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Chase Banter #3
In the Unlikely Event...
Chase Banter has always been about risk avoidance, but parenthood has changed all that. Among other things, she’s embraced a writer’s life, joined the board of the Lesbian Illumination Institute and fomented rebellion within the PTA.
When she and her BFF Lacey butt heads over the Institute, Chase decides it’s high time she prove once and for all that she is a changed woman. Her daughter, Bud, is an eight-year-old filmmaker, and will document her mother’s fearlessness, once she figures out how to focus past knee caps. Chase proves she can visit Urgent Care and not wash her hands afterward. She can skateboard, teach people how to drive and—to the surprise of many, including herself—she can gift wrap anything.
All these changes can only lead to one the Gift Wrapping National Finals. How hard can it be, after all? It’s not as if she’s going to jump out of a plane or anything like that.
Saxon Bennett’s tongue-in-cheek take on Chase Banter’s quirky lesbian life won a Golden Crown Award for Family Affair. Marching to a Different Accordion was an instant bestseller.
When she and her BFF Lacey butt heads over the Institute, Chase decides it’s high time she prove once and for all that she is a changed woman. Her daughter, Bud, is an eight-year-old filmmaker, and will document her mother’s fearlessness, once she figures out how to focus past knee caps. Chase proves she can visit Urgent Care and not wash her hands afterward. She can skateboard, teach people how to drive and—to the surprise of many, including herself—she can gift wrap anything.
All these changes can only lead to one the Gift Wrapping National Finals. How hard can it be, after all? It’s not as if she’s going to jump out of a plane or anything like that.
Saxon Bennett’s tongue-in-cheek take on Chase Banter’s quirky lesbian life won a Golden Crown Award for Family Affair. Marching to a Different Accordion was an instant bestseller.
264 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 2012
17 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Saxon Bennett
53 books180 followersSaxon Bennett is an admitted bibliophile and has the bookcases to prove it. Her favorite book is Harriet the Spy. She grew up among the pine trees of Washington where she learned to be a Keeper of Odd Knowledge with a special liking for new words - the queerer the better. She has a penchant for inspirational quotes - the more motivational the better. A serious aficionado of pie, she also drinks a lot of coffee and tea - especially when she’s writing, which she does every day. Saxon is a parent and a wife—two things she never thought she’d be - and she writes blogs about her family in the style of Erma Bombeck. In her next life she wants to be a professional snowboarder. She likes to grow flowers and tend to her pond. Jelly beans, gummy bears and licorice are her favorite candies. An avid walker with a goal to walk every street in her small town, she hits the pavement each morning. To keep herself limber, she does beginner yoga. She’d like to learn to meditate but her mind is as restless as a squirrel trapped in a box. As an amateur seamstress, she is endlessly trying to create the perfect butch purse. Her favorite quote is “Man plans, God laughs.” Saxon is the author of fifteen novels. Her book Family Affair won the Goldie for General Fiction in 2009. She won the Alice B. Reader Award for her body of work in 2012. Her second book in the Family Affair trilogy entitled Marching to a Different Accordion won a Golden Crown Literary Award for general fiction in 2012. Her book In the Unlikely Event is the final book in the Family Affair trilogy. All her books are available at Amazon and Bella Books in both print and electronic format. She has also written two books with her partner Layce Gardner and they are More than a Kiss and Crazy Little thing. Check them out on Amazon.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 4, 2018
I don't think I have laugh so hard reading a book.
Chase is determined to try to overcome her fear of new and changing things. Her daughter is a mini Eisenstein. Her wife is Italian who can't cook. What follows is the complications of each person when they all three attempt to help or hinder each other with a lot of love for each other. Enjoy!
Chase is determined to try to overcome her fear of new and changing things. Her daughter is a mini Eisenstein. Her wife is Italian who can't cook. What follows is the complications of each person when they all three attempt to help or hinder each other with a lot of love for each other. Enjoy!
