Twenty-Dollar Rag: A Dunham Tale

Tales of Dunham #2.5

by Moriah Jovan

ONE NIGHT. ONE MAN. ONE DRESS. Regina Westlake sees nothing wrong with her clubbing lifestyle until the gorgeous guy cleaning her pool refuses to play her games. When he's hired to be her arm candy for a formal event, he makes his disdain for her clear by re-dressing her in something far more appropriate than what she had worn to the party. Shattered, she takes his contempt, his dress, the memory of his kiss-and rebuilds her life from the ground up. She never expects to see him again, but when she does...

72 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

About the author

MORIAH JOVAN writes what her imaginary friends tell her to write. Thus far, they have shown up in the novels Dunham, The Proviso, Stay, Magdalene, Paso Doble, We Were Gods, Black Jack, Lion’s Share, 1520 Main, and “Twenty-dollar Rag,” published by B10 Mediaworx. They will, most likely, continue to order her around until she hits on the right drug and dosage. Fortunately, her husband is very understanding of all the other people in her life and her children have no need of their own imaginary friends since they know all of mommy’s.

Moriah has been doing this self-publishing thing since 2008 and has the war wounds to prove it. She’s a Chiefs and Royals fan, half-assed planner, dilettante DIYer, and aspiring odalisque. She regularly thumbs her nose at her to-do list as if it has any authority over her at all. Her goal is to finish all the craft projects she has begun in her life.

All of them.

Reviews

[Estara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a cute short read - at font size 12 points it was 32 pages on my e-reader - that set up certain points in time and the situation in there and then jumped.

It was lovely seeing Vachel again, and get some cameos from Bryce, Giselle and their son. They all sounded like you would expect them to sound if you had read The Proviso and Stay, even though they only had a few lines. Moriah Jovan really has a knack for creating memorable scenes with few words.

Due to the really short size - it's around 11000 words - there were some short cuts I wasn't so happy with: the punishing kiss at that evening shindig; the idea that the heroine manages to build a store for antiques and have a manager and two employees, but not enough money or interest to buy a TV so she knows what is happening in the US a year earlier; the fact her destructive mother can move on without being charged for the damage she tried to do to a good but weak man; the very fast way Vachel and the heroine jump into bed together at the end - a hot kiss and a promise of future meetings would have done just as well and made me believe in the heroine's sense of self-worth even more; the thought that Vachel had lots of girl friends in between but kept thinking of the way they had danced that one night every few months or so (and that he would let 8 years go by without trying to find her, even before the shit hit the fan with her father, if he felt that strongly).

I think all of these could have been solved by making it a novella of 33000 words or something similar, but I guess it wasn't what the editor of the anthology called for.

[Lucinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great novella in the Dunham series. Loved seeing Vachel all grown up.