Royal Casa Cruise Liner: Chocolate, Cruise Ships & Casinos (Erika A. Knight Mysteries Book 1)
So apparently “Royal Casa Cruise Liner: Chocolate, Cruise Ships & Casinos” is the title of the book, “Erika A. Knight Mysteries” is the series title, “Erika Knight, a nationally acclaimed freelance Food Stylist” is what the protagonist does when she’s not solving cozy mysteries, and I’m getting a headache.
The first paragraph:
“The alarm clock buzzed Erika into consciousness ringing through her Eustachain tube, sending morning vibes through her ossicles to get her to wake up. She struggled through the persistent noise from the alarm clock. Knowing she had slept under the heavy influence of alcohol the night before.”
There are 77 pages of this.
I’m so glad I looked up those words in the dictionary.
I get my morning vibes to my ossicles through my external acoustic meatus. Going through the eustachian tube sounds … oh, well, different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Maybe she has one of those new nose-mounted alarm clocks?
This is even more bizarre than ‘nationally acclaimed freelance Food Stylist”.
Bemused by the things that look like swan figurines in/on/floating in front of the roulette ball.
The concept of a “cozy murder mystery” is also a little worrying, in itself.
Don’t you just love it when two unrelated stock photos are badly GIMP-ed onto each other?
At first glance, I though Erika Knight, a nationally acclaimed freelance Food Stylist, was the author, and I wondered why she was writing a mystery instead of a food book.
And the cover? Somewhat strange. I was expecting some gorgeously styled food. Not a roulette wheel with a swan-themed roulette ball.
A “Freelance Food Stylist” is one of those asinine jobs that teenagers dream up. Sort of like they all think that a “fashion buyer” is some big glamorous gig, where they’ll go to all the big Haute shows, rub elbows with the big designers, etc. Or those housewives that think that they can get rich working from home being a Secret Shopper.
It’s just so freaking annoying.
BTW, @Spanner: actually, Cozies are a very real subset genre. Miss Marple, Poirot, Death in Paradise (or is that Murder in Paradise? I can’t remember–the UK show filmed in the Caribbean), Midsomer Murders–those are all Cozies. It’s a time-honored tradition in Mystery writing. 🙂
Oh, okay. It wasn’t a term I’d encountered in this sort of context before, so the initial reaction was something like, “that’s what you want to elicit?”