This HaBO request comes from Glora, who wants to find a contemporary romance. Lots of trigger warnings for this description:
So, years ago I read a book that was really great. I didn’t finish it for some reason, probably because something by a favorite author came out and booted it further down my reading pile, and then I lost it.
Contemporary romance. Hero was an auto mechanic living in a trailer caring for his alcoholic, abusive, chronically ill (congestive heart-failure I think) father. Heroine is a paramedic. They meet during one of the hero’s father’s frequent health crises. She sees him later at the hospital sitting outside on the steps, he’s upset that his father is slowly dying and also really upset over the emotional abuse he’s getting from the old bastard, so she takes him out for coffee and they talk.
Background on the characters. Hero’s father is abusive emotionally and used to be abusive physically. He once beat the hero so badly when he was 15 that the hero peed blood. That was the last time though because the hero grabbed a rifle and threatened his father with it. He soon left home and didn’t move back, until after his mother passed away and his father’s health started to decline and he needed someone to care for him. Now, I’d have let the old bastard rot, so clearly the hero deserves a halo for putting up with him.
Heroine is a paramedic and Latina. When she was 15 her uncle raped her. Traumatized, she ran out into the street and a woman driving an ambulance stopped to help her. This left a deep impression on the heroine and when she grew up, she wanted to be a paramedic too so she could help people who were also in crisis. Eventually she told her mother what happened and her family believed her and took her uncle away – heavily implied they took him out to the desert and killed him.
I wish I could remember more about the hero and heroine’s relationship; they were pretty much in love from the first coffee date. Part of the book was from the father’s perspective and while it’s somewhat clear that he did love his son, it’s also pretty clear that he had major anger and control issues. I felt that the author did a good job making him three-dimensional, not just a mindless villain but also not white-washing his abusive behavior.
Hero’s father eventually dies/possibly kills himself in a fire involving the oxygen tanks he uses and it completely burns down the trailer.
I really want to finish this book. I think it might have been called “Gasoline” and was possibly published by Harlequin?
That’s some pretty heavy stuff. Anyone know it?
Could this be “Burned Gasoline” by Isabelle Lawless? I haven’t read it but some of the plot synopsis seemed to fit.
There was a book I came across recently that sounded like this one….I’m trying to recall the title (I want to say ‘coffee’ was in it) but I decided not to get the book because it was too dark.
I also came across Blood and Gasoline by Elias Anderson – could this possibly be the book the reader is looking for?
His father suffering with fatal cancer, Cody is forced to reunite with the violent, alcoholic tyrant of his childhood. Requiring expensive, live in care, Cody is tethered to the old man by guilt and duty, and there is no one else but him to step up to the task. Feeling trapped, Cody becomes desperate for a different life.
While restrained by caring for his father, Cody meets Perla, and the different life he dreamed of begins taking shape. When he brings her home to meet his father, however, Avery snaps, insulting and degrading the woman Cody has fallen in love with. Every relationship has secrets. Some darker than others , including the drunken accident that left Cody without a mother. With time running out, Cody and his father work to shed light on their dark past before cancer claims the relationship each of them seeks. Things get better, but as always, it is only for a while…
It is so not helpful to say this, but I kinda think I read this, but it was from the public library. Might have been a town in OR or WA and there was a serious about the various inhabitants. Not Robyn Carr.
I’m kinda into this. I hope it gets solved