Cover Image: Loser Baby

Loser Baby

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Member Reviews

This book is wild. It was not what I expected at all. If you're thinking that with a book set in SoCal, you'll be reading about some rich kids, you're wrong. Everyone in this book has issues. EVERYONE. No one is particularly likeable, and they're not supposed to be. This is sort of like a movie in book form, like a Pulp Fiction vibe, full of action. I haven't heard many people talking about this, but they should be.

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Twins Jasmine and Jordan Frank escaped an abusive home altering birth certificates to pass themselves off as older. Living together in a tiny apartment in Santa Ana, California, they keep mostly to themselves. Jordan appoints himself as protector of his beautiful sister and attempts to keep her out of trouble. After accepting an invitation to a party, Jordan awakens to find Jasmine missing. The party was a wild freak show of designer drugs. He knows he was dosed with some type drug that knocked him out for the night to separate him from his twin sister. He panics and begins a search to find her. Jasmine comes to on the side of the road outside an In-and-Out Burger joint. She has no recollection of what happened, but she does recognize that she's in serious trouble. She's in possession of something that belongs to a dangerous man. What does she do and where does she go from here?

Loser Baby is a convoluted, crazy ride with a cast of losers. Points of view change with each chapter allowing readers to get the story and history of a wild collective group of characters. While it's an interesting concept, it's also confusing and quite graphic in language. The story unfolds over one day in Orange County in pages of insane confrontations and chases. There is no good guy riding in on a white horse in this one. Each character is severely flawed with questionable morals. Bovberg tells the "other" side of the story of golden California - the overlooked, down on their luck, underpaid, just trying to survive ordinary people. These characters aren't likable, but they're real. However, at some point, it all becomes overwhelming in the sheer volume of people and their lives. I feel like the end result are some character and plot lines left dangling. Having said that, Loser Baby is unique - a one of a kind type crime fiction that I won't soon forget.

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I had to dnf this book about a quarter way through as I did not enjoy the style of writing. I could not identify with the characters and did not care what happened,.

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Crazy LA, crazy drugs, crazy violence. Misguided siblings who have no one but each other are lost in the dark, gritty LA that is the haven for drug dealers, criminals, and gang members. There is no safe place for those who cross the wrong people.

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Thank you for the advanced copy

This was such an interesting read. Clearly he demonstrated that he had issues but the way the system is set up they had forge on. I’m glad he is finally able to get the assistance he so clearly needs

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i enjoyed that this mystery was based in Southern California, I enjoyed reading this book and the plot of the book. The characters were what I wanted and I enjoyed reading this.

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The Review

A gritty and surreal look into the various facets of life in Orange County, author Jason Bovberg does an incredible job of capturing the atmosphere and culture of the O.C. area and those living in it. As someone who grew up in Southern California and has family from Orange County, it was fascinating to see the setting and atmosphere come to life like that, as the O.C. has so many different layers and cultures bubbling within it, and this book really brought that to life.

Yet it was the layered approach to the book’s mystery that kept the suspense and thriller genre alive in this novel. The story really elevates the narrative by taking the original premise and mystery and flipping it on its head. The shocking twists and turns the narrative takes, and the really nuanced characters that gave this story the emotional depth that it employed, was so engaging that I was hard-pressed to put this book down.

The Verdict

A remarkable, chilling, and emotional roller coaster, author Jason Bovberg’s “Loser Baby” is a must-read novel of 2021! The mystery and intrigue the story takes plays well against the dark and seedy undertones of both the criminal elements of the area and the average people caught up in the madness the day becomes, making this story really engrossing to read.

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Very entertaining and unpretentious book that moves briskly along and then wraps up everything nicely at the end in an expected way. Artfully done and a writer to watch! I rec this book to everyone!

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Thank you to NetGalley for an early e-reader version of this book.

Everyone is a loser in this book. From Jasmine and Jordan Frank, to everyone they encounter in the course of one 24-hour period. Jasmine, having fled with her twin brother, Jordan, from an abusive home, goes missing, and that is where the fun starts. Through a frenetic tour of a SoCal town, the reader is introduced to various characters, all with secrets and wants that they don't share with anyone. It leads to a brilliant conclusion, which I will not spoil.

I really enjoyed this book, and felt the characters and situations were well-developed. The tension and pacing were very good, and kept me reading. I didn't want to put this book down, and had to see how it turned out. I loved the structure of the alternating points of view per chapter as it kept the action moving and really developed the characters well.

