DNF
Title: Love on the Rocks
Author: Pamela Yaye
Publication Info: Harlequin February 2010
ISBN: The reader spen
Genre: Contemporary Romance
I have been monster busy and therefore craving Harlequins for reading – but this one I couldn’t get through, no matter how many times I told myself that maybe after a few more pages the book would pick up and get better. I had to stop about halfway through.
Tangela and Warrick were together for seven years before a messy and painful breakup, one that they’ve apparently never talked about. When Tangela shows up on the cover of People magazine’s weight loss issue, showing off a very trim and a very sexy confident new self, she and Warrick find themselves in each other’s worlds again, and find a second chance to fix what went wrong.
Unfortunately, a whole mess of a lot went wrong before I even got to the middle of the book.
The reader spends way too much time in Warrick’s head, and it doesn’t make for much heroism when he has loving thoughts like the following:
“Leonard Butkiss had a face only a mother could love. Wide eyes, large ears, and a slightly crooked nose. Warrick didn’t know anything about the guy, but Tangela deserved to be with someone strong and athletic and rich. Like him.”
Superficial much?
How do I reconcile that lovely bit of arrogance with the man who keeps thinking in bewilderment that Tangela was beautiful before she lost all the weight, and she was fine the way she was? And while I’m on the subject of Tangela’s weight loss, here’s her recounting of the change as she gets all ticked off that People magazine dared intimate that she had an eating addiction:
She was fit and fabulous whether she was a size eighteen or a size ten. Just because the editorial staff didn’t believe her didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She’d lost the weight without even trying. Having been to Guadalajara numerous times, she’d felt comfortable walking from her host family’s house to the institute where she taught English classes and studied Spanish.
Her host mother, Ima, was weight-conscious and took great pride in preparing tasty, low-calorie meals for the family. Three weeks after arriving in Mexico, Tangela had lost twelve pounds. Six months later, she was down to a size fourteen and by the end of the year, she was at the lowest weight she’d ever been.
This is a real pet peeve of mine in fictional universes. What the fuck planet do people live on where the weight “just falls off?” Unless we’re talking medical problems, twelve pounds in three weeks?! Come on now, and I mean it. It can be alarmingly easy to gain weight, but for that same person, trying to lose it can be so very very difficult. I don’t admire a heroine who blithely ruminates that the weight just disappeared while she wasn’t looking. I want to smack her with something containing a lot of mass. Like a recliner. What’s the problem, is being overweight some kind of moral failing that can’t be overcome with studious and deliberate weight loss? It has to magically happen, like she was never overweight to begin with? Goddammit, that blithe Magically Thin “Oops! I did it and have no idea how!” weight loss trope bugs the shit out of me.
Anyway, back to the book: MY GOD IS THERE A LOT OF RUMINATION going on. I’m amazed Tangela and Warrick didn’t walk into things while being wrapped in reverie. Every time there’s a bit of backstory needed, one of the protagonists starts reflecting:
Staring at Tangela, Warrick reflected on their seven-year relationship.
That’s a long relationship. He’ll be staring at her for awhile.
Then there’s the dialogue and the incredibly bizarre descriptions:
“After using the washroom, he wandered into the lounge and sat down. The inviting decor, padded leather booths and lively music created a relaxing atmosphere. Pressing his BlackBerry handheld to his ear, he listened to his messages. Making a mental note to return the calls later, Warrick slid the phone into his pocket and stared up at one of the flat-screen TVs.
He checked the score of the Mariners game, relieved to see his team was beating the Yankees. An American Airlines commercial came on and he thought of Tangela. He wondered if she was out with her friends. On the weekend, she liked to go with her coworkers to the Karaoke Hut for cocktails. Singing off-key and encouraging others to do the same was something he couldn’t get behind, but Tangela always seemed to enjoy herself.”
Currently I am sitting in my nondescript desk chair typing on my QWERTY keyboard into Microsoft Windows, and I’m hitting the capslock key to type, HEY! YOU!! WAKE UP!!!11!!!
What’s puzzling, on top of that passage above, is that later he has a different handheld. Warrick gets all ticked off because Tangela has his sport coat. She doesn’t understand why he’s chasing her down for it when he has several others:
“I’m sure you could live without it for a few more days.”
“You’re right, I could – if my iPhone handheld wasn’t in the breast pocket.”
iPhone handheld? BlackBerry handheld? Really? Who says that?
