Book Review - Diana Pharaoh Francis's Putting the Fun in Funeral

Putting the Fun in Funeral by Diana Pharaoh Francis
Published by: Lucky Foot Press in conjunction with BVC
Publication Date: September 4th, 2018
Format: Kindle, 296 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
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Beck Wyatt's mother is dead. In the most gruesome yet amusing way possible. She was crushed to death by the phallus of one of the gargoyles that perched on the roof of her mansion. Don't worry, she deserved it. Which is something the police can't quite grasp and why Beck is a person of interest. The bereaved usually don't ask for crime screen photos to put on display. Or go about planning the tackiest funeral whose theme could literally be "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead!" Because besides being her mother, she was a literal witch. A trait that Beck has inherited, though she made sure never to let her mother know about her powers. This woman spent years torturing Beck, who knows what would have happened if she knew about her powers. A lifetime of cages, chains, trials, and now she's free. All the secrets she kept bottled up to protect the three people in the world she loved can now be decanted like a cheap wine. Jen, Lorraine, and Stacey have always been there for Beck. They knew the Wicked Bitch was trouble, she did enough damage to their own lives, but they never knew how bad until now. Now that Beck can actually say what happened with impunity. When she's ready that is. First there needs to be much drinking, and tons of cheesecake. Of course, as "luck" would have it, her mother's death sets off a chain of events Beck could never have foreseen. First there's the attempted kidnapping by the very sexy Damon Matroviani. Then there's the death curse. Then there's the near death experience of plunging through a river to remove the death curse. More and more "incidents" keep happening to Beck which keep making her interesting to the police. She just wants to bury the Wicked Bitch and get on with running her business, a resale and consignment shop that also runs estate sales. Which of course means her business and home are attacked. And it turns out that Damon might have seen this all coming and warned her more properly. Because Beck is the daughter of two very powerful bloodlines and was kidnapped by her aunt at birth and raised without any knowledge of the world she should have taken a place in or her magical abilities. So once again Wicked Bitch AKA Aunty Mommy screws over her life. Here's hoping Beck can get it back, but on her terms, no one else's.

I feel there's really no way to properly classify Putting the Fun in Funeral. It might be one of the oddest Urban Fantasy books I've ever read. There seem to be two genres fighting for dominance and they couldn't be more different. On the one had it wants to be magical chick lit, with the girls giggling about guys while drinking margaritas and eating cheesecake. On the other hand it's straight up horror. The torture and PTSD that Beck has is heartbreaking and horrifying. And the book swings from one extreme to the other. Reading this book is almost like getting repeated whiplash. Yet somehow it works. There's a disconnect but also a tentative balance. It makes sense that Beck wants that part of her life that is hers to be almost superficial. I'm not saying that her connection to her friends isn't bone-deep, it's just that they let her set the boundaries and that means they stick to the "fun" as it where. They gossip and drink and drink and gossip and then get around to the cheesecake, because this is what Beck needs to counteract the horrors she faced in her past and still faces minimally twice a month at the hands of "Aunty Mommy." Though for me the real horror is when Beck learns more about the magical world she was kept apart from. That world is about bloodlines and status, in other words, if the Death Eaters and the Republic of Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale got together and created a breeding program this is what it would be. And it scared the shit out of me. This moved the book so far away from chick lit into straight up dystopian horror that I shudder just thinking about it. Beck would have no control over her reproductive rights. She would be forced into contracts and used as a broodmare to the benefit of her father's family. What's more, due to the whole "magical" nature of these people, she can be forced to carry twins or triplets. Oh, and every consummation guarantees conception. Just hell no. I just can't. The books that are the most successful are ones that despite whatever genre they are reflect the real world and real crises the readers are facing. This was almost too real. This is the world that so many people want to see become a reality. They want to take away all my rights to my own body. And I'll be standing at the ramparts with Beck screaming no. This is my body. You stay the fuck away.