REVIEW: Who Got Liz Gardner | Elizabeth Allen | YouWriteOn.com

Title: Who Got Liz Gardner
Author: Elizabeth Allen
Published by: YouWriteOn.com, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84923-888-5
Format: Trade Paperback
Length: 355 pages
Genre: Fiction

Reviewer: Clayton Bye
http://www.claytonbye.com
Alternative-Read.com

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Liz Gardner wanders into a chat room for members of her 1977 graduating high school class. She’s a financial advisor looking for prospective customers. Instead, what she finds is a discussion between a group of men trying to answer the question “Who got Liz Gardner?” And so begins a trip through Liz’s mind, not so much looking for the answer to the group’s question, but answering, for herself, the question “How did I get Liz Gardner?”

You just know this trip into the past is going to be interesting: Liz says at the outset, “My stories require no embellishing. I didn’t conform to social ideals, pressure or expectations. I drove through my life without a safety-belt, miraculously surviving my reckless choices.”

Having grown up during the same era as Liz, I expected a story of rebellion against authority, drug experimentation and plenty of sex. We were part of the “do what feels good.” generation. But Who Got Liz Gardner is so much more.

Reading like an autobiography, we first see Liz as a victim of a broken home: unloving father, self-centred mother and a young woman determined not to repeat her parents’ mistakes. Instead, Liz makes up her own rules to live by (a lot of us did that). She’s not interested in drugs. But sex is fun, driven by her, not the man. Monogamy isn’t necessary, but you better make that clear up front: Having a father who was a serial cheater, Liz doesn’t put up with liars. She isn’t perfect and doesn’t expect her men to be. Yet Liz is looking for someone, a person she hasn’t even defined in her own mind.

An aspiring actress in New York, Liz’s life is busy, messy and full of some really odd men. In fact, one of them, to whom she is technically engaged, is uncomfortably weird. He eventually becomes the deciding factor in her decision to move to Los Angeles. Happy with her new acting school and the choice of men available within that group, Liz continues living as before. But when she becomes disillusioned with the type of man she keeps returning to, and her former fiancé turns into a stalker, Liz begins her transformation. A new age retreat takes her even further. She comes out of the experience ready to become the person she needs to be for the special someone she can feel coming her way.

And she’s right. It isn’t long before Liz finds her mate: Eric Allen.

Okay, you’ve got the basic outline of the book. Why should you read it? Liz Allen tells it like it is (or was). Sex is natural, described in terms we actually used in those times, and is often funny and clumsy, the author not following the current trend of erotic romance, where everything is perfect, spelled out for you and which often crosses the line into pornography. Even when her life is falling apart, Liz is aggressive; she’s never afraid of making choices. While she may worry, Liz always seems to have a core that can turn anything around, usually in a non-typical, “I won’t run away from life manner.” Oh, there’s also the fact that even when Liz is talking dirty, behaving without regard to what may happen after the current orgasm, she’s charming, larger than life and great fun to read about.

Who Got Liz Gardner is not a book for your teenager. I wouldn’t even recommend it for those of you who prefer sex with the lights off—the book will startle and offend you. Yet it comes off in such an honest, unpretentious and entertaining way, that you, my readers, should buy a copy today!

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

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