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Aztec Vampires, Adventure Romances, and Paul Scheer: Pajiba June 2024 Book Recommendations Superpost!

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | June 27, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | June 27, 2024 |

Paul Scheer Getty 1.jpg

Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones

Colin has just turned 18, and while casually walking through the woodlands of Box Hill, he stumbles (quite literally) across Ray, a handsome biker in leather who immediately coaxes the younger man into giving him a blowjob. So begins a torrid and damaging relationship that blurs the lines of consent and kink.

With the news that Box Hill is set to be adapted into a film with Alexander Skarsgard in the mean gay biker role, I was compelled to read this tricksy slip of a novella. I rather cheekily expected something more erotic but ended up getting a rather devastating portrait of the delusions of trauma. Colin’s description of his relationship, if it can even be called that, is rather simplistic until it’s not. To the reader, it’s clear that what he experienced was years of abuse in the guise of a dominant-submissive dynamic (not that it was ever negotiated as such with him.) The subtitle of the novel is ‘a story of low self-esteem’ but it’s only so to Colin. Hindsight is not 20/20 when you’re so blinded by your own pain.

I was struck time and time again by how Mars-Jones would describe the most harrowing thing with the stiff upper lip casualness of your granddad choosing a jam for his morning toast. It’s one of the most damning indictment of the ‘keep calm and carry on’ philosophy of Britishness that has entirely poisoned this damn island. Colin’s narration feels like an Alan Bennett monologue in how it blends unbearable trauma seamlessly into descriptions of what is otherwise a rather mundane life. Box Hill is a short read but one that will linger with you.

Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller

Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is more myth than reality. The Calvin Klein publicist became one of the most famous and followed women in America when she married John F. Kennedy Jr., the closest thing the country had to a prince. Their deaths in 1999 from a plane crash ended what many saw as a fairy tale, but for years, the press had hounded the pair and turned Bessette-Kennedy into their favorite fashion doll turned punching bag. Elizabeth Beller’s biography asserts in its opening that the subject of her work was so much more than the tabloids made her out to be, and she wants to show the world who the real Carolyn was. But the woman defined by Once Upon a Time doesn’t feel any more human than the press caricature.

Beller interviewed dozens of people to create a richer portrait of Bessette, although it’s notable that none of her or the Kennedy’s inner circle are among them. Those who do go on the record are expectedly effusive in their descriptions of their dear late friend. In their eyes, she was perfect: kind, funny, beautiful, loyal, ambitious, a goddess of the ’90s. She’s magnetic but unpretentious, which can’t be said for this book. As readable as it is - it’s clearly aiming for that fizzy beach read quality - it’s hard to escape that there’s not much going on beneath the glitz. In her efforts to balance out years’ of rumours that Bessette was a drug-addicted cheater on the verge of collapse, Beller paints her as flawless in a way that entirely infantilizes her.

This also extends to her descriptions of Bessette’s marriage. It’s somehow the ultimate fairy-tale even as Beller details the fights, the stress, and the unexplored realities of coupling up with a Kennedy. They were meant for one another, Beller asserts, but she doesn’t seem willing to note that it’s possible to be wildly in love with someone who is all wrong for you. By dismissing the prickly truths of Bessette’s story, smudging away all the details that can’t be waved away with a line about how it was all patriarchy’s fault, we’re left with little to grasp as a reader. Surely it would be kinder and more humane to truly dissect the experience of being a complicated woman thrust into a situation that one could never truly be prepared for. Once Upon a Time is more hero worship than biography, a dehumanising practice that offers the toxic positivity version of the tabloid cycle.

Joyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul Scheer

If you’re a die-hard fan of How Did This Get Made, then the chances are you’re familiar with the unexpectedly bananas tangents of Paul Scheer. While he is ostensibly the straight man emcee of the podcast, at least when compared to the chaos of Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael, he will occasionally interject with a story about his childhood that will make you laugh, gasp, and wonder if this dude is okay. Well, in his book, Joyful Recollections of Trauma, Scheer lets us know that yes, he’s lived a life, and no, it wasn’t all okay.

