C-
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
The One in My Heart is Sherry Thomas’ first contemporary novel. I’m a huge fan of her historicals, and I’ve looked forward to her efforts in other genres. Recently she’s been writing YA fantasy, and now we have a contemporary. I respect Thomas for trying out new styles, but this book was pretty uneven for me.
Eva is a scientist (and, oh, how I wished this book had more science) who meets a neighbor, Bennett. Bennett is a surgeon who is estranged from his family. He needs a girlfriend to win his relatives over. After a night of no-strings-attached sex, they make an arrangement whereby Eva will pretend to be Bennett’s girlfriend in exchange for several large donations to charities of her choice and a hefty financial contribution towards her research project.
Meanwhile, Eva is taking care of her stepmother, Zelda, who has severe bi-polar disorder. Eva does not want to attach romantically to anyone because she has severe trust, abandonment, and intimacy issues, yet she is crazy about Bennett. As the story progresses, she keeps trying to figure out how much Bennett really likes her and how much he’s pretending, while she pretends total indifference throughout.
It was a bold move to kick off the book with an explicit sex scene, and it was my first hint that I was going to be out of my depth here, not because the sex was anything unusual but because I could never in a million years picture the scenario (it involves rain and tiramisu) actually taking place even though I am well aware that real people have casual sex all the time. It set a tone: these people are going to have great witty banter and great chemistry while totally failing to communicate what they actually want, and they will do all this in the kind of world in which a housekeeper makes tiramisu and then conveniently leaves.
I just do not know what to think of this book. For one thing, the plot swerved around a bit – I thought the book would involve more of Eva’s struggles with Zelda, but after one incredibly written chapter, the matter was largely dropped. That may have been part of the point. Initially, Eva presents herself as having to behave a certain way in order to take care of Zelda, but as the book progresses it becomes clear that while Zelda has a very serious condition, Eva uses that condition as an excuse to avoid dealing with her own issues. The chapter in which Eva helps Zelda with a depressive episode by quoting Tolkien was one of the truest, saddest, warmest parts of the book, and if more of the book had been like that it would have been an A+ for sure.
But I had a huge problem believing in the story, and this may have been less a problem with Thomas’ writing and more a personal block when it comes to billionaire stories. Both characters are very well off and Bennett is insanely rich. Apparently, it’s easier for me to grasp the concept that people could live in space ships than it is for me to grasp the concept that there are hotels which leave you not only a complimentary chocolate on your pillow, but an entire box. Every meal is lovingly described. Every setting is charming and scenic. There are no servants except an invisible housekeeper and yet everything is magically clean and perfect.
And where do these people find the time for all the sex? They refer to working. Bennett talks about not getting sleep, and sometimes he can’t answer the phone because he’s in surgery, but he has lots of energy. Eva refers to her work schedule, but only in the context of it taking her to glamorous locations for conferences. Bennett became a billionaire (or possibly millionaire – specifics of net worth are not established but it’s a heap) by pure luck (he invested in the art market and stock market during the boom, making investments at random) and now he’s a surgeon. Who does that?
I suspect that I’m missing the point here. More specifically, I think that, in billionaire romance, the implausibility IS the point. When I read science fiction, I want things to make a certain amount of sense, but I don’t need to understand the mechanics of space travel to enjoy the story. I’m fantasizing about the planets and the adventure and the tech just as much as I’m fantasizing about the romance itself. So maybe in a contemporary billionaire romance, the reader isn’t just fantasizing about love; they are also fantasizing about the clothes, the food, the leisure time, etc. – and therefore it doesn’t have to be realistic. In fact, the more un-realistic the better. What I found horribly distracting might be total crack for readers who are more accustomed to this sub-genre.
A bigger, and less subjective problem is that the whole story is told from the point of view of Eva and she behaves in a manner that goes beyond frustrating. The entire plot hinges on her refusing to be direct, which leads to her playing mind games on herself and on Bennett that are almost sadistic. At one point, Eva agrees to a fake engagement. Then when Bennett doesn’t propose she’s crushed, because she really wanted to be engaged. She knows it would have been pretend, but she wants to be engaged for real, and somehow she sort of felt like the pretend engagement would have been real, but she’s still telling Bennett that she doesn’t want a relationship, and I just could not understand what was happening in that woman’s head, especially since they’ve only been fake-together for a couple of months. I don’t think Eva just has abandonment issues; I think she needs some serious help.
