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18: She's So Money
May. 27th, 2011 11:21 pmJust read Cherry Cheva’s first novel, She’s So Money. Like her second novel, Duplikate, I have mixed feelings about it.
She’s So Money concerns Maya’s desperate attempt to raise ten thousand dollars to pay off a fine that she accidentally incurred when her parents left her in charge of their Thai restaurant for a weekend. Maya starts a cheating ring to raise the cash, deputizing her smart friends to do the rich kids' homework at a hundred bucks a pop - while Maya secretly skims a twenty-five percent commission off the top.
It’s the secret skimming that bothers me. First, screwing over her friends makes Maya unsympathetic in a way that merely cheating does not; but second, and far more importantly, I have no idea why she doesn’t just tell her friends about the fine. I bet if they knew, they’d be willing to give her an even bigger commission, even split the money fifty/fifty; they'd still get fifty bucks for fifteen minutes of work.
It’s a classic idiot plot. Cheva doesn’t even attempt to explain Maya’s refusal to tell. It just sits there, a black hole in the center of the story, sucking Maya’s more sympathetic qualities in with its gravitational force - the more so because Maya's friends are reasonably well-developed and a lot of fun, making her look like even more of a cad for lying to them.
On the other hand, if you put that aside, the book’s got a lot going for it. I didn’t like her boyfriend very much, but I have a low, low tolerance for fictional assholes, no matter how reformed; I suspect other people would think he just hit the spot. I read the book in a night, and the pacing is cracking good (though, as in Duplikate, Cheva chickens out on the consequences in the end) and Maya’s fast, frazzled voice is a lot of fun.
She’s So Money concerns Maya’s desperate attempt to raise ten thousand dollars to pay off a fine that she accidentally incurred when her parents left her in charge of their Thai restaurant for a weekend. Maya starts a cheating ring to raise the cash, deputizing her smart friends to do the rich kids' homework at a hundred bucks a pop - while Maya secretly skims a twenty-five percent commission off the top.
It’s the secret skimming that bothers me. First, screwing over her friends makes Maya unsympathetic in a way that merely cheating does not; but second, and far more importantly, I have no idea why she doesn’t just tell her friends about the fine. I bet if they knew, they’d be willing to give her an even bigger commission, even split the money fifty/fifty; they'd still get fifty bucks for fifteen minutes of work.
It’s a classic idiot plot. Cheva doesn’t even attempt to explain Maya’s refusal to tell. It just sits there, a black hole in the center of the story, sucking Maya’s more sympathetic qualities in with its gravitational force - the more so because Maya's friends are reasonably well-developed and a lot of fun, making her look like even more of a cad for lying to them.
On the other hand, if you put that aside, the book’s got a lot going for it. I didn’t like her boyfriend very much, but I have a low, low tolerance for fictional assholes, no matter how reformed; I suspect other people would think he just hit the spot. I read the book in a night, and the pacing is cracking good (though, as in Duplikate, Cheva chickens out on the consequences in the end) and Maya’s fast, frazzled voice is a lot of fun.