Scheer gets candid about the physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, a man who would strangle a child rather than lose a board game. It’s a testament to Scheer’s skills as a storyteller that he balances such wild swings in tone, offering those glimpses of childhood joy amidst such overwhelming suffering. Comedy is a way for him to navigate a difficult world, one where his own parents often seem unable to confront what happened to their kid. It’s also a way for Scheer to not allow himself to become the bitter bully that his stepdad was. He talks about being a d*ck as a teen, cloaking himself in cruelty to avoid being hurt even further, and how he had to make the choice not to be that man. Those moments of optimistic introspection are extremely Scheer-esque.

The book does fall foul of many of the same problems that are typical of this subgenre. Many actors and comedians have great stories to tell but not necessarily enough to fill out an entire book, and the padding is evident from the get-go. Scheer clearly had some tough stuff he wanted to share as well as some hilarious anecdotes, including one chapter on his time as a Blockbuster employee that will be familiar to die-hard HDTGM listeners. That drive isn’t present in every piece, however, and there are ones where you feel like the story was just getting started. Perhaps he’s saving all his stories about his life with June for another book (which I will 100% read because I love them together.) Certainly, he’s a consummate storyteller and Joyful Recollections of Trauma proves he has more to offer us beyond the medium of the podcast.

Immortal Pleasures by V Castro

La Malinche was a Nahua woman who was enslaved by the invading Spaniards and forced to act as the translator and lover of the infamous Conquistador Hernán Cortés. Centuries later, she lives as Malinalli, an immortal vampire who roams the globe retrieving the plundered antiquities of her people. When she arrives in Dublin in search of a pair of Aztec skulls, she falls for a human who is not afraid of her. But waiting in the shadows is Cortés himself, also a vampire and in need of something only Malinalli can give him.

It’s been a while since I was this thoroughly burned by a novel I anticipated so eagerly. Immortal Pleasures had so much potential but felt like a series of ideas haphazardly forced into one shaky standalone title with little concern for cohesion. The juiciest details come in the flashbacks, when Malinalli sees firsthand the colonization of Mexico by Spain and is forced to be a traitor in the name of survival. The modern day scenes were where things deflated. Malinalli talks about the pain of centuries of isolation but the infatuation she has with Colin never makes sense. He’s introduced in such a hot and heavy manner then abandoned by the narrative once a hot vampire comes along. You could easily remove him from the book and nothing, emotionally or narratively, would change.

Malinalli seems so dishearteningly passive in her own story, even in moments where she’s described as badass. When Cortés appears (alongside the slave trader John Hawkins), his new line of work is an evil skincare brand, which made me think of the Halle Berry Catwoman. Moments that should be seductive feel too jokey, with some truly bizarre analogies at play, such as a moment where a man’s penis is described as ‘an electric eel bringing me to Bride of Frankenstein life.’ It could make for some fun camp, especially given the bronze age comic book villain stuff with the baddies, but then they’re described so ploddingly that it saps all the energy from the page. I don’t know what this novel wanted to be and I suspect the author didn’t either. An anti-colonialist erotic fantasy with Aztec vampires and evil skincare should at least be more fun than this.

Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura



If you grew up watching The Mummy, Indiana Jones, and many a syndicated adventure series where ambition and budget were not always equally matched, you probably have a thing for action romances. I’ve always been disappointed that there aren’t more examples of this in mainstream publishing. Surely it’s reader catnip: a hot couple who verbally spar and fall in love in an exotic locale while looking for secret treasures. So, when Raiders of the Lost Heart turned up on sale, I had to pick it up.

Dr. Socorro “Corrie” Mejía is an archaeologist who has long been underestimated by her colleagues. Her dream is to one day find the long-lost remains of her ancestor, Chimalli, an ancient warrior of the Aztec empire. When she’s invited on a well-funded dig to uncover the missing grave, it feels like a dream come true. But it means working under Dr. Ford Matthews, her professional nemesis. He’s handsome but buttoned up. She’s an adventurer who isn’t taken seriously. Do sparks fly? Duh.

I wish this book had stuck to its central hook. The romantic dynamic is a sharp one and the heat they create is suitably appealing, but all too often the plot and action archaeology take a backseat. The story cries out for more of that derring do, but it’s all but forgotten for the second half of the plot. By the time things get more exciting, all the conflict is shoved into a couple of quick moments then resolved almost instantly. Instead, we get increasingly contrived emotional drama between the romantic pair, which does them no favours. There’s a set-up for a sequel, but my enthusiasm was deflated by how much this novel ended up feeling like the platform for a series rather than its own narrative.