RITA Reader Challenge Review

Searching for Disaster by Jennifer Probst

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by Darbi. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

The summary:

When Isabella MacKenzie tries to move on from her disastrous past, Officer William Devine is determined to show her that love is the only way to heal. This sexy enovella, the final installment in Jennifer Probst’s heartwarming Searching For series, follows the high-powered women of the popular matchmaking agency Kinnections, located in the small, picturesque town of Verily, NY.

Here is Darbi's review:

Searching For Disaster had a premise that I was excited for, but then everything spiraled into a disappointing into a pile of WTF and alphahole nonsense. I will put a disclaimer here – Searching For Disaster is the seventh and final part of the “Searching For” series so I’m sure there’s things I’m missing. That said, I’m not exactly tempted to go back and catch myself up.

Our Hero and Heroine are Officer Liam Devine, and Izzy Mackenzie. Izzy works at Kinnections, a match making agency in a small town, and is an addict in recovery. Izzy and Liam had met six years prior to the story’s beginning and had a hot hookup that went south due to Izzy’s drug use. Fast forward to the present and Izzy has been through hell and back due to her addiction. She and Liam meet up again and cue the aforementioned alphahole nonsense, puns on Liam’s last name, and magic. Yes magic, I’m not joking. This book reads like a small-town contemporary, but there are literal magic spells, so I’m not sure if this is an extremely light paranormal romance/urban fantasy or if it’s an attempt at Like Water For Chocolate-style magic realism.

Side Note: read Like Water For Chocolate if you haven’t already. It’s a really good book.

Second chance stories are total catnip for me, and I love an unconventional heroine. With the United States and Canada in the midst of an opioid epidemic, I was actually looking forward to reading a book about somebody struggling with recovery. Izzy could be such a fascinating character but the entire book is bogged down by Liam. Liam and his magical penis of wonder and enlightenment that somehow knows Izzy better than she does after that one time six years ago they had sex. Liam basically coerces Izzy into a date via her workplace in a manner that is almost certainly illegal. Her friends and coworkers are totally in on the scheme because they all know what’s best for her.

Side note: is anybody else tired of the manipulative-but-well-meaning-best-friend trope? I ABSOLUTELY think I know what’s best for my friends, but I never put action to words. Maybe I’m too lazy to be a good friend?

Izzy only agrees to the date to make Liam realize that they’ll never work. Which makes all of the sense, and is not something that could be communicated by the word “No.” This is immediately followed by Izzy panicking over what to wear to dinner when your clothing is trying to communicate incompatibility. In this section, a quotation from Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman came to mind:

“When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.”

Side note: read How To Be A Woman if you haven’t already. It’s a really good book.

Izzy ends up wearing an “upscale halter top” whatever that means. The date night ends with Liam physically boxing Izzy in against her front door and kissing her. When she asks him to please leave her alone, Liam’s thoughts in the book are:

“Better to retreat and prepare for the second phase of attack.”

This is the point where, had I not signed up to review the book, I would never have finished. Frankly, it wasn’t really worth finishing, but I did my Elizabeth Warren best and persisted.

Here’s what else happens:

Show Spoiler
they get some puppies, Liam’s friends are jerks about addiction, they break up, Izzy dresses like Slave Leia, they get back together.

The end.

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Searching for Disaster by Jennifer Probst

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  1. Heather T says:

    Oh Darbi — my fellow sufferer in having to review this fail of a book — your review gave me all the good laughs. Especially the spoiler. Yup, all that happened. And it was NOT good.

  2. MirandaB says:

    If she was searching for disaster, I think she found some. Yuck.

    The closest I ever meddled was when a total asshole I know mentioned online that he he’d just started dating someone with the same first name as a separate friend.

    I was 99% sure it wasn’t friend, but I emailed her to ask “Have you just started dating someone named ‘thisguy’ because if you have, we need to talk.” Turned out, all was safe, which is good.

  3. Kris Bock says:

    I have long since learned that even when my friends ask for my advice over and over, they never take that advice (which is usually, “Dump that​ jerk. Why do you put up with that crap anyway?”) Granted, I know a couple of people who would be more likely to take my advice if I were recommending they get involved in unhealthy relationships.

