2009 romance. Emmaline Grant and three of her childhood friends run a
wedding business, everything from engagement photos to the Big Day;
she does the flowers and decoration. Jack Cooke is a family friend,
and the architect working on the business's various expansions and
extensions. They've known each other for years, but then all of a
sudden…
Bits of this work very well. There's the competence porn of
organising things so that the customers remember having had a
wonderful day, however much trouble they cause – less than there was
in the first book, though, and it's one of the things I'm reading the
series for. There's a build-up from friends to lovers that seems
sudden but makes sense given how well the principals already know each
other. There's some foreshadowing which makes me pretty certain I can
name the male leads for the last two books. There's background for
both Emma and Jack that goes some way to explaining why they've fallen
into the patterns of thought and behaviour that they have. All right,
there's not much conflict, but things are bumping gently along towards
the predictable conclusion…
Then, near the end, there's The Fight. I think it's meant to be
portrayed as them both being tired and making mistakes, but it comes
over as her deliberately rubbing him the wrong way, him being just a
bit less than ideally prompt in his responses, and her putting the
worst possible interpretation on everything and then refusing to
listen when he tries to answer. I'm not saying real couples don't do
that, of course… but (a) not couples I can believe in having a
happily-ever-after a chapter or two later, indeed from the male
viewpoint I might be moping but I suspect I'd eventually count myself
well rid of someone who was so ready to flip in an instant from love
to hatred, and (b) while I thought the scene itself was written to
show them both messing up, the sympathy of secondary characters is
entirely with her, admitting no possibility that she could have got
anything wrong in any way. And of course he has to do the vast
majority of the apologising.
It's a real shame. I mean, it's a romance, so of course there have to
be obstructions in the course of True Love. I get it! And the primary
audience for category romances is female… but surely female readers
also accept that women can behave badly sometimes, and perhaps need
to be told that they got it wrong (and so did the guy, obviously)
rather than just having their egos stroked?
I've read much worse of course, but after the lovely first book –
indeed, after the majority of this book – I was really expecting
more than was delivered.
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