Winning Ruby Heart

Disclaimer: Jennifer Lohmann is a librarian, and was RWA's Librarian of the Year for 2010.  We are, what I consider, professional colleagues - routinely chat at conferences and have presented workshops together.  

Winning Ruby Heart by Jennifer Lohmann is a good book.  However it's possibly a great book for all the things that it's not.  Which, I know, makes no sense.  But let me see if I can try to explain it over the course of this review.

Once upon a time Ruby Heart was an elite middle-distance runner with an Olympic silver medal to her credit.  It's while training for that elusive gold that her life comes crashing down around her ears.  She's found out.  Our dear heroine has been blood doping.  She's a cheater.  Stripped of her silver medal, getting sued by her sponsors, banned from any Olympic sport, hounded by the public, the press, the paparazzi and forced into a life of seclusion in her parents upscale home.  Ruby is now a 29-year-old with, literally, no skills - other than running.  Which she is very slowly, and secretly, getting back into via ultra-marathons - as of yet, and unlikely, to become an Olympic sport.  So she figures she's in the clear so long as her disapproving parents don't find out.  She did not plan on Micah Blackwell being at the very first race she was brave enough to enter herself in.

Micah works for an ESPN-like station, was an elite college and NFL quarterback until a hard tackle left him in a wheelchair, a paraplegic for the rest of his days.  Micah got tougher, learned to live his life again, went back to school, and has been clawing his way up the ladder at work.  When he learns there's an anchor spot with his name potentially penciled in, he is willing to do just about anything to secure that promotion.  And then he sees Ruby Heart at an ultra-marathon where he's covering another runner.  Micah interviewed Ruby immediately after her cheating came to light and needless to say he raked her over the coals but good.  He sees this "new" Ruby - without the glam make-up, flashy clothes and sexpot image and immediately realizes that she can punch his ticket to that promotion.

This story basically starts out with the enemy-to-lovers trope.  Micah has very strong opinions about what Ruby did - and make no mistake....she did it.  With her eyes wide open.  Oh sure, she was led astray by those around her, but in the end Ruby made her bed - she's lying in it.  And frankly she's tired of lying in it.  She's tired of not living and being too scared to even try.  For her part, Ruby is not happy to see Micah at that race.  She remembers all too well how he made her feel during that interview five years ago.  The short answer?  Like shit. Micah made her see just how massively she screwed up - how she not only cheated and lied to the public, but how she cheated on herself and threw her talent away when she stuck out her arm for that needle.

We all know what happens eventually.  Micah and Ruby are attracted to each other, but with Micah covering Ruby for the network there's a whole lot of "conflict of interest" standing in their way.  Also Ruby's past baggage and the fact that both of them are more than a little selfish.

This is where the book really stood out for me.  Ruby was raised to eat, sleep and breathe running competitively.  Everyone around her was "Team Ruby" - working towards that gold medal.  Ruby was raised, was trained, to think about Ruby.  For his part, Micah is selfishly looking at what Ruby can do for him, which equals that job promotion.  A decent chunk of the climactic finish is spent on the fact that both of these people need to see past their own noses.

This is a good story.  A nice story.  But it's more notable for what's not on the page.  For one thing, Micah's disability isn't used as a cheap writer's shortcut.  Micah isn't disabled to provide ready made angst for the author to milk.  Micah just happens to be disabled.  He's not hung-up about it.  He's not crying himself to sleep and shaking his fists towards the heavens cursing at God.  Micah doesn't need a heroine to come along to "teach" him that life is still worth living and how he needs to comes to term with the accident.  Micah is, simply, Micah.  He's a guy.  He's living his life.  He's ambitious.  He's a bit of a workaholic.  He's like countless other men we see in real life or read about in novels - it's just that he happens to live his life in a wheelchair.

Ruby is a complicated heroine.  Oh, make no mistake - she cheated.  But the author doesn't explain it away by making her some dupe.  Some naive girl who was lured to the dark side by villains twirling their mustaches.  Sure, Ruby's coach played his part - but Ruby said yes.  Ruby could have said no.  Something that she acknowledges, something she has to keep acknowledging because she'll have to live with it for the rest of her days.  I loved that the author didn't try to wash away Ruby's sins.  This book is about Ruby learning to live with herself, and her mistakes.

