A
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Forced Proximity (stranded, safehouse, etc), Road Trip
Archetype: Military
I am not a crier by nature. I follow the much healthier (that’s sarcasm) path of pushing my feelings down deeply inside of me until they eventually swell up, geyser-like, and get all over everyone.
I sobbed while reading Against All Odds. I’m talking full-on, mascara smearing, snotty tissue, alone by the light of the Bookmas Tree sobbing. It was wonderful and cathartic, and honestly, I think this is my favorite book of 2017.
Here’s what you need to know. Abigail Williams has a brain tumor (Glioblastoma in her temporal lobe), and along with the support of her physician sister, Olivia, (who I loved), is looking at–best case scenario–a dangerous surgery followed by a grueling recovery. Her chances of survival depend on what her surgeons find when they open her up.
Abi is still determined to enjoy her life, so she books a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia to knock some items off her bucket list. One of those items (half-jokingly added by Olivia) is to have amazing sex.
On the flight Abi is seated next to Australian war-hero and amputee Sergeant Ryder Harper and they instantly begin a flirtation that is absolutely delightful. I adore flirty banter, and this was done so, so well. Ryder came to the US for a state-of-the-art leg prosthetic and is now headed home to spend some much needed time with his family in the Outback.
Since they’re on a flight from the US to Australia, Ryder and Abi have a lot of time to spend getting to know each other, and it’s apparent that they are both smitten. Ryder wants to continue to see Abi after they land, but she’s hesitant because she knows that in a few weeks she’s got to focus entirely on her health. She’s not in a place to start a relationship.
Abi doesn’t hide her tumor from Ryder, although it takes close to halfway through the book for her to divulge the seriousness of her condition. Initially I was concerned that they would have a torrid fling, she would leave and then tell him about the cancer diagnosis, but that doesn’t happen.
Abi’s condition doesn’t deter Ryder from wanting to spend time with her. He tells her about the mission that resulted in him losing his leg:
“The medics who came with the evac team said I died three times.”
She pressed her fingers to his lips and shook her head.
He kissed them away. “I should have died a dozen more times. Somehow I made it through.” He shrugged and grinned. “Most of me at least.”
He kissed her chin, her lips, her nose. “When things got bad out there in the desert, when artillery shook the ground and all I could hear were bullets thudding around me like hail and my teammates’ screams, I measured my life in seconds. The most important things I learned out there with blood congealing in my gloves and darkness trying to steal my consciousness was how precious life and time are.” He lowered his head until his nose touched hers, and he was staring into her eyes. “I’ll give anything for a few more seconds with you.”
Abi eventually agrees to spend time with Ryder at his family’s ranch in the Outback. Ryder is adopted, as are his siblings, and they are a blended, multi-racial family lead by his tough, lovable mother.
A lot of this book is about family, and about trusting the people around you to love you and care for you when you aren’t at your best. As someone with a chronic condition, I related to this immensely. Like Abi, I sometimes struggle not to get in the headspace where I consider myself a burden.
When Ryder’s mother, Naya, learns of Abi’s condition she tells Abi her own story about cancer.
Naya drifted toward her with strides as graceful as they were powerful. “The bitch [cancer] got my left breast nine years ago. Five years ago she took my right and most of my lymph glands, but I killed her before she got the rest of me.”
“I-I’m so sorry.”
The words were so inadequate, so useless. Abi opened her mouth to add something more profound, but her brain could only produce a pathetic sigh that dribbled from her mouth and dripped onto the floor.
Naya smiled and waved her words away before running her fingertips over the image of her son. Ryder was dressed in fatigues and smiling into the camera as he hugged his mother. “He deployed to Afghanistan for the fourth time that afternoon.”
Abi laid a hand on Naya’s shoulder and squeezed. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through.”
Naya turned and nodded to her head. “I prayed you were just covering up a really bad hair day, but there’s a nagging ache in my gut telling me you know exactly what I went through.”
A little while later Naya asks Abi about her feelings for Ryder:
“Do you care about him?”
Abi tried escaping Naya’s searching gaze, but it was impossible. “I’ve only known him…I mean, it’s only been–”
“Do. You. Care. About. My. Son?” Naya emphasized each word with a gentle shake.
The questions Abi had been ignoring all day crashed down on her. What the hell was happening between them? Was it just lust or something more? Did he feel the same way about her? And if he did, where would she find the courage and strength to break this crazy bond they shared? Because the only certainty in her future was she’d have to leave this incredible man, and the longer she lingered in this fairytale the harder and more painful confronting her reality would be.