Finally, what drove me over the edge was the repeated habit of so much telling and not enough showing. Not NEARLY enough showing. And, in addition, the telling was so inconsistent I couldn’t trust the point of view of either protagonists. For example, Warrick looks at Tangela in a restaurant:
“Everyone inside the restaurant was dressed in their Sunday best, but Tangela had glammed it up as though she was going to a movie premiere. The yellow pantsuit matched her bright disposition and she was wearing her hair the way he liked, up off her shoulders, gathered in an elegant French roll with slim curls grazing her ears. The sexy flight attendant lived life beautifully and looked damn good doing it.”
The man thinks in cover copy!
Watching Tangela fiddle with her necklace, he realized he’d never really appreciated what she’d meant to him. She’d always been a prize, but now she had the three Bs-beauty, brains and brilliance.
So now that she’s lost weight, she’s even better? I thought he was dumbfounded and sad that she’d felt the need to change herself so much. That’s what he said in the first chapter when he reflected on it for awhile.
The major elements of the story drew me to this book immediately. A heroine who is so changed, having lost so much weight, that she appears on the cover of People’s annual weight loss issue, and thus brings her ex-boyfriend back into her life? Second chance stories? With makeover elements? I’m down with that.
But I can’t figure out how these people maintained a relationship for seven years because they just don’t talk to one another. They’re reflecting and wandering around in the midst of a reverie instead. They misunderstood each other repeatedly, and even seeing both sides of their backstories from their respective points of view didn’t endear me to either of them. Warrick never recovers even halfway into the book from being shallow, conceited, superficial and inconsistent in his ruminations on Tangela’s hotness. Tangela is either terribly selfish and cruel: she left Warrick because he didn’t have enough time for her… while he was taking over the family business for his father after a massive health crisis, and while his father was still in the hospital. At the time of their breakup, I suspect both parties were in desperate need of some growing up. They both need more time in the crock pot of life experience, but I don’t have the patience to endure reading any more of their reflections.
Love on the Rocks is available from Amazon.com, Book Depository,Powell’s, and eHarlequin.com.
I’ll go back up and read all the comments in a second. I’ve got to type this:
#1) I’d never read a book with a heroine named Tangela and a hero named Warrick, especially if it’s set in present day. Warrick, really?? It reminds me of a novel cover that featured Fabio with his blonde locks blowing in the wind. And Tangela? The name seems awkward and forced.
#2) I’d also suspect the author of this novel isn’t fat or anywhere near a size 18 or 10 for that matter. I mean losing enough weight to drop from and 18 to a 10 would be noticible, but not enough that People would feature it. I mean a size 18 is big to some, and hey, someone who is thin would probably think those ladies on the Biggest Loser are wearing 18’s, but the difference from an 18 to a 10 isn’t magazine worthy is it? Maybe it is, but I don’t think so.
All this product placement with blackberries, iphones and such reminds me of a book I read that was written 30 or so years ago. The author, in order to make his hero seem so hip, rich and cutting edge, had his character own the only Betamax in the ‘hood. Does anyone nowadays even know what a Betamax is? I had to have a laugh when I read that. And so, years from now, readers may get a laugh out of all the obsolete technology Warrick uses in this book.
Unless it’s something vitally important to the story (like “The kidnappers got away in a red Honda Civic.”), then leave the product names behind and stick with simple generic terms.
They earned maximum whoredom points because the one of the “Bones” semi-regulars waiting in line (Joel David Moore), appears in “Avatar” as Dr. Norm Spellman.
HURL.
I lost about 20 pounds in a few weeks once.
The Stroke Weight Loss Plan – not recommended.
P.S. Those damned Woodvilles!
I can see where people could be bothered by this, but to me, having the uber-geeks excited didn’t seem out of the range of possibilities.
Then, when I saw Avatar, I realized that tall, goth Bones intern was one of the main supporting characters in Avatar and it made a lot of sense that he was the one with tickets. 🙂
Well, here’s one for me to avoid.
I mean, MY GOD! Just the weight loss thing alone is enough to keep me far away. The ONLY time I accepted that was in a romance novel I read where a woman who died is sent back to the old west to play guardian angel/matchmaker for a distance ancestor of her’s – who happens to be fat. When the hero breaks her heart, the guardian angel, who was shallow when she was alive, magically makes the heroine lose a ton of weight without trying.
Divine intervention I can accept for weight loss. Anything else – NO!
Thank you for helping me avoid a book I’d want to throw across the room.
There’s a song by Here We Go Magic called “Fangela,” and the second I read this review, it popped into my head and won’t go away, so I already hated the book for that. I’ll hate it even more for the weak writing, sure.
Magical weight loss? When I turned 30, my mother gloated that now my metabolism would change and I had better be more careful about my eating habits. (Seriously, she’d been waiting for that for AGES.) After I lost 10 pounds for absolutely no reason, she stopped asking about my weight.
