I’ve been trying to branch out in my reading this year, and so despite not being a sports person I read The Art of Running in Heels by Rachel Gibson. For the most part I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t get past all the sexist and homophobic comments, especially those uttered by the heroine’s father (who is also the hero’s hockey coach). Trigger warning for quotes in this review that include misogynist, homophobic language.
Here’s the story. Seattle Chinooks’ hockey star Sean Knox gets into a small plane that is supposed to take him fishing. The plane is waiting for one other passenger, Lexie Kowalsky. She arrives in a massive wedding dress, high heels and veil but with no money or phone. Sean enjoys helping her out of her dress and loaning her a shirt, but as soon as he realizes that Lexie is his coach’s daughter he decides that she is off-limits, and he also manages to avoid mentioning to her that he plays for her dad’s hockey team.
Lexie arrives in full bridal attire because she’s running away from her wedding. Lexie was on a reality show called Gettin’ Hitched which is basically The Bachelor but with a ‘country’ theme. She meant to just do a couple of episodes and then get herself voted off. This would allow her to promote her new business of “haute couture” for dogs. However, Lexie is incredibly competitive and she got caught up in the contest aspect of the show. By the time she came back to her senses she was in a wedding dress at church. With the help of a friend with a car and a friend with a plane (the one mentioned above) she heads to the tiny fishing town of Sandspit, Canada, to lay low for a while. While in Sandspit, Lexie and Sean hit it off, which has repercussions when they return to Seattle.
I enjoyed the way this book made me care about and sympathize with Lexie, a person with whom I have nothing in common with other than the fact that we both like dogs. The writing made it seem perfectly plausible that she would appear on the show (Bachelor fans, this is where we say, “FOR THE WRONG REASONS!”) and forget to lose. It’s hard for me to get past the fact that that she calls her dog “Yum Yum,” but I forgive her because she gives Sean’s hypochondriac mother a three-legged rescue dog which plays out both hilariously and beautifully.
I admired the way Sean steps up to help Lexie with her many problems that arise from her participation in Gettin’ Hitched and her decision to run away from the wedding. However, he has some emotional swerves that confused me. He is very sweet to Lexie, says wonderful things about her, helps her with the show, and basically gives her every indication that he has feelings for her, which makes it stunningly hurtful when he says that he doesn’t and that she should be “better than the women who get mad and act this way.” Then he has another emotional flip-flop and decides that he loves Lexie after all and rushes off into her arms. I did not believe his revelation, I did not believe in his grand gesture, and I did not believe that Lexie would or should take him back.
The book is funny and when Sean isn’t being a jerk he and Lexie have a nice, easy camaraderie. I loved Lexie’s memos to herself and to Sean, and the way Sean improvs off of them. This book is the seventh book in a series and the only thing I thought I might have missed from the earlier books was a better idea of who Sean’s teammates are. There’s a cute scene of all the guys on a plane between games that gives a sense of them as people who travel together way too often and who might not be friends but who know each other very well.
Here’s what upset me: the book is full of homophobic and sexist slurs. According to Lexie’s dad, John, any man who is annoying is, in some way, like a girl, which is implied to be the worst thing a person who is not actually a girl could possibly be. John uses words like “sissy” and “nancy-boy” to describe men with long hair, men who care about hair, and men who don’t hit hockey pucks hard enough. It’s trash talk, but trash talk that is steeped in toxic masculinity. Here’s John commenting on a hockey game that he’s watching on TV:
“For shit’s sake. Hit that son of a bitch. What’s wrong with these young guys?…They’re more concerned with their flow than putting points on the board…All that hair product has shrunk their balls and now they shoot like girls….God, what a sissy.”
He refers to Sean as a “girly-man” and a Gettin’ Hitched competitor as a “slutty hillbilly.” About Sean, who has very nice hair, he says, “Goddamn nancy-pants. I’d love to rearrange his Chiclets and see how arrogant he is without his front teeth.” He also refers to small dogs as “nancy-pants dogs.” Secretly, he likes the dogs, but the language is still offensive.