November 15, 2020
This series has captivated me!!!
Dear Lord I speed read and flip through books. NOT this one!!! The word smithing and character voices make it worth your while! Slow down and savor ever word!!! So fun you will laugh out loud and cheer for this extended little family!!! I can't recommend this series or these authors enough! They deliver!!!
Dear Lord I speed read and flip through books. NOT this one!!! The word smithing and character voices make it worth your while! Slow down and savor ever word!!! So fun you will laugh out loud and cheer for this extended little family!!! I can't recommend this series or these authors enough! They deliver!!!
May 21, 2019
Growing exponentially
Story is of growth and facing fears. Phobias like for germs, talking in public and fear of failure. If you likes stories with too many subject, this book is for you.
Story is of growth and facing fears. Phobias like for germs, talking in public and fear of failure. If you likes stories with too many subject, this book is for you.
March 19, 2019
Bloody well done, Chase! It would've been cool to see what happens to an older Bud, but this was a great end.
April 24, 2019
Nice story. Very funny at times.
October 25, 2022
What a funny book. Bud is for me is the star of this book. The action between Bud, Addison and Chase are so funny and at times heartwarming.
June 10, 2016
My third book by, I believe only despite Gardner’s name up on GoodReads, Saxon Bennett (none of the covers list Gardner).
I had, and still do for that matter, loved the first book in this series. I’d mentioned a ‘negative’ that wasn’t really a negative – the part where the cover of the book said Saxon Bennett, yet two author names were listed on GoodReads so I wasn’t sure if this was a solo or group effort. That, despite my calling that a ‘negative’ really wasn’t a negative.
For the first time I’ll mention a negative that I had thought of at the time but pushed to the side as something that might not be important, reading further would let me know if it was important or not. Well, I’ve read the three Chase Banter books and so I know now. Other than ‘Chase’s partner’, I never had a firm grasp of Gitana. Heck, I had a better understanding of what made up the personality of Gitana’s sister than I did Chase’s own partner. Gitana owned a flower shop and was busy with that all the time. She has a sister and mother, who were introduced into the storyline. She loved and/or put up with Chase’s insanity. And her ‘continuing running gag of humor bit’ was that she, disastrously, couldn’t cook.
Hell, by the end of the third book, I knew more about Chase’s internal muses than I did about Gitana. So, yeah, I guess that negative was there. Unfortunately.
So, first book was loved, only real negative was the relative ‘thinness’ of Gitana’s character. Second book was liked, and some of the negatives which will overwhelm and almost keep me from being able to finish the third book were mixed and played with in the second book. I mean, having almost every straight person around them suddenly realize they were actually lesbians was kind of annoying. And a reoccurring theme. Lacey started off as someone I didn’t really want anything to do with but wasn’t disliked necessarily. By the third book I wanted all contact with her cut off. Severed. I wanted her outfitted with cement shoes and tossed into the nearest body of water.
And that pink mafia thing? That kind of enraged me when it popped up in the second book. Funny how this stupid fucking lesbian nation thing that Lacey started overwhelmed my loathing of the whole idea of the pink mafia, eh?
In terms of humor – there are obviously things which were supposed to be humorous but which I just found tedious to get through (I assume the whole lesbian nation thing, the Lesbian Illumination Institute, was supposed to be a joke, humorous). I didn’t find it funny. I was ready to give up on the book early on. But I did in fact love the first book, and like the second so I pressed on. And there were moments of humor still that I found, you know, humorous. Like, I don’t specifically recall what had occurred, but somewhere around the 32% mark, when I was contemplating not continuing, a bit of humor broke out. I thought I had written more notes. Hmms. I’ll conclude this section on ‘humor’ by noting that having your story include a scene that involves people laughing uproariously at ‘funny moments caught on film’ is kind of like a stand-up comic that laughs loudly at their own jokes before anyone else can even react to them (I mean, the scene with the cop? That wasn’t funny, that was downright scary. I mean, the fucking cop had actually pulled his gun at one point. Do you know how fucking easy it is to go from ‘we are all just joking around, not really’ to ‘oops, the cop just shot everyone’? Apparently it’s really fucking easy to go from one to the other, based on all the news lately. That’s not fucking funny).
