Descent by Julie Cannon

Descent by Julie Cannon

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I have several issues with this book, but let's start with a very basic outline before I add the issues in.

Two rich* young woman attend a rich elite expensive private school - the equivalent of a high school. Both are athletic and into doing sweaty stuff. One, while playing tennis, spots the other walking by looking all gorgeous and stuff – distracting her and allowing the male tennis pro she was playing beat her. Later tennis player and gorgeous woman end up in the same locker room. Gorgeous walks into a shower room, into a stall, other follows, closes the door behind her, pounces onto gorgeous. Luckily for everyone involved, including the reader, this act of sexual assault morphed into just sex. The two become a couple. They hang out together and fuck. One day, near the end of their time at school, one is studying for a test. She’s the kind who can get good grades, but has to really study hard to achieve this feat. The other knows and when Study Girl gets all amorous, tries to redirect her attention to studying. But Shannon is 17 and horny, so she doesn’t try too hard to get Caroline back to studying. So, as you might expect, they fuck. While Shannon’s fingers are inside Caroline’s vagina, the door opens. Standing there is Caroline’s papa and the school principal. Neither looks happy. Shannon tries to defend herself and Caroline. Caroline just continues being shocked and stuff. Unmoving. Papa Davis (Caroline’s last name being Davis) looks super angry. Super. In a low controlled voice he tells Shannon to leave. Relatively quickly she does – especially after the principal steps in and tells Shannon to wait in the next room. Before you can snap your fingers and sing ‘it’s raining men’, Papa Davis has worked his influence on the school and kicked Shannon out (though she’ll be allowed to take the tests to graduate, and, remember, it’s just a few weeks until graduation anyway sooo….). Shannon, afterwards, frantically attempts to make contact but almost never gets through – and when she does get through she just gets voice mail. Years go by. The two see each other again, occasionally, on the job. They mostly grunt at each other or ignore the other. Now it’s ten years later (as evidenced by the 10 year reunion letter that popped up near the beginning of the book). Both expect to see the other, but still ignore the other, as they compete in the mountain bike racing championship series of races. Shannon has developed a really huge player reputation, the kind wherein she might bounce from one bed to another on the same night. Caroline hangs out with a straight woman named Fran, and very occasionally will wiggle sexually in a bed with some woman. While competing in bike racing, Caroline has also been working on getting her Ph.D. In Astrophysics. Three weeks after the racing series ends, she’ll have to defend her dissertation – if successfully she’ll immediately become an astronaut for NASA (I’m not sure if NASA has any say in the matter).

Take two:
Two young women meet in a rich elite expensive high school like school. They become a couple. They fuck a lot. Father Davis catches them. Shannon doesn’t defend them and flees – and the next time they communicate again is when they spot each other at racing events years later. Whereupon Shannon continues to basically ignore Caroline. Caroline blames Shannon for their ‘it’s just a teenage fling’ being over. Shannon, on her side, wishes she’d done more to be with Caroline, and blames herself. Caroline moans to herself about how her fingers bleed after graduation from the number of times they beat at the phone buttons – to little or no result. Shannon has developed a really huge player reputation, the kind wherein she might bounce from one bed to another on the same night. Caroline hangs out with a straight woman named Fran, and very occasionally will wiggle sexually in a bed with some woman. While competing in bike racing, Caroline has also been working on getting her Ph.D. In Astrophysics. Three weeks after the racing series ends, she’ll have to defend her dissertation – if successfully she’ll immediately become an astronaut for NASA (I’m not sure if NASA has any say in the matter).

