Trust My Heart

by Carol Post

October 25, 2016 · Waterfall Press

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2017 review was written by DonnaMarie. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romance with Spiritual or Religious Elements category.

Here is DonnaMarie's review:

Like many RITA reviewers, I ended up with a book in a genre I rarely read. Not that I haven’t enjoyed “inspirational” books in the past, just that I end up finding them less than inspirational. I went in with few expectations and came out pretty much as expected.

Full disclosure: When I signed on for this book I checked availability with the GBPL but failed to notice that the only copy they had was an audiobook. This is not my favorite format. I competed in speech forensics for eight years, so I find myself critiquing the voice performance as much as the book. So let me get this out of the way right off the top. The voice performance was… uninspiring. Sarcasm was not sarcastic. Lines were read without particular emphasis, then a pause and, “she shouted.” There were other content interpretations that I found lacking but the worst of all: cliche characterizations. The cute female friend had a cute female voice. The tomboy friend was voiced in the same lower register that all the male characters shared. I think I’ve got enough off my chest. I’ll try not to digress.

So, we have the story of Jami Carlisle, small town reporter, and Grant McAllister, big city lawyer. Jami is perky, kind and some form of Christian. Grant is cynical, closed off and disillusioned.

As the story opens Jaime has graduated from college and returned to Murphy, North Carolina. She’s landed a job at the local paper and is happily reconnecting with her friends. First up though, is to let down her on-again-off again boyfriend when he makes it clear he believes her return to town means it’s time for them to get married. It’s a given as far as the town is concerned since they held hands in the 8th grade. Aside from her ruminations on how his kisses are less than swoon worthy, her main problems with this seem to be that he: a) hasn’t actually asked her to marry him and b) voices his non-proposal in the town’s equivalent to CiCi’s Pizza. I can’t fault her on either of these issues. The guy is a bit of a condescending douchecanoe. I can fault her for comparing the restaurant to CiCi’s and then saying the food never lets her down. Really? Now I’m questioning everything about her. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived my entire life in the Chicago area where you can throw a stick and hit a really good pizza. And CiCi’s isn’t one of them.

Next up for Jami is a story on the appearance of Grant McAllister, the long lost only grandchild of the wealthy and reclusive McAllisters. Grant is a successful New York attorney who had a hard luck childhood with his single mom. His father had been disowned by his parents after he married against their wishes and then died before Grant was born. He’s more than surprised when informed that he has inherited their estate. He has zero interest in any of it as they had zero interest in him. So there. He’s come to Murphy to sell the property and hopefully find some mementos of his father. Also, his wife cheated on him with his best friend, and he was subsequently treated badly by the press during their high profile divorce, so he has zero interest in talking to the perky reporter. He’s got “all, so nothing” disease. All reporters will do anything for story and don’t report the truth, just what will sell papers, so no talking to reporters. All women/love can not be trusted. They stomp on your heart, tell lies and take your money, so no getting romantically involved with women. He’s also into self punishment. He’s given up his music (French horn) and gourmet cooking. Nothing shows up the people who hurt you like giving up the things that make you happy.

I question Grant’s success as an attorney. It requires a bit of logical thinking that Grant lacks. Aside from the above, the man is bummed because he’s gone through the entire first floor of the mansion and found no sign of his father. The first floor being the public rooms of a mansion. He hasn’t touched the second floor full of bedrooms where one would expect to find personal items or, say, a locked room that hasn’t been touched in decades. Funny thing, he knows there’s a locked door on the second floor, but he can’t find a key. Oh well…. It’s not like he could call or locksmith or, I don’t know, kick down the damn door in a house he owns..

As expected, sweet perky Jami worms her way into his life. She’s his neighbor, so there’s proximity. She’s got a ‘never say die’ attitude, so she keeps chipping away at his resistance. She promises not to publish anything he doesn’t approve first. She takes him on tours of the area so he can learn to appreciate its beauty. She’s with him when he finally gets the damn door open and finds much more than he bargained for. She gets him to go to church where he sees that maybe it’s not all some hypocritical show like when he went with his wife and her family. Because they sing, I guess. He starts to see the light, and then….

