HAT IF IT FEELS GOOD?: BOOK REVIEW

Reviewed by Stanley Bennett Clay -- A novel by D. J. McLaurin [Taylor Nicole Publishing 404 pp. ISBN 9780909403804 website: www.djmclaurin.com] - D.J. McLaurin’s hard-to-put-down, exceptionally well-written and phenomenally plotted “What If It Feels Good?” is pure old-school pop fiction with an edge. Harkening back to the better days of Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, and Jeffrey Archer, and a terrific homage to Charles Dickens, Ms. McLaurin restores melodrama’s good name with a story as heart-wrenching as anything concocted by the Bronte sisters, while still maintaining a unique voice of her own with a contemporary and downright controversial slant few writers have been brave enough to traverse. The story opens on the mean streets of Detroit. Michael Bagley is an almost too beautiful street urchin, a cross between the angelic Oliver Twist and the streetwise Artful Dodger, homeless, eating out of trash cans, surviving anyway he can. The novel opens with three telling sentences: “Men were attracted to him. At just fourteen, Michael could see it. Of course not every man was attracted to the youthful sweetness of the innocent, but there were enough of them to make a lucrative living.”But there’s something special about Michael’s personality, as special as his unearthly beauty. Even as he half-heartedly hustles male tricks twice his age and older with mixed results, the kid’s got chutzpa and a lot of heart, with no desire to do anyone harm. He beds an older woman out of gratitude and genuine affection, his good heart earns him shared shelter under the highway with a loving homeless couple, and even his single mother, a stripper and a loving (if irresponsible) parent beset by unfortunate circumstances, benefits from his unconditional love and devotion. Ironically it is because of his protection of her (whom, against her protest, he stays away from to give her space with an abusive pimp-type) that lands him in trouble, as a gun accidentally goes off injuring his mother’s nefarious paramour. Swirls of activities ensue at a deliciously dizzying pace; court hearings, mysterious lawyers, the sudden appearance of an unknown father, the threat of incarcerations, and custody decisions. Suddenly the court gives Michael’s biological father, Joseph Simpson, a black billionaire entertainment and media mogul from New York, an ultimatum: either assume custody of his illegitimate son, or watch the boy be remanded to Michigan state custody. Both mother and son are devastated by the results, as Michael is whisked off to a New York mansion by a father he doesn’t know, and to a step mother and half-siblings who are less than cordial. Without resorting to simple black-and-white stereotypes, the author creates circumstances for Michael in his new setting so emotional that tears of sadness and tears of joy are guaranteed to fly, and after being roller-coastered through every emotion imaginable you’ll jump with the bitter sweet joy of parents at their only daughter’s wedding when Michael’s ultimate relationship with his father works itself out. Over time a bond is created between Michael and the rest of his new family, only for the now 17-year-old to enter into a deeply moving love affair with his father’s best friend, a man twenty years his senior, creating another grand crisis in a story awash with crises. Ms. McLaurin’s handling of the delicate issue of pedophilia is nothing short of miraculous; leaving readers with conflicting views and though-provoking questions that will spark discussion long after the final page is turned. Books like these—impossibly beautiful people, rags to riches, what price celebrity, a media eating frenzy, tawdry sex, infidelity, deep family jealousy, dark family secrets, international jet-setting, deathbed confessions, and the kitchen sink—usually have very little on their minds and are so often mere titillating stories poorly articulated (How do you say Jackie Collins-Judith Krantz?), but in “What If It Feels Good?” D.J. McLaurin has cracked the secret recipe for writing an intelligent and literate potboiler. It is almost a cliché to say that I didn’t want this book to end. Well it also happens to be a fact. What a hellified book. What a hellified writer. I wait anxiously for whatever she comes up with next.