The author also says very interesting things in this book - a lot of it revolving around female celebrity, how the public reacts to that celebrity, and what it's like when that female celebrity falls from grace.  Ruby received rape threats even before the doping scandal broke, and she's well aware that as a woman she'll never be redeemed in the public eye as easily as if she were a man.

Where this book stumbles a bit for me is with the pacing and the romance.  Micah and Ruby are both athletes so there is a lot of body-talk in this book and naturally, as they are both athletes, you would expect that their mutual athletic physiques are a source of attraction for both of them.  But after a while I found this a little tiresome and wanted more lovey-dovey-mushy emotional "stuff."  I also felt the ending was really rushed.  The climactic moments are good - but Ruby's final race (a 100-miler!) is glossed over considerably, and the author deploys a villain to spur the couple towards a happy ending - which seemed a little out of left field for me.  Yeah, the villain is a jack-ass, but his motivations at the end didn't entirely work for me.

Still, this is a very good read.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, and think the author did a really good job handling elements that, frankly, we don't always see handled well within the genre.  To be frank, this story could have been a disaster in a lot of ways, but Lohmann never allowed it to go there.

Final Grade = B

Broken Promises for the Baby

Note: I know the author.  She was RWA's Librarian of the Year 2010, and I received the honor in 2011.  We are professional colleagues, and we presented together at Librarians Day at RWA Atlanta in 2013.  This is her third published novel and the third one I've read/reviewed.  I really liked the first two books in this trilogy, the second likely to end up as part of my "Best Of" for 2013.  All this to preface saying I hope she'll still speak to me if she sees this review....

A Promise for the Baby is the third book in Jennifer Lohmann's trilogy about three siblings.  The Milek kids grew up in a Polish-American enclave in Chicago, and what has been great fun about this series is how Lohmann has infused a lot of "small town" sensibilities in these books by setting her stories in a "neighborhood" of a "big city."  The culture, the sights, the sounds, the food!  It makes for such a really great concept.  That being said, I felt the strength of Lohmann's first two books were really her dynamite heroines.  Her heroes?  Were OK blokes, but not as strongly drawn (in my opinion).  So how would I like this last book featuring brother Karl Milek?  Turns out I was fine with him.  Oh the irony that I spent the entire novel feeling stabby towards the heroine.

From the time he was sixteen, Karl Milek has been tied to his clear sense of duty, justice and right vs. wrong.  His older brother, father and uncle were all killed by a drunk driver.  The driver had a history of DUIs, but he stayed on the payroll at his trucking company because somebody bribed a city official to overlook those transgressions.  Needless to say Karl grew up to become a lawyer and now works as the Inspector General for Chicago.  Basically it's Karl's job to ferret out corruption, which I mean - in Chicago?  Karl is a busy guy.  He's all work and no play, with one failed marriage already under his belt.  So naturally his well-meaning, meddling secretary practically pushes him out the door to a conference in Las Vegas, where, when he's confronted by his past, Karl gets rip-roaring drunk in the hotel bar one night.  He meets Vivien Yap in that bar, they get rip-roaring drunk together, get married, and oopsie, guess what?  Vivien shows up in Chicago a few weeks later to tell Karl she's pregnant.

Vivien comes to Chicago not only to tell Karl about the baby, but also because she's out of options.  She's been fired from her casino job and Dear Old Dad has cleaned out her bank account and anything remotely of value from her apartment.  Basically Vivien drives across country and arrives on Karl's doorstep in a car running on gas fumes and $10 in her pocket.  She's broker than broke.  She may not know Karl all that well, but she knows enough to know he's a "fixer."  She also knows that he won't kick her out on the streets - and our girl needs a place to live, time to find a job, and health insurance for her and the baby.