While waiting outside the local quick mart, he sees Jami’s car parked there, and he’s told by the local mechanic that Jami is engaged to be married. Douchecanoe told his gossip spreader aunt they were engaged, but not that Jami declined his non-proposal. Jami has spent a goodly portion of the book correcting people, just not in front of Grant. Does Grant wait to ask Jami WTF? No, of course he doesn’t. He gets in his car stewing over how she made a fool of him and leaves town without a word. They have shared exactly one kiss and had zero discussion about it.

Digression: Hank, the above mentioned mechanic, is described as always wearing overalls. I think this, along with his involvement in a secondary plot involving a secret admirer scam, cued the narrator to create a voice characterization that is… arghhhh! Between the exaggerated slow drawl and the fact that every word seemed pulled from the far end of his cerebral cortex, I was itching to throw the book at the wall. Since I was listening to the book in the car and would have had to drive it into a tree to accomplish that, I refrained. I was offended on behalf of mechanics everywhere and my big brother, who has never worn overalls in his life, in particular for the caricature that is this character.

Back to the book review.

I don’t want to rehash the whole story. Suffice to say that Grant comes back after he is told the truth. He and Jami spend more time together, both think maybe they are on their way to a relationship while never actually discussing it with each other, and then what you expect to happen does. The story about Grant’s family gets published without his permission, so he takes off without a word AGAIN. The cut and run thing is irritating enough, but there’s more.

It appears Jami writes for the local paper, but doesn’t actually read it. She has no idea why Grant would have up and left and refuse to take her calls until days later. Once she knows what happened, she’s desperate to explain how it was all a big mistake. Since he won’t take her call or those of her friends, her big plan is to drive over the state line to a different area code to call him. Because we all take calls from unknown numbers….

Me, I’m of the fool me once school, but that wouldn’t make for a HEA in this book

Aside from several characters being more caricature than personality, the major problems with this book is telling not showing, and the distinctly uninspiring picture of faith.

Grant has a lot thrown at him: he walked into this book with trust issues that would choke a horse, and gets more reasons to continue in that vein. By the time we get to the end of the book,

So unsatisfying.

He finds faith sitting on a beach. It’s his understanding that God is everywhere, at least he thinks he remembers that from his childhood. Really? Some vague catechism of twenty odd years ago is the only understanding he has of God? That a song he sang along with in church with Jami moved him to tears is the foundation of his new faith? Or that Jami has faith is a reason to re-examine his own beliefs?

Jami is the one with strong religious beliefs. She prays on things, espouses the virtues of forgiving and moving on, but when confronted with the alcoholic father who deserted her 15 years ago, she is cold and unforgiving. Sure, she admits she’s being hypocritical, she recognizes that she may have self esteem and abandonment issues, but there’s never a sense that she has opened her heart one little crack to grant him the grace of forgiveness. When she goes to see him, it’s more Christian “duty” than actual Christian practice. I didn’t expect her to fall into her father’s arms, but it was left hanging in the wind with no expectation that there would be resolution. She forgives Grant, whom she’s known less than a month, twice for walking out, but healing a relationship that had a huge effect on her whole life is expecting too much.

I don’t know what the message about faith is supposed to be here. If this is supposed to be about the redemptive power of forgiveness, it’s a fail. The theory, as I understand it, is that forgiveness is as much about personal healing as is about the person who is being forgiven. I had no sense that anyone other than Grant got the benefit of that.

(If you’d like that kind of story, I recommend Molly O’Keefe. She doesn’t write inspirational romances, but she’s doing some great work with the themes of forgiveness and redemption.)

Then this happened: because I was listening in the car, I turned it off when she accepted his proposal (elapsed time of relationship: 4 weeks) thinking I had another chapter to go. He’d just done his grovel, mapped out their future and coughed up a ring. The secondary plotlines about the matchmaking scam and her father were hanging out there. Imagine my surprise when I started the car this morning to hear: “This is the end of…:”. It just ended with all their issues and the secondary plot up in the air.

Finally, there was a lack of depth to the whole thing. Nothing really resonated. Even cheap triggers like talking about her deceased mother barely engendered a sniff. It felt more like something I’d skimmed rather than spent a week with.

If you want something unchallenging and light on emotion, pick it up. Looking for depth of characterization, an exploration of how faith guides your relationships or inspiration? Skip it.