#The Perfect Ones by Nicole Hackett

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Review: The Perfect Ones by Nicole Hackett

Author: Nicole HackettPublisher: Crooked LaneReleased: May 2, 2023Received: Own (Aardvark) Sign up for Aardvark | More Aardvark Reviews Book Summary: A group of social media influencers have been invited to an exclusive trip. It should be a dream come true, right? Yet this story is about to get dark, as one of the influencers goes missing. Worse, there’s plenty of reason to suspect foul…

[ulkaralakbarova]

Film geek Josh is looking for the subject of his new documentary when a chance meeting puts the perfect star in his sights—Dylan, his school’s most popular junior. But Dylan’s hopes of using the film to become Blossom Queen don’t quite match with Josh’s goal to make a hard-hitting exposé about popularity. Will Josh shoot the film as planned, or show Dylan as the truly interesting person she is? Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Dylan Schoenfield: Sarah Hyland Josh Rosen: Matt Prokop Hannah: Vanessa Morgan Amy Loubalu: Sasha Pieterse Lola: Lili Simmons Nicole Paterson: Andrea Brooks Asher: Jordan A. Nichols Steven: Jimmy Bellinger Ari: David Del Rio Sandy: Lilli Birdsell Alan Schoenfield: Andrew Airlie Caitlin: Kacey Rohl Mr. Farley: David Milchard Ms. Guthrie: Brenda Crichlow Amber: Erica Van Briel Shy Girl: Nina Kiri Lunch Lady: Kathryn Kirkpatrick Smart Phone Customer: Sean Mahaffey Mall Cop: Brent Chapman Parking Enforcement Officer: Keith Dallas Another Random Girl: Aliza Vellani Popular Guy: Aaron Miko Volleyball Player: Taurean Mills Film Crew: Screenplay: Hilary Galanoy Screenplay: Elizabeth Hackett Director: Jeffrey Hornaday Original Music Composer: Nathan Wang Novel: Robin Palmer Editor: David Finfer Producer: Tracey Jeffrey Casting: Natalie Hart Executive Producer: Todd Lieberman Production Design: Chris August Executive Producer: David Hoberman Executive Producer: Paul E. Shapiro Casting: Jason La Padura Director of Photography: Robert Brinkmann Co-Producer: Brian Zeilinger-Goode Visual Effects Supervisor: Dan Schmit Supervising Sound Editor: Mark Friedgen Costume Design: Rebekka Sorensen Movie Reviews: Reno: **Student film festival meets beauty pageant.** I’m one of those guys who does not believe chick films are for girls alone, actions are for men, as well as magic films for kids. I watch them all, well, at least I admit that. So, not in my childhood, but overall I’ve seen many DCOM and I’ve liked many of them. This film came half a decade ago, I was aware of it, but only now I had watched it and it got me by surprise. I thought it would me another mean girl tale, that’s where I was wrong. Well, in the initial few minutes, that’s how it looked, but everything has changed since the beginning of the second act. That was the biggest plus point of this film. Even though predictable scenes, still it felt good enough. The character transformation, the way it was done was very smart. At one stage you hate, then a soft corner develops. It is a television film, but that’s not how it looked. The quality of the story was like a theatrical film. If they had risked on that, they definitely would have succeeded. I would say a bad decision by the production house, but still the product delivered more than its expectation. The casting was good, All of them were new face to me, except Sasha Pieterse. Expecting a sequel for a good/successful film is so common with its fans. I thought about the same, but seems they are not interesting in one which was kind of confirmed in the end itself. Even though if they decide to make, it won’t be as good as this one. Because the main story, all happened in here. Just like ‘Taken’ which is very powerful original film, not suitable for followups. This is a silly concept, but very nice film. I totally suggest it. _8/10_

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2015’s The Untold Tale is the first volume in The Accidental Turn series.

