I am usually excited when I get to read a new J. D. Mason novel. Over the
years, she has become one of my favorite authors. When I get one of her new
novels in my hands it is a cause for celebration because I know the novel is
going to be good. Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It is
mason’s latest novel, and it’s going down in history as the fist Mason novel
that I cannot stand! The story of a young woman, who was abandoned as a baby
and searches for the mother that abandoned her. The search leads her to
three high school girlfriends, whose lives have taken different roads. The
story is an old one that Mason failed to grasp the drama of, or update the
story from a fresh perspective. I could have done without the book, and half
way through it, I wished I had.
Renetta Jones, Phyllis Neville, and Freddie Palmer were close high school
friends who were more like sisters than friends. Their senior year turned
into a traumatic one when one of the girls became pregnant. On the night
when the expectant mother had the baby, the three friends went to the
hospital together and left the baby. The only evidence of their trip was a
fuzzy surveillance image of three African American girls entering the
hospital. Twenty years later, the abandoned baby, Tasha Darden, goes looking
for her mother, and one of those women is going to tell her something before
it’s all said and done.
I hate Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It! The story
dragged on and on. I found that I was not interested in any of three women.
There was nothing compelling, amusing or captivating about their lives. The
three heifas just bored the hell out of me. But the one that really burned
the hairs on my private parts was Tasha. At the beginning of the book, she
hires a private investigator to locate the three girls, he does, and then
she spends the rest of the book contemplating if she should make contact
with the women or not! What kind of crap is that!? The cherry on the cake of
it all was that Mason did not reveal who Tasha’s biological father was. Why,
I have no idea. The identity could have made for a juicer story because Lord
knows this puppy was tired on arrival.
I have to be upfront a sec. The premise of the story sounded familiar to me
when I got the novel. The reason being is that I had already read and LOVED
it many years before. Remember, how I told you all when I started reading
books when I was 13 years old, I started off reading my mother’s books. At
that time, my mother read nothing but romance type novels. So I cut my teeth
on Sidney Sheldon, Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins books. Also, in that
group was a novel titled Lace by Shirley Conran. At the time, Lace was a
mega-selling novel. Lace had the same premise as Take Your Pleasure
Where You Find It! Four prep school girls, best of friends, until
their senior year when one gets pregnant and puts the baby, Lili up for
adoption. The baby grows up in terrible foster homes, where she was abused;
began living on the streets, eventually becomes a porn star and then a
legitimate movie star. Lili, the child, goes looking for her mother. She
gets into the lives of the four friends in order to hold something over
their heads in order to force them to tell her the truth, which one of them
is her mother. The famous line in the book, and the subsequent TV miniseries
when she got the four former friends together was, "Which one of you
bitches is my mother?"
Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It could have been,
should have been a better book. As is fairly obvious, I don’t have any kind
words for it at all! Strangely enough, this novel was not enough to knock me
off the J. D. Mason fan wagon. I’m keeping my fingers crossed with the
sincere hope that her next book is a helluva lot better that this one. If
you are still interested in this storyline, I strongly recommend you check
out
Lace by Shirley Conran, the novel is still in print.
Related Links
Read a review written by Idrissa Uqdah who "Enjoyed
" this book
http://aalbc.com/reviews/take_your_pleasure.html