Kicking and Screaming by Larisa

If you think that a romantic storyline benefits from a sprinkle of humour and you don’t mind a rather butch bunch of girls running around, you’ve got to look into the stories written by Larisa. I’ve already reviewed my favourite “The Phantom”, but I think that “Kicking and Screaming” is also worth reading, if you are fond of Larisa.

Larisa normally uses two set of characters, the protagonists and a couple of rather hilarious sidekicks, who helps to get the ball rolling when it comes to creating the funny scenes and dialogues. In “Kicking and Screaming” we only have one set of girls to focus on, but they have a unique way of attracting small mishaps and the likes, and its fun to “watch” from a safe distance.

This story centres around Aeryn who works as an investigator at her father’s law firm, which leaves her with a lot of shitty jobs, and often a bit to close to her colleague’s grubby hands. And grubby hands is exactly what lands Aeryn in yet another mishap, as she declares to everyone that she is gay, just to avoid the unwelcome hands. This declaration gets Aeryn an invitation for her and her girlfriend to a charity dinner - and 4 days to find … a girlfriend.

This is where Taylor comes in; she has a bet going with a friend that leaves her with the task of saving a damsel in distress and get her to go out with her on one date. After Taylor has spent her day looking for just the right opportunity to do her “saving”, she gets the chance she is looking for, when she sees a woman being assaulted, and this is how Taylor and Aeryn meet.

From here on it’s just a matter of getting “the straight girl” to wonder if she is really straight at all, and the “out lesbian” to decide that she ought to take a chance on love with a woman, who has just “jumped the fence”. Yes - Larisa uses one of the standard romantic storylines as a basis for the story, but it works just fine - even if we’ve seen it all before.

What I like about Larisa is the fact that she is able to come up with an interesting and funny setting for her stories, with a witty dialogue and some very likeable characters, but I’ve got to warn you about the editing. In “Kicking and Screaming” you will find all the usual problems that a good beta-reader would properly weed out.

If you like Larisa’s stories and you have read “The Phantom” you might want to look in on Aeryn and Taylor in “Kicking and Screaming”, and perhaps you should put one or more of the stories listed below on your reading list for a rainy day. You just have to put a bit of space in between reading each of the stories listed as you might otherwise get a bit tired of reading stories written from the same basic template.

The stories listed are not in the same league as “The Phantom”, as the they are too short for the characters to really develop and benefit from the imaginative setting, and for the reader to realise just why the protagonists falls in love and heat, and they do that .. fall in love and have lots of rather stereotype sex, but I still had fun reading as Larisa has a great sense of humour:

- “The Ice Princess”
- “Mender of Souls”
- “Emotional Paralysis”
- “Reason of Insanity”
- “Rough Warrior”.

By the way I’ve saved the latest Larisa story “Operation Drop Zone” for a stormy weekend; I hope to get one of those soon!

Enjoy your time with Larisa!