  4. DonnaMarie says:

    You poor thing. Well, it’s over now and you came out swinging. Good on you. Jennifer Probst has been on my fool me once list for a long time.

  5. Demi says:

    From reading this review, too, I got the sense that everyone else thinks they know what’s best for Izzy because she IS a recovering addict and that somehow entitles them to make sure she ends up with obviously perfect sheriff man. GAH.

    Thank you for suffering through the condescension, and I second Caitlin Moran’s “How to Be a Woman.”

  6. DonnaMarie says:

    And am I the only one who thinks Kinnections is just incestuous sounding enough to be completely inappropriate for a dating service?

  7. Darbi says:

    @HeatherT Your review was BRILLS. Just trying to live up to it 😉

    @DonnaMarie — welp, that is a bell that cant be unrung. That had not occurred to me and now the book is even more messed up. TBH, I just automatically went “Kardashian”.

  8. Where can I get a magical penis of wonder and enlightenment?? Sounds like fun.

  9. kitkat9000 says:

    Someone, somewhere recommended this author highly. In anticipation of good reads, I requested several from the library. I believe I got through the first 60-70 pages, nope out, skipped the middle, and read the last 30. Returned the others unread and haven’t bothered with her since. Seems I’m still not missing anything.

  10. Nancy C says:

    Thanks for the rec for Moran’s How to Be a Woman. I just put a request on it from my library with the hope that it will arrive in time for me to take it with me on vacation shortly.

  11. Louise says:

    a match making agency in a small town
    Didn’t this trope come up in a review of some earlier book? Please say it was another in the same series. I don’t want to think there exist two different authors who believe that a small town can support a match-making agency with multiple (seven?!) full-time employees.

  12. Tori says:

    Yeah, WTF is an upscale halter top? Is it studded in jewels?

  13. Maite says:

    As I adore Like Water for Chocolate, I will go on to read How To Be A Woman. Considering I would have also quit the book after the “date”, I consider you a person of good taste.

  14. Rose says:

    An “upscale halter top” sounds like something I would’ve made an emergency trip to the mall to find after seeing Buffy rock it. 2001 was a different time. Loved this review!

  15. Mona says:

    @DonnaMarie I thought Kinnections would refer to a matchmaking agency for Furries or Kinfolk (I spend too much time online). That would be even more niche and even unlikeliest to support seven employees.

  16. Christine says:

    Just your description of the book almost made me throw up in my mouth a little, for real. (Although I just read some news headlines, so was probably primed.) Jennifer Probst’s books always sound good to me, then I get partway into the sample and think, oh, right, this is the exact opposite of the execution I was hoping for…

  17. Christine says:

    P.s. I seem to recall that Josh Lanyon has a good book with a cop dating a recovering addict–I think it’s Unto These Yellow Sands or something… I’m relatively confident there are yellow sands in the title.

  18. Lizzy says:

    @DonnaMarie I thought maybe it was an agency that helps people find their families, like adoptees looking for their bio parents or people looking for long lost Uncle Bill.

    I’m a naturally bossy person and one of the hardest lessons I learned in early adulthood is that my family and friend relationships go much, much better when I don’t try to run other people’s lives. I’ll give suggestions and have no problem speaking my mind but after that point it’s best to sit down. People don’t really appreciate when you think you can live their life better than them.

    And can we pleeeeaaasssseeeeee stahp with the No means Yes later? It doesn’t. It’s not romantic and it’s not appreciated. In the real world we call that behavior stalking and harassment.

  19. LML says:

    Loved your fun personal touch side notes.

  20. QOTU says:

    For real, y’all, I just went to the RITA website to see how books get nominated… They do it Emmy – style. Anyone can submit (just apy the fee) and then the entries are winnowed down to the nominees through an eligibility check (ie is this a romance? Is it novella length?) and some panel scoring. Then, the nominees are judged by a panel whose instructions I can’t read them because I’m not a member. Seems like they might want to change things up a little if books we all want to avoid keep getting the nod.