This isn’t cute! John is not a loveable curmudgeon! This is ugly, this is not adorable, and it does significant, actual harm to people! Why are we acting like it’s cute? John isn’t any more adorable than a racist uncle, whether he has “a big heart” or not.
Meanwhile, Sean has his own issues with toxic masculinity. He repeatedly claims that the bachelor on Gettin’ Hitched must have a small penis because otherwise he could get women without being on TV. He asks an angry Lexie if she’s about to get her period. He tries the “not like other girls” thing when he says that Lexie, who is upset because he has rejected her in an especially cold fashion, is “better than the women who get mad and act this way,” and yes, I’ve quoted that twice, because it made me SO GODDAMN MAD. He worries that any expression of romance towards Lexie might make him look like, in his words, “a nancy-pants.” Seriously, I’ve never seen the words “sissy” and “nancy-pants” thrown around so much in my entire life.
This kind of language and behavior would be offensive in any context because of the homophobia, sexism, and toxic masculinity, but it’s especially glaring coming from characters who are supposed to be at least partially sympathetic in a book marketed to women. It seems especially odd is that we are supposed to think that John is a good dad and that Sean will be a great boyfriend. Why on earth would Lexie, or any woman, want to spend time with someone who thinks that being like a girl is the worst thing a person could be? What kind of message could Lexie have gotten as a little girl when she heard her father say these things in tones of repulsion? The words go unchallenged and unquestioned. Encountering them in a romance novel, even one about hockey, I feel betrayed and invaded.
Because I’m not a sports fan I’m probably not this book’s most specifically targeted demographic – the details about hockey were lost on me. Still, I could see why this series is so popular. It’s funny and sexy. There are some serious emotional issues at play – not enough to mire the book in angst, but enough to give it some solidity. The characters are three-dimensional and interesting and the plot zips right along. If not for the language, I would give this book a B.
However, because the misogyny and homophobia runs throughout the book and goes unchallenged, I’m giving it a D. It’s 2018. Enough already.
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I tried with Rachel Gibson, I truly did. Her writing is funny and sweet–except when it plays into the dare I say “locker room talk” of the sports team/players/men and their toxic masculinity. I am not a sports fan at all, but I’m less so a fan of misogyny. I get that it’s been treated for so long as a wink-wink convention that boys will be boys and talk like that, but I couldn’t five years ago and I sure as hell can’t now.
We, and the talented Ms. Gibson, deserve better.
John uses words like “sissy” and “nancy-boy” to describe men with long hair, men who care about hair
Sorry, “John,” but the guys on my real-life NHL team openly joke they should get paid in hair products and cut out the middle man. Turns out, young men prone to getting their faces smashed up are super invested in their crowning glory. Perhaps “John” would approve if male haircare was presented as a strategy for the manly pursuit of getting laid. By women, of course!
The John Kowalsky that shows up in this book is not the same John that was in “Simply Irresistible.” I looked forward to this book because Lexie was a cute little girl that I wanted to read about all grown up. I was disappointed and puzzled by Rachel’s writing because the name calling was not necessary and was just flat out wrong. This was the first Rachel Gibson book that I’ve read in years and it will be a long time before I read another one.
Ew.
I want books with women running businesses that make them happy, but “woman joins a sexist show to promote her business for expensive dog clothes and gets caught up because women just **have** to win when pitted against other women and isn’t smart enough to escape the consequences with basic necessities for today’s world (like a phone and money)” is a set up that is kind of hilarious, but also kind of fraught with sexist tropes. IDK, I can see some of those things being handled well in a non-sexist way by some authors, but all of that together doesn’t paint a picture of the kind of competent heroine I love to read. Maybe if she had kept going in the show because she actually liked the guy but found out right before she walked down the altar that he had been cheating, or maybe if she’d dropped the relationship before it got to the wedding point and was escaping intrusive press with a better plan than showing up on a plane and borrowing clothes from a stranger, or she’d been on a “Bachelorette” type show and gotten caught up in the forced romance of it all rather than the “beat all the other women” part, I wouldn’t mind as much. As it stands (and this is just from reading this review, not the book), she seems to be written with a lot of negative, sexist stereotypes; women are frivolous, women use their looks to get ahead, women have to compete with other women, women run on emotions rather than logic, women are flighty, women don’t plan things well, blah blah blah.
