I have reviewed Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman for Reedsy Discovery.
Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman is a humor fiction that follows a thirty-five-years old Tatiana, a former Cardio Queen, as she hopes to reinvent herself as a pet-sitter. When Frances offered her a job, Tatiana didn’t even know what kind of job she had in mind. However, one minute into the interview call revealed that Frances and her friend, Gerty, were leaving for Mexico, and she wanted Tatiana to pet-sit four of their cats. As the initial shock subsided, she decided to take up the job offer. Ever since her days of fame ended prematurely, she had been struggling with her finances. So, she had no other choice than to give it a shot. Although her boyfriend, Blake, had enough money, she wasn’t even sure where their relationship was headed. So, taking his help was out of the question anyway. Little did she know her new job prospect was a backdoor to a phone sex operation. By the time she found out the truth, the hell had broken loose.
I was teaching one class, had one client, and zero money. It’s 1998, and my client list consisted of Sam; a womanizing 80-year old with teenage-dreams and geriatric man parts. That’s what happens when you make a mockery of your career like I did in 1995.
– Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman
Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes is a laugh riot from the start to finish. There was no breathing space in between the comic punches. One after another, Tatiana falls into traps that ultimately deliver hilarious situations. As the audience juggles between deciding whether to pity the protagonist or laugh at her expense, the storyline begins to take several gripping twists. To be honest, certain scenes were more than a tad bizarre, but the overall hilarity negated the absurdity of those scenes. Ranging from Tatiana’s obsession with her ass to Sam’s over-enthusiasm for his balls, Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes is packed with language appropriate for an adult audience.
I didn’t even know that there were pantyhose fetishes and my mind would explode if I thought of all the possible deviance one could encounter in the sex business. In the fitness business, you ran into the occasional underwear and underarm sniffer, but that was it.
– Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman
The side characters have contributed to the comedy of the book. Be it Tatiana’s mom or her inner-guru, Phil, each one of them is well executed. Vanessa Newman excels in word plays and knows exactly which “pre-dick-ament” her skill would work well with. The author has done a commendable job with Tatiana’s dialogues that suited a fitness enthusiast. Furthermore, Tatiana’s lack of experience with cats is made even more authentic by her weird logic and cats’ funny comebacks. A quick round of proofreading would help with the misplaced quotes and make the book even more enjoyable. Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman is a joyride for humor lovers.
… why the hell did we call it pet-sitting anyway? Who was supposed to be sitting — the pets or me? Was a pet sitter’s role to get the furry creatures to sit down? Were you only supposed to sit in the presence of the pets? Why was it so important that they sit as opposed to laying down or walking? Either way, I doubted that pet sitting would make my ass or the cats’ any smaller than mostly rump-side activities. Exercise research showed that sitting was going to be the death of us all. Yet so much exercise equipment required sitting?
– Croissants, Caramel Clusters & Catastrophes by Vanessa Newman
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