Test Tube Mutant Baby

 

Remember when I told you that for some reason I was mildly enamored with this strange little book?

She Has a Blow Hole!

So then I decided that I would read the second book because I was majorly hooked! (Remind me never to smoke crack because clearly I have zero impulse control).

Book two can be summed up in one word: UGGGH.

Love, Lattes and Danger offered up very little love, ZERO lattes, and actually so much danger that it was annoying.  This book follows dolph boy Joel and his sister Amy (I called her Casey in book one because that’s how memorable she was).  It picks up a few months after the first book and Joel and Amy have been sold to Ziccon and are working on oil rigs detecting both major and minor leaks (so I guess I was wrong, these dolph kids do have marketable skills).  One of their handlers, Craven, HATES mutants and therefore treats both Joel and Amy as slaves (Sandra Cox is HILARIOUS when she names her bad guys.  Reading the names Craven and Dr. Stranger in one sentence was almost too much for me.  Sandy, you have zero chill and no subtlety).

What moves the story is that a) Joel doesn’t want Dr. Stranger to harvest his sister’s eggs like he did with Piper.

b) he learns that Dr. Stranger secretly extracted semen from Joel and made a brilliant dolph baby with Piper’s egg.

c) Dr. Stranger is super gross (as seen here)…like seriously dude, stop playing with dolphin DNA and get a real job.

Joel sees the baby and is able to communicate with her because this kid? She’s amazeballs.  She’s got a fish shaped birth mark on her shoulder like Joel (birthmarks aren’t hereditary are they?) and a blowhole, like her mother.  Just writing that sentence makes me laugh.  I’m laughing right now.  So Joel has to figure out how to get his sister and child to safety and attempt to find Piper and let her know that she totally has a baby now (that should go over well!).

So the funny stuff!! Sandra Cox has no idea how the body works.  Joel needs a blood transfusion, his sister Amy is the only one who can donate to him because dolph reasons.

 

This is several pints at once.  So at first  I was like, ok, “maybe she gave it over time” but then no, I read this and realized that our author has no idea that Amy would be dead if she was donating more than five pints but less than ten in one sitting!  No Sandra…no.

Other fun things: Tyler has yet another convenient uncle! Last time it was a Navy SEAL, this time it’s a Mafia boss who can supply them with counterfeit money!  Other than brooding or hitting Joel, this was the only reason why Tyler was in this book–which is a shame because Tyler usually says the best corny stuff ever.  This time, it was Holly’s turn (his twin sister) when she meets Joel and Piper’s child for the first time she says:

mark my words.  No one would ever look a newborn and be excited that she has an awesome blow hole.  Or maybe they would…but I wouldn’t. I would look you right in the eye and ask if you were grossed out that your baby had a blow hole.

But Holly’s not alone, Joel has a great zinger himself when he fills Piper in on the fact that they have a child together:

There’s gotta be a better way to tell someone that.  Maybe Hallmark makes a card?? Try anything other than what was uttered from your mouth Joel.

Ultimately, this was the biggest false advertisement (not that it actually mattered):

No one in the book smiles…at all, this book is just RUN AWAY FROM DANGER! SAVE DOLPH BABY! PINE FOR PIPER!  No one in the book surfs.  Who is this guy?  Why is he happy? All I can say is that he’s not a character in the book.  But I did appreciate that little blurb on the cover Love has its challenges–especially for a mutant.  That seems like an understatement.  I think being a mutant probably has a lot of challenges, love being one of them, I’m sure.

Bottom line: The hilarity of the first book did not translate to the second.  Yes, there were still unintentionally funny things (which I shared some of) due to the fact that I think Sandra Cox may be a mutant writing about her own experiences as she pretends to be a human, but mostly, it was really, really dumb.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to read book three because my brain hurts, but it would be cool to see the two super villains Craven and Dr. Stranger again because they are just so very focused on evil for no particular reason…we’ll see, but I’m not rushing to read it when there are actual books I want to read out there.

 

Update as of 11:27 am 3/11/16: I’ve just pre-purchased Book 3 because it involves the Bermuda Triangle, Voodoo priestesses, and reincarnation.  I can’t resist that, am I not human?  Stay tuned.