaches.

I’m sorry but is every million-billionaire some sort of kinky sex fetishist? Or is that part of the erotica template? Neil, Emir, now Ian and Gena. And everyone is just happy to talk so openly about their sexcapades. And nobody has to sign NDA’s except Anastasia Steele? Seriously, Neal has 4 billion dollars and he didn’t even bat an eyelash starting up this super kink relationship with Sophie and not have her sign a non-disclosure agreement? Trump screws porn stars and makes them sign. Even when he thought she was a mole and fired her from Porteras, he didn’t think she could write a salacious tell all? Even after she wrote “I’m Just the Girlfriend”? Now, granted I have zero clue who owns and runs publishing houses like Elwood and Stern and I don’t care to, but still. And now he is all up in arms about Stephen writing a tell-all about what he did when he was in college? Isn’t that where their relationship began and ended? I am guessing that Elizabeth was not a fan of the kink? Did she know about it? Did Valerie buy into his fetish? So many questions, and probably zero answers.

Nearly half-way through and there was the brief mention and melt-down over the tell-all and nothing since, so is it a big deal or not?

And I am sorry, but No, Nope, No Chance In Hell does a woman stand in a posh baby store and tell everyone staring at her about her fiance’s ex-wife wanting children and he not wanting them and so on and so on like Sophie did. And I would have expected Emma to have clued her ex-stepmother in about her pregnancy and she read Sophie’s book so she should have realized that Neil is probably shooting blanks and that Sophie was not the one they were shopping for.

For someone who claims to be so strong and independent Sophie cries a lot. And she is super insecure. Pick a role already. She is either tough as nails or a seventh-grader.

Also, they bought out the couples who were planning on having their weddings the same weekend as Sophie and Neal at the Plaza? Probably not. They had probably had that venue reserved for forever and a day and most likely had to sell their souls to the Devil and sacrifice their first born in the first place. There are how many venues in New York for weddings? And they have a thirty-five fucking thousand square foot house in the Hamptons and couldn’t have a June wedding there?

And then the book is set to release in June after the wedding and right around the time poor Emma is due to give birth? Who encounters this level of coincidence?

And then Emma goes into early labor and I don’t recall exactly when it was in this book because I rushed into the next book so quickly, but if the baby’s birthday is really when it is in The Baby, there is no way in hell that anyone should have been okay with HOW early this birth is/was. Not the doctor, not even if the ultrasound said that baby was 9 lbs, not the mother, the father, or any other human being on earth. SPOILER ALERT for The Baby… April 9th is 75 days prior to her estimated due date of June 23. That is nearly 11 weeks. Eleven weeks would be right around 29-30 weeks gestation and while babies can and do survive that, they spend a lot of fucking time in the NICU and most doctors would try to stop the labor and put momma on bedrest. Not be like, “well the ultrasound says this baby is 6 pounds. Sounds okay to me.” And if the baby was 6 pounds at that point, someone cannot math correctly when determining the due date.

So, the trailer burns down and of course Mom comes to live with Sophie and Neil. I am not from the Midwest, I am from the Rockies, but for fucks sake not every person who lives in a small town and a single wide trailer is so uncouth and blunt as this author portrays Sophie’s mother. It feels very stereotypical and is annoying.

A black wedding dress? Really? I get not going all out in white considering the life this woman is leading, but I don’t buy into the “purity myth” bullshit she spouts. For such an evolved woman, who is nobody’s to “give away”, how can she in good conscience be so enthusiastically engaged in a submissive sexual role? It’s hypocritical as fuck.

Also, four fucking dresses for one wedding? Really? A dress for the ceremony, a dress for dinner, a dress for dancing, because you can’t wear the same dress you wore to eat in?, and a dress to wear to airport and on the private jet? Because that dancing dress can’t be worn in the car and changed out of on the private jet? And it sounded less like a dress and more like a nightgown. A nightdress that I am assuming never made it on the jet because instead of driving to the airport in New York, they drove two hours to their compound where Neil took the Parisian themed shack and turned it into their own little sex shack. As if nobody would ever want a look inside that structure while touring the compound. Mom, who is living in the guest house (quite literally) wouldn’t wonder what the fuck that place is?

And of course Mom and Tony are doing it. Any idiot in their right mind would have figured that out the minute they were mentioned in the same sentence together.

And really? Sophie thinks that virginal Penny would love Ian, swinger divorcee, who is roughly around Neil’s age? Because all 22 year olds want to screw older, divorced, kinky men that fall madly in love with them? Is there not enough coincidence in this book? Neil screws Stephen, who happens to have a sister, Valerie, that Neil goes on to have a child with, and his best friend Rudy also happens to screw Stephen. And then he is friends with Ian and Gena who are swingers and willing to go full on during their first dinner date with Sophie & Neil. Also, Neil manages to pop a woody wonder every single time Sophie gets wet and is able to get to full mast? Every time? Like there isn’t a time when he is out of refills and they have to contact his doctor or the pharmacy runs out because all the billionaire ED sufferers had to get refills too? And then, Penny, who collects pennies, drops the bomb that she is a virgin while on the saddest, least-wild bachelorette party in the world and a few weeks later, Sophie decides that she would be perfect with Ian and somehow, Penny just is all for it and so is Ian. Because? The cosmos has aligned or because the is the most ridiculous formulaic book in the world? It is almost as cosmically aligned as when Anastasia’s roommate fell in love with Christian’s brother.

I get that Neil pays an assload of money to his “therapist”. But he really had the good doctor contact his “rapist” for a joint session? All so Neil could tell Stephen he said no and Stephen raped him? And he wanted Sophie to sit in on that why?

And why was Sophie’s mom so okay with Neil and Sophie being bisexual when she lost her shit over the age difference? She had zero qualms about him being into men and women and her daughter for that matter, but she continues to needle the age difference? No dramatic argument over him maybe leaving Sophie down the line for a dude? I don’t buy that after her entire family brought in convenience store hooch for her reception at The Plaza. Midwesterners are most likely going to go apeshit for top shelf booze over some sale on Coors Light at the corner bodega. These people have cable right? They have seen Sex and the City, the women should be all over Cosmos and martinis. And the men should be all up for something other than Jack Daniels. Jesus!

Remember when Ross said that Sandy had cried more in his apartment in three days than Ross had since he moved in? Yeah, he has nothing on Neil. Neil cries every other page. He should buy some stock in Puffs Plus. Not that there is anything wrong with men crying, but when a man cries that much, in front of a girl who probably never saw a man cry in front of her before, there are going to be some alarms going off.

Oh, and Emma using the term “au pair”. Nope. What you have is a nanny. And au pair is, by definition, ‘a young foreign person, typically a woman, who helps with housework or child care in exchange for room and board.’ As we find out in The Baby, Olivia’s nanny is American as fuck working in America. So therefore, nanny, not au pair. Stop trying to fit in “foreign” idioms because you sometimes forget that Emma is English and not American.

In summary, I hated the fuck out of this book and, once again, the title had zero to do with the actual book. You can mention all of Neil’s exes as much as you want, quantity does not make the title fitting.