Toxic Triangle

I’m not quite sure what I was expecting with this book, but when I got wasn’t quite it. The book review site where I got it from stated it was a small-town romance and chick lit. I was curious to see which way it would lean more, as I find that chick lit is often more of a romance with an unhappy ending.

The book was slow to start, detailing Rose’s move to her aunt’s old cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. While she was from Edinborough originally, she had spent the last six years in London pursuing her career. She used to enjoy the visits to her aunt’s cottage when her family vacationed there, so her aunt left it to her. She soon meets the local laird in a near traffic accident. What follows is a strange romantic triangle, where she and the laird develop an intense attraction to each other, but he is bedeviled by his ex-girlfriend whom he believes is a danger to herself. In fact, he makes Rose secondary in his life to placating this ex-girlfriend. Things at the end of go completely psycho, which I was not expecting.

In the end, I didn’t really find this romantic much at all. I thought the hero was a bit spineless where the ex was concerned, and Rose should have given him his walking papers instead of sleeping with him right at the start! The book is overly long and at times repetitious. I do understand Rose’s confusion and hurt, but going over and over everything again and again was a bit much. I didn’t get the sense of rising action and progressive complications that would have made this interesting.

I didn’t appreciate either the multiple digs at Americans and “Yanks.” I would think the author would know that there are a lot more Americans who have the potential to buy her book then Scots, so why would she shoot her own foot and annoy a potentially vast audience? While Americans are only peripherally mentioned or briefly shown, it is never a good light. I find myself wondering if the author just has a bias against Americans or if it does reflect the Scottish small-town mentality.

How Far Will She Go?

Justine’s world has just been turned on its head. Her boss at an online magazine, where she has a pretty cushy job, has just died, and the new boss is his grandson, who does not have such a laissez-faire approach. In fact, he’s giving her only two weeks to prove her worth to the magazine. To what lengths will Justine go keep her job? And what is she going to do about her attraction to the new boss?

I found the writing style of this hard to read. It read like Justine’s stream of consciousness, making it choppy and not wholly coherent at times. Lots of one-line paragraphs and short-phrase sentences broke it all up too much, not allowing for a cohesive flow of narrative. At times, also, I felt like the author was trying too hard to be funny, making many instances of potential humor fall flat. Justine’s head is not a comfortable place to be in on several counts, including the ones just mentioned. Also, she is very self-centered and takes little personal responsibility for her actions.

Rather than finding this a fun romantic comedy, I found this to be a disjointed work that was actually hard to read because the narrative flow–and the right amount and type of humor–just wasn’t there.

Will Cadence and Fitz Find Their HEA?

We’re now 17 years after the end of Cadence Untouched, the first book in this duet. We first meet Cadence in her role as the owner of a non-profit that helps DACA individuals. She is surprised when her daughter’s date for the prom—whom her daughter states is just a friend—reminds her of Fitz. When she finds out his last name, she figures out that the young man must be his son. While doing her regular run at a different place in the city, she actually runs into Fitz. She had already determined to tell her daughter, Kallie, about her father; she had previously spun a tale that she didn’t know who her father was. Now, what will she tell Fitz?

I feel that the pacing wasn’t quite right with this book. I fully expected Cadence to tell Fitz about Kallie early in the book, maybe at the end of the first act or at least by the midpoint, so that the both of the book would follow the aftermath of the revelation and them all, perhaps, working toward becoming a family. Instead, the bulk of the book seemed to be about the evolving relationship between Cadence and Fitz, without her having divulged that they had a child. This might have been okay (though I think it still should have happened by the midpoint) if Cadence had wrestled more often with whether (and when) she should tell him. She did now and then (and not often for long) and more towards the end when it looks like the secret may get out anyway, but there definitely should have been more persistent inner conflict for Cadence. I thought Fitz sometimes still thought, spoke, and acted a trifle immature for his age (39).

The author clearly has some very strong political views about DACA and immigration, and she made Cadence very passionate about these topics. This is fine, but at times the dialogue felt more like political proselytizing than real conversation, which I think is unfortunate.

The end, to me, felt like it came out of nowhere. We know that Fitz’s father is a nasty piece of work, but I wasn’t expecting his cruelty and the dramatic way in which he exited the story. Unfortunately, the book had more than the common issues with grammar, punctuation, and spelling. At times plurals and possessives were confused, like panty’s vs. panties or references to family members as a group (e.g., the Millers, not the Miller’s). Some sections in italics weren’t properly italicized, with some formatting shifts coming within sentences and even words. There were some issues on occasion with capitalization.

Oh, and the author totally messed up which Austen novel Elizabeth Bennet is from; that dear heroine is from Pride and Prejudice, not Sense and Sensibility! Supposedly, Fitz read some Regency and Gothic novels to make him feel closer to Cadence. (They did have a discussion about the novels in Book One.)

If the first book got you emotionally invested in Cadence and Fitz, you would most likely want to read about their second chance at love. If you haven’t, this book could be read as a stand-alone, but the flaws in it and the pacing issues may be enough to distract you from reaching the end.