This story started out a little slow for me, mostly because it takes a while for the author to really delve into the characters.  For the first several chapters I felt like I was reading about people I had no firm handle on.  I knew Karl a little from the previous books, but since he's a stiff upper lip sort, he's not exactly forthcoming about, well, anything.  And Vivien is a completely new arrival into this trilogy's universe.

But the character development gains some traction once Vivien's Big Secret is revealed.  OK, this is good.  I finally have a nice handle on the characters and am learning more about them as people.  The problem is the more I learn, the more I loathe Vivien.  The Big Secret involves her father and why she got fired from her casino job in Vegas.  It's a doozy.  And naturally Karl finds out the truth via a third party and he is none too pleased.  I don't blame Karl one bit for being angry, especially 1) given his job and 2) having a deeply ingrained sense of duty.  Is Karl uptight and have a stick shoved up his ass?  Yes.  However this doesn't make him wrong.  And Vivien getting irritated with him when she's the one so clearly in the wrong is just annoying as all get out.  The worst of it is that Karl then spends the rest of the story having to 1) work through his issues and 2) gets treated like a villain even though his wife and her idiot father are the screw-ups.

That's the real problem - Vivien's Dear Old Dad, who is piss-poor con man.  Vivien has spent her entire childhood constantly moving around because Daddy needs to clear out when his schemes blow up in his face.  This is a guy who blew through her college fund, but it's OK because she's such a resourceful girl and she'll find some other way to pay for school.  This is a guy who robs his own daughter blind and skips out of Vegas - leaving her with nothing.  No job (thanks to him), no hope of ever finding another job in Vegas, no money, and nothing left for her to even pawn/sell.  Yet this asshole is still in her life because he was a single father and "did the best he could" and it's wasn't "all bad," Vivien has some "good memories."  And naturally Daddy comes sniffing around her again as soon as he needs something from her - ie. money.  And well she just can't say no to him!  And golly gee, he deserves the chance to know his grandchild!

Where is a shotgun when you need one?

Maybe I'm cold-hearted but if my father did half the stuff Vivien's Dad did to her?  It would go like this:

Dear Dad.  Leave me alone.  Stop contacting me.  I've filed a police report about the money and personal possessions you stole from me.  There's now a warrant out for your arrest, so I'd lay low if I were you.  Oh, and here's a restraining order.  Go to hell.  Sincerely, Me.

But Vivien can't do this because, well, she's a romance heroine.  Dear Old Dad basically gets to keep on doing what he's always done.  Karl sort of deals with the problem at the end by throwing money at him.  Because it will make Vivien happy to have her father stay in her life and get to know their baby (!!!!).

I WOULD NOT WANT THIS LEECH ANYWHERE NEAR ME LET ALONE MY INNOCENT CHILD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the lesson here is that Karl is the "bad guy" for being a judgmental prick (which he is, but it doesn't necessarily make him wrong).  Vivien's Dad gets a big check and the opportunity to keep having a relationship (and I use the term loosely since relationship to this man = what can you do for me) with his daughter and his future grandchild.  

This book technically ends happily, but all I can think about is the other shoe waiting to drop.  Oh sure, Karl can tie it all up in a bow, giving his father-in-law stipulations, but once a blood-sucking leech, always a blood-sucking leech.  And Vivien shows that while she can say "no" to him, she doesn't have the balls to cut this toxic asshole out of her life completely and forever.  Because, you know, the baby.  And he was a "good father" who "did the best he could."  Oh really?  Before or after he stole your college fund and then robbed you blind as an adult?

Yes, it would be a cryin' shame if that baby didn't get to know this asshole.  Boo-frickin'-hoo.

Seriously, it left me so very irritated.  I didn't see Karl as a bad guy no matter how unreasonable Vivien thought he was being.  You know why he doesn't trust you cupcake?  Look at your bloody track record.  I wouldn't trust you as far as I can throw a rock.

And I throw like a girl. 

Final Grade = D

It Takes Two To Tango

Disclaimer: Jennifer Lohmann was RWA's Librarian Of The Year in 2010.  I was RWA's Librarian Of The Year in 2011.  We don't exchange text messages or Christmas cards, but we are, what I would consider, professional colleagues.  We are also presenting together at Librarians Day at RWA 2013 this summer in Atlanta.

