Read Fragment

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy.

THE LAST JEWISH VIRGIN was a difficult book for me to write about, if only because I feel like I shouldn’t be reviewing it in the first place. Most of this book felt like an allegory that I couldn’t unlock, or a parable whose moral I didn’t understand. Despite a blurb that made me think this would be more accessible, I can say with confidence that THE LAST JEWISH VIRGIN shouldn’t be classified as Urban Fantasy or Paranormal Romance.

My main point of disconnect with this story was the main character, Lilith. From the outset, it is clear that Lilith is unreliable and melodramatic. Seemingly simple events take place, all the while with Lilith quaking, shuddering, and generally over-acting her own story. When speaking to the Urban Fantasy genre, Lilith is the anti-thesis of heroine that learns and develops throughout the story. If nothing else, her break from reality grows more and more pronounced, and rather than believing that any real paranormal events were taking place around her, I was more convinced that she had an eating disorder, delusions, and an unhealthy obsession with her professor.

I have read books where an unreliable narrator adds spice to the proceedings, and I was able to enjoy untangling their observations from the greater “reality” around them (Iain Bank’s THE WASP FACTORY comes to mind). Unfortunately, THE LAST JEWISH VIRGIN never managed to slip me into that process. The book’s arc did not center on Lilith (or the reader) gaining any greater sense or reality. Rather, we all spin deeper into Lilith’s psychosis without hesitation or clarity. THE LAST JEWISH VIRGIN creates a caricature of an UF heroine in the real world. If Bella were written in the real Forks, Washington, most likely she would have ended up in a mental institution or dead in an alleyway when her blood-drinking, older “boyfriend” showed his true psychotic colors. That was the fate I kept expecting for poor Lilith (and part of me still believes that is Lilith’s “off camera” future).

While I don’t want to give you the impression that THE LAST JEWISH VIRGIN was poorly written, it was certainly not something I would read for pleasure. There are details from the book that I enjoyed and will remember, and as a concept it is an interesting premise, but the process of reading this book was more chore than enjoyment for me.

Sexual Content: Descriptions of sex acts and sexual situations.