As the pressure to do what was right collided with her aching need for him, the truth escaped her trembling lips. “More than I could have dreamed.”
A relieved grin replaced Naya’s frown. “Well, I guess you’re stuck here then, because there’s no way in hell he’s letting you leave until you’re sick of the heat, dust, and inmates in this asylum.”
Abi sniffed. “I made him swear not to try and stop me.”
Naya’s expression turned calculating. “But you didn’t make me promise.” She spun Abi toward the bathroom before she could reply. “Get yourself cleaned up. Dessert’s about to be served and my no-good kids aren’t going to wait for us long.”
I loved that this book addressed the realities of being sick. In Abi’s case it’s migraines and painkillers and dizziness and vomiting. I hate it when illness in fiction is portrayed as “pretty,” like some Victorian swooning disease that causes the heroine to faint, but beautifully.
I can attest to the fact that illness is not pretty. It’s often embarrassing (although it shouldn’t be, and rationally I know that). It’s often not a thing people feel comfortable sharing, even with the people they love. I’ve been married to my husband for twelve years, he’s known me before the pain and now, when I struggle with it, and despite the strength of our relationship there are days I wish he didn’t have to see me at my worst. There’s a component of being sick that I want to keep private, when in reality his love and support often see me through my bad days.
So maybe that’s why this book hit me so hard. Having a hero who unquestioningly loves the heroine, even through a “worst” that would stop a lot of people due to fear, was incredibly reassuring.
Yet Ryder’s love doesn’t magically cure Abi’s cancer either. This is a serious disease and it’s not taken lightly. I’m sure many of you want to know how it’s handled so…
I think that’s why I loved this book so much. It acknowledges that shitty are going to happen, sometimes really shitty things, but that we find out strength and hope amid the shitty things in our love for each other. It’s the pervading message in romance, and it was the note I needed to start the new year on.
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I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this book. I know too much about glioblastoma (GBM killed my dad).
A good outlook with GBM means “throw everything at it and maybe it’ll kill you in 2 years instead of 6 months.” And that’s if the doctors operate RIGHT NOW, not after you go away for 5 weeks for a dream trip to Australia. Heroine Abi would end up seizing and unconscious, not enjoying sexytimes in the Outback.
@Hyacinths: I’m so sorry.
I have a friend who works in a hospital brain tissue lab. I don’t think I’d find this book very accurate either.
I once worked with a young man who met a woman who was very special to him and he wanted to pursue a serious relationship. That woman told him that the was in treatment for breast cancer (just starting I think) and she expected him to back off. Instead he said that he was looking for “in sickness and in health” and if the sickness part came first, that was life. They married after her treatment ended. I found that inspiring.
I did check out the sample chapter but couldn’t get past the opening scene where she’s driving her car to the airport despite her “paranoid” doctors telling her not to drive. Um, yeah. You know when neuro-oncologists forbid you to drive? When you’ve had at least one seizure and are at risk for more.
The romance portion sounds beautiful, but I have to recognize when my own experiences make it impossible for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy a book.
I just had a friend (20 years old) pass away from a glioblastoma after an initially good diagnosis. I’d be another one who couldn’t get through this book. Maybe if they had picked a different cancer. It sounds very sweet.
I’ve been puzzling over my response to this review, in part because I don’t want to rain on Elyse’s love for the book. So Elyse, I respect your reaction, and I give all props to any book that portrays serious illness with emotional realism. But I’m with Hyacinths on this one. I lost my father-in-law to GBM, and in terms of medical realism, I could wish the author had chosen a different disease to depict. “Bucket list” adventures are just so unlikely for anyone with GBM, because debilitating seizures, personality changes, and cognitive impairments are common symptoms. Hyacinths’ assessment of the survival odds is correct.
I get that in Romancelandia, anything is possible. I also get that in the Romance genre generally, emotional reality counts far more than surface reality. As a reader, I’m willing to let some details go provided the emotional dynamics feel credible. But I think with a contemporary (that is, depicting a real-world circumstance that at least some readers are likely to share), the imperative to get the surface details right is a little more urgent than in, say, a historical. It’s a tricky balance. GBM is (fortunately) rare, so few readers will have encountered it IRL.