There’s another plot element concerning Bennett and his long-lost girlfriend that really upset me. Bennett fell in love with a woman when he was sixteen and she was thirty-two, and they had a long relationship. His family was upset, and Eva thinks it’s a little gross, but over the course of the book the relationship is described as one that is generally healthy. There is such a double standard about boys and girls and sex and it absolutely infuriates me that this is presented as a healthy relationship, and that it’s presented as a relationship that he initially manipulates into being. I don’t care how good a seducer he thinks he is – he’s sixteen. He is not in control here, and everything about him and the relationship demonstrates his immaturity at the time. It’s not romantic. It’s not cute. It’s exploitative and I wanted it to be called out as such, not romanticized.
Clearly this book didn’t work for me – it left me mostly confused and kind of pissed off. And yet, I’m positive that someone out there is clutching this book to his or her bosom and saying, “But it’s the BEST BOOK EVER!” And they aren’t wrong to say that, because this seems to be laced with catnip — just not my catnip. It’s funny, it’s full of romantic gestures, it features a great supporting cast of women of all ages, and it’s sexy. Eva’s friends are a diverse and wonderful group, and Eva also has older women friends and relations who have their own romantic lives. It has touching moments and important things to say about intimacy and trust.
But ultimately, this book fell apart for me because I simply could not understand the protagonists, particularly Eva. I’m incredibly curious about what other readers think. Did it confuse everybody? Am I the only person who was totally baffled by the heroine’s increasingly bizarre behavior and also by her many hours off work? Am I the only person who was horrified by Bennett’s teenaged romance with a woman twice his age? Or did other readers see in this a sensitive portrayal of challenging familial and romantic relationships, wrapped in a luxurious package? I did see that – I saw all of it – but ultimately my enjoyment of the sensitivity and the luxury was out-weighed by my vast frustration with the heroine and with certain aspects of the story. Despite loving Thomas’ other books, perhaps I am just not the audience for this one.
This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well.
Thanks!
This sounds like pure FSOG. People with demanding jobs who never seem to do anything but walk on the beach and eat beautiful meals; people with staff who magically never need managing; heroines whose brains don’t work on normal logic… I prefer those Harlequin Presents where the most romantic thing is when he orders a better kind of take out so they can meet their crazy deadlines–that’s a fancy version of real life (or at least my real life). Sarah Morgan gets it right.
I’m wondering how in this day and time “I must have a girlfriend to be acceptable to my parents” plays.
“Apparently, it’s easier for me to grasp the concept that people could live in space ships than it is for me to grasp the concept that there are hotels which leave you not only a complimentary chocolate on your pillow, but an entire box.”
I find this the most interesting comment of your review because it almost explains (to me) why other readers are ablle to enjoy SF.
I came to appreciate Sherry Thomas’ books a lot, but the first of hers that I tried to read, Not Quite A Husband I just couldn’t do, because of the like, rape that is never addressed as rape. Like, going into someone’s room, even your wife’s, and having sex with them while they are asleep is rape, just as a grown person having sex with a sixteen year old is also rape. Idk I’ve been thinking about reading this book, because I loved Sherry Thomas’ books generally, but I just can’t rape that goes totally unaddressed in books!
I confess that I find billionaire romances to be a complete turn-off. They are clearly just beyond the extremes of unreality in romance that I can accept. Like you, I seem to find life in spaceships or even the concept of shapeshifters or vampires easier to buy into. Maybe this is because these latter books don’t really pretend that they have any basis in reality and I don’t expect them to. Or there is no actual reality against which they can be compared. Whereas it is hard not to look at these billionaires who don’t really seem to work or do anything realistic that could actually earn them billions of dollars without comparing them to the real-life requirements for being a billionaire. Anyway, I do like Sherry Thomas’ historical books but think I may be giving this one a miss.