Just reading the first 3 paragraphs of the review turned me off of the book, but the rest of the review made me mad it was published.
I’ve read a lot of Rachel Gibson and genuinely love a couple of the books in this series. But in the past few years, either my tastes have really changed or her quality has really fallen off (or both). I really disliked the last one I read (2014, according to Amazon) and wasn’t planning on reading this one, even though it’s a return to the series.
Also, I am a Sharks fan, and beard maintenance is a long running topic of conversation (and also jokes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFBBQudA20g.
Thanks for this review; you’ve just saved me some time that I can spend on a book that won’t make me grind my teeth.
Wow. Ok then. I could never explain why, but ever since I first saw it, I have HATED the cover art on this book, and up until now that was enough to keep me away from it. But now that I’ve read the review, I have a whole slew of other reasons to avoid the book.
Wait. So let me get this straight. Lexie’s sexist father is the HERO of a previous book? Oof.
This sounds especially infuriating because, as a hockey fan, IT IS A SPORT ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF SHUTTING DOWN HOMOPHOBIA. There’s still toxic masculinity and misogynistic language, but players get fined and suspended for using slurs on the ice. Every pro team and many minor league and college teams have “You Can Play” ambassadors. Players march in pride parades. That kind of language from a coach would lead to a call from the league, pronto, and media coverage.
QUIT MISREPRESENTING MY SPORT.
I haven’t read Gibson since See Jane Score came out and someone on the AAR boards called out a character for using the word Oriental to describe a woman he thought was Asian. (i.e. “I thought that woman was Oriental.” “Nah, just bad eyeliner.”) Gibson’s response was that she doesn’t write politically correct characters. I tried to find that quote, but that was way back in 2003 and it’s probably gone from the internet by now. However, she’s made similar comments since then, like in this one from an article about hockey romances way back in 2007:
https://nypost.com/2007/04/09/romance-readers-hot-for-ice/
“The appeal of hockey is it’s not politically correct,” she said. “They hit each other. They knock each other out. It’s testosterone driven.”
So yeah, she seems to have some really dated ideas about how hockey players behave, and thinks she has to write them as sexist Neanderthals to be accurate and real “manly men”. Like, oh, you think my characters shouldn’t be sexist and racist? You’re just too politically correct!
I wasn’t interested in that 15 years ago and I’m not now.
Another interview where she defends writing potentially offensive things because they’re supposedly true to life:
http://ladyscribes.blogspot.com/2012/05/interview-with-nyt-bestselling-author.html
MV: Has there ever been something you’ve written and gotten heat for, or something that you’d wished you written–naysayers be damned?
RG: Yeah, I get heat all the time. Mostly for silly things like readers who get really offended because the cars in my books are “gas guzzlers” or the heroine is stupid because she ran in heels and “will develop foot problems.” I know that I’m going to get flack anytime I write the word “gay.” Someone is going to write and accuse me of being homophobic. Those people look for reason’s to be offended. They have issues in their lives that have nothing to do with me. I know what I am and what I am not. My oldest daughter is gay and is more puzzled by the homophobic accusation than I am. I get offended by people who want to tie by hands with their views of political correctness.
If I didn’t have to worry about the naysayers, I’d be a lot less politically correct because real life isn’t always pc. “
Another interview where she defends writing potentially offensive things because they’re supposedly true to life
Don’t let anybody tell you there’s no world-building in contemporary stories. When you live in a world in which you’re told your views are offensive and you write a world in which those views are uncontested, that’s the opposite of realism.