The follow-up to her strong debut novel, Reservations For Two, Jennifer Lohmann takes a big step forward with, The First Move.  This second book in a series features one of my very favorite tropes, the complicated, emotionally prickly, wounded heroine.  It's also a trope that is notoriously hard to pull off, mostly because romance readers are a fickle lot.  Oh sure, we love our warped, screwed-up heroes, but the minute a heroine starts exhibiting anything of the sort she's a vile bitch who doesn't deserve him.  To which I say - pfft!  What Lohmann does with this story is very smart.  Yes, her heroine is closed off, emotionally stunted, and kind of a bitch at times - but oh her back-story!  It's really heartbreaking.

Miles Breslinn cannot believe his eyes.  Here he is, at his ex-wife's wedding and who should he run into?  None other than Renia Milek, the girl who populated every one of his teenage fantasies in high school.  She was the pretty, wild-child party girl.  He was a dork, which meant she didn't know he existed.  A sad fact confirmed to him when he chats her up and he realizes that she has no clue who he is.  Oh well, he can't let his tiny bruised ego stand in his way.  He's no longer a dork, and he's determined to get a date with his former dream girl.  Now to figure out a way for her to say yes.

After her father and brother died in a car accident, the Milek family fell apart.  Renia's way of coping as a teenager was to rebel - anything to get her grieving mother's attention.  This led to a lot of partying, a lot of drinking, and sex.  Sex that resulted in her getting pregnant, getting shipped off to live with an aunt, and eventually giving that baby girl up for adoption.  It was not an open adoption, mostly by Renia's choice, and now that her baby is set to turn 18, Renia is bracing for the other shoe to drop.  She's so wrapped up with the idea that her baby might call her, how and if she even wants that to happen - that she really can't deal with a distraction like Miles.  But damn, he's persistent.

I thought Lohmann's debut was a very solid read, but this book?  There are moments of brilliance and heartbreak that just damn near ripped my heart out.  You bleed for Rey.  She was 16 when she gave birth, and intellectually she knows that giving her baby up for adoption was the best thing she could have done for the child.  Rey was self-destructive and 16.  What kind of life could she have given her baby, especially when the Baby Daddy calls her slut and denies paternity, and her own mother basically kicks her out of the house to go live with an aunt?  Also relinquishing her parental rights, making that decision, sobers Rey up to the point where she's an emotional brick wall.  OK, great - she's no longer drinking herself stupid and having indiscriminate sex - but she's also not forming any good relationships either, keeping her own family at arm's length.  Rey struggling with her past, and the years she has spent living in denial, are devastating to read about.   She may know that giving up her daughter was the right thing to do, but that doesn't make that decision any easier for her to live with.  That decision has a ripple effect in Rey's life and in her relationship with her own mother.  The moment in the book where she and her mother finally sit down to talk?  I mean, really talk?  Keep the tissues handy.

As much as I loved Rey's journey, what didn't work quite as well for me was the romance.  Miles seems like a nice guy, but I never quite figured out how our couple got to love.  For a long time I sort of felt like Miles was in love with the idea of dating his high school dream girl.  He owns up to this and pays lip-service to it towards the end, but I just didn't quite see it.  When?  How?  Rey and Miles weren't close in high school - at all.  He fantasized, she didn't know he existed.  There is no past relationship for them to build on.  Also she spends a decent chunk of the story pushing him away, even as she's leaning on him.  Rey is, if nothing else, kinda screwed up - so it makes sense she would run hot and cold.  I think I needed Miles' personality to be stronger to really ramp up the romance end of this story.

But you know what?  This book made me emotional, in a good way.  I'm not a crying sort of reader.  It rarely happens.  But there are moments in this story where I was reading with a lump in my throat, and I really think that's on the strength of the heroine.  Romance, as a genre, tends to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy focusing on hunky, beefcake heroes who are emotionally screwed up because their Mama, Daddy, Brother, Pet Goldfish didn't love them enough.  Yeah, heroes are great - but romance works because at the end of the day it's the heroine's journey.  It's a genre that relies on studs for the sex appeal, but it gets its running legs from the heroines.  Renia drives this story.  Renia pretty much makes or breaks this story.  And in my opinion?  She makes it.  She's stellar.  Don't miss it.

