RITA Reader Challenge Review

No Better Man by Sara Richardson

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by PamG. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Best First Book category.

The summary:

A DARING PROPOSITION

When it comes to business, Avery King always comes out on top. So after a very public breakup, work is the perfect excuse to flee the Windy City for the gentle breezes of Aspen, Colorado. Her mission: acquire the land of a rundown mountain ranch. Avery expects an easy win . . . until she meets the rugged and irresistible rancher who won’t give up his property without a fight.

Bryce Walker is stunned by the stubborn beauty determined to get what she wants. But what she wants is his last connection to the life he used to have. Bryce has plans to return the ranch to its former glory and no way will he sell his family home. Yet the more time he spends with Avery, the more her sweet touch makes him forget his painful memories. Now Bryce must decide whether living in the past is worth losing his future . . .

Here is PamG's review:

I started No Better Man with high hopes. Chapter 1 was great. And that was it.

Actually, I’d made it about 72% of the way through sometime back in April, then put the book aside when I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Besides, I had a lot of cereal boxes to read. With the RITA Reader Challenge deadline fast approaching, it became a point of pride to resume reading and do my duty. Unfortunately, doing so required the dreaded reread.

The story opens as Avery does her fangirl thing at a Cubs game. Her excitement over the game comes through as authentic and kind of endearing even for a non-baseball fan like me. Sadly, her perfectly groomed, business suited Dad can’t seem to refrain from discussing business during the game. Daddy, the real estate shark, wants to chat about a property in Colorado that’s ripe for the plucking. Avery wants to jump up and down and throw popcorn. Turns out Dad and his assistant, Avery’s best friend Vanessa, have an ulterior motive for attending. It seems that Aves has a ball player boyfriend who thinks that the middle of a game is an appropriate place not simply to propose, but to bring up the M-word for the very first time. When Avery chooses to respond based on her real feelings rather than attempting to avoid public embarrassment with a lie, the consequences are predictable and dire. As a result, I started off this novel with respect and sympathy for the heroine.

Chapter 2 also opens with a baseball game halfway across country in Aspen, Colorado. Our hero, Bryce, is at bat, bombarded by chatter from both his team and their opponents in the local amateur league. For a couple of minutes there, I was impressed by the clever segue between city girl heroine and country boy hero. The ball field chatter was amusing, and then the info-dumping commenced. In the course of a single at bat, the reader is introduced to an array of locals. We also learn that Bryce is just back from rehab, on the verge of losing the ranch, and hasn’t told his Mom about the impending foreclosure. Apparently though, the pitcher for the opposing team knows about it because she gives him the name of a bank officer who might help him out. Too bad, Bill the Bank Guy ain’t a baseball fan, I guess. We learn that Bryce blames himself for the mess (big surprise), but he fucked up for reasons. Cue secret tragedy. . .

So my first major problem with No Better Man is the showing rather than telling. Time and again interior monologues outpace the rather boring dialogues. Nor is this tendency occasional or limited to Bryce’s POV. Bryce constantly refers to all the work he is putting into the ranch. While this does give Bryce the opportunity to sweat sexily while chopping wood every so often, it left me scratching my head over and over. He works so hard, but there’s no visible progress. He’d behind on the bills including the mortgage, yet no one is supposed to know that building materials cost money. Is he boffing a hardware store owner? Worse, though, is the sense that this guy is hammering away at his problems with absolutely no plan, as though hard work alone will generate some kind of miracle.

As for Avery, she constantly refers to what a hotshot she is, the consummate mistress of the art of the deal and Daddy’s right-hand girl. Yet the only evidence of this is her own say-so. There are never any convincing details offered from her job or her past projects. In addition, she seems to think that talking Bryce out of his ranch is somehow a charitable act. Sell me your ranch and you’ll be freeeeee! Though Avery is supposedly a city girl from Chicago and a businesswoman, she frequently refers to the happy days of her youth when her Mom was still alive and the family visited Colorado. Once. Now she is back, and the scenery and fresh air and friendly locals all reinforce her love for this place. Yet she believes that the best thing for Bryce—this guy she just met—is to leave it all behind.