This exactly echoes my own feelings about this book. I was particularly bothered by the hand-waving away of the really problematic nature of Bennet and his ex’s relationship and how he was portrayed as a hot stuff seducer when he was a kid and she was an adult. And Eva was never at work! She had this awesome job and it seemed like she would be a fully-developed person but she just wasn’t ever on the page. And that one chapter about Zelda was so good and then it just disappeared.
It also bothered me that the dynamics and social situations here felt like that which you’d find in a historical, but just jammed into a contemporary setting (high society, relationship of convenience etc). I love a quality contemporary but this just didn’t bring anything to the table that makes contemporary special.
Gah, I’m so glad for this review because everyone seems to be loving this book and it was a big nope for me.
Thanks for the thoughtful review! This kind of bums me out, because I have LOVED Thomas’ historicals and had my eye on this one, but I recognize a lot of your issues as things I also find hard to read. Also, now I am about to write a massive thesis, because this review sparked so many things in my brain!
Re: Not Quite A Husband and possible-marital-rape: I think that Thomas is a super smart writer, so I wonder if rather than ignoring the rapiness, she’s recognizing that in the time she’s writing about, there was no such thing as marital rape. In the UK, there was a specific legal doctrine under common law about “rape” within marriage, which was basically that it could not exist, because a woman belonged physically to her husband had given permanent lifetime consent that could not be revoked. The first attempted prosecution for rape within marriage in England was not until 1949, and it wasn’t actually illegal until 1991… yikes.
Sometimes I wonder if we overestimate the degree to which people in the past thought exactly as we do. A woman of that era would presumably have understood that her culture did not believe that married women had the right to deny themselves sexually to their husbands. To do so would have been a serious decision, because there would have been no legal recourse for her: if she denied him her bed, he was “perfectly entitled” to take his marital rights by force. And then, unless her family was powerful enough to take her away and physically protect her from him, she was basically stuck.
As a history nerd, part of why I read historicals is because I want to feel the different culture of a different time and maybe understand something about the way people of that time thought about issues. Some authors are really good at this. Some are maybe not very interested in it. I’m reading a book right now (The Earl’s Mistress by Liz Carlyle) that is for various reasons a very mixed bag for me. Early on, in a conversation with a sister, it is revealed that the hero has another sister who is gay and lives with her partner. The other sister lectures the rakehell hero for expressing the mildest of qualms about this arrangement:
“How it galls me that you, of all people, should question a devoted and monogamous relationship— friendship— arrangement —whatever.”
You see this sort of gloss of modern attitudes quite a bit in recently-published historicals (I’ve also seen it about race and the slave trade). I get that it’s uncomfortable for moderns to look back and contemplate, say, “Basically everyone I am writing about, by my modern standards, would have realistically qualified as a homophobe”, so I do understand this impulse, and obviously anyone who writes historicals handwaves a lot of stuff about how magically none of your sexy-promiscuous heroes ever have syphilis. Even so, I don’t really understand the point of historicals if you aren’t going to have your characters be people of their era. Most 19th-century aristocrats were after all not models of progressive thought, deeply opposed to slavery, totally cool about homosexuality, proto-feminists, etc. I think it feels to me like – why write about, say, Lesbians Of The Past unless you’re actually going to wrestle with – wow, this was an intensely courageous choice, to live even semi-openly with your female partner during this time. I’d like to see that given the attention it deserves, rather than seeing it glossed over with 2015 attitudes that, ironically, undercut the radicalism and bravery of such a choice!
(I found Courtney Milan’s The Countess Conspiracy an amazingly great execution of this sort of thing, not in terms of LGBT issues, but in dealing with the real constraints on women of the time, and eventually finding paths of realistically possible resistance. I found it deeply, deeply moving, in a more-than-a-romance-novel kind of way.)
I think this screed actually ties in to the review, because just as I have a hard time with “historicals” that are not interested in actually grappling with the issues raised by the time and the setting, but instead want “historical” to be code for “there are some sexy but easily-overridden restrictions on behavior, and the heroines wear beautiful gowns and the men look like Richard Armitage in North and South”, I have a hard time reading “Billionaire” stuff, too. Charlotte Stein has written a couple of rich business guy heroes that work for me, because they’re weird and always working and have strange driven personalities and are obsessed with their ambitions. And that makes sense to me, that that’s how a self-made billionaire might be. It makes much less sense to me that you’d have a billion dollars but the reader is meant to take that as code for “has a lot of spare time for relaxing and eating luxurious foods and pampering the heroine”. And nothing else.
