I really don't have many guilty reading pleasures. When you don't care what anyone thinks about your reading habits, there's nothing to feel guilty about. It's very freeing, really, to give yourself permission to read according to your whims, whatever catches your fancy at that moment, and stop worrying about reading the "right" books, or the "important" books that people are talking about at the moment. Being a snob was okay for a few years, but I seem to have outgrown it, and I'm quite content with this development.
That said, Amber Kell stories are a guilty pleasure of mine. Not because I'm embarrassed that I enjoy them, but because it pulls at an area where I can still feel guilt: my budget. The stories seem to come out at a rate of one or two a month, they're quite short, they usually cost four or five dollars each, and I just can't shake the feeling that I'm spending too much money on the literary equivalent of Cheetos. You know--tasty and crunchy and totally lacking any nutritional worth, and yet you can't stop eating them. As a very, very thrifty person, the idea of paying more for something than I think it's really worth makes me feel guilty. But I keep buying them anyway--they're Cheetos.
Why do I keep buying them as soon as they come out? Because Kell tends to write stories I enjoy. They are an excellent example of the idea that genre readers care more about plot than anything else. Despite their many faults (pacing, characterization, editing), more often than not I enjoy the stories, so I can tolerate the other problems. And not only do I enjoy most of her stories, but I re-read them fairly frequently. William's House or From Pack to Pride or Mate Hunt are enjoyable, undemanding comfort reads for late in the evening when I'm really tired but want to read a little before I go to sleep.
There is one thing about these stories, though, that I find very disturbing, and that is the way that women are written. If it were only occasionally, I could forgive it. Sure, sometimes the only female character in the story might turn out to be the villain. And I suppose that an author could be allowed one story in which the protagonist's motivation is that his sister had been kidnapped. But in these stories it is disturbingly consistent: women, if there are any, tend to be either the protagonists' family member, or there is a great likelihood that they will turn out to be the bad guy or a refrigerator woman (sometimes they are family _and_ refrigerator woman in one).
"Refrigerator woman" is a term that originates in comics, referring to a story in which a hero comes home and finds his dead girlfriend stuffed in the refrigerator. More generically, as I understand the term, it means when female characters are killed, raped, kidnapped, or have other terrible things happen to them, not in any way as their own character arc, but simply to provide motivation or character depth for a male character. A non-sexist example of this can be found in The Princess Bride: "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." His father's death was his motivation much of the rest of his life. But more often it's a wife, a daughter, a sister, or a girlfriend who ends up dead so that the male character can go off and try to get revenge, or feel interesting guilt and provide character depth. The guy gets a story about him. The woman gets dead. This isn't good.
So let's have a look at some of Kell's works. These are to the best of my memory, so the details may be a little fuzzy:
Courting Calvin: Calvin's motivation for his actions is fear for his sister, who's been kidnapped (refrigerator woman)
Finding Farro: There are two people who betray Farro in this book--his housekeeper and the only female werewolf in the Moon Pack that we meet. So, two villains, and both are the female characters.
Getting Gabe: His female best friend is the villain
Inflaming Inno: Inno was sold to the crazy mutants who want to harm him by his sister
A Prideful Mate: The main character is betrayed by his best friend. Why? Because his sister was kidnapped (refrigerator woman, and another kidnapped sister!)
A Prideless Man: the villain is his father's girlfriend
Soldier Mine: there are two villains and, as in Finding Farro, they are the female characters.
Kevin's Alpha: there is one main female character, Lisa. She gets murdered (refrigerator woman), which gives the guys something to get upset about and something to do. On the other hand, when the same people catch Jaynell, they're able to rescue him.
Mate Hunt: there are four women in this story: two are the mother and the aunt of the protagonists. Of the other two, one is the villain and the other has an abusive boyfriend and seems there mostly to get beat up and give Jory an excuse to do something about it, thus revealing his character to his lovers (borderline refrigerator woman).
Mate Dance: The story begins with a woman getting murdered, which leads to the main characters meeting (refrigerator woman). It's later revealed that she had wanted to extort money out of the king (potential villain, had she not been turned into a refrigerator woman). The primary female character is the creepy governess, who is the villain.
Saving Valor: the main character thinks his brother is trying to kill him, but it turns out it's his stepmother.
Modeling Death: the killer is his crazy mother.
Samhain's Kiss: the villain is the queen of the fairies.
Now it's true, I have cherrypicked the stories I can remember that have these characteristics. But it's really disturbing how the female characters are so consistently either relatives of the main character, or they turn out to be the bad guy. Yes, it could happen once or twice, but it comes up again and again. I don't think Kell is doing this deliberately, I suspect it's just a habit she's fallen into without giving it much thought, like most habits. But I do find it a bit creepy. There is a general lack of female characters in Kell's work, which isn't uncommon with M/M stories, but come on. When the only female werewolf we meet in the Moon Pack is the one who turns out to be the traitor? It's reached the point where I just automatically expect the woman to turn out to be the villain, because it usually works out that way. Why do a lot of M/M writers, many of them women, write such unrealistic and awful female characters? If these stories are to be believed, gay men could lead happy gay lives if only it weren't for the nasty, treacherous women who keep attacking them. What the heck?!?