I’m glad it’s not just me who came to write about what appears to be a very inaccurate picture of GBM. I do know of someone who lived a few years with one but his was found incidentally after a concussion. Why in the world a writer would pick a cancer that is invariably fatal over the many that can have a reasonable prognosis is beyond me. I want at least the hope of a happy ending in my romances! (BTW, I’m someone who had cancer less than two years into my relationship and we got married later. It happens!)
I don’t think I could read this, either. The love story sounds lovely and moving, but the medical inaccuracies would keep dragging me out of the book, and then I’d go crack open a textbook to look something up, and one thing would lead to another and I’d find myself knee-deep in an UpToDate article on chemotherapeutic regimens or something. Who needs that when they’re trying to relax?
Thank you, Elyse, for letting us in on how you got strength and comfort from this particular book. I love the romance genre because it says, in thousands of storylines, “love wins,” and “you are not alone.”
Chiming in with all the other skeptics. As a nurse, I’ve seen glioblastoma, and it’s a really nasty diagnosis that is highly unlikely to accommodate solo travel plans or even a cautious long-term HEA. I wish the author had researched more and found a diagnosis that would fit her plot better. As it is, I just don’t think I could suspend my disbelief sufficiently to get through this book, no matter how good the other aspects were.
This is another great review, Elyse.
“I am not a crier by nature. I follow the much healthier (that’s sarcasm) path of pushing my feelings down deeply inside of me until they eventually swell up, geyser-like, and get all over everyone.”
A woman after my own heart because I do the same thing. Sometimes I will read a book that makes me openly sob and think, “Geez, Kelly what the hell? Release much?” It seems like it is an often different small trigger with the odd book that will hit the Kelly sob button. Once in a great while a movie will release the sobbing beast. When watching Marley and Me? I sobbed so hard my husband just sat there quietly pausing the movie. (I am not a known cryer.) I then got so mad because it had such a profound emotional “geyser” effect on me that I hated that movie.(I can’t do animals in peril thing).
I want to say I am deeply sorry for the commenters or anyone who lost a love one to GBM.
On a different note, I have to applaud authors that write in today’s intricate, ever changing social and political climate to have the moxie or maybe sometimes just crazy stupidity to write a story that may or may not set off a shit storm of anger, lambasting, or distaste. Especially if that was not their intent. They have much more guts and talent (some much more than others) than I could hope to have.
Though, many times I sympathize because there are romance books that I don’t feel are appropriate or aren’t well researched that many others find are wow books. I am just as often on the flip side.
I also want to commend Smart Bitches for being such an awesome forum where we can express all viewpoints and discuss how books make us feel, whatever and however strong that emotion. We are a strong and very diverse group of people who gather here with our love of books and it makes me want to give you all a virtual hug! 🙂
Have a wonderful New Year!
I’m delighted to see this terrific review of Jezz’ book. He’s an absolute delight of a human being, at least on Twitter! I lost a brother to GBM and I still read this book because I like Jezz. That said, I totally understand those of you taking hard passes. My brother died 35 years ago, so although at this point in my life I’m mostly able to remember the wonderful person he was, I’m still overcome with horror and sorrow at random moments, and I still miss him. I could not have read this book within ten years of his death, that’s for sure.
I love that this site is a safe place for all of us to hold differing viewpoints without flaming each other. Thanks, all.
I’d be another one who would have a hard time with this book. GBM took my husband two years ago. He was gone three months after diagnosis. (The neurologist told me it was the most aggressive tumor he had seen in 30 years of practice.) One of the hardest things for him was not being able to have a bucket list because he lost his motor function very quickly. He wanted to go to the mountains one last time but we couldn’t even get him into the car; he had to settle for being in the back yard and it took all three of us to get him there. He also had mood swings between being very loving and trying to express his love and wishes to all of us, and in the next hour becoming very verbally and physically abusive. Surgery for GBM is usually not an option but even if it works (temporarily) you still lose a lot of your motor and cognitive ability and personality along with the tumor so — no HEA with this type of cancer, no matter how you look at it.
I’m glad that it resonated with you, Elyse, and it may also resonate with others who are dealing with the reality of a chronic illness and all it entails (Representation Matters). But I agree with others in this thread, the author should have chosen a different cancer that would have a more likely remission.
