Poor Little Bitch Girl

I was going to give this book two stars like I normally do for garbage books that never pretend to be anything other than garbage books, but there is a dog in this book named Amy Winehouse because, well, it sounds just like Amy Winehouse. That's apparently how things work, so in solidarity with Jackie Collins, upon witnessing my cat hacking up a hairball on a piece of paper and then trying to fuck it, I've renamed my cat Jackie Collins.

Someday, I'm going to write a book called The Dude With the Plane and the Huge Dick, stick a pen name on the front, and then make 60 million pounds or however much this old hag had when she croaked out. It's all so, so bad. I just don't understand. Maybe other people read it for the same reason I do; each show more of them has a shitty friend who will only read the intentionally terrible books they're given for Christmas if someone else does it first. Do these people not have a TV? I love reading. I really, really love reading. But you'll get far more out of bad TV than a bad book and it takes like 10% of the time.

But wait, you say! There's sex in this thing! Well, let's examine the text for a good example on how to get a steady diet of sex in your media. Benito, a grumpy young stereotype with a prominent role in this book, decides he wants to get a boner. How does he go about this? Does he pick up a Jackie Collins book and read it until page 264, at which point he could read a paragraph-and-a-half blow job? Actually, he doesn't. Straight to the porn for our hero. See, at first I didn't think there was a lesson to take from this thing, but maybe there is!

And please, PLEASE don't give me the shtick about how Collins' fiction is somehow supposed to depict what Hollywood is actually like. What the fuck is this supposed to be, a parable? Can anyone explain to me what a dude with really nice abs desperately trying to pork a lawyer after getting blown by Madonna says about Los Angeles that isn't already self-evident? "A LIFE OF FAME AND FORTUNE ISN'T WHAT IT'S CRACKED UP TO BE," said Mother Goose in like the 15th century. "OCCASIONALLY, HOT RICH PEOPLE DO SEX STUFF," I believe comes directly from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. This is all old news. We get it already! How many fucking shiny-eyed rubes do you think we've got left in this country? DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION

Also, lest we forget, a lady gets straight up raped right at the beginning of this book, and it's handled with all the sensitivity that such a subject deserves, assuming you, like Jackie Collins, believe that being a rape victim is super similar to eating too much pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. The victim is grumpy for a couple chapters (which are like three pages each in a 400 page book, meaning we're talking one wad of cum in the Arctic Ocean), after which she just gets over it and becomes the "Poor Little Bitch Girl" that we love to hate. Now I'm a man who's completely empty on the inside, and that seems callous and dismissive even to me.

What's fascinating to me is that this isn't the first time I've talked about a situation like this in a terrible book. The way I see it, bad authors, much like good authors, will occasionally write about real world problems that involve interesting complications. What separates the good from the bad is that a good author will both acknowledge and examine the issues, while a bad one will 100% of the time get scared and push it all out of the way as quickly as possible.

In both the James Patterson books I've read, there is a minor character with mental illness that has been failed by both a family and a healthcare system. One is homeless. One is in prison. What can we do to help such people? What can we do to prevent this from happening in the future? Is it our responsibility to get them help, or is it theirs? These are all questions that a good writer could explore through fiction. Instead, Patterson takes the equally commendable route of making fun of them. "LOL that guy thinks he hears voices. Why would anyone want to consider whether his tragic life outcome was necessary?" Fair enough, James.

Jackie Collins, in Poor Little Bitch Girl, has an opportunity to expound on the traumatic experience of a prostitute who has been raped. Who can she talk to about it? Will she feel guilty, even though she shouldn't? Does she have an obligation to report the rapist at the risk of her livelihood in order to keep him from victimizing someone else? It'd be one thing if Jackie had left it to the readers to answer those questions, but she doesn't even make the fucking CHARACTERS answer the questions, which I would have told you was impossible to pull off before I read this book. These are questions that our protagonist MUST answer, because that shit happened to her, but Jackie just kind of lets it all fade away. She didn't even have the courtesy to pull a James Patterson and turn it into a reprehensible joke. Yeah, that's right Jackie. I just called you worse than James Patterson.