So – lesbian nation flopped for me. That whole muse thing got really annoying in this book. I mean, Chase is described by her friends, lover, and shrink as being ‘better’ now. But, and I wish to stress this, but she seemed, in certain regards, ‘worse’ in this book. I mean, it’s this book wherein she’s in the middle of some activity and . . . suddenly she’s blocked off all outside noise and she’s reliving a scene in her shrinks office? When her muse manifested itself and tossed around a photo that had been on the wall? And then back to whatever scene she had been in before this . . . think that had occurred (I’d normally call it a flashback, but I’m not even sure the activity ever actually took place). And this seemed to be a running ‘gag’ in this book. Suddenly Chase is off inside her head, arguing with Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor (or whatever her Muses were called). And not paying much attention to the world around her.
Right, so. Too bad the author went the direction they went. It’s the lowest rated of the three books in the series, but still over 4 stars, so obviously others didn’t have a problem with the way things turned out in this here book.
December 14 2015
I had, and still do for that matter, loved the first book in this series. I’d mentioned a ‘negative’ that wasn’t really a negative – the part where the cover of the book said Saxon Bennett, yet two author names were listed on GoodReads so I wasn’t sure if this was a solo or group effort. That, despite my calling that a ‘negative’ really wasn’t a negative.
For the first time I’ll mention a negative that I had thought of at the time but pushed to the side as something that might not be important, reading further would let me know if it was important or not. Well, I’ve read the three Chase Banter books and so I know now. Other than ‘Chase’s partner’, I never had a firm grasp of Gitana. Heck, I had a better understanding of what made up the personality of Gitana’s sister than I did Chase’s own partner. Gitana owned a flower shop and was busy with that all the time. She has a sister and mother, who were introduced into the storyline. She loved and/or put up with Chase’s insanity. And her ‘continuing running gag of humor bit’ was that she, disastrously, couldn’t cook.
Hell, by the end of the third book, I knew more about Chase’s internal muses than I did about Gitana. So, yeah, I guess that negative was there. Unfortunately.
So, first book was loved, only real negative was the relative ‘thinness’ of Gitana’s character. Second book was liked, and some of the negatives which will overwhelm and almost keep me from being able to finish the third book were mixed and played with in the second book. I mean, having almost every straight person around them suddenly realize they were actually lesbians was kind of annoying. And a reoccurring theme. Lacey started off as someone I didn’t really want anything to do with but wasn’t disliked necessarily. By the third book I wanted all contact with her cut off. Severed. I wanted her outfitted with cement shoes and tossed into the nearest body of water.
And that pink mafia thing? That kind of enraged me when it popped up in the second book. Funny how this stupid fucking lesbian nation thing that Lacey started overwhelmed my loathing of the whole idea of the pink mafia, eh?
In terms of humor – there are obviously things which were supposed to be humorous but which I just found tedious to get through (I assume the whole lesbian nation thing, the Lesbian Illumination Institute, was supposed to be a joke, humorous). I didn’t find it funny. I was ready to give up on the book early on. But I did in fact love the first book, and like the second so I pressed on. And there were moments of humor still that I found, you know, humorous. Like, I don’t specifically recall what had occurred, but somewhere around the 32% mark, when I was contemplating not continuing, a bit of humor broke out. I thought I had written more notes. Hmms. I’ll conclude this section on ‘humor’ by noting that having your story include a scene that involves people laughing uproariously at ‘funny moments caught on film’ is kind of like a stand-up comic that laughs loudly at their own jokes before anyone else can even react to them (I mean, the scene with the cop? That wasn’t funny, that was downright scary. I mean, the fucking cop had actually pulled his gun at one point. Do you know how fucking easy it is to go from ‘we are all just joking around, not really’ to ‘oops, the cop just shot everyone’? Apparently it’s really fucking easy to go from one to the other, based on all the news lately. That’s not fucking funny).
