It has been a year or more since the last smashing, a very busy year for me, but that doesn't mean its been any less smashing!

In recent times in our discord book club I read a person's story from beginning to end and decided it had been a while since I did a review. She seemed okay with it.

This is when she knew, she'd fucked up.

Taboo: The story does go into the topic of abortion. Regardless of one's opinion of the topic this is from the perspective of the characters who are in the situation that they are and the beliefs that they hold driving them to the actions they choose to take accordingly. The way the topic of abortion is covered does not reflect the belief of the author in either direction.

Other: The story does have some smut, so if you are not into that be watch out. Its not much, just three chapters. One towards the beginning-middle and two towards the end.

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tldr; Cowboy, you are the father.

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Main Characters: - Smashing! - The main characters are Cowboy and Damaged. 

Cowboy is a bit of a simp at times with a huge white knight complex. He is rather head over heels. Yet, despite how little self-respect he portrays, it is for the sake of children and not his own ego. So the very thing that can be seen as creepy or a red-flag by women in terms of relationship material is portrayed as willingly self-sacrificial. He knows he stands to lose everything being involved with Damaged, but is willing to take the risk because at best, he gains everything, and at worst, he hopes to save lives. It is not perfectly self-sacrificial, and has some character flaw, because he still thinks more with his tiny head than his big one. Dude be horny! This is a perfectly normal human flaw and is relatable. This difference and combination also leads to natural drama between him and other characters because he lacks the experience to know the difference. He has resources, he knows what he wants, and is willing to offer them for what he wants. Great as that is, he is still a flawed person. Just like cowboy's willingness to think with his tiny head is dangerous, so also is his drive to get what he wants through any means and the darker side of the 'simp' traits show. He uses people around him to manipulate the situation with Damaged. The difference between it being good or bad lies in how his immediate motivation to set up the scenes as he did was to his own benefit, rather than towards her healing. I will get more into it in the plot section, but the scene does not play out as he would like and temporarily causes damage to everyone and everything, but the fact that it does not come as a direct consequence of his tampering and more by random freak chance rids his choices of consequence. So I imagine that in the future sequels that his willingness to manipulate a situation around people to suit his desires, and his lack of foresight or self-control, will lead to drama. For this story at least, it did not. That was disappointing. He was still a good character, but the lack of consequence to strong negative traits tarnished what was other side a complex, human character.

Damaged is on the flip side. She has deep trust issues that lead to her questioning her identity and possibility as a woman, as a mother, and a possible girlfriend and wife. She has nothing and so is forced to depend on the generosity of strangers. To her credit she lacks the pride to be stubborn about it, while also the pride to keep her morals. She is stuck in a very difficult situation and so has to face the choices, and their consequences, to decide what is the best course of action. I don't have any problems with her, nor is there much to say, because as a character she is much more straight forward. She is just as horny as the cowboy but spends the story trying to figure out what she wants and what is the best choice for the future of her children and herself.

Side Characters: - Semi-Smashing! - There is a good variety of side characters and they do their job excellently, pushing and pulling at the main characters and forcing them to exercise their morals. Most of the time the side characters are from Cowboy's side of the world, but that happens when everything happens at his place. Damaged also has some side characters from her side of the world, and all around all of them are great. I adored all of them for one reason or another.

The only negative I found was around Damaged's mother. She was great, excellent. She is also explained to be the reason why Damaged is damaged, and yet she only appears for one brief scene. She is mentioned in almost every chapter, but is only visible for half of one. By the law of diminishing returns, I think this is a problem. After showing her once, just saying she is the cause 50x isn't going to cut it. The first couple of times is good, but with each time she is told to be the source of the problems, with no scene at all showing her behavior in present day nor a flashback, then the mechanism of simply saying 'yeah she is the reason im like this' means less and less until it got somewhat obnoxious towards the end. A really easy fix I think would be to have a flashback or two distributed through the story to portray the mother's toxic influence. Then the POV where Damaged keeps thinking 'yeah im damaged goods' will not have diminishing returns, but have an active explanation that is refreshed at intervals.

Grammar and Word Usage: - Smashing! - The story was very easy to read. No problems here. 

World Building: - Semi-Smashing! - The world building was done through the use of the side characters mostly. From them we saw two entirely different worlds collide as the values they exhibit were different. We also got a good couple chances to expand the world a bit and see beyond the side characters to rather the environment Cowboy lives in, and eventually more of the environment that Damaged lived in. The world is a perfectly normal, relatable world, so there is no need for expansive maps or laws of nature and countries or whatever. The world building extends to two cities with the two small communities the characters surrounded themselves with. 

Since the side character section was semi-smashing, then so is the world building, due to how the world building was orchestrated by the side-characters.

Plot: - Smashing! - The plot was quite good. In a sense the plot was simple and acts merely as the mechanism by which the characters interact and aim for waht they want as the drama unfolds.

A romance, in so far as I understand it, is as follows. 1) A first, idealized impression. 2) The characters are forced together by forces beyond their control, but also forced to stay at arms length (by their wishes or not). 3) There is a second, human impression that clashes with the first. 4) There is drama that ensues as they settle the difference between the first and second impression, and the frustration of having to be forced together while also at arms length. 5) they settle the conflict of the first/second impression in such a way allowing them to be free of the external control. bonus) lots of sappy shit.

The story begins at stage 2, and stage 1 very quickly is then explained as them having had a one-night stand that resulted in a pregnancy, and now they have to figure out what to do about the children in her womb, what it means for their relationship, and what they want to do going forward that is best for themselves, the children, and possibly even each other. I quite like this twist on the plot steps because it shoves you directly into the action and faster fast paced, and it lets you have as much 'panic' as the characters themselves learning about this for the first time.

The mechanism by which they are forced together beyond their control is both the pregnancy and the fact that her car breaks down, she has no money to repair it, and she is very far from home or even just the town itself. so until the car is fixed they are pretty stuck. This adds a nice touch in that her remedy to departure is on the morals, character, and, ultimately, generosity of the other person in this romance. And, to his credit, he doesn't hesitate in helping, but has a time limit of sorts in how long it takes to have the parts shipped to him, putting him on a time restraint. All around these are excellent tension building mechanisms used together almost flawlessly, and are based on character.

The rest of the story comes down to basic drama, but the sort of drama utilized is not empty. It is that he figures out a bit of what her problem is, and how he can manipulate the situation to get her to change her mind in the time allotted to him. Then he focuses on doing just that, while on her end she is focused on feeling, thinking, and deciding. This keeps it fast paced even when it feels like nothing is happening, and also adds an interesting contrast in that his scenes are choices from action while hers are choices from feeling. This kind of pace shifts drastically towards the end, but this is at least how the middle portion is done.

The ending portion is dramatic and good. The only problem I have with it is that the logistics doesn't make sense to me, because a fair bit of confusion occurs because of the literal roads they choose to take from point A to point B doesn't make sense looking at their choices, thoughts, and what they said did to begin with. Basically if two people go from Point A to Point B in a straight line with the motivation of the shortest path possible it should be the same road, and it wasn't. That really doesn't make sense to me. That is just a small thing so it won't affect the rating, but I would encourage the author to examine how those logistics were done.

Overall - Overall I would rate it 4 smashing out of 5! The pros outweigh the cons. It is good enough as is, but has some things I felt kept it from reaching its full potential.

I'm out with a smashing!

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If you are interested in learning to write, mastering the craft, want some really good reads, or just to chat and hang out with a mature group of adults, feel free to hit me up for a smashing discord book club that has lasted years.