  21. kkw says:

    Best spoiler ever! The worst books really make for the best reviews.

    So I think an upscale halter top would be silk-looking Buffy era style, as opposed to like a gingham 50s looking one?

    Also, fwiw, I really enjoyed the Moran book, despite the title, but apparently she’s one of those crappy entitled white feminists who is too special to have to care about intersectionality. It’s very disappointing.

  22. Chillyjen says:

    Again, thank you for reading this so we don’t have to.

    It also reminded me of one of my “things I’d like to see in more romance novels”: regular folk who are in recovery be it drugs, alcohol, disordered eating, etc. I honestly cannot recall (and hook me up if you can think of some) a novel where the hero or heroine are in recovery without a seriously gratuitous screwed up past and are Now Unable To Love or some such. Too often people with addictions are parents who have left their children with the emotional baggage needed to create tension, or perhaps like in this case is a villain-type in a previous book and is Now Redeemed. And besides disordered eating or maybe sex, it’s the dudes with the past addictions. A lot of folks in recovery (and I speak as one myself) are no more screwed up or unidimensional than everyone else. Ok, rant over.

  23. Vicki says:

    For everyone with concerns about the Kinnections thing, let me just say that the studies on the Icelandic genome showed that the most fertile marriages were between third or fourth cousins. So, you know, looking for a partner at a family reunion is not necessarily a bad thing. (I get to say this because 1. my mother is Icelandic and 2. both sets of her grandparents were first cousins, in one case because of inheritance.)

  24. Lizzy says:

    @Chillyjen Steadfast by Sarina Bowen features a hero who is in recovery from opiate addiction and is trying to get his life together after getting out of prison.

  25. LauraL says:

    Thank you for taking one for the team, Darbi and Heather T.

    To feed my small-town romance addiction a while back, I read one Jennifer Probst book and never read another. No need for a matchmaking agency in a small town. There is church, the grocery store, and Tractor Supply.

  26. Megan M. says:

    It seems like Jennifer Probst is always a DNF or an I-should-have-DNFed. Bless her heart. “Kinnections” is an AWFUL name for a matchmaking agency. AWFUL.

  27. Ren Benton says:

    @LauraL: Tractor Supply! 😀 I swear, there is less flexing and posturing at a Mr. Universe pageant. While I can’t complain about never having to lift anything heavy, it’s always a relief to escape that place without an engagement ring.

  28. Rose says:

    @Ren Benton I have no idea what it is, aside from the obvious context clues, but I’d now like to read a romance novel set in or around a Tractor Supply. 10/10 location points.

  29. Ren Benton says:

    @Rose: Around here, it’s the place to go if you need to rent or buy heavy machinery, feed your chickens, build a retaining wall, shoot something, or outfit yourself for a rodeo. It’s… a lot of things under one big metal roof, but mostly it’s a playground for big boys. The doors slide open, and testosterone punches you in the face like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse.

  30. LauraL says:

    What Ren Benton said! Even gray-haired married ladies like me never have to pick up anything heavy in a Tractor Supply store. If you’re looking for chicken feed or a shovel and a scruffy bearded guy, that’s the place. I go there for the good dog food and birdseed. Really.

  31. Louise says:

    mostly it’s a playground for big boys

    Each spring, the local farm-and-feed store has prominently displayed signs that read “Pick Up Chicks Here”.

  32. Anonymous says:

    My parents met at a family reunion, and we’re not even Icelandic. (They’re third cousins by marriage, though, so genomes are irrelevant.)

  33. Rose says:

    She was building a retaining wall around her heart. All he wanted was a pair of embellished chaps. Sparks will fly (outside, a responsible distance from the gas tanks), in…A Playground for Big Boys.

  34. Ren Benton says:

    @Rose: Perfection! (How could I forget the propane?!)

  35. Rose says:

    @Ren Benton That’s the plot twist! Their love is too incendiary for Tractor Supply. Will it find steady fuel or will this propane passion blow sky-high?

  36. Msb says:

    Ew.
    And How to Be a Woman IS an excellent book.

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