I haven’t read the book and don’t know the author’s motivations in choosing this particular cancer, but reading all the comments above about how terrible it is kind of makes me want to read the book more than I otherwise would. Isn’t romance as a genre all about the kind of happy endings we don’t see enough of in real life? At least, it is for me. Most relationships don’t work out, most marriages don’t last, yet we happily gobble up stories that make it seem like they will. If so many people with this type of cancer don’t survive it, isn’t a romance novel exactly the right place to offer the fantasy that someone can, giving her the happy ending she would normally be denied in real life? Maybe it’s unrealistic, but if so, I’d say that’s the whole point.
I…am torn between needing a good cry book (and the romance part of it sounds lovely,) and seeing the comments from others on how inaccurate the book is.
When I was 27, I was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. Google will tell you that the prognosis is not favorable. Six years later, I’m fortunate enough to be here and to have remained cancer-free since my surgery and chemotherapy.
So as someone who is alive “against all odds”, I find the premise inspiring. And cancer and cancer treatment affect individuals differently; for example, I was able to do things that others couldn’t while undergoing chemo. That said, I did not have this type of cancer and I do understand why those with knowledge and experience would be concerned about accuracy.
I’m not quite sure I’m capable of reading this since many books and films about cancer are still triggering. But again, I applaud the author for writing a more hopeful story.
I one-clicked this on Amazon immediately after reading your wonderful review, Elyse. I’ve been looking for a good book cry with a hopeful ending.
OK, so maybe the author selected the wrong disease. I remain thrilled by the fact that she told him. I hate, hate, hate, I virulently loathe and detest that literary trope–think An Affair to Remember–where it is considered More Noble to let a man think he’s been dumped that to ask, or even permit, him to make an adult decision.
Go, Abigail.
I think I would struggle with this story as well though not for the reasons many other people might. I don’t have any experience with cancer but I am an Australian and while I love reading stories featuring Australians or set in Australia I wish the author had done just a little more research.
I may be wrong of course, I haven’t read the book, but the impression I get from the blurb and from this review is that the Australia in this book is America, painted red, with kangaroos.
For example, his family ranch? Surely you mean station? Or property? And wait… they live on it? In a ‘dusty’ part of Australia? They must be really struggling… wait. No. They are rich enough to adopt not one but several children despite all of Australia’s anti-adoption policies. Shit. Now I’m confused.
According to the author’s bio, he’s Australian:
https://www.amazon.com/Jezz-de-Silva/e/B00WWEQ1C8
Maybe it’s just the marketing then.
Some Australians are unaware of how difficult adoption is here. Strange but true.
I think this is an interesting discussion in both the comments and the review itself about the portrayal of illness in romance.
I have Crohn’s Disease and read a romance where the heroine had Crohn’s and I was like uh no, that is not how any of this works. She said that the disease made her tummy feel a little icky and that she had to get ready for some tests – the test that she was in all likelihood getting would a colonoscopy and believe me there is nothing romantic about the prep for that (drinking thickish suff that tastes horrible and forces you to go to the bathroom like fifty billion times In a 12 hour period). I get that the author probably wanted to leave the details out because how could she successfully sell a romance novel to a publisher if she talked a lot about pooping, but still it was so unrealistic that it just made me mad. And I (luckily) have MILD Crohn’s which is well controlled by oral medication so don’t get me started about how even more inaccurate this was for someone with moderate to severe Crohn’s who may have to take steroids and/or do IV therapy and/or have colonoscopies like every 6 months and/or have other complications like Crohn’s-induced arthritis (which even though mine is mild I did suffer from before I was diagnosed and put on the correct medicine).
I guess it is a really really hard line to walk because on the one hand more representation is good and is needed, but on the other hand it is so hard to do it accurately for several reasons (consideration from the publisher that too many quote unquote gross details wouldn’t work in a romance novel or lack of research on the author’s part etc.)
Also I know someone who was Ina horrible accident where the doctors thought he may never walk again (he did!) and he had to go through countless surgeries because someone with a medical problem who shouldn’t have been driving crashed into his car. So the other commenter mentioning that the heroine was driving even though the doctors told her not to is a huge red flag for me – not sure I could gloss over that one and read the rest of the book without being In a rage about it.
The Amazon link to purchase the book isn’t working
Echoing the above, you lost me at glioblastoma. My Uncle and FIL both died from it. My Uncle was lucky in that he had three years. My FiL had nine months. And they were an ugly nine months. It’s not a survivable cancer.
If the author had picked “regular” brain cancer or breast cancer then maybe.