Me, Myself, and Why? [MP3 CD]

Me Myself and Why by MaryJanice Davidson

This is the first book in a new trilogy by Ms Davidson and it features Cadence Jones a not so typical FBI agent, who just happens to have a multiple personality disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder. No, not your usual comedic romance plot lines. But then again this IS MaryJanice Davidson we're talking about. She is the one who was able to turn forced sex (MJD did acknowledge this to be a rape scene) into a semi-series Secrets: The Best in Women's Erotic Romance, Vol. 6 and the participants into semi-recurring characters in her Betsy Queen of the Vampires books. So if anyone can take a politically incorrect theme and turn it into an interesting story it's MaryJanice Davidson.

Unfortunately I had a very difficult time finding anything humorous about an FBI agent with three very different personalities. The personalities range from namby- pamby (Cadence) to down right violent (Adrienne) and smartly manipulative (Shiro). Granted this is a branch of the FBI that can only come out of Ms Davidson's very fertile imagination, as it also houses pickpockets, sociopaths, psychopaths and other diverse and rather unfunny characters. And the idea that the FBI would use mentally damaged people because if you weren't already mentally unstable, working the job would make you so, made sense in a twisted sort of way.
The story itself was clever was not difficult to read. What I DID have a problem with was keeping track of which personality I was reading about at the moment. We would start out with Cadence being in the forefront; her conversation or thought would stop half way through and we would be on to Shiro. I did not really understand what was going on in between some of the chapters...who I was reading about until the end I thought it was the killers' ramblings, but once you know who the killer is you realize that isn't possible.

The romance was weak and felt somewhat cut and pasted in. Although it's a nice thought that someone with these kinds of problems would attract a man like that and it makes sense that his upbringing was around his sister who also suffered from a mental issue so he would be familiar and comfortable with a woman with mental health problems. I didn't like his manipulative ways with Cadence. and I found myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm wondering just what the next two books are going to involve.

I can see people having quite different opinions about this book, but I really don't see anyone loving it. I liked that it was a quick read. The chapters are rarely longer than 3 pages. It has some funny parts but never laugh-out-loud funny. It is part murder mystery, part romance, part study in psychological disorders.

The premise of the book is really off the wall, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief for a good story. This is only a so-so story. Cadence works for a division of the FBI called BOFFO. Apparently they are staffed solely by people with fairly severe psychological disorders. In real life these people would never get into the FBI (except maybe as criminals). Cadence, our heroine's, disorder is multiple personality disorder. She witnessed a terrible trauma at age three that caused her to develop two added personalies she calls "sisters" - Shiro and Adrienne. Shiro, a petite Asian, is the no-nonsense martial arts expert that comes out when Cadence is in danger. Adrienne is the psychotic, totally deranged sister that comes out when Cadence is angry, as far as I can tell. Adrienne's part of the book were the strangest, written in verses, often including "Wheels on the Bus."

Cadence is the "normal" personality. She's pretty and blonde, is friendly, has good people skills, doesn't swear and thinks she's a virgin. Meanwhile her sisters leave her to wake up naked in bed with strange men.

Cadence and the BOFFO team are trying to catch a serial killer nicknamed ThreeFer because he kills in threes. The murder mystery part of the book was actually pretty clever and unpredictable. That said, the ending wasn't all that spectacular.

This was a so-so read, and I wouldn't really recommend it to my friends.

Fans of Queen Betsy, the Cyborgs and (my personal favorites) the Alaskan Royal Family know that the odd, quirky and unexpected is par for the course when you crack open a MaryJanice Davidson novel. Me, Myself and Why? certainly delivers the off-beat, piquant characters that make Davidson such a successful and popular writer, not to mention so wonderfully fun to read. But this novel is also longer on mystery and lighter on romance than Davidson's previous works and it has a whole lot more depth for the reader to digest.

This is the first in an intriguing new trilogy featuring Cadence Jones, an agent with an under the radar branch of the FBI which goes by the unusual (but fitting) acronym BOFFO. Cadence and her fellow BOFFO Agents all suffer from serious psychological disorders. Cadence's little quirk is that she is always with her `sisters,' Shiro and Adrienne. Sisters who just happen to be fractured pieces of her own psyche. And if Cadence's multiple personality disorder would seem to be an unusual trait in an FBI agent, consider her partner George - he's a sociopath.

Cadence has even more on her mind than usual these days. She and the annoyingly self-centered George are on the trail of a serial killer, which would be stressful enough, but Cadence's best friend's older brother seems to be making a move on Cadence - and on Shiro and Adrienne to boot. So Cadence is all about juggling her work and her personal life, but keeping them separate turns out not to be an unworkable notion. As she and George turn up clues at the `Threefer Killer's' crime scenes, Cadence starts finding that things are disturbingly familiar.

Me, Myself and Why? is an ambitious undertaking and while it is a little slow and confusing in the early stages (the jumps between personalities are a little tough to sort out until the reader becomes familiar with each of the `sister's' voices), the writing throughout is accomplished and extremely readable. About a third of the way through things really pick up - both in the central mystery and in Cadence's personal life. When I first read the description of this book on Good Reads, I was really curious to see how Davidson would make the idea work, so I was thrilled to win a copy through first-reads. Things were really getting interesting and complicated at the end and I find myself looking forward to the next entry in the Cadence Jones trilogy.