I guess I tend to want the things raised in the books I read to be taken seriously. If someone is a self-made billionaire, GREAT, I want to read a book that is basically about Mark Zuckerberg moving in next door and being weird and faintly unlikeable and a bad dresser and falling for your heroine. Not… the other kind of billionaire. OR, if you want to have a billionaire hero who doesn’t really ever do anything and is super laid-back, perfect, give him inherited wealth and a heroine who is a driven, self-made woman who comes from nothing and is driven crazy by his “let’s just head to the Bahamas for the weekend!” attitude toward life. These don’t just seem “more realistic” to me, they also seem like they would naturally be easier to plot and write than books where you’re always trying to make sure people are both ambitious and have a lot of tiramisu time.
(Which is why I really wish I could figure out a reliable way to predict the “realness” of a book before I start, because obviously many people love unrealistic billionaires and totally enjoy the gloss of “he has a lot of spare time for relaxing and making sweet love” and would like to avoid books where the billionaire never sleeps because he’s obsessed with his product’s launch cycle.)
And since I’m asking for the moon, I also want books to have warning labels, like when the roadblocks to the happy ending are built mostly of “The hero and heroine refuse to talk to each other about how they feel”. Come on people! We can 3D print things but this technology doesn’t exist?
@ CP (Cordy)
Thanks so much for your massive thesis! I agree on every point.
I personally have less of an issue with this shoe-horning of contemporary ideas and ideals into historicals as I choose to read them as fantasy. I do truly enjoy reading the historicals that get it right, but I’m not really bothered by the fantasy.
I hate, HATE!, when my contemporaries are littered with fantasy. I crave really well written, realistic, (fully human) people who have normal relationships, realistic schedules, and live in the universe that I live in.
I’m currently a pet sitter and was a nanny before that, and have worked with people of all walks of life. I have clients that are authors, lawyers, judges, pro athletes, real estate agents, flight attendants, physicians, teachers, office workers, police officers, landscapers, you name it I’ve worked for them.
Something that they all have in common is that, whether they’re scarcely thousandaires or multi-millionaires, they all work hard for their money. Not worked, work.
What I think is really interesting is what we assume is wealthy. I mean, I assume that Sherry Thomas, as a successful published author, is wealthier than me. But apparently, she still fantasizes about, “the good life.” And my wealthiest clients are constantly striving to keep up with the Joneses (or the Kardashians, whatever).
I have a very real aversion to reading the billionaire romances. No amount of money can make a person interesting. No amount of money can make a person witty or a good conversationalist. And, while I haven’t tested this theory I assume that no amount of money can make a person good in bed.
I think a good rule of thumb is that if this man wouldn’t be interesting, attractive, or a good prospect if he happened to be a landscaper with crooked teeth and scuffed shoes, driving an eight year old, beat up pickup truck, and looking for work, maybe making him into a billionaire doesn’t really make him a hero. And if your heroine would be labelled a psycho stalker if she was rather plump with imperfect skin and smelled of french fries because she worked at McDonalds instead of being the hot, wealthy neighbor, maybe your characters need work.
I get that people enjoy the fantasy. But like you, I would like to be able to weed out the fantasy from the real.
I realised recently that I like romance primarily because there’s a happy ending. I think real people, with real issues, and realistic finances, also deserve happy endings (perhaps that is my fantasy?). Those are the stories I want to read.