Pick up this book and go on a thrill ride with a pack of losers like you've never seen before.

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The party, by all accounts, was a success. People staggered looking for more booze, some had their brains fried from the drugs, there was loud music and there was more.

Jordan was one of the attendees, along with his twin sister, Jasmine. But Jasmine is missing. She woke in a strange place with a plastic bag filled with something she took from Tommy Strafe .. a dangerous man, a man who wouldn't hesitate to shoot you if you even blinked the wrong way.

Tommy is steaming mad and now both men are searching for her. Someone is going to die.

There's plenty of action on behalf of each and every character. Have to admit, I didn't care for any of them. They all had issues, the foul language was just too much, and at times it all seemed jumbled up in one big bag. The brother was overbearingly strict ... his sister was 17 going on 10. I found it difficult to care about either of them. The ending was fast, unexpected. I really wanted to like this book much more than I did.

Many thanks to the author /Dark Highway Press / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

2.5 STARS

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I rarely choose a book by it's cover. I've heard the warning. But I picked this one up from the cover and the title makes me start singing the old Beck song. I was immediately drawn in. This is the Orange County I use to know and still hate. Orange county is a study in extremes and the noir vision of it in this one is the extreme people outside of Southern California never see anymore. I found myself drawn back to the places I went in the early 90s that I wouldn't go anywhere near now! But twins Jordan and Jasmine do go there. And Jasmine makes a mistake. And Jordan is left to search for her. He gets more and more into the photo negative of the socal not seen on "reality" TV. I just loved it. I couldn't believe how quickly I finished this book.

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Loser Baby is first and foremost a gritty noir novel, exposing the seamy side of Southern California. The story's characters run the gamut from well-intentioned to downright evil and though some have more depth than others, almost all are in some way relatable. This book is action-packed, filled with car chases and terrifying realizations. Though it focuses on the darker side of human nature, it ends on a hopeful note. The ending is sad and satisfying; sad because you want more of the story, satisfying because you were really invested in the characters who came out on top.

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Firstly the cover drew me to this book! I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. Great writing, great characters and a great storyline. Time to clear your schedule for the afternoon, coffee pot on and phone turned off - you won’t want to put this one down. This was a compelling and thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish (and what a finish it was)!

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To most people when they hear about California’s iconic Orange County, they think of the bored Newport Beach housewives at Fashion Island or the giggling teenagers at pre-covid Disneyland. In Loser Baby, Bovberg strips that illusion from the stage and introduces readers to the rest of The real OC, filled with rundown apartments, skanky homeless methheads, and a drug addled teenagers racing down crowded boulevards on their way to drown out their nightmares.

Loser Baby introduces us to a pair of luckless twins who decide to party with a bully from their high school and his drug dealing buddies in a skanked wasteland cup-de-sac of Santa Ana. Like any good noir, we get a bag full of money and a group of people at each other’s throats racing around the County trying to find each other or escape from each other.

What makes Loser Baby stand out is it’s told through the ever-changing point of view of a group of losers who keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into hell. It opens with the twins, Jasmine and Jordan, who lose each other at the party. Jordan wakes up in their apartment without a clue if how he got there or where his little sister is in her mini sparkling blue dress. He goes nuts trying to find her. Jasmine wakes up curled up in the In and Out Drive-Thru without her purse, her phone, her sense. Looking like a homeless addict with a shopping bag of heavy stuff, she’s got no idea how to get home.

From there we get to know luckless loser after luckless loser all racing around and heading toward a giant dead-end as the nastiness swirls around them getting more and more serious as bodies start turning up and there ain’t no salvation nowhere.

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I finished Loser Baby quite a few days ago, but I’ve had trouble coming up with my review. Why? Because there’s absolutely no way I could adequately explain, summarize, or expound intelligently about this story without ruining it for you. I’ll do my best, but geez-o-pete you really need to read it for yourself.

Mr. Bovberg has created a story that’s very complex and yet at the same time very simple. The premise is simple – there’s a party, a robbery, and a chase. Where it gets complex is the characters – your opinion of who’s the “good guy” and who’s the “bad guy” in this story changes often. You’ll need to take notes and keep up (or do like I did and read the whole thing in 2 days).