These are not alternate story lines but how the story is told over the course of the book. There were many confusing things that popped up, in addition to the things that could be spotted in the two paragraphs above. Like the part where I thought both young women were rich but a couple words here or there, and some attitudes shown, makes me question that. Like the part where I know Shannon has bucket loads of money, yet allows herself to have a super creepy sponsor manhandle her and be gross towards her while she nervously whimpers and just takes it – though she shows slightly more backbone when the sponsor’s wife tries to hump her – more in that she is sexually harassed, occasionally sexually assaulted, but keeps saying ‘no’. She’s super nervous about losing her sponsorship. Even though she could pay for everything herself. Or . . . can she? Things that pop up in the school sections, things like how some of the other students literally and directly make comments to Shannon like ‘you don’t belong here’ lead me to question certain things. Then there’s Caroline – who seems to have a rich girl attitude and stuff, and her father sure did seem to have a lot of influence over the rich private elite high school . . . yet it is also mentioned that the parents didn’t have the money to travel to see all of Caroline’s races. Sooo, um, wha? Also – it was never mentioned just what the fuck the father and principal happened to be doing there right then. Overlooking, of course, the part where the door was unlocked. It sounded more like someone telling another person about a reoccurring nightmare that was slightly unlikely that involved their father ‘catching her’, and, ooh! The principal as well! Seriously, what the fuck were the father and principal doing there?

These little story hiccups happened throughout the book. Like the time Nikki barged into Shannon’s trailer and sexually harassed her. Which lead to . . . a comment in Shannon’s head about how she had the conversation but here Nikki is again, whereupon Nikki sexually harassed her again. Seeming to indicate that these were two different incidents – but there’s no break between one to the next.

And good grief I kind of despise Caroline. She did nothing to try to keep a relationship with Shannon going when papa turned up. And her relationship with the man who broke her from her lover and kept them apart was . . . fabulous. And yet it’s Shannon who is the ‘bad human’ in this story who needs to beg for forgiveness (for what exactly)? Caroline loathes Shannon for unexplained reasons (there are hints, not very well done, that Caroline had tried to keep in contact with Shannon but Shannon ignored her – not very well done because we have competing stories about what occurred, and both seemed to be believed by both (that Shannon had in fact tried to make contact, and couldn’t, that Caroline had in fact tried to make contact, but couldn’t; or that both ignored the other after the fact with Shannon blaming herself in both situations – because Caroline’s this innocent angel or something – fucking bitch).

I was going to make comments comparing this one with Spangler’s Edge of Glory (both involved two athletes competing at the height of their sports competing in a series of races all over the world (though one involves snowy events (and different events, skiing and snowboarding), while the other involved summery events – mountain bike racing), both books have straight side-kicks who are kind of horny; both have issues the athletes have to overcome to get together; then make some comment about how Spangler’s version had been executed at a higher level) but this book here, just both confuses and pisses me off too much to be making comparisons.

The first status update I made indicated that the book was just filled with sex. Something like how I’d read 48 pages and only like 3 of the pages didn’t have sex, people thinking about sex, or people self-pleasuring themselves. So, yes, this book is sexually graphic. But it should be noted that there wasn’t a whole lot of graphic fucking going on after that. There were a few occasions where Shannon would grab some random woman to ‘do stuff with’, and evidence of that ‘stuff’ would be visible after the fact, but the sex act itself wouldn’t be described, but then there were also a few more graphically described events that occurred after the 23% mark of the book.

There’s a thread in one of the Goodreads groups I follow. Something like ‘favorite lesfic couples’. There’s no fucking way I’d put Shannon and Caroline in that thread. No, I’d put them in ‘lesbian fiction couples who I loathe and wish had never meet’ thread.

ETA: oh, rereading what I wrote - another thing that I had issues with - the ages seemed to be weird in the book. The two young girls are somewhere between 17-19 in that high school, though the age of '17' is used at least once when describing that they were weeks away from graduation (though I think other ages were used at some point) - there's a ten year anniversary coming up, and since they were 17 when they graduated, that naturally means they are 27 now . . . except one is stated as being 28, while the other is stated as being 29. So . . . um, wha?

ETA2: Oh, then there was a different kind of issue - like when it was just calmly stated that Shannon was six feet five inches tall and was, therefore, just average height in the area they were in. Six feet five inches? 6'5" . . . average height?

ETA3: it doesn't really get addressed but Shannon thinks that Caroline is dating Fran - from the touches, looks, caresses, to the fact Fran keeps following her around the many different cities, countries, continents. Then Shannon fucks Caroline . . . while still thinking Caroline is dating Fran. So . . . I put the book on my cheating shelf.

Rating: 2.60 (I might be overly generous with my rating)

November 22 2017



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