Final Grade = B+

Sweet Home Chicago

Disclaimer: The author won RWA's Librarian Of The Year award in 2010 and I know her.  We aren't BFFs or exchange Christmas cards, but we are, what I would consider, "professional colleagues."  We're also presenting together at Librarians Day at RWA 2013 in Atlanta.

I don't think readers are getting worn out on small town contemporary romances so much as they're getting sick of bland, tasteless, wallpaper.  World-building gets harped on a lot when talking about paranormal or historical romances, and yet not very many people talk about it with straight contemporaries.  This is what Jennifer Lohmann's debut romance, Reservations For Two, has in spades.  This a big city-set (Chicago) romance with a small town feel and it has an excellent sense of place. 

Chef Tilly Milek has come home to Chicago after a few years away to open her own restaurant.  Having grown up working in her family's Polish restaurant, Tilly's idea is to make Babka a bit more of an upscale eatery.  Her mother's restaurant is where you go to get Polish home cooking during the week, Babka is where you take your date on Saturday night.  It's been a lot of hard work, and there have been a few bumps along the way, including a scathing review by a mysterious food critic on one of Chicagoland's most widely read blogs.

The food critic in question is Dan Meier who freelances for the blog run by some of his college buddies.  His editor ran the post because he knew it would generate buzz, while there are others on staff who feel Dan wasn't fair.  For one thing, he typically eats at a restaurant on three separate occasions before writing his reviews.  He only dined at Babka once, and while his over-salted food is a legitimate critique, other events of that evening were beyond Tilly's control.  Dan's critical colleague essentially orders him to attend a demonstration Tilly is putting on at the Taste Of Chicago festival.  We all know where this is going right?  They "meet cute" at a hot dog stand and before Dan finds how who the mystery woman is, he's smitten.

The story pretty much follows the course that Dan behaved like a jackass, Tilly doesn't know who he really is, and he has to figure out how to make things right with her without sending his professional integrity down the toilet.  There's also the matter of some hijinks occurring at Tilly's restaurant - is someone trying to sabotage her personal dream?

There are other elements at play as well.  Dan has a strained relationship with his father, who expects him to wake up one morning and start running the family business.  It's because of this strained relationship that he may have jumped the gun with Tilly's review just a wee bit.  Tilly lost a brother, her father and an uncle in a tragic car accident, but is still close with her mother and two surviving siblings (Sequel Bait Ahoy!).  She hasn't dated since moving back to Chicago, what with her hectic work schedule and getting a new business off the ground.  I did wonder at times why she didn't knee Dan in his kielbasa 'n pierogi - but as the reader we see Tilly struggle with Dan The Unfair Reviewer vs. Dan The Really Nice Guy She Met At A Hot Dog Stand.

The author infuses this story with a deep love of Chicago, everything from the food, festivals, music and most importantly - the baseball (the Cubs and White Sox are their own religion).  She also takes a big city locale and gives it a small town feel by writing about an ethnic community (Polish) without falling into any unpleasant, insulting stereotypes.  It gives this book a lovely neighborhood feel, but gives Tilly and Dan a whole city of sights, sounds, and tastes to play around in.  The way the author writes about the setting, food, and the importance of both in her characters' lives is very well done.

There were some debut author-isms, mostly in the form of pacing issues for me.  I found the first couple of chapters a little uneven, especially when the guys that Dan works with at the blog were introduced.  But once our couple meets, and especially after Dan's Big Secret gets spilled, the story really starts cooking and the pages flew by.

This was a very strong debut with some nice originality to it.  I'm looking forward to the next two books in the series which will feature Tilly's siblings.

Final Grade = B

Note: This is a February release from Harlequin SuperRomance.  It is currently on sale at their web site in both print and digital formats.  It will appear at other retail outlets in February.