Ok, right there the heroine should have been dragged out and shot.
When authors make stupid statements like this I wonder what their reason is as to why the character waited to lose the weight if she was capable of losing it at any point in time? And why the character isn’t making millions selling this “weight loss without even trying” idea….
Well I must admit that I did once lose 22 pounds in 3 weeks but I can’t say it made me a better person or more romantic. In fact I was so angry all the time from being deprived of my carbs that I wanted to kill my family. Since the “halibut Incident’ my kids never want me to diet again 🙂
I lost a bunch of weight without trying, but I was 16, and it was puppy fat, and it was hormonal. When the hormones calmed down and my “food is wonderful and exercise is boring” lifestyle continued, I got fat, and stayed fat. I keep wishing for that effortless shrinking to occur again, but somehow I think puberty just isn’t going to happen again. Except for the acne, moodswings… Damn it.
@Suze, I call it “approaching menopause.”
Oy. I have the acne, the greasy hair, the mood swings, cramps (granted, on an ever-decreasing basis), and so on. Only now I don’t have the thick glasses (thanks to contacts. And I have friends. 🙂
Only the bloat comes on and never goes away!!!!
(My captcha is “sat82.” I’ve sat at the computer for the last 82 hours [which helps explain my weight] and I’m still no closer to making my deadline.)
@Cat
Now that I actually took the time to read the comments –
Not fairy godmother. Guardian Angel. Shallow woman living in the 1980s (or maybe it was the 1990s) dies in a car accident. In Heaven she finds out she has to play guardian angel/matchmaker for an ancestor of her’s. Said ancestor is fat. At one point the angel in charge of our shallow angel is getting on her because she’s spending so much time staring into a mirror rather then helping her depressed charge, so the GA waves her hand and makes her charge magically lose weight, saying that it will fix everything. Of course she’s shocked when it doesn’t work.
And the fat heroine had both a beautiful sister and a nasty father who constantly verbally, emotionally, and mentally abused her for being fat. Then when she was thin, abused her for that because she was too depressed to even wash her hair.
While others have said magical weight loss happens, still would tick me off in a book without a supernatural or divine intervention.
Anyway, why does the heroine have to go from fat to thin? Dang it, this is just ONE of the many reasons an author would base a character on me. (Along with all my other issues.) Let the fat girl win love without losing weight!
I lost weight like that in a couple weeks once. Twice, actually. Funny, now I have these two kids…
I don’t mind reading about a heroine working hard to lose weight or change herself / her life in some way, but I prefer seeing it in a women’s fic than a romance. It seems like authors do it justice when they concentrate on the journey rather than toss it in as a segment of a story about a relationship. It tends to “shallow the issue” in a way that clearly doesn’t work for a lot of readers.
“after a few weeks of heart palpitations, mood swings, and insomnia, tangela visited her doctor, where he tested her thyroid hormone levels. oh look! hyperthyroidism! who knew?”
after all, thyroid disease effects 1 in 10 women. *grins* sorry, all this talk about “magical weight loss”…i just HAD to make a plug for http://www.thyroidawarenessmonth.com
The only romance revolving around weight loss I ever liked was THIN WOMAN, by Dorothy Cannell. (Well, sold as a mystery, but I loved it for the romance). And the heroine worked d*mn hard at it, and was upfront about the psychological toll of obsessing about it.
And the best thing about it was that this mental cost continues to be an issue during the entire series, with the heroine continuing to struggle with her body image and food insecurities, and her chef husband lovingly but not so patiently trying to cope with it.
Is JR Ward writing under a different name?
I think the reason people refer to the character in Wishes as a fairly godmother is that the book was written as a definite homage to Cinderella. I know she was a self-involved woman who died, but helping the heroine was penance, and the relationship was pretty Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo. Pretty much every discussion on the book that I’ve ever seen called her that also.
My problem with the book is more a back-handed compliment. The author is not afraid to try new things, and sometimes that bites her in the rear and she writes herself into a corner. In Wishes, she actually made the heroine inadvertently make a wish that made her TSTL and spineless in order to keep the couple apart.
In Remembrance she wrote herself into another corner where the hero couldn’t sleep with the heroine due to a past life dealio. The solution to that goes down in history as a classic “Wait, what? No!!”
hear69: earlier I had summer69. Is there a message there?
HAHA! I was thinking the exact same thing. If the BDB was such total chrack, I would throw them across the room for the sheer number of times she refers to scotch as “Lag”.