So – lesbian nation flopped for me. That whole muse thing got really annoying in this book. I mean, Chase is described by her friends, lover, and shrink as being ‘better’ now. But, and I wish to stress this, but she seemed, in certain regards, ‘worse’ in this book. I mean, it’s this book wherein she’s in the middle of some activity and . . . suddenly she’s blocked off all outside noise and she’s reliving a scene in her shrinks office? When her muse manifested itself and tossed around a photo that had been on the wall? And then back to whatever scene she had been in before this . . . think that had occurred (I’d normally call it a flashback, but I’m not even sure the activity ever actually took place). And this seemed to be a running ‘gag’ in this book. Suddenly Chase is off inside her head, arguing with Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor (or whatever her Muses were called). And not paying much attention to the world around her.
Right, so. Too bad the author went the direction they went. It’s the lowest rated of the three books in the series, but still over 4 stars, so obviously others didn’t have a problem with the way things turned out in this here book.
December 14 2015
July 22, 2012
Chase Banter and her dysfunctional family are back for another rollercoaster ride of fun and high jinks.
Chase has changed since becoming a parent. She no longer avoids taking the odd risk here and there. Neither does her ever loving spouse Gitana. Her culinary skills always end up in utter disaster. Much to the dismay of Chase and Bud and laugh out loud humor for the reader.
Writer, Chase, is on the board of the Lesbian Illumination Institute, but she wants out of it. She ends up at loggerheads with her BFF Lacey. Much hilarity ensues, involving hand cuffs and shady characters.
Gitana and Chase’s six year old (going on twenty) daughter, Bud, is an aspiring film maker. She is going to make a documentary of Chase’s journey to her new found fearless self, as well as anything else she fancies filming along the way. On her journey of self discovery, Chase learns to skateboard, gets herself a job gift wrapping and excels at it, even entering a competition. She puts herself in the middle of a germ filled clinic, all to prove how she has changed.
Of course, Chase still has her muses, Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor keeping her company, just to add to the gut aching laughter.
As if all this isn’t enough, jumping out of a plane looks to be on the cards too. But will Chase be up for it, or back out at the last moment?
This book is crazy, an absolute side splitting laugh throughout. Although Chase didn’t give birth to Bud, they are both so in tune with each other it’s uncanny. There are lots of wonderful multidimensional characters playing large and smaller parts all interacting really well together to further the story in this hilarious fun filled lesbian family romp. Lacey, Chase’s best friend is the sort of friend I think I’d feel the need to swiftly strangle. She has some huge control issues. I loved the way Chase eventually sorted her out. Donna is another great character too. It was nice to finally find out a little bit more about her.
My all time favorite character is Bud. I just love the way she is. Although I have to say, I’m glad I’m just reading about her rather than living with her.
I’m not sure if this was the last in the series, I’d love to see another book, especially one where Bud reaches adolescence. If Bud is the way she is at six, just think of the fun she will have when she’s sixteen! Which means as a reader, great fun for us too.
Chase has changed since becoming a parent. She no longer avoids taking the odd risk here and there. Neither does her ever loving spouse Gitana. Her culinary skills always end up in utter disaster. Much to the dismay of Chase and Bud and laugh out loud humor for the reader.
Writer, Chase, is on the board of the Lesbian Illumination Institute, but she wants out of it. She ends up at loggerheads with her BFF Lacey. Much hilarity ensues, involving hand cuffs and shady characters.
Gitana and Chase’s six year old (going on twenty) daughter, Bud, is an aspiring film maker. She is going to make a documentary of Chase’s journey to her new found fearless self, as well as anything else she fancies filming along the way. On her journey of self discovery, Chase learns to skateboard, gets herself a job gift wrapping and excels at it, even entering a competition. She puts herself in the middle of a germ filled clinic, all to prove how she has changed.