I think this book is essentially “The One in Sherry Thomas’ Heart.” You know how Eva fantasizes about randomly running into Bennet in Munich, and constructs entire elaborate narratives surrounding their encounters, coffee, romantic walks, etc? I’ve done that too, just concocted a grand, epic romance while trying to sleep which has then been embellished and enhanced and transformed with greater implausible details over the years, new imagined tidbits of conversation, improbable plot twists, you name it. I think that’s what this book represents to Sherry Thomas. If you’ve read her FAQs/interview or whatever for this book, she mentions that it’s basically a story she’s been nibbling on for many many years, and has just finally published. It’s basically her every romantic fantasy and ideal crammed together into one whopper of a book where everyone is witty and charming and aristocratic but also intelligent and beautiful and warm and deep and quirky and interested in Lord of the Rings with perfect careers that require little work and random interesting events and encounters with people (that tango, wtf!). Exhausting and with no verisimilitude. I get it, it’s great to concoct these stories for one’s own pleasure, but don’t publish them for the world at large! Or, at least, let an editor hammer it down into a respectable plot if you do want people other than yourself to read it!
I was interested to read this one, because Sherry has a tendency for overly dramatized angst but writes so delightfully that it works well for escapist historical romance. Much harder to digest in a modern setting. There were a lot of fluff details in here, which could easily have been edited out/dumbed down and suddenly this book would have been that much more enjoyable. What makes the book worse are actually the parts that make it better: I think Sherry couldn’t decide if she wants to write billionaire fantasies ala 50 Shades of Grey, or relatable stories about real emotions and real reactions to modern situations, and so we end up with this frustrating hodgepodge with moments of brilliance that lead to that much more disappointing of a letdown. Eva sending so many text messages to rile him after their “break up” is very believable and real, the sort of immature behavior we would all indulge in. Eva attending a Paris cotillion is not.
They’re not fashionable anymore, but the old Judith McNaught type romances about poor boy making it big in the corporate world and then dazzling some rich heiress type corporate woman were so much more digest-able even as billionaire fantasies. The characters behaved in ways that were consistent. Sadly not true here
@CP I feel the exact same way about modern social issues in historical romances. It drives me absolutely nuts. I am also not a fan of billionaire romances and didn’t take the news that Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan were writing non-historicals well. However, I ended up loving Trade Me and I’ve got a sample of this book on my kindle, so I guess we’ll see.
About the hero’s teenage adventure, interesting to contrast this with The Pleasure Principle by Jane O’Reilly (a very intelligent book): Cal tells Verity (the narrator) about his first time…
“She was one of my stepmother’s friends,” he says. “I was seventeen.”
“All very Mrs. Robinson,” I say. And then I imagine Cal Bailey at seventeen. “Or did you seduce her?”
“Actually, my stepmother told me that if I got a decent school report, she’d get one of her friends to give me a blowjob. I worked my arse off and she kept her promise.”
I push up onto one elbow, stare down at him. “Are you serious?”
“Perfectly,” he says. “It was a better incentive than what my dad offered, which was to kick my arse into the middle of next week if I didn’t get my act together.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Look,” he says. “I was seventeen. I was a complete shit, acting out at home, playing truant from school. I was so horny I didn’t know what to do with myself and my father had just married a hot blonde twenty years younger than him. Judy was one of the smartest women I ever met. She wanted me out of the house. I wanted out of the house. She figured that if she could get me to calm down, I’d be at university and out of her hair in a couple of years. She identified the problem and she found the solution.”
“So you slept with one of her friends?”
“Quite a few of them, actually.”
He sounds so calm about it, so reasonable, but I can’t imagine what sort of a sexual education that would be……
……”The first time I made a woman come, it was just…” He shifts his position, looks at me. “It made me feel about ten feet tall.”
“Didn’t you want a girlfriend, though?”
“Not after witnessing my parents’ divorce, no,” he says.
I’m beginning to understand him, I think. We’ve got more in common than I ever realized.
So is Cal screwed up? It doesn’t seem so on first meeting him; he’s outgoing, awesomely patient with Verity’s insecurities, really mature apparently. And yet Verity comes to realize that Cal actually does have some self-doubt, self-deprecation lingering from his teenage years, some sense of only being valuable for sexual services he can provide.
I really love contemporaries, but I do struggle when the main conflict centers around the characters’ ambivalence or Serious Issues. I think part of the struggle for contemporaries is that there’s not many external things that keep people apart… if we’re talking about a straight, same race couple (and in this subgenre, we usually are), what’s really keeping them from going for it? If they want to commit, great. If they want something casual, that’s fine, too. That’s why I tend to like contemporaries that are more focused on the couple gradually deepening feelings as their relationship progresses or where there’s a genuine external conflict, rather than “I like you, and 5 minutes of honest reflection would tell me that I like you, but we can’t be together because REASONS.”
