The plot is patently absurd, but it tweaks the nose of patently absurd category romance plots that have come before, so I bought it hook, line and sinker. Joshua Grayson is a successful PR guy with a loving family and a big fancy house in Copper Ridge, Oregon. What he doesn't have is a wife and his father thinks that's just no good - so the old man puts an ad in the newspaper. Yes, an ad. To find his son a wife. Joshua is highly annoyed with his old man so places another ad, this one looking for a woman who will play the role of highly unsuitable potential wife and just maybe his father will get the message to butt out. Who Joshua gets is Danielle Kelly and a baby.
Danielle is all of 22, Joshua assumes the baby is hers, and she doesn't correct him. Life hasn't been easy for Danielle, raised by a single mother (who had her at 14) who was always looking for love in all the wrong places. Finally away from Mom, working as a grocery store cashier in Portland, life is pretty OK - until the day Mom shows up pregnant. Danielle takes her in, baby Riley is born, and while Mom says she's going to change her ways...she naturally does not. Danielle ends up losing her job thanks to unreliable child care, and social services expects her to have a steady life and income if she's to keep custody. She's desperate. So desperate she answers Joshua's ad and we're off to the races.
I've been reading romance a long time, meddling parents are pretty much a staple, and frankly Joshua's father is one of those guys who thinks the little woman should make a happy home, and squeeze out a passel of kids while the man of the house brings home the bacon. So if Joshua thinks he can tweak the old man by bringing home a much younger fiance with a baby - more power to him I say. Frankly the old guy has it coming to him.
No, what doesn't really work with this story is the romance. I just never believed in it because I never felt like Joshua grew as a person. He starts off the story as a jerk. The kind of jerk who uses woman but that's OK because they know the score:
He was happy enough now to be alone. And when he didn't want to be alone, he called a woman, had her come spend a few hours in his bed - or in the back of his truck, he wasn't particular. Love was not on the agenda.My. Hero.
Not.
And then there's the matter that, while they're overstepping, his family ultimately cares about him. Deceiving them sticks in Danielle's craw for a good chunk of this story, but our girl is desperate - a desperation that Joshua is ultimately counting on:
She was prickly and difficult, but at least she had an excuse. Her family was the worst. As far as she could tell, his family was guilty of caring too much. And she just couldn't feel that sorry for a rich dude whose parents loved him and were involved in his life more than he wanted them to be.And there's the rub. To counteract this, Yates gives Joshua a tragic backstory - a former fiance, a late miscarriage, and a spiral into drug addiction, which I think was supposed to make him sympathetic to the reader, but instead he comes off as even more self-absorbed and narcissistic. He doesn't seem to care all that much what became of the former fiance (he assumes she's living on the streets now) - he's more concerned that "he failed her." Um. Well, what did you do to, oh I don't know - get her some help? Look, people who turn to drugs ultimately have to help themselves break the cycle - but from what I could tell Joshua pretty much leaves her to wallow in her depression and drug addiction until she cheats on him with one of his coworkers - and then he walks away to live in seclusion back in his home town and wallow in "his failure."
Which leads us through to the end of the book with Joshua and Danielle ultimately deciding to get married for real. He proposes out of a sense of guilt. She accepts because it means financial security for her and Riley. Naturally Danielle falls in love with him, but knowing his baggage we get The Black Moment:
He didn't love her. He wanted to fix her. And somehow, through fixing her, he believed he would fix himself.I never felt convinced that Joshua moves past this. That he's only with Danielle out of a sense of guilt and atonement. I never felt like he loved her for her. He loved her because he could provide for her and "save" her. As for Danielle? Well, naturally, she's a virgin. So is she falling head over heels for the rich dude because he can make her life easier and he gives her incredible orgasms? Look, marriages have been built on less, but I spent a good chunk of this story feeling like she deserved better - especially since her sassy, spunky smart mouth is kind of what saves this story for me.
There's an audience for this story, no doubt. The joy I've found in Yates' work with Presents is that she can flat-out write The Fairy Tale. But, to be honest, Cinderella is one of the harder fairy tales for me to swallow in the modern romance genre. Too much Rescue Fantasy for me. But there's an appeal there for a lot of readers. The idea that the handsome rich dude will swoop in, fix everything, and give the woman a damn break for a change. Look, I get it. It's appealing. Just not to me. And Joshua never really grows as a character enough to convince me that he's past his need to assuage his guilt. Plus, he's kind of a jackass.
Final Grade = C-
3 comments:
You know, if having him wallow in "his failure" was essential for the character, he could have tried, repeatedly, to help fiancée and fail *at that* instead.
Or fail her by emotionally abandoning her, then growing up by trying to help her afterwards--again, repeatedly.
Otherwise, is self-centered asshole-dom, and life's too short for that.
Yeah, he "emotionally abandons" her by throwing himself back into his work after the late miscarriage while she basically stays at home locked in her cycle of depression. There's a whole lot of "he couldn't give her what she needed" but nothing of "what the hell did he try to do." Look, you can't save everybody. But there's no talk of him being with her through doctor's appointments, or trying to get her into therapy or any of that. Ultimately the person in this cycle of depression and drugs has to take a step towards the help - but this guy just went to work every day and left her when she started boinking his recreational drug using coworker who could keep her supplied. And then he was like, "oh well, don't know where she is now - probably living on the streets." Really!?!
Danielle deserved better.
Nothing against Ms Yates, but I wish authors stopped using the troubled ex as a character shortcut for protagonists, because too often they drop the ball entirely on what happens *after* and, as in this case, that says more about the protagonist's shortcomings than however many words they do say about his current life.
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