Now feel free to tell me that these books are supposed to be light reads that shouldn't be taken too seriously. "Nobody reads Jackie Collins to think too much! Why can't you just let a dumb book be dumb?" Well, motherfucker, I'm not the one that dropped a lady getting raped in my non-serious book. If you don't want to deal with rape, you don't have to write about it! Do you know how many rapes there are in The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Not very many! (And no, the sequel The Very Horny Caterpillar is not canon) Do you know how many rapes there are in Norm Macdonald's autobiography? Two, and they're both hilarious!

That's where you fucked it all up, Jackie. If you really felt like you needed to write about rape without taking it seriously, you needed to write a fake memoir that takes exactly zero things seriously. Your book, as crazy as it sounds, just wasn't absurd enough to get away with it.

Oh well. It is what it is. All this shit is what it is. Happy New Year. show less

I had never read a Jackie Collins book before and I don't really like jumping into an already established series, but I was loaned this book so thought I'd give it a shot (no pun intended with a shooting in the book).

The story centres around 4 main characters; Bobby, Denver, Annabelle and Carolyn. They all went to same school as youths but weren't all friends. Denver is a lawyer who was briefly friendly with Annabelle, daughter of two famous movie stars, but is now friends with Carolyn, assistant to a senator. Bobby is the son of Lucky Santangelo and is in Annabelle's social circle as he is friends with her boyfriend, Frankie.

Unsurprisingly, Annabelle is a spoilt bitch and is the subject of the book's title. She lands herself in hot show more water but as it is in LA, if you have enough money you can make anything go away. I quite liked Denver at first, as she seemed the more normal of the 3 girls until she jumped into bed with anyone who looked at her for longer than 10 seconds. Carolyn got the short straw; having an affair with a married senator who makes an arrangement with a local gang leader to abduct Carolyn when she gets too attached. That was quite a gripping part of the story. Bobby didn't really leave a lasting impression on me. He seemed a bit weak, most unlike the playboy I expected him to be.

I really liked the way that Jackie Collins summed it all up in the last chapter by giving a brief 'what happened next' to each character. I do think that there were too many characters in the book with none of them standing head and shoulders above the rest as a main character. The murder storyline was predictable and the bitch wasn't even that bitchy so it all felt a bit flat for me. Perhaps if I had read the first 6 books in the series, I would have enjoyed it more. show less

In her latest novel, Poor Little Bitch Girl, Collins once again writes a page-turner of a novel filled with sex, friendship, a kidnapping, a murder mystery, and characters whose lives are on a collision course. And again, she succeeds in getting the reader's attention and keeping it.

This novel is a perfect beach read, just in time for spring breakers to head south or on a cruise. Denver Jones, a hard-charging LA lawyer meets up again with former high school classmates Annabelle Maestro and Bobby Santangelo Stanislopolous. Annabelle's movie star mother is murdered and Denver is on her movie star father's defense team. No one in LA knows that Annabelle and her boyfriend run a high end escort service in New York.

Bobby is the son of show more Collins' most popular recurring character, Lucky Santangelo, who makes a welcome cameo appearance in the novel. Another high school friend of Denver's, Carolyn, is a personal assistant to a senator with whom she is having an affair. When Carolyn goes missing, Denver and Bobby team up to help find her.

The plot races at whiplash speed, yet Collins manages to create characters who are interesting. Denver is a favorite, falling for the handsome Bobby and having a torrid affair with an artist she meets in NYC and a Mario Lopez-like TV entertainment show host. (When it rains, it pours for Collins' female protagonists and sex.) Bobby is a chip off the old Lucky block, a hard-working, handsome, rich, good guy- every girl's dream.

One fun aspect of Collins books is figuring out which real life rich and famous people are thinly veiled as characters. I also liked that this book has less graphic violence against women than in earlier Collins novels.