Gibson’s responses really make me appreciate that one review here where one of Mary Balogh’s books was called out for having a racist trope and she showed up shocked then she listened and apologized and said she was going to not do that anymore.
And it really doesn’t surprise me that someone who believes toxic masculinity is normal and good
writes homophobia into their books.
Between this and that book Good Luck With That I’m doubting that publishers care about putting out blatantly offensive books at all
Thanks for the warning. Will skip this author.
Wow. It’s totally reasonable to have characters with misogynist/homophobic attitudes, especially when you’re talking about characters who are involved in men’s professional sports (not that everyone in those sports is homophobic or misogynist, but these are problems that leagues have and need to deal with.) But there’s a way to talk about that misogyny and homophobia without acting like it’s *okay*, whether it’s having that character’s views change or having other characters treat it like the serious, serious problem that it actually is. You can argue that characters like John and Sean are realistic (fair!) but I don’t need to read anything that makes him sympathetic (and sometimes I don’t want to read anything with people like them in it at all.) Anyway I’ll go back to reading Avon Gale’s Scoring Chances series and Santino Hassell’s Barons books for now, thanks.
I used to like Rachel Gibson a lot, and “Truly Madly Yours” was a favorite for a long time. However, that was years ago and I’ve become somewhat enlightened since then. She inadvertently posted something on her Facebook profile (a supposedly funny but offensive meme about Hillary Clinton) that she immediately deleted, but she only sort of rolled her eyes about it instead of realizing the meme itself was offensive. Ever since then (and this was a few months ago now), I haven’t been able to see her in the same way. I’ll never read another book of hers again, since it’s so obvious where her politics and heart are. I’m not at all surprised at the tone of this book, and I’ll gratefully spend my money elsewhere.
I’ve tried a few Rachel Gibson books, even if I’m not a sports fan, by any stretch, and I do remember enjoying some parts but ultimately finding the male characters problematic.
There’s always that underlying thread of misogyny, and sometimes the male leads are unnecessarily cruel and cold, that I don’t even know if they deserve to end up with the heroine (esp. since her her heroines are usually really likeable).
As I said on the fb entry on this, I have not read a Rachel Gibson book since 2005 when I got pissed at her cavalier use of “retarded”. I’m pretty sure it was in “Lola Carlyle Reveals All” which made me mad for many other reasons.
As a hockey fanatic (@slimlove–Shark fans in the house, YEAH!) who reads a ton of m/m sports romances, I was eager to try Gibson’s SEE JANE SCORE a few years ago. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t remember the racist line of dialogue, but there were a TON of other things that really bothered me. Vlad was the only remotely interesting male character to me, but the way he was portrayed always seemed so xenophobic. (He’s no more sexist than the other guys on the team, and has a certain innocence that made me smile, but the “brutish Russian” aspect was always played up in the descriptions. Meanwhile, Jane is openly disgusted by him because in the locker room, she sees that he’s–GASP!!!–uncut! This from a character who
[spoiler]is secretly writing an erotic serial every week. The minute I saw that a foreskin squicked her, the story lost all credibility for me.) Plus, it was the internalized misogyny in the book that bothered me so much…Jane was so shallow! At one point, she befriends the hero’s 15-year-old sister (I think, I’ve blocked it out at this point so correct me if I’m wrong), to whom he’s the legal guardian. The girl is very vulnerable and hurting, clearly yearning a strong female figure in her life. Jane, of course, immediately takes her for a full body waxing, because we all know that fixes everything emotionally. Other than Luc (the hero) eventually preferring small breasts because Jane has them, the book is just in thrall to every make-women-feel-bad-about-themselves Madison Avenue standard of beauty. I remember lamenting about it to my best friend, and seriously considering annotating the library copy I’d read with Post-It Notes calling out specific bullshit while providing a list of ANYTHING else to read. (I haven’t thought about it in years, but GOD, I want to do that now.)
