The Particulars: Inspirational contemporary romance, Love Inspired #1085, 2017, First book in trilogy, Spin-off from previous series, Out of print, Available in digital
Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I heard the author speak on a panel about cowboys at RWA. There were several authors on this panel but Navarro lives in Texas and touched on Mexican cowboy culture (and Mexican rodeos) and that was enough to intrigue me and pick up this book.
The Review: For this month's Something Different theme I decided to go with a New-To-Me Author and a category romance line I had never read before. I've read Love Inspired Historicals and Love Inspired Suspense, but have never read anything from the contemporary line. This reminded me a lot of the Special Edition line...just with more God Stuff.
This is one of those books that left me feeling disoriented and out of sorts. There's stuff I really liked in this book and then there was stuff that enraged me to the point where my head almost exploded. So, this should be a fun review. Anyway, there's no way for me to talk about the problematic crap without giving spoilers so you've been warned.
Adrian De La Cruz is a single father to his 10-year-old daughter. He got his girlfriend pregnant in high school, gave up his dreams to travel the rodeo circuit (he was pretty good) and with the help of his family got down to the business of raising Mia and starting a construction business with his twin bother. Mia's mother, being young, sinking into addiction, and with a crappy home life, willingly gave up custody to Adrian and took off for parts unknown almost immediately after giving birth.
Nikki Bergmann is back home in Clear Water, Texas not because she wants to be, but because an accident has jacked up her knee. Nikki is a travel guide, one of those outdoor adventure types who takes folks on tours in the Grand Canyon. Past ready to leave Texas in the dust, she decides to take her busted up knee off-road biking on her late mother's ranch, gets in an accident, jacks up her bike and knee (again) oh...and a storm has blown in. Adrian was checking a downed fence line on the border of the property and rescues her. He had a terrible crush on her in high school, but she was three years older (translation: out of his league) and blew out of town before he had the guts to approach her. He hadn't heard she was back in Clear Water, which is pretty amazing since it's a small town where everybody is up in all y'alls business.
This story starts off in a very uninspirational way. For one thing Nikki has got to be the most prickly, standoffish heroine I've read in a dog's age. Adrian is Mr. Nice Guy who tends to let his mouth run away from him - one of those that can't seem to let a silence just linger. So she's on her guard and he's trying to stop himself from sounding like a blithering idiot.
The small town world-building is great, the characters are well drawn, and the relationship between Nikki, her younger twin sisters, and youngest half-sister is dynamite. Mia is just enough kid and "wise beyond her years" without being a plot moppet. She is also recovering from a knee injury, the result of a rodeo accident that has turned up all of Adrian's over-protective instincts - so she and Nikki take to each other right away - despite Nikki's wariness and Big Secret.
And that's where this book went to Hell. Nikki's Big Secret is that she fell for the wrong boy when she was 17 and got pregnant. He was using her and two-timing on his girlfriend (a woman he later married and knocked around before she dumped him). When she tells him she's pregnant he's like "get rid of it" and "if you tell anybody I'll deny it's mine and everybody will know you're a lying slut." Things aren't great at home for Nikki at that time thanks to her stepmother so she hides the pregnancy from her Dad, her sisters and goes to live with her Mom's aunt who gets her through the pregnancy and has the baby boy adopted by distant relatives who want children but are unable to conceive. Nikki stays away from home and builds a life in Arizona - only to have an accident and another disastrous relationship send her back to Texas to recover.
So yeah. We all know where this is going right? Nikki knows she has to tell her family the truth of why she left home and why she hasn't been back in, like, 12 years. Adrian does not think highly of his Baby Mama for "abandoning" Mia to his care and she, naturally, blows back into town - now sober for 3 years - and hoping to meet her daughter. Adrian freaks his shit out, which Nikki witnesses. So when Adrian finds out about Nikki having a baby, and giving that baby over to another family to adopt? He freaks his shit out.
And...that's the rub. The author may want me to think that Adrian is this dynamite, sacrificing single father but he is so blindingly insensitive that I started screaming at my Kindle screen. He's completely incapable of looking at anything outside of his own perspective. He doesn't "get" that his Baby Mama was scared, young, not ready to be a Mom, and had NO family support. He thinks, "Well, she had me and my family and she left anyway so she sucks." He doesn't think that Nikki was young, scared, her life at home was strained and the boy she thought loved her used and abandoned her. No, Nikki just threw away her baby without so much as a by-your-leave.
By this point in the story Nikki goes from prickly to a bit too downtrodden for my tastes, but at least once the light dawns for douchecanoe Adrian and he goes running off to beg her forgiveness, she gets a few choice words in. Not nearly as forceful as I would have liked, but frankly I felt like Adrian should have suffered mightily, crawling over broken glass through colonies of fire ants. Mores the pity.
Since this is an inspirational, let's talk God Stuff. On a scale of 1-10 this is probably hovering around a 6.5. The characters believe that God has a plan for their lives. They attend church. They socialize with people they attend church with. They pray. The God Stuff is fairly light in the beginning but gets heavier starting around the halfway point.
All in all I'm left with conflicting feelings. Navarro is a good category-length writer, hitting her beats, building an interesting world, writing interesting characters, and throwing in some good smooching scenes to build romantic tension. But OMG, Adrian's reaction and judgmental attitude towards his Baby Mama and once Nikki's Big Secret comes to light ENRAGED me. I have no idea how to assign one grade to encapsulate my yo-yo emotions so I'm assigning this a catch-all C grade and calling it done.
Final Grade = C
3 comments:
You know, godly-stuff aside (I don't touch anything god-related, regardless of what god is involved), I think that my anger at the misogyny that permeates EVERYTHING has increased so much over the past four years or so, that what I could have tolerated (if not quite forgiven) in fiction in, say, 2015, will now set me to burn with incandescent rage for days.
Life's too short for that, so.
I don't have books enrage me too often, but when they do, I can't finish the book, so good on you for getting past the rage to finish.
My trigger is violence against women or children. Two books sent me over the edge with it this past month, and I had a hard time getting back in the mood to read.
AL: Oh Lord, yes. I couldn't put my finger on it while reading through my red haze of anger - but it was the misogyny that just KILLED me. How dare that a$$hole pass judgement on these women and the incredibly difficult choice they made. The lack of empathy was staggering.
Dorine: The only way I got through this one was because the enraging bits didn't come until nearly the end and the LI line is pretty short. Longer than Presents, but shorter than a Special Edition. And I was enjoying the story until I wanted to run over the hero with a bus.
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