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Godcorp (2014)

by Jessica Smith(Favorite Author)

4.34 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

149737409X (ISBN13: 9781497374096)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Createspace

review 1: Before choosing a book to read I will typically go through the following ritual:1. Find books in the same genre in which I write (this is important)2. Find covers that are aesthetically appealing, that look interesting or pretty3. Read the title of the book; this is sometimes interchangeable with step 24. Read the blurb and ask myself if I want to spend hours with itI did none of that this time when selecting Godcorp. In many ways it was selected for me, and for that I am grateful because I was more than pleasantly surprised by the pages within! This despite hesitation about the book’s title. What kind of name is “Godcorp” anyway? But I was told it was an interesting take on the heaven/hell plot and since I’d never read one of those (but was considering writing one... more myself), I dived in head first. My first thought was that I hoped God was a woman in this iteration. That would have been great in another story, but wasn’t exactly the kind of story I was getting myself into with “Godcorp”. Let me give you a blurb of my own:Malcolm is on his way to meet the girl who is, for all intents and purposes, the love of his life. Evie. They’ve had their ups and downs throughout the years; after all they have known each other since they were young teens. They go through the cycle of breaking up and making up, and it was time for the making up, with the added bonus of some huge secret Malcolm had to share with Evie. Unfortunately Malcolm never makes it, as he is involved in a vehicular accident and dies. That’s the prologue. It’s kind of written in a chirpy way, meaning somewhat funny. So I don’t feel incredibly bad for him at first because I get the sense that he’ll be back in some way.Flip the page and we meet Evie, who has the Midas touch when it comes to her job, which in this story is sales. She can sell you anything. I’m still not quite sure what she actually does as a job, because sometimes it reads as if she’s in sales and sometimes it reads as if she’s in marketing. I know those two can go hand-in-hand sometimes, but the way it was described was at times vague on the part of the author, although kudos to her for attempting. When we meet Evie it is the day of Malcolm’s accident a few hours prior. There is a brief email exchange where she tries to get him to reveal what the big secret he has to share with her is, but he won’t budge. I guess her Midas touch doesn’t work via email on her boyfriend of 10+ years. Evie reiterates and expands on the dynamic of her relationship with Malcolm, and it sets the scene for the impending heartbreak of finding out that Malcolm has died.After the relationship has been established, but before Evie finds out that Malcolm is dead, we are introduced more to Evie’s work environment and her boss, Maxwell, and Maxwell’s wife, Janine, who are both colorful and crazy from the get-go.Maxwell informs Evie (with the help of his wife and half the office all crammed into Evie’s office) that superstar businessman Lucius Devlin has requested a meeting with her.Of course Mr. Devil is handsome. This is that kind of book. It’s not enough that he’s handsome though – no – he has to be the most handsome of all the handsomest handsome men in the universe. I get it, I do the same thing in my books. Nobody wants to read about the just-okay guy with monster personality if not monster looks. Malcolm has monster personality and he dies in the closing lines of the prologue. Case closed.Bloated John Travolta (this is sort of how the author describes Evie's boss, and it's amazing) insists she start to get to work immediately and she has enough leeway to tell him that she needs the night off but will be in first thing in the morning to nail it to the ground. (You know, for a story with so many biblical references, perhaps the nailing part is a bit too apropos). Of course that never happens, because she never gets to see Malcolm that night (or find out what his secret was), and spends the next two weeks sliding into the oblivion of despair and loss. Can you blame her?“… but from that point onwards I couldn’t help but notice a switch had been flicked for the rest of the world. Funeral done, life goes on.”Her companion throughout her grief is Ed, an ancillary character you needn’t get too comfortable with because his only purpose is to have “strong arms” (every time he hugs her it’s with this “strong arms”) and eventually try to perform a kind of intervention-slash-5150 of Evie. But I’ll get to that in a bit.Evie is understandably devastated and it’s the pricks at work who are trying to get her to come back to work to have the meeting with the famed Mr. Devil, Evie’s bereavement be damned. Now, this is an area where I take issue, and I continue to take issue throughout a lot of the first third of the book. I understand completely that Evie is monumentally shaken to the core by the loss of Malcolm. Anyone would be. But despite the establishment of relationship via character thoughts in the first few chapters, I’m not really feeling that connected to Malcolm and Evie as a couple, and perhaps that is by design. Her grief is too severe. They weren’t married, and in fact that weren’t even together at the time. That doesn’t mean her pain is any less because their relationship wasn’t more, but it somehow doesn’t feel as significant as to render her essentially crazy. Again, that may be design.Evie comes back to work reality for the ever-important meeting with Mr. Devil, and of course he’s even more handsome in person. Can’t say the same for his right-hand man though.His name is Barry. Which seems like a totally innocuous name but just you wait!The meeting doesn’t go that well, to be honest. Mr. Devil tells Bloated John Travolta and his wife (who has major crazy eyes for Mr. Devil) to leave him with Evie, and when he is alone with her she tells him about Malcolm and that it has to be a mistake; Malcolm is supposed to be with her and she’s going to do whatever she can to bring him back.This, readers, is where you must abandon your logic, because Evie certainly has. I don’t mean that in a bad way. There are many stories where you are required to suspend disbelief and abandon rationality in order to gain entrance to something worth giving those things up for. You can draw your own conclusion as to whether Godcorp is worth all of that effort.Mr. Devil mumbles something about such and such a planet in retrograde (what does that even mean?!) and says that she’s right, it must be some kind of mistake and good luck to her on getting him back.Just so we’re clear… she wants to bring her dead ex-boyfriend