I know I’m a total hypocrite, but the Bones episode actually didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I loved it and thought it was absolutely hilarious. It was a total geek thing to do and so completely believable. Bones often refers to current events, pop culture, or whatnot, so it didn’t feel like a “commercial” to me, just a usual part of the show.
As for “magical weight loss”… gag me. Those of us who have struggled our whole lives with our weight (and been humilated, berated, and abused for it) do not enjoy having “magical weight loss” thrust in our faces. It would be nice to read more books with “plump” heroines who save the day AND get the guy. 🙂
SPAM: Having63… forget having63. I want to have it ALL!
I meant to say “if the BDB WASN’T such total chrack”!
(Someone needs to proofread! lol)
@Buffy
You’re right on about sizes. Size 18 just isn’t very large. It only seems large to people who are tiny. Try size 52 for large, or 6X. The women on the Biggest Loser often are quite short, which helps to account for how rotund they appear.
You know, maybe this author thought that magical weight loss was appropriate for the wish-fulfillment aspect of a romance. The only trouble is, we believe we can find the perfect mate. We don’t believe we can ever lose the pounds for good. Hence, not appropriate.
I do remember reading a few years back about a chick-lit author who’d actually got a sponsorship deal with Ford (I think). In return for a retainer, she had to give her main characters Fords (and of course cast them in a pleasant light. No good saying, “Jane got into her rust-bucket of a Fiesta and prayed it’d last the drive to work.”)
I know authors who would KILL for that kind of deal. Hey. if I put all my heroines in Manolo Blahniks, do you think he’ll start sending me some?
It’s irritating to have every single item name-checked, but in some cases its actually a useful insight into the character. Is this the sort of person who actually cares what sort of phone they carry? Does the model of car they drive say something about them? “He drove a mid-size saloon” could mean anything, “He drove a Saab,” means he’s probably an architect. On the flipside, any hero who drives a Lamborghini without irony makes me want to throw the book across the room. Nobody with a full head of hair, an unlined face and a large penis ever drove a Lambo. Especially not a yellow one.
And as for iPhones, I KNOW I’ve heard people put that little extra vowel in front on purpose. “I’ll call you on my iPhone.” “Let me just check on my iPhone.” “Look at the apps I have on my iPhone.”
They might as well just admit they all have tiny penises and have done with it.
I can’t speak to the penis size, but I’ve known a guy who made a fortune from nothing, grew his hair Fabio length and was often mistaken for him, was youngish, and had his own Lamborghini. Evidently the deal with the cars is that so many rich guys want them that there’s a waiting list. After he had ordered his, the car dealership offered him $75,000 just to be bumped down the list a little in favor of some other guy. Nope. Wouldn’t do it.
“shall93” should be “shallow” and 1993 was about when he bought it, too.
Oooh, I had some weight just “magically” fall off my body, too! It happened quite literally overnight! 35 POUNDS went overnight!
Of course, the next morning, I woke up with a newborn, and I wouldn’t actually call that process “magical” come to think of it…. nevermind.
Weight loss sucks and it pisses me off to see it staged as easy or magical or I wasn’t even thinking about it. At least show the heroine sweating a little at the new five mile walk she makes twice a day and I’ll be happy to buy it, okay? Okay?
LOL. My work in progress has the characters driving a beat-up ‘38 Chevy they refer to as the Piece of Shit. I doubt it’ll get me any sponsorship deals any time soon.
The thing is, though in some rare cases weight can seem to kind of ‘magically’ come off when we have a major, rapid lifestyle change (even if that change is temporary, like a summer internship or whatever), the vast majority of people really struggle with weight. And the older you get, the less “magical” the weight loss gets.
The “weight loss is magic/easy mindset is a direct slap in the face to those who have an incredibly difficult time shedding pounds. And those people already have a lot of sentiment against them; like I said in my other post, many thin people look at heavy people and think they are lazy disgusting slobs who have “let themselves go” and just need to be stronger. The obesity epidemic in the U.S. proves it’s just not that simple.
Am I the only one bothered by the host mother’s name being “Ima”? In most Street Lit (and my students’ essays, alas), “Ima” (pronounced to rhyme with lima as in the bean, not the city) functions as a contraction of “I’m going to” as in “Ima pop her *#(” I suppose it COULD be short for “Immaculata” or something of that sort, but it seems unfortunate.
And just as a funny; the country with the highest rate of childhood obesity is….Mexico. So tasty meals, yes definitely. Frequently healthy ones, if non-processed ingredients are used. Low calorie, not so much.
Funny – “Ima” pronounced “EE-ma” is Hebrew for “Mother,” so I read that totally differently.