Kintyre Turn is a bona fide hero, complete with the magic sword Foesmiter and his very own loyal sidekick, Sir Bevel. Most damsels in distress, at least the ones from Hain, would be relieved to get Kintyre’s help. Lucy “Pip” Piper isn’t from Hain and she’s not at all relieved to be rescued by Kintyre. That’s because she has to make do with Kintyre’s much less impressive stuttering brother Forsyth.

Forsyth didn’t actually save her in person. The Shadow Hand of Hain (spymaster extraordinaire) has Men for that sort of task. To make matters worse, while his Men did manage to retrieve Pip from the Big Bad, the Viceroy, it was only after Pip has suffered extensive torture. While this is a victory of sorts—she is the first of the Viceroy’s victims recovered alive—it is at best a mixed victory.

Forsyth does not think much of himself, but he is in fact a competent Shadow Hand. Pip is an anomaly. She’s clearly not a commoner but she also does not seem to fit into any of Hain’s social strata. She is also not obviously any of the varieties of foreigner familiar to Forsyth. Wherever she is from, it must be somewhere very distant indeed.

Somewhere meta-distant, in fact. Pip comes from a world in which Kintyre and Forsyth figure in novels—namely, The Tales of Kintyre Turn by Elgar Reed. Pip is not only one of the author’s more devoted fans; she’s an academic fan, who writes papers on the series:

“I did my thesis on the books. I know more about the world that Reed wrote than probably Reed, or his editor, or anyone else, because I analyzed all the stuff under the words.”

Now that Pip is trapped inside the novels, she could be a deadly weapon in the hands of the Viceroy. It is advisable not only to rescue her, but to return her to her own world. That requires a quest. As Kintyre is not available, that leaves only Pip and Forsyth to carry it out.

And Forsyth is not at all sure that he wants to return Pip. His Author, it seems, has a weakness for Love at First Sight.

~oOo~

There’s a From Elfland to Poughkeepsie moment early in the story, when Pip first starts talking and what comes out is contemporary vernacular. I am not a purist—I think it’s OK for The Lord of the Rings to have an English edition as well as the original Westron—but I prefer it if characters in secondary worlds don’t sound like they come from Toronto. Or worse, Brantford. As it turns out, Pip does come from our world; it makes perfect sense that she would talk the way that she does.

This foreshadows something else in the book, a something that Forsyth notes but does not take properly into account. The Author, Elgar Reed, puts a heavy hand on the plot when necessary, rendering his characters selectively blind to any pesky details that would derail the desired narrative. If Pip were reading the adventure rather than being in it, she probably would jot a snide comment in the margins. Alas! she is trapped in the story. Once there, she is just as clueless as any of the other characters.

Many people find it a comfort to believe they have an Author and to trust that the various injustices and infelicities of their world serve some greater end. The unfortunates in this story don’t have that assurance. While Reed isn’t a malevolent figure, a Drosselmeyer or even a Horace Hackett, he is, shall we say, selectively benevolent. He sends multitudes of spear carriers and redshirts to certain doom. They must suffer to give Kintyre a reason to wield Foesmiter in manly martial combat.

Pip, presumably as familiar with metafiction as she is Reed’s fiction and armed with knowledge of what happens to academics drawn into the work they study—a surprisingly common hazard in Canadian academia—might expect to fill the role of a Mary Sue, that perfect character everyone adores, without whose efforts the villain would succeed. What she gets is raped, tortured, and a bad case of PTSD. Moreover, far from being a welcome savior, she is by her very nature a significant threat to the natural order of things in Reed’s world. Not so Mary Sue.

This novel is chockfull of all sorts of secondary-world fantasy tropes. On first encounter with such a trope, I would start to feel mildly annoyed. Oh no, not that old thing again. Then things would swerve and I would find, to my delight, that Frey was using that trope for a purpose that I had not at all expected.

Hence I have no idea what to expect from the rest of this series. As I enjoy being pleasantly surprised, I will be following the series with keen interest.

The Untold Tale is available here.