What a refreshing surprise that this mystery doesn’t have a “white hat” main character trying to get the evil dude. Each and every character has their good and bad, and you’re simply along for the ride. Even the secondary characters pull you in.

The book changes points of view each chapter. I adore this, and Mr. Bovberg pulls it off beautifully. The ability to change points of view within the book was so well done it makes for a well rounded view of what was happening to each character. This makes you care about each character while also making you question if you want them to achieve their goals. You’ll have lots of feelings about these people, I promise.

I won’t give it away, but I guarantee you that the ending is nothing like you’re expecting. It’s very satisfying, but completely out of left field!

I highly recommend this book if you like mysteries, noir, surprise endings, or simply well-told tales.

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Loser Baby was a wild ride, that’s for sure! Action packed and unrelenting, there is no dull moment in the 24 hours Jordan searches for his missing twin sister, Jasmine. Coming off a high, possibly mentally unstable, and probably obsessed with his sister, Jordan is the epitome of an unreliable, complex narrator. I loved Jordan’s character because I didn’t know if I could trust him; I wanted to strangle him for his rash decisions, but also give him a hug and tell him to breathe. Normally I don’t like multiple points of view, but the format worked wonderfully here because the narrators were so unreliable. Each chapter switches points of view between the twins and numerous secondary characters, offering new perspectives on the same story. When I had a question, a new character would pop up with the explanation, propelling the story forward and showing not only that the truth isn’t black and white, but also that there are no good guys and bad guys. Loser Baby is a world of grey.

On the flip side, because there were so many characters and each one was treated equally, it was hard to feel any emotional attachment. Everybody was treated as a main character and while I appreciate that each person had a history, their back story felt more like an explanation of their personality to add drama than character development to make them real. We got a taste of each person’s life, a peek into their personality, before they disappeared. Sometimes I didn’t even realize a character was gone until a few chapters later, I would wonder “Hey, what happened to X?” and then go back and reread that they walked away/got thrown off a boat/literally just disappeared and realize that was their exit. A quick little blurb and then they were gone. Even Jordan, whose character I loved at first, we barely broke the surface on – his overprotective, manic behavior was explained by his abusive childhood and unstable mother, but there was so much more mentioned that was never explored: was Jordan actually obsessed with Jasmine? Did their codependent relationship cross a line? How the heck did he afford that car?

Loser Baby was beautifully written – I could visualize each person, their antics, their tantrums, their fear – and some parts felt more like I was watching a movie than reading a book, but there was so much more that could have been explored. It fit somewhere between an action thriller and a drama and I wish it was either more plot driven like an action thriller or more emotionally driven like a drama. Even though Loser Baby didn’t hit that mean punch the first few chapters hinted at, it was a fun read and I enjoyed it!

(But seriously…how did Jordan afford that car?)

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Loser Baby is straight merciless tragedy, hold the comedy, with intense, unrelenting and unrepentant action throughout. Told from the perspectives of multiple characters, this story delves deep into the dark corners of society’s underbelly – poverty, drugs, crime, abusive relationships, and mental illness – while also finding a way to highlight beautiful aspects of life such as resilience, forgiveness, connecting with others, rising to the occasion and the eternal pursuit of a better life.

Loser Baby follows a cast of characters who are profoundly flawed, clinging to the bottom rung of the economic ladder and trying to overcome the crappy hand life has delt them. They’re all involved in the dual searches for Jasmine Frank and Tommy Strafe’s valuable coin collection, both missing since last night’s raging designer drug-fueled party. While all participants have the same end goal in mind, finding Jasmine and the coins, they have vastly different motives and methods for bringing events to a close. In fact, literally no character is safe from violence and harm.

Beyond the strong character development and twisting plot, the best part of Jason Bovberg’s novel was the fantastic choice to have each chapter told from a specific character’s perspective. This adds depth to the storytelling rather than following one straight narrative that clearly identifies the protagonists from the villains. Instead, good vs. bad is a fluid concept in Loser Baby, forcing the reader to continually confront their feelings for each person as the story unfolds, changing opinions several times as events progress towards the conclusion. It’s quite the emotional roller coaster from start to finish.

A solid new entry into the Thriller Noir genre, Loser Baby is a complex story that deserves to be consumed and digested by thoughtful readers who want an emotional experience. It’s not for the faint at heart. But if you dare to open the front cover, you will be rewarded with an emotional read that will stick with you long after completion.

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