Also, huge cosign on not liking the underage guy with much older woman. This is a predatory relationship, regardless of if the underage person is male. Gross.
I don’t usually like contemporaries or billionaires, but I actually loved this book. On paper, it’s not my catnip, but I was with the heroine the whole way. It’s one of my favorite Sherry Thomas books.
Unfortunately I have to agree with this review. I count Sherry Thomas as one of my favourite authors but this book was just a let down. I too have a strong aversion to the millionaire plot line in contemporary romance (give me a sexy mechanic anyday!) so once Bennett’s millionaire status was revealed it kind of went down hill for me. It just became so far fetched and I guess in a contemporary, I actually want something to relate to. The first few scenes in the book, even the initial sex scene (don’t have too much of a problem with early sex in a book if its played right), were interesting. Overworked, tired, socially isolated doctor? Yes, please! Manipulative, self-centred millionaire who just so happens to also be a doctor? Not so much.
But those early scenes, especially between Eva and Zelda (the step-mum) were nicely done. The exploration of Zelda’s illness and the impact it had on Eva growing up – so nice and tender. If only the rest of the book was that grounded. But because the rest of it just went off the wall for me, I couldn’t even really finish the book.
I also think part of the problem was in the use of the first person. Its really, really challenging to write a first person narrative well without the main character coming across as all whiny and the secondary characters as all distant. Unfortunately, she does not really pull it off in this book – Eva seems self-involved and Bennett seems kind of distant and a bit of a prick.
Sherry Thomas is not the only historical author that has tried to write a contemporary. Courtney Milan did it recently too- and for me with a similar effect. It all feels a little like they are painting by numbers – trying to tick all the boxes of what apparently makes a contemporary successful (millionaire, first person, sex, sex, sex). I kind of feel if both authors had just written more down to earth, real stories, the books might have been more enjoyable. Because I want more stories about how mental illness can fuck with family relationships, how rejection can scar you or how an immigrant mother tries to be true to her culture in a new world – you know, real stories but of course with a whole lot of love thrown in. I’m crossing my fingers for Sherry Thomas’ next contemporary. But hey, if none of the points above bother you in a book, then this book will likely be OK for you.
I am the someone out there clutching this book to my bosom and saying, “But it’s the BEST BOOK EVER!” This was totally my catnip. The angst and the slow opening of Eva’s heart were just beautiful to me, and I happily glossed over many of the implausibility issues. Loved it. LOVED IT. This and Trade Me by Courtney Milan are my fav books of 2015 thus far.
Like Kay, this book was like a giant load of my catnip.
That said, I think some of my reader quirks made me love it, even though it wasn’t as strongly plotted as most Thomas books. If you, as a reader, are comfortable filling in a lot of character motivation and backstory from dropped hints, this book should work for you.
As for the Mrs. Robinson relationship in the Hero’s past – I was strangely fine with it. It was never presented as being acceptable or okay, even the hero seems to understand it was problematic now that he’s an adult (though he was fully on-board when it started and his paramour was not). I love how it gave him a background in having experienced insta-love and seen how it had both good and bad fall-out. I also love that he was a coked-up billionaire crackpot for a while before he got his shit together. I thought the doctor thing was a bit much on top of all that, yes, but understandable given his current and past motivations.
One thing Thomas has mentioned in interviews: her pet peeve, as a reader, is when the tension drops off after the couple has had sex. So, as a writer, she goes out of her way to make sure that the sex scenes don’t resolve all the tension between the couple. That means a lot of her sex scenes take place when characters have conflicted motivations, and I’ve seen more than one come off as rapey. In historicals, that makes sense, given the time period and assumptions of the day. In this contemporary, I think it makes the reader doubt the hero’s judgment a little bit.
600046 829820 Spot on with this write-up, I truly believe this site needs significantly a lot more consideration. Ill probably be once more to read significantly a lot more, thanks for that information. 957119