I don’t know what was more annoying: that this supposedly hard-nosed businesswoman kept touting her altruistic motives or that she had no qualms about forcing herself on Bryce as a guest at his non-operational ranch. First she snoops. Then she kind of sucks up to his mom too. Ick! How can Avery be such a deal maker when she seems completely clue-free when it comes to Bryce, or when it comes to common courtesy for that matter? That requires people skills, right? Even her ringtone is abrasive. Weirdly, everyone but Bryce seems to just love her on sight, but the reader never actually sees her exercising her wonderful social skills. She tries, but somehow it never quite works out as expected.

Compliments! She was great at giving compliments. Avery picked her fork up and eased in a hearty bite of the risotto. “Mmmm.” Covering her mouth with her hand, she hurried to chew so she could offer the praise Elsie seemed to crave.

Does she chew with her mouth open? And, I mean, how insincere is that? Unfortunately, her much touted yet invisible people skills fly out the window in Bryce’s presence because he is. Just. So. Hot. Whatever respect she won in the first chapter is quickly dispersed once she shows up in Colorado.

Bryce is only slightly less aggravating than Avery. He too is immediately possessed by the ever popular insta-lust, but he is stalwart in his refusal to entertain Avery’s business proposal. He is fortified in his resistance by the guilt over his wife’s death which precludes any involvement with a woman. Then there are all the assumptions he makes about Avery and her motives. He refuses to even give her a hearing because he already knows all there is to know about stuck-up, wealthy heiresses from Chicago.

Nor does Bryce limit himself to assumptions about Avery. At one point he comes out with this gem: “What was it with women anyway? Why’d they have this burning desire to get to the bottom of absolutely every feeling they ever had?” Later, on the same page: “She looked even better when she got mad.” Better yet, he repeats the cute-when -angry cliché later on. As far as I’m concerned, the only appeal of the strong, silent type is an interesting mind lurking beneath the silence. Bryce is all cliché and stereotype, no complexity.

Once I started rereading this book, the reasons for my dislike came back to me pretty rapidly. I might even say they started to cascade. I felt like there should be blinking red lights and shrieking alarms. Bryce and Avery have such typical romance novel issues. I have read and enjoyed countless tales of heroes blaming themselves for past tragedy and heroines with Daddy issues. Somehow Bryce and Avery seem more whiny than sympathetic, more trite than tragic. There are so many inconsistencies between the way they regard themselves and the decisions they make, it just boggles the mind.

Avery especially comes across as not merely inconsistent, but abysmally TSTL. On several occasions she makes choices that are actually dangerous. When one of her choices results in an entirely predictable accident, she actually blames Bryce, just as her chronic lack of professionalism is blamed on Bryce’s hotness. This pattern repeats many times. Avery does something inappropriate, goes “I’m sorry,” and follows it with “I didn’t mean….” At one point, she wonders whether she’s apologized enough. Someone should tell her that excuses aren’t apologies, and sorry is not a substitute for taking responsibility.

Several of the supporting characters are fairly annoying as well. Elsie, Bryce’s mother, is both syrupy sweet and totally clueless, though clearly everyone adores her. Avery’s father retreats to hard-charging, all business mode at the first sign of feelings, except when it comes to his dead wife. Then he subsides into depression that distresses Avery. He is a weird combination of over protectiveness and emotional distance. What makes these portrayals so problematic is that there is so little else to hang a character on—just two or three major traits or traumas glued together with a physical description.

Perhaps this sums up the problem with Bryce and Avery as well. In the end, all their issues somehow circle back to themselves. Even when an event should focus on the other person’s well-being, somehow it ends up being all about themselves. Bryce freaks when Avery has an accident. He seems so concerned for her well-being, but in the end, it’s more a flashback to his wife’s death than an awareness of Avery’s danger. When Avery considers the death of Bryce’s wife, she sees it in terms of her mother’s death and assumes that the loss of her mother gives her automatic understanding of how Bryce feels. She also assumes that his grief is the same as her father’s grief. The overall impression I’m left with is of two people who swing wildly between pants feelings and self-absorption with little or no exchange of thought or emotion in between. I simply can’t see this leading to a believable HEA.