@Stacia K
Thanks—glad to know I’m not alone out there with all that king stuff.
Warrick—how he’s aged me. Who is this CSI guy? I mean, those CSI type shows are all so DARK? Like, there is almost no light in government agency offices? Hello—it’s a wonder they find anything there. Okay, now you know I have grandchildren who don’t know from “ancient history” and probably don’t watch CSI either, being too busy twittering and twaddling on with their lives in the brave new 21st century.
I wonder—do they read? Romance? When do they have the time with all their handheld devices and stuff….
Hah! spamword: trade65—no way—I worked dang hard to get here
@Robin –
And that is why I stopped reading Cornwell’s books. Seems like she was always saying something nasty about fat people. Fat people and moms. All her serial killers have bad mothers and it’s mommy’s fault according to Scarpetta and Cornwell that the killers kill people.
Both my husband and I lose weight every time we move to a new country – it does just fall off. And then, after a year, it steadily comes back on. We’re about to move back across the Atlantic to Virginia, and the only thing I’m looking forward to in yet ANOTHER move is the novelty of being able to wear clothes two sizes smaller than I usually do.
One question, though (from a non-American) – there’s been a lot of fun pointed at the names in this novel, but aren’t the protagonists African-American and isn’t there an AA tradition of more creative naming? Looking up the name ‘Tangela’ on the Baby Name Wizard site, the following sibling names are listed: Carvis, Keshia, Jamaar.
poking fun at names that are unusual or creative is, to me, a sign of being closed-minded…most of the novels that i’ve read have heroines with similar names: maggie, susie, molly, beth or claire..the hero, more often as not, has the ‘unusual’ name…
i wonder what the comments would be if the characters were asian or hispanic or would their names be considered “typical”?
Beverly Sills famously described a character in Tales of Hoffmann as “Schlemiel…that’s his name, not a description.”
We all make connections that strike us as incongruous or funny. Tangela being one letter off tangelo is reasonable. So is Butkiss, for gosh sakes. That’s not racism. If we remember our youth, there always was some kid on the playground who could come up with an insulting version of any name. We laughed when it wasn’t our own.
I have to say my son spent a semester in Guadalajara and gained weight while he was there. “Tasty low-fat meals” are nearly non-existent, there’s taco stands, convenience stores and American fast food joints everywhere in that city. Even if she does walk everywhere weight is not just going to fall off, not unless she’s got a tapeworm. Which she could get from fresh unwashed fruit or vegetables but otherwise, not likely.
I have to admit I love the name Tangela.
All I have to say is that I am glad I’m not the only one who kept picturing a Pokemon while reading this.
In honor of the best crossover couple of all time: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v708/CannonBabe/epicromance.png
The cheapest weight loss plan ever? Dysentery. After two years in the Peace Corps I was able to get back into my 1986 Limited jeans (they taunt me even now from the furthest reaches of my closet). I could eat anything I wanted (or could find) in any quantity, but just had make sure I was near the facilities within 15 minutes. Tres sexy! Then I moved to France and cream sauces took hold. I don’t care for the magical weight loss trope. if I am in the mood for it to even be mentioned, then I think I will skip this one and reread Bet Me
@Tam – Well, Tanglela IS the name of a Pokemon. So it’s kind of hard to not poke fun. Especially since she’d have to be way young and her parents would’ve had to have had her as teenagers if she was named for a Pokemon.
As long as people are mentioning illness – time I lost the most weight was when I had mono. Sleeping 23 hours a day and only eating when mom would force me to sit up and eat will do that to you. (At the most I could take three spoonfuls of soup at a time before falling back to sleep.)
I actually laughed out loud reading some of the things you gals wrote! It’s amazing that SO many people commented on a book that they haven’t read. Why not read the book first, then comment? Just a suggestion, take it or leave it.
As for Tangela losing weight without trying, it happened to me and a whole bunch of my co-workers who moved to Korea to teach English. Not far fetched, it happens. Warrick and Tangela aren’t names that I made up either; they can be found in any baby book.
I’m sorry that you didn’t enjoy, LOVE ON THE ROCKS, Sarah, but don’t give up on Kimani Romances. I don’t write the kind of book you enjoy, and that’s okay. Keep reading and I am sure you’ll find an AA author that you’ll like.
Pamela Yaye
Um, on a different topic than names, or the whole weight-loss thing (which I’m not even going to TOUCH because, believe me, I would go on for a very long while)—as a Seattlite, I have to say:
The Mariners would never
EVER
beat the Yankees.
I love them, but they really suck. That is all.