Of course, Chase still has her muses, Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor keeping her company, just to add to the gut aching laughter.
As if all this isn’t enough, jumping out of a plane looks to be on the cards too. But will Chase be up for it, or back out at the last moment?
This book is crazy, an absolute side splitting laugh throughout. Although Chase didn’t give birth to Bud, they are both so in tune with each other it’s uncanny. There are lots of wonderful multidimensional characters playing large and smaller parts all interacting really well together to further the story in this hilarious fun filled lesbian family romp. Lacey, Chase’s best friend is the sort of friend I think I’d feel the need to swiftly strangle. She has some huge control issues. I loved the way Chase eventually sorted her out. Donna is another great character too. It was nice to finally find out a little bit more about her.
My all time favorite character is Bud. I just love the way she is. Although I have to say, I’m glad I’m just reading about her rather than living with her.
I’m not sure if this was the last in the series, I’d love to see another book, especially one where Bud reaches adolescence. If Bud is the way she is at six, just think of the fun she will have when she’s sixteen! Which means as a reader, great fun for us too.
February 13, 2013
Quirky, witty and fun. Chase Banter is the most dysfunctionally functional person you will ever meet and her daughter Bud is a precocious and brilliant young girl who gets Chase to do things that she normally wouldn't do. Chase is also dealing with her best friend and employer Layce whose is having control issues and her muses, Divine Vulva and Commercial Endeavor are having an affair and causing all kinds of turmoil for Chase but she is determined to overcome some of her phobias.
There are several times I found myself laughing out loud, this is a sidesplitting ride that is quick, quirky, witty and fun. If you need a good laugh, some witty banter and the feeling of being perfectly normal in a crazy world then pick this book up!
There are several times I found myself laughing out loud, this is a sidesplitting ride that is quick, quirky, witty and fun. If you need a good laugh, some witty banter and the feeling of being perfectly normal in a crazy world then pick this book up!
August 29, 2014
In the Unlikely Event is Saxon Bennett's conclusion to the story of Chase, Gitana and Bud.. (plus all their various friends). I loved this story and felt she had developed Chase and company in wonderful and healthy ways. I found myself wishing I could be friends with each and every one of the main character's. I wish there were more adjectives to describe Saxon's writing because I would use them all in the most positive way possible to tout Saxon Bennett's brilliance! This is a delightful must-read!
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April 1, 2016
Another great book.
I loved this final installment in the Chase Banter trilogy. Laugh out loud funny. Yet so endearing to watch Chase work thru all her issues and be a good parent, a good partner and a good friend.
OK, Why doesn't Audible have all of these available? Come on Audible! The fans want to listen to these great books while we drive, commute, garden, whatever. Please. How about Abby Craden as the narrator.
I loved this final installment in the Chase Banter trilogy. Laugh out loud funny. Yet so endearing to watch Chase work thru all her issues and be a good parent, a good partner and a good friend.
OK, Why doesn't Audible have all of these available? Come on Audible! The fans want to listen to these great books while we drive, commute, garden, whatever. Please. How about Abby Craden as the narrator.
October 14, 2012
Saxton Bennett has never disappointed me yet. Her books are so funny and this one hits the mark again. I always laugh out loud with her books. Highly recommended. Keep up the great work, I love a book where I am constantly laughing out loud.
November 20, 2012
saxon bennett books are always on the top of my list. not a big fan of series books but i will enjoy re-reading this series
November 30, 2012
As the 2 parts before, so funny, a really goood read.
June 11, 2016
First book was the best
This was the worst. I hated the change in Chase...too much. I loved the character before the change... Not so much after the change.
This was the worst. I hated the change in Chase...too much. I loved the character before the change... Not so much after the change.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews