Book Review: Duchess, by Nikki Wilson

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay

 

I hope Nikki won’t mind, but I decided that for my blog post this fortnight, I would review her book that just recently came out. I love you, Nikki, and I’m so happy for you that your book got published. Plus, I thought it was a delight!

So, without further ado . . .

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (On my own blog, I have explained that I generally reserve 4 and 5 stars for books that touched me deeply or were really extraordinary in some other way. So 3.5 is a high rating, honestly, but I’m starting to rethink this because it comes across as lukewarm, which it isn’t. So just know I thought this book was a fun, worthwhile contemporary romance.)

Clean rating: G. Super duper clean.

Short summary: Katie is the manager for a major pop star, Duchess, but what people don’t know is that she also is Duchess. Chase is a veteran who is asked to help put together a charity concert with Duchess as one of the stars, so he has to work with Katie. Of course the inevitable craziness ensues when she tries to hide her identity and Chase tries to figure her out.

Recommend it? Are you a fan of light, clean, contemporary romance? Then yes, I recommend it. It was a fun read with a premise that was pretty amusing (imagine trying to be both a pop star and the pop star’s manager—what a pain!). There was also some seriousness—Katie’s mom is very sick with cancer, and Chase still suffers from PTSD and from some things that happened when he returned home—but it was handled gently so it didn’t feel heavy or depressing.

What I liked: I most enjoyed the situations that arose from Katie’s predicament. While I don’t really know about whether the situation is all that realistic (it probably isn’t), I didn’t care. It doesn’t matter whether or not this would work in real life. What matters is that Nikki sold it as believable in her world. It was funny, and I could feel Katie’s tension as she tried to navigate the different relationships she had, not telling anyone about Duchess. I also enjoyed the developing relationship between Katie and Chase. For me there was a nice level of tension, and I very much enjoyed that it was romantic but never crossed any lines. Plus, I really liked the cover—I thought it captured the essence of the story very well.

What didn’t work for me: This is a personal thing, but I rarely like reading song lyrics and poems within a book. I can rarely do them any justice in my head, and I wind up not enjoying them. So I would have preferred less of that, but your mileage may vary. I also had a few times when I wanted to tell Katie that she was being unrealistic about her mom’s prognosis and she needed to behave a little better. On the other hand, I think that those of us who truly believe in life after death tend to have a much easier time with death, so maybe I’m being too harsh?

Last words: Go buy it! Not only is it very inexpensive, and not only will you be supporting our very own awesome Nikki, but most of all you will be getting a fun romantic story out of it!

Fail With Honor

As my daughter gets ready for her mission to Chile, there are a lot of things she is nervous about. The biggest thing is the language. She didn't take Spanish in high school, and--like me--she speaks Spanish like a white girl. Our pronunciation is terrible.

The other day we went to the church distribution center in Mesa and saw some Spanish speaking sister missionaries. Since our next errand was to look for shoes for her mission, I urged her to ask the sisters about their shoes and what they would recommend. The conversation eventually came around to learning a language. My daughter asked them how long it took them to learn the language. One sister said it took her 5 months, the other, 7 months.

Then one of the sisters gave her this advice when it comes to learning the language in the MTC: "Fail with Honor." She went on to explain that everyone failed at learning the language in the MTC, but instead of getting discouraged, or giving up, embrace the failure with your head held high and continue to ask questions. Continue to work hard and continue to fail. Because if you're not afraid of failure, you will learn faster that those that are afraid to try for fear they will say something wrong.

As I thought about this advice as it pertains to writing, I realized that I haven't always failed with honor in this area. There were lots of moments where I retreated into myself and was afraid to let anyone read my writing. I also quit querying for six years. I realized I let my fear of failure slow down my progress. I still progressed because I never quit writing but how much faster would I have progressed if I wasn't afraid to show my work to other talented people, or I wasn't afraid to query an agent that may have given me some much needed advice?

So my advice today is to fail with honor. Don't be afraid of failure, embrace it as part of the learning process. Recognize that our life on this earth is full of failures because we are not perfect, but God knew this and prepared a way for us to rise above our failures. Thanks to Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we can all fail with honor as we repent and try harder to do better in all areas of our life.

Mission Call!

 By Nikki Wilson

I'm interrupting this blog post to bring you some very exciting news: My daughter received her mission call for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!  She is going to the Chile Vina Del Mar Mission Spanish speaking!

She is so excited. Mom is already missing her and she's not even gone yet. Now it's time to get her ready to serve. If anyone has tips for getting a missionary ready to go, let me know! Like tips on really comfortable, quality shoes that are appropriate for a mission would be much appreciated.

Marriage...The Ultimate W.I.P.

By Nikki Wilson

This is a writing blog, so why would I post about marriage? Mostly because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. My husband and I recently celebrated our 20 year anniversary and I would love to say it’s been a perfect 20 years but that would be like saying the first draft of my books are perfect. Anyone who’s ever seen even a glimpse of one of my first draft knows that is far from the truth. 

Often times movies and books portray marriage as the ultimate happy ending. Especially romance books where the whole plot is to get two people together despite all the obstacles in their way and hopefully lead them to the alter where their happiness is now assured because they have found their soul mate. But marriage is more than that. Yes, you can find some of your greatest joy in a marriage, but you can also find some of your greatest pain. 

Recently, my husband and I had a disagreement. It was over something stupid like our arguments usually are. But I was suddenly thinking of all the things that had annoyed me about him over the past 20 years and I realized he is never going to change and this is what I will get to deal with forever and suddenly eternity felt like a very long time. I voiced this thought and suddenly all the fight went out of him and he asked very sincerely, “What am I doing wrong?”

This question actually excited me. This was my chance to tell him about all the little annoying things and then maybe he could finally change. After all, he can’t read my mind so if I tell him everything that bothers me and he tells me everything that bothers him, maybe we can make our marriage stronger and it will be better. I opened my mouth to speak when a very strong thought caused me to close it. The thought was this: Stop! He isn’t your critique partner!

I realized I’d been going about this all wrong. I thought back to all the times that we have nit picked at each other and realized that it had never made our marriage stronger. This wasn’t a book I was writing where I need to see all the flaws so I can fix them. I wasn’t dealing with letters on a page that can be rearranged and changed by the touch of a key.

I opened my mouth to speak again but these words came out, “We have done enough of telling each other what we’ve done wrong. We need to tell each other what we are doing right.” I think he was surprised by that but he didn’t even hesitate before he began listing my positive attributes. As I began to do the same I wondered why I found it harder to speak about the positive than the negatives. Not that there wasn’t enough positive things to point out, but talking about them brought out emotions so much stronger than the emotions of anger and frustration brought on when we were focusing on the negative. 

I realized that for the past 20 years I’d been wearing rose colored glasses when it came to my husband but I’d suddenly out grown the prescription and I didn’t like what I saw. I knew as we talked to each other about what we love about the other that I wanted a new pair of rose colored glasses. But this time the prescription would have to be stronger to last the next 20 years. 

I recently watched Pride and Prejudice (the BBC version of course) with my daughters. As we were watching the part where Elizabeth Bennett started to soften towards Darcy, my 15 year old daughter made the observation that he had always been that person that she was falling in love with, she just wouldn’t allow herself to see it at first. 

This struck me very personally. Because I could see that my husband is still the man that I fell in love with all those years ago, but for some reason I wasn’t allowing myself to see it anymore. I had to change what I was focused on. My perspective needed rearranging. 

It would have been easy for me to say that my feelings had changed towards my husband and that we should part our separate ways. After all, the world says you can’t help it if you fall out of love with someone (not that I ever fell out of love by any means). But there’s a voice inside that tells me I can help it. There’s a voice that sounds a lot like Pres. Uchtdorf saying, “Doubt your doubts first.”

I'm happy to report that those feelings of doubt were fleeting and I am able to focus on the positive parts of our marriage again. And because we have been focusing on each other's positive attributes, our marriage continues to grow stronger. But it's something we will continue to work on because it's important to us.

So marriage may be a lot of work, but fortunately there are no deadlines, we actually have eternity to work on it! And as any good writer knows, the joy is in the creating of the story and not the perfecting but both work together to make something to be proud of!

What If...

By Nikki Wilson

What if...I believed in myself a little more?
What if...I believed in rejection a little less?
What if...I didn't let excuses get in my way?
What if...I went after my dreams with all my might?

Do you ever let yourself wallow in "what if's"? I turned 40 this year. I remember when that number seemed so far away and I remember how I imagined my life would be at that age. I would be a perfect wife and mother, with perfect children, and I would be a successful writer. Well I got it part right, I'm a wife and a mother with children and I am a writer. Isn't that good enough? I've been telling myself it's good enough for several years now. But...

What if...I didn't settle for good enough?
What if...I pushed myself past my comfort zones?
What if...I tried a little harder to be a little bit better?
What if...I invested more time into my dreams?

I'm not saying I'm not happy with my life right now. Because I am very happy with my family and with my pursuit of my dreams. But maybe that is the problem. Maybe I'm afraid that if I actually ever achieve my dreams my life will change.

What if...I wasn't afraid of change?
What if...I didn't let fear control me?
What if...I did achieve my dreams?
What if...achieving my dreams isn't as wonderful as dreaming about them?

Does anyone else feel this way? By finally writing these thoughts out I feel like I am right on the cusp of something. Like my mind is trying to prepare me for something. Like I might be ready to actually overcome my fears and really try to achieve my dreams. Up until now I feel like I've been going through the motions of someone reaching for a dream without actually putting all my effort into it. But what if I did?

What if...I fail?

I feel like I've been living my life by that what if. Afraid of failure. But I'm sick of being afraid. I want to find out what I'm actually capable of. I want to finally see what I can do with the talents God has given me. I want to be the person He sees. I want to be who He wants me to be. The person I know I can be.

What if...I succeed?

Writing Teaches Important Work Skills

By Nikki Wilson

I've recently been asked at work how many words per minute I type. I didn't even blink and replied that last time I checked I typed 72 wpm. So for fun, I took some online typing tests...and then I took them again...and again...and again. My highest score was only 54 wpm??!! What in the world is going on? Then I realized, I don't really type at work, and for the past year I've been editing my books, not writing new ones and I haven't even worked on edits since the beginning of April. So what does this mean? It means I can tell my husband and my kids that I need to be writing more often to keep up my valuable marketable skill of typing.

It also means I may need to join in on Camp Nanowrimo in July. Well, I better go work on my next book idea because I need to get to typing SOMETHING!!

Avengening Expectations

By Nikki Wilson

I have a confession to make. I didn't thoroughly enjoy the first Avengers movie. I know, I know...get a rope! I actually admitted it on Facebook at one point and it was most definitely a public verbal lynching. But that's ok. I didn't say I hated it, it just didn't fulfill my expectations. I'll tell you why. To me there was a lot of action. Not that I don't like action, but it seemed like one action sequence after another. Also, it felt like the movie had been made to satisfy fans who wanted to know who would win a fight between Thor and Iron Man and Captain America, etc. Not that I wasn't curious about that, but the movie just felt like it was lacking something.



In the movies leading up to the first Avengers movie, most of the plot lines tugged my heart strings, and tickled my funny bone, and ignited curiosity. This is what I wanted from the first Avengers movie but didn't feel that I got. Though many people said they were completely satisfied with the movie and that I was just being too critical. And maybe they were right. I have been known to be overly critical of movies and books, so I accepted that as the reason why I didn't enjoy the first Avengers movie as much as I wanted to. But last week I saw the new Avengers: Age of Ultron and I suddenly knew what I was missing from the first movie.

The new Avengers movie is AMAZING. I hate to give someone high expectations that may not be met like happened to me on the first movie, but I truly think there is something in this movie for everyone. Why is that? Because this time the movie gave us many different beats.

If you haven't read "Million Dollar Outlines" by David Farland you may not know what I'm talking about. David Farland talks about how a writer takes their readers on a journey that actually releases seratonin into the body giving the reader (or movie watcher) instant rewards and satisfaction from the journey. (He actually describes it much better than I'm doing, so read the book!!) But one of the tools a writer has to take readers on this journey can be called emotional beats. Think about it like a song, if you play the same notes over and over again, the listener gets bored. But if you mix high notes with low notes and many variations with the notes in between as well you stimulate the listener and hold their attention. The same can be said with emotions. If a movie or book hammers it's audience with the same emotion over and over they become desensitized to that emotion. That's why the best movies and books have a variety of different plotlines and emotions to choose from.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good example of how this is done. Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty of action in this movie, but there are also many emotional beats embedded inside the the action to slow down or speed up the pace of the movie. The humor beats were perfectly timed, and the romantic plot line added a different dimension as did another plot line where our heartstrings were strummed in another way. All in all, Avengers: Age of Ultron was everything I was hoping for. (Though, I will say there were parts when I realized the Avengers were just fighting a mechanical version of Raymond Reddington from the Blacklist TV show! LOL! But then again, I love the Blacklist, so I didn't mind it too much.)


Now I realize that everyone is different in their tastes and in what they consider an emotional beat. Emotions are very subjective, that's why there are so many different genres to choose from so people can pick the emotions they like best. But even then, the best stories are those that have many different emotions present allowing for a wider audience, and a happier one.

(There! So now you can go see the new Avengers movie and say it's for research! Your welcome!)