back to life. Only now am I realizing how utterly selfish her quest is. She knows in her heart that her future path is entwined with Malcolm’s, and that it must be a mistake because where is her life supposed to go now? But never once does she consider what other people might want. People like Malcolm’s parents, who would probably shit their pants (pardon my French) if their dead son came back to life, reanimated and everything.Mr. Devil leaves but says he’ll be back (of course he will) and we then fall into the abyss with Evie and her bereavement.She decides she must speak to God to tell him it was a mistake. So she goes to a church and, surprise surprise, their answer is prayer. She knows better than they do though.Further down the rabbit hole we go into Evie’s depression and mission to bring her ex-boyfriend back from the dead.She eventually finds out about a website called Godcorp, which is supposedly the website for heaven, and doubts both its provenance and legitamacy. But later on Mr. Devil sends her a note telling her about the Godcorp website. Or maybe she found out from him first? I don’t exactly recall. This part of the book went from good to tedious very quickly for me, as evidenced by the two tweets nearly 2 hours apart where I went from liking the book to starting to resent Evie and her inability to Human.She makes some new “friends” in the form of gothkid outcasts who believe they are prophets of some kind and spends the majority of her days trying to call Godcorp. She renders an enormous bill on her cell phone, alienates all of the people in her life except for the prophets, and lets her professional life turn to absolute shit. And to be honest it’s difficult not to resent her because she has every opportunity in the world to clean herself up and continue living a normal and productive life and she absolutely refuses.So I don’t precisely remember why, but at 36% done with “Godcorp” I was certain there was no place else for this book to go. Evie obviously can’t bring Malcolm back from the dead and she cares very little about her own life (despite being quite selfish about it, actually). I was warned this book had a slow start and they weren’t wrong. It’s only after Ed (remember “strong arms”?) has her committed to the loony bin that things start to really pick up. She tells the hospital staff that her next of kin is none other than Mr. Devil and of course they don’t believe her. That’d be like telling the doctor your next of kin was Steve Jobs (if he were alive, rest in peace) or George Clooney. But it turns out one of the doctors is an illegal (a reincarnated person who knows about Godcorp – it’s a little too deep for parentheticals) and they call Mr. Devil and Mr. Devil’s mole assistant comes to get Evie. He brings her to Mr. Devil’s ginormous home and that’s where the story really beings.Phew. This is a long book. I might need to take a break to continue on…(Several minutes later)Alrighty! Now that I’ve had a bathroom break and my tummy is full of delicious tomato bisque soup (with provolone cheese – it has to be with provolone cheese), let’s continue on.So now Evie lives with the devil and let me tell you, that may not be such a bad thing. I don’t want to give too much away here because there actually is a LOT that happens. Here are some bullet-points for you:-There’s a 17th century painting by William Blake called “The Devil’s Whore” that plays a significant role-Evie continues trying for Godcorp with the help of Mr. Devil(Did I mention that by this point – shortly before the forced hospitalization – Evie had been fired from her job? It happened right after Bloated John Travolta screamed his head off at her then broke her cell phone a minute after someone from Godcorp finally answered (that was a blow, I must say). Anyway, back to the bullet-points:-Evie is falling in love with Mr. DevilLike you didn’t see that one coming. There is quite a bit of backstory about Mr. Devil that you’ll have no problem understanding if you’ve ever so much as looked at a Bible at some point in your life. It’s fleshed out quite nicely here.In the end Evie has a decision to make, and you might be surprised at what happens in the end. Some might call the end shocking or surprising. Some might guess it entirely. Some may say the end is something of a cop-out.There are some great moments of truth, the best of which comes in a monologue from the devil himself:“You don’t even know how selfish you are, do you? You haven’t the slightest bit of self-awareness. I may be the Devil, but at least I know what I’m doing when I’m being an asshole. You expect me to choose you and drop everything for you, when you are choosing him. You want it all your own way, everything exactly how you want it. No way, princess! I’m not going there! There isn’t anything in the world that would make go there while you have chosen him. You’ve got your answer. It was a mistake. Why won’t you just let it go, choose me, be with me, love me. Or go there and run to him. IT’s your choice, but make your decision.”And some great moments of humor:“I felt like a Muggle.”“Oh God, I thought and God winked at me.”All in all, I’d say this is a book you should read. Yes, it starts off well, slows to a pace rivaling molasses that will leave you wanting to put the main character out of her (and your) misery, but there is excellent payoff in the end, and some true originality that won’t leave you feeling like you’ve sacrificed your own religious faith (if you have it) for a day of fun reading.There is a sequel, which I’m currently reading, and I can say so far that the sequel falls into the trap of not being as good as the first book (which is entirely my own opinion). You could read “Godcorp” as a standalone book, however, and be satisfied. There’s no real cliffhanger to speak of; in fact the ending is resolute with still a hint of promise for more. Download it while it’s free on Amazon.com this weekend, and spend a few hours falling in love with the Devil.Five stars.
review 2: Godcorp has an unique storyline, a story with different perspectives between heaven and hell. This book will not disappoint!!Evie's on and off again boyfriend Malcolm passes away after he's tragically involved in a motorbike accident. Evie's convinced he died by mistake and is determined to get him back. Evie's consumed by grief but when she meets Mr Lucius Devlin, he gives her a business card with godcorp.com written on it and tells her, there might be away contacting god. Evie thinks she can see the light at the end of a tunnel.Lucius Delvin is Hot and knows what he wants and he wants Evie, he's willing to to anything to get her including helping her bring Malcolm back but is Lucius all he seems? Has he got his own reasons to get close to Evie?Can't wait to read book 2!! less

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