Title: Vogel House
Author: John Forrester
Clarise Chambers is rich, confident, and beautiful. Life is about shopping for designer labels and hanging out at private parties thrown by her older brother Phillip while her parents are off getting drunk. Author: John Forrester
She’s never really been attracted to boys at her prep school, until she falls for Keary. With his dreamy eyes and sexy hair, she can’t stop imagining his beautiful hands discovering every inch of her body. Instead of afternoon study sessions, she fantasizes an erotic afternoon with him in bed.
The carefree, unshakable Clarise is startled by a secret, a secret involving Vogel House, her father and Keary’s father, a secret that threatens to tear her away from Keary and destroy her family. When her father forces her to stay away from Keary, Clarise finds herself caught between fighting for her family’s survival and her passionate romance with Keary. Her obsession for him crashes into the plot of revenge by Keary’s father, whose sole purpose is the destruction of everything she loves in life.
*I was given a free copy of this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review*
I'm hesitant to give this three stars, because most of the characters were so detestable, including the main character Clarise and made it so hard to read on. I don't know whether this was Forrester's aim; to make us uncomfortable with characters that made me laugh for all the wrong reasons and throw my hands up in the air (more than once) and scream, "WHY?!". Now, don't get me wrong - when spoilt rich kids are done right, they can produce glorious reading material, (Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis is one of my favourite examples of this) but Forrester's writing style, choice of genre for the book and overall characterisation made for a very strange but entertaining, (even if for the wrong reasons) read.
First of all, we have the incredibly bizarre (bordering on incestual) relationship between Clarise and her brother, Phillip. He has no problem squeezing her ass (!) and getting naked in front of his own younger sister and getting sexual with ladies in front of her. Clarise dismisses this as his naturally perverted personality but their closeness to each other is too intimate and peculiar to feel like something doesn't go on behind closed doors. Perhaps Forrester's aim was to challenge this taboo without taking it too far, but in my opinion it just doesn't work. I feel the love between them, but the weird sexual tension was hard to ignore and dismiss. We then have Clarise herself, who thought about murdering people in almost every chapter, and at one point, has this irrational outburst (mentally, of course) about how Zachary (who is no angel and just as much of an asshole at this point) is acting like a five year old child, whimpering in the car whilst a gun is pointed at Clarise. Yes. It's things like these that ultimately end up detaching you from her - she is somewhat of a vindictive bitch and gets a rise of seeing those who she hates suffer. How can you relate to someone who borders on being an antihero but is clearly meant to be a heroine? That being said, the development in her character was very present, and it was nice to see her toughen up - but it was to such a hilarious extent that unfortunately made it unbelievable. However, with these incredibly screwed up kids about, there were some refreshing characters - I thoroughly enjoyed Aleksey, a hard man with a soft heart. Howard, Keary's father, at first seemed like simply the evil guy, a monster, cruel and heartless - but in the last few moments of the book revealed himself to be a conflicted man, who did indeed have a conscious for all his actions. I found more depth in these characters than the main ones.
There were some memorable moments in the book, a personal favourite being a chapter involving shrooms being taken and a hallucination that Clarise has. This chapter of the book was incredibly well written - it's a shame the rest of book wasn't as well written. Again, don't get me wrong - Forrester has a beautiful way with words but it felt so out of place in this novel and I'm not sure why. It felt like it was trying very hard to be something it was not. The writing was all over the place - this is a book set from Clarise's point of view, and at times the elegance in her tone disappeared in the next chapter when she (at one point) compared Keary's penis to a Pez dispenser that was happy to see her and claimed she felt like a fish during an intimate moment with him. Nothing pulls you out of the mood more. It was inconsistent. It was things like this that made the book comical and bizarre in moments that were meant to be romantic and steamy.
Vogel House feels like it's trying too hard to be one of those books with so much to offer. Unfortunately in doing so, digs its own grave. There is so much potential for this book that is let down by the execution of it. However, this was a good read, simply because the plot was thrilling towards the end. The pace quickened and finally we were getting to the root of the true story. Beyond the plot though, there isn't much Vogel House can offer you that a million other novels can't.
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