Long story short, I figured I hadn’t given Gibson a chance, and was going to try this one. I’m SO glad I won’t now.
People ask all the time how a peace-loving gal like me can be a hockey addict. That’s because hockey is about love, not hate. Watch any pregame warmup, and the bromances will warm your heart. Guys hug en masse after scoring goals! When a goalie earns a shutout, his teammates will usually come up to him one by one, stand forehead-to-forehead with him, and hold his gaze lovingly for several seconds. Watch any interview segment on a hockey show, and a guy will slash himself with one or more teammates unselfconsciously by the time it’s done. And people forget that when guys fight, nine times out of ten it’s in response to a hit on a teammate. I could go on forever. Factor in the amazing You Can Play Project, transgender NHWL hockey star Harrison Browne, and the way the US Olympic women’s hockey team successfully took on Team USA’s sexism to renegotiate their contracts, and I wonder where Gibson has been the past five or ten years. Sigh!
Ick, didn’t realize how to hide the spoiler (not that it’s a huge one, but hey)…if I need to fix it, just tell me how. I’m sorry. Guess the rant made me forget formatting…
Anyone who likes hockey romances (@robot above…sorry can’t figure out how to reply here) should check out Sarina Bowen’s series. I didn’t think I liked sports romances before reading them!
I read five or six Rachel Gibson books back when I was first getting into romance, and ended up having a lot of the same problems I have with Susan Elizabeth Phillips. There were a lot of things I liked about the books, but I couldn’t shake off this sort of patina of grossness, and eventually I figured I’d given her a fair shot and haven’t looked back. I didn’t know any of the things about her reported in this thread, but neither they nor this review surprise me.
Gibson sounds like one of those authors who thinks masculinity is quantified by how thoroughly a person rejects femininity, and a person’s femininity is defined by exterior appearance.
I’m amused that she thinks people are really upset about the fact that her characters ride around in SUVs or her characters run in heels. I somehow severely doubt that’s as big a problem as she says.
Incidentally …
Please tell me the book doesn’t really say this. Sandspit, Manitoba? Sandspit, Saskatchewan? Naah, it’s probably Sandspit, British Columbia, given the “fishing town” and Seattle references.
…
At which point I belatedly look it up and learn that Sandspit, BC, is an actual place. And it really is tiny: current population, <300. (Remember how NHL commentators used to talk about Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, as if it were some benighted village consisting of two igloos and a ceremonial lodge?)
I second the recommendation for Sarina Bowen, and another hockey romance series to try is Catherine Gayle’s Portland Storm. The locker room talk is refreshingly free of casual misogyny (although there’s lots of swearing) and the heroes are uniformly good guys. The series is also refreshingly diverse – the most recent one I read had a black hero and multi ethnic heroine, and there’s a m/m releasing soon I think. I found them ridiculously addictive. Trigger warnings though as most of the storylines deal with very serious themes. The first in the series is currently free I think – I loved it but the heroine is recovering from a violent sexual assault so do watch out if that’s a trigger for you.
Well, I will give this book a hard pass, and thank you for the warnings.
But for you hockey-loving commenters, just in case you don’t already have this in your lives, I give you the Minnesota State All Hockey Hair Team. If you’ve got time, watch through to the end for a shout-out to Romancelandia, and to our Neighbours to the North.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2704OHdFVew
Flowetry in Motion.
I went through a phase in which I glommed any Rachel Gibson books I could find—I even still have a couple of her books on my Kindle app. Some time around 2007 I just stopped reading her books. I would borrow one from the library, read a page, and then put it back in the library bag. The last full book I remember reading involved a heroine who returned to her small town and immediately criticized the women who got their hair done at the local salon because they didn’t know any better. That just didn’t sit right with me and I started to think about the other ones I’d read and started to notice problems with them. The biggest was the book in which the heroine’s fiancé cheated on her with a man. Having come from a Catholic background, I had a lot of internalized homophobia and hadn’t given a second thought to the idea that a relationship between men shouldn’t be portrayed as being icky. Yes, he cheated, but the fact that he cheated with another man shouldn’t make it any worse than if he cheated on her with a woman, but this was presented as the ultimate betrayal.