Technically, the writing isn’t bad. Some of the descriptions are very effective. The Colorado landscape is lovingly described and the baseball games are atmospheric. There are some oddly imprecise word choices that could be the fault of autocorrect or an attempt at poetic description —“crevasse,” “whirled” and “survivalist” where crevice, whorled and survivor seem more appropriate, for example. My favorite boo-boo occurs a little past the halfway point when Vanessa (remember her?) shows up with Daddy and commences to quiz Avery about hottie Bryce in typical BFF style. Her interrogation leads to this response: “A prick on Avery’s cheeks warned of another oncoming blush.” How Shakespearean! I myself blush easily, but it’s never been heralded by a prick.

Up to this point, I’m writing about a book I have yet to finish and the grade is wavering between D+ and DNF. I suspect that my dislike of No Better Man has more to do with my particular sticking points than qualities intrinsic to the novel. I don’t like trite, and I don’t like TSTL, and I especially don’t like discrepancies between what people say and what they do, whether they stem from a lack of self-awareness or sheer dishonesty. Most of all, I hate the navel-gazing self-involvement. Furthermore, these problems are unrelenting at least three quarters of the way through the book. Even a miracle couldn’t pull it out of the tank in that last twenty-five per cent. So the grade will most likely remain DNF.

Hey, all. I finished it! It was so hard, I had to take myself out for a beer afterward. The ending compounded all the other issues by issuing indiscriminate HEAs to everyone. Dad was predictably a prick. Sacrifices were offered. Sacrifices became unnecessary due to a total personality transplant. Everyone was fixed. Everything was fixed. The only nauseating thing that didn’t happen was Elsie hooking up with Dad. Yeah, D+.

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No Better Man by Sara Richardson

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  1. Carolyn says:

    Wow! There have been a lot of low grades for the RWA gang this year. It does make me wonder how any of these books got nominated.

    I can stand some info dumping but navel gazing and TSTL – now. Just no.

    Thank you for this review; I might have been tempted because, you know … Colorado!

  2. Carolyn says:

    *That was ‘no’, not ‘now’. Edit before click; this is not the alphabet! 😉

  3. Cassie says:

    I’m with you, @Carolyn. I keep shaking my head and wondering how on Earth these books are selected and how on Earth mainstream publishers publish them.

  4. kitkat9000 says:

    @Carolyn: And here I thought maybe you were doing an Eliza Doolittle impression. No?

    At this point, more than half and possibly even upwards of three quarters of this year’s nominees don’t appeal to me. At all, not even a little bit. I can’t recall a year since I began coming to SBTB, when there were so few books that interested me. And, judging from some of the comments, quite a few others.

    Perhaps they should rethink their nomination process? So far I’ve got to say that hearing a book was RITA nominated, much less a winner thereof, doesn’t impress me. If anything, it makes me think that I should read something else which I’m thinking is contrary to the purpose behind the awards.

  5. bnbsrose says:

    “A prick on Avery’s cheeks warned of….”

    Bwahahahahahaha!!!

    No one wants to know where my brain just went.
    Oncoming blush wasn’t it. I’m certainly not explaining the cackling noise my coworkers just heard.

  6. Jazzlet says:

    @ bnbsrose

    Well if your brain just went where my brain went I wouldn’t be exlaining cackling to my co-workers either!

    Good review PamG, thank you for persevering.

  7. Avery Flynn says:

    @Carolyn – Either the author or the publisher submits the books. RWA caps initial entries at 2,000. Each of those initial entries are judged by multiple judges on a 1-10 scale and the top 4% of books in each category are finalists. Here’s a link to the contest rules/process: https://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=531

  8. rachel says:

    Can I borrow “Someone should tell her that excuses aren’t apologies, and sorry is not a substitute for taking responsibility” and use it all the time, please?

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