And as always there is lots of sex in the book. Smart men might pick up a copy as a gift for their wives or girlfriends. Just make sure you are there when they finish it a few hours after they start it! show less

Didn't feel guilty reading this. I liked the Denver character best, Carolyn was just too naive to believe and Annabelle was insufferable. The book's story lines nicely blended in the end. I keep wondering who the Zeena character's supposed to be in real life, hmm.

Okay, there is no way to defend myself from having read this other than the fact that I was in the mood for some flashy trash, which this book provided. Romps through people with too much money and too much sense of entitlement. Hookers, movie producers, actor and actress parents, the whole nine yards.

However, it killed a good three hours, and was entertaining enough to do so.

Mini-Review: Poor Little Bitch Girl centers around Bobby Stanislopoulos, Lucky Santangelo’s twenty-something son. He’s the co-owner of Mood, a Manhattan club. Bobby and M.J., his business partner and high school friend, decide to expand Mood and seek to open clubs in Miami and Vegas.

Bobby also went to school with Annabelle. Originally from LA, she now lives in New York City with her boyfriend Frankie. The pair run a high-price dating service. Money is rolling in and Annabelle is starting to make a name for herself. When her mother is found murdered, her father is arrested. Annabelle returns to L.A. to grieve and seeks answers to her mother’s death.

Denver is the attorney assigned to case. She also has a history with Bobby and show more Annabelle. Although she doubts either will remember her. As Denver throws herself into the case, a case which could advance her career, her friend, Carolyn has secrets of her own. Carolyn has been dating a married Senator and learns she is pregnant. Anticipating he will finally leave his wife, Carolyn tells him about their baby, but he is less than thrilled.

Poor Little Bitch Girl is Collins at her best. The story moves quickly and soon the characters are reunited. What comes next is sure to keep the reader turning pages. show less

Anabelle Maestro the daughter of two hottest and highest paid actor and actress in Hollywood. She is the one in the cover. Spoiled, rich, beautiful, sexy and wild. Which also means unappreciated, insecure, selfish. She moved to the east coast after dropping out of college in Boston to get away from her parents' fame and to venture on her own, she did alright, together with her coke addict boyfriend Frankie Romano they are raking in millions, running a very lucrative business - the high end prostitution ring in New York, geared for the most powerful, rich and famous men.

Bobby Stanislopolous, son of the late Dmitri Stanislopolous, a shipping tycon and Lucky Santangelo a successful business woman who own a chain of hotels in Vegas and is show more married to Lennie, a Hollywood hot shot. Bobby partnered up with his best friend M.J, and together they are the owner of the hottest club in Manhattan- Mood. Bobby is obviously born into a family of achievers, in this book he seems to be the most successful and luckiest man, career wise. He is a loser when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. It's not that he is bad looking, no. He was described as hot but he seems to picky and he seems to be attracted to women who seems to belittle him. One of these women is the cougar Megastar Zeena who has an annoying penchant in referring to herself in a third person every time she have a conversation with people.

Denver Jones is a twenty something hotshot attorney in a prestigious law firm based in Los Angeles, she did two highly publicized case and won both of them. She used to be Anabelle's friend, and also went to high school with Bobby, MJ. One day, Gemma Summers, the most beautiful and talented actress in Hollywood was shot in the face inside her L.A mansion. Her boss Felix, put her on the case, looks like she is going to reacquaint herself with an old friend, since Gemma Summers was Anabelle's mother.

Carolyn Henderson, is Senator Stoneman's assistant and mistress. She is educated, young and beautiful and she is my least favorite character. Nothing is fascinating or intriguing about her. Did she really believe that an ambitious Senator that she's been sleeping with for two years will leave his wife with excellent social and political connection and the father of his two kids? just because he managed to impregnate her? Carolyn is obviously a stupid and delusional, naive girl. Does she not watch TV?

I've never read any of Jackie Collins' book been eyeing them for sometime now but I was never really serious of buying one. So I am extremely grateful that this copy was sent to me for review. Now I am a fan. I love this book. It has murder, glamour, sex, money, and juicy scandals. show less