@no,theotheranne: The Flowetry video is glorious…for the first time in ages, I have hope for the future of America! (And sigh, Charlie Coyle cameo…I still count him as a former Shark, even though he was only in the team’s system for what seemed like ten minutes. I have the strange urge to find that video where he’s doing hot power yoga somewhere…)
Gibson definitely has antiquated dialogue and thought processes. I guess what hits me most is that she doesn’t feel it’s necessary to grow into the reality of contemporary writing. This book was really light and without much depth. No one gets cured from a serious disorder by having a dog. The resolution at the end between the main characters was shallow. The writing was just lazy. The heroine wasn’t really given a chance here. It’s a serious waste of money to purchase this book at full price. I can’t even think about the lack of caring she exhibits by excusing her characters behavior or comments as being “Not Pc”. The reality is that she doesn’t want to put out the effort to grow into today’s reader.
I really appreciate all of your thoughtful discussion and conversation here, and especially the trigger and content warnings for other recommendations. That’s very kind of y’all, and I thank you for helping everyone feel safe to both talk about our opinions and explore new books to read. TL;DR: thank you.
I just read this over the weekend on a flight. I’d never read any Rachel Gibson before & kept hearing her name brought up as a classic contemporary writer. I love a fake relationship trope, so I decided to make this my first from her…even leaving aside the toxic masculinity BS that dripped from every page of this book, which SB Carrie outlines beautifully, this was a terribly plotted book. I honestly kept trying to figure out how it could possibly wrap up in the few pages left towards the end… basically, this book is WAY too front heavy. You don’t even get to the fake relationship until like 70% into the book, and by then, everything feels super rushed. Aside from any thematic or tonal issues, I’m not interested in reading anything else from a seasoned writer who can’t get the pacing right. I’ll excuse for a newbie with promise, but honestly- that’s table stakes to me.
The free Catherine Gayle actually contains the first 4 Portland Storm novels/novellas.
As for Rachel Gibson, read her years ago and eventually just stopped. Can’t give a specific reason now (far too many years have passed) but I do remember seeing her then current book at the library and couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to pick it up. Not an issue for me as there are too many other books to choose from to bother with an author such as she.
I read all the Rachel Gibson Seattle Chinook books when I was a teenager and particularly loved See Jane Score. Just went back and re-read it over the holidays to see if it held up. It did not.
However, I’m still in love with hockey romances and my favorites are Sarina Bowen with the Ivy Years and the Brooklyn Bruisers as well as Sawyer Bennett with the Carolina Cold fury. Have also enjoyed Catherine Gayle and Toni Aleo.
Thanks. I have been tempted and waffling. No go now.
I love sports romances–any sport, even the ones I don’t watch or follow. And I’m a hockey fan from way back. I saw Gretzky play in person when he was still with Edmonton. But I think I’ll be skipping this one. I tried a Gibson book a while back and couldn’t get into it, though I don’t recall why. From what I can tell, the title is the most appealing part of this one.
I know I’ve read See Jane Score, but apparently it didn’t leave enough of an impression on me to prompt me to leave notes on Goodreads! I had been interested in checking this one out, but I will avoid it now – thanks for the heads up, CarrieS.
I agree with all of the other sentiments here about hockey making big strides toward equality, and am so glad that lots of other Smart Bitches like the sport too!
In addition to Sarina Bowen I highly recommend Kate Meader’s Chicago Rebels series – NHL team is inherited by three sisters, making them the only women team-owners in the league!
Greatly appreciate your in-depth commentary about character and story!