{"id":1698,"date":"2009-07-18T17:42:29","date_gmt":"2009-07-18T22:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1698"},"modified":"2025-10-28T12:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T17:44:11","slug":"book-review-the-actor-and-the-housewife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/book-review-the-actor-and-the-housewife\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Actor and the Housewife"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CoverThe Actor and the Housewife<\/span><\/a>
\nby Shannon Hale
\nPublished by Bloomsbury USA<\/p>\n

I feel like I just got jerked around in an extremely passive-aggressive manner by a narcissistic fuckwad.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t tell you how pissed off I am at this moment.<\/p>\n

No review. No more crit. You can see previous entries here<\/a> and here<\/a>. It\u2019s completely irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Tell you what. I\u2019ll read Stephenie Meyer again before I\u2019ll read anything else this author\u2019s ever written. I can\u2019t imagine Breaking Dawn<\/span> is a worse betrayal by an author than this.<\/p>\n

ETA:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve gotten a bunch of emails about what actually happened, so here you go. Spoiler warning.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\t\t
Spoiler<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Okay, here was the deal:<\/p>\n

All the way through this book, Felix is in love with Becky. Almost painfully so. Obviously so (which is its own irritation that nobody picks up on this). He\u2019s a very nice guy and fairly fleshed out and he\u2019s only an ass for maybe 5 pages of the whole book.<\/p>\n

Okay.<\/p>\n

Her husband dies at the 2\/3 mark. So, for 2\/3 of the book she\u2019s all about Felix when her husband\u2019s around. Then, for the last 1\/3, she\u2019s all mourning her husband for two years, and Felix is there, wanting to marry her, tells her he\u2019s been in love with her (and oh, this comes as a complete shock to her, right? Pfffttt), and now she\u2019s all about her husband. So for pages and pages and pages and pages she\u2019s all, \u201cNO I\u2019M STILL MARRIED TO MIKE!!!\u201d (this is after 2 years of widowhood, remember) and breaking Felix\u2019s heart, then she finally decides, yeah, okay, I can marry him. He\u2019s my best friend after all. I\u2019m 45 and my kids are way grown (youngest is 13 or something and oldest 2 are gone) and Felix and I can grow old together, so yeah, I think maybe I\u2019ll think about marrying him after all.<\/p>\n

And then they go away for a while so they can kiss uninterrupted. So they do.<\/p>\n

And it is (I quote), \u201ca belly-flop\u201d of a kiss. No passion. So that\u2019s it. They go their separate ways, I guess still being best pals on the phone or whatever.<\/p>\n

Cuz they aren\u2019t made for each other after all.<\/p>\n

Because they didn\u2019t get horny when they kissed for the first time.<\/p>\n

Happy happy joy joy.<\/p>\n

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? AFTER ALL THAT FUCKING ANGST? HOW DO YOU NOT GET HORNY ABOUT THE PERSON YOU\u2019VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH FOR ELEVEN YEARS???<\/p>\n

She spends the first 2\/3 thirds of the book w\/her husband being all about Felix and the last 1\/3 with Felix being all about her husband.<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

I have no way to reconcile any of this to any reality, writerly or Mormonly or humanly. None. It makes no sense on any level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale Published by Bloomsbury USA I feel like I just got jerked around in an extremely passive-aggressive manner by a narcissistic fuckwad. I can\u2019t tell you how pissed off I am at this moment. No review. No more crit. You can see previous entries here and here. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[521,553,712],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-friends-to-lovers","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22400,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/22400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}