F
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Redheadedgirl. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.
The summary:
There’s truth–and then there’s love
Sedona Campbell is an attorney who works with The Lemonade Stand, a unique women’s shelter in California. She’s called in to advise fifteen-year-old Tatum Malone, who claims she’s been abused–by her brother, not her boyfriend. It’s Sedona’s job to sort out truth from lie. She soon discovers that’s not an easy task, especially once she meets Tanner Malone. Because despite herself, she’s attracted to him.
Tanner has always protected his younger sister–but she’s lying about him. And he’s falling for Sedona. Between them, maybe they can figure out why Tatum’s doing this. Maybe then he and Sedona will be free to love each other….
Here is Redheadedgirl's review:
This is a RITA nominee that the reviewer could not finish, and who knows that and hears, “I triple dog dare you”? Me. I hear a triple dog dare where none was given and here we are.
It’s a good thing I read this on an airplane, because that kept me from throwing things.
The set up is that Sedona is a lawyer who works at a women’s shelter, and Tatum, a 16 year old girl, shows up and claims that she wants to stay there because her brother hit her. Sedona is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, as she has pants feelings for Tatum’s brother, Tanner, and she’s certain that somebody is abusing Tatum, but not Tanner because pants feelings, and it’s all very melodramatic and stupid.
I hated this book. Flames on the side of my face hated.
It wasn’t just the fact that the whole set up was based on a false accusation of abuse, though that was a big part. No matter what mental gymnastics you get into to justify a girl lying about being abused, it’s a trope that just… it shouldn’t be used. Not in a melodrama pileup like this. Maybe Quinn was trying to explore something here, about manipulation by intimate partners, and how far it can go, but it did not work, and was shoddily executed. But that’s not the worst sin.
The worst sin is the total unethical behavior on the part of Sedona. She’s a lawyer, for fuck’s sake. She’s representing Tatum. There are rules in place by state bars and the ABA that prevent conflicts of interest in order to protect clients (and honestly, it protects the lawyer, too). One of the most basic? DON’T GET INTO AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DUDE YOUR CLIENT HAS ACCUSED OF ABUSE. NO, NOT EVEN WHEN YOU’RE PRETTY SURE SHE’S LYING. Saying, “Wow, this is super unethical, I really shouldn’t do this” even as you’re doing it (him) isn’t going to absolve you of your ethical breach. NOT BANGING THE DUDE IS THE ANSWER.
As soon as you realize your pants-feelings are getting in the way of doing your job, you either break it off with the client, or draw yourself some strict boundaries. “Oh, I told Tatum we were friends, and she still wants me to be her lawyer,” is not an absolution, either.
Don’t fuck him, is what I’m saying.
When it comes to melodrama pile-up, this is impressive. Tanner has custody of his sister because their mother was a prostitute meth addict, and after she tried to pimp out Tanner and Tatum’s other sister, Talia, Tanner got her to give up custody. They have a brother, Thomas, who left home and never looked back. Talia lives in Vegas and is a stripper, and had a terrible marriage that involved being pimped that Tanner needed to buy her out of, and Tanner is BOUND AND DETERMINED that Tatum will not be like that. Tatum will go to an Ivy League school and he controls her every movement in pursuit of that goal.
Given that she’s a 16 year old, that works about as well as you might think.
There’s a whole bunch about both Talia and Tatum being in danger because of their beauty that will drive men wild or whatever, so they need to be protected. From themselves, mostly. Tanner also doesn’t believe in telling Tatum the truth about their mother and what he went through to keep the siblings together and that naturally backfires spectacularly.
It’s exhausting to read about.
There was one moment in the entire book that worked- the moment Tanner talks about how, even though he has a nice income now, and a vineyard, and money set aside for Tatum’s education, he still eats boxed mac and cheese. And that’s because as kids, they would eat mac and cheese by soaking the noodles in water overnight. Eating it now means they’ve got milk and butter, and the means to actually cook it. That’s something people who go, “Oh, mac and cheese is less than a dollar a box, so anyone can afford it” don’t always seem to get. It still assumes a certain amount privilege- all food does. So exploring that, however briefly, was a nice moment.
A single nice moment doesn’t mitigate anything else, here, though. This was a MESS.
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Those names!
Seeing so many names starting with “T” made me feel almost like I was reading about a book version of “Duggars Gone Wild”. I sometimes wonder what the judges for the RITA are smoking – heck, what the people who even nominate books this bad are smoking. There are much better contemporaries out there. At least this one didn’t win!
After seeing the RITA nominees for several years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that the nominations are not based on good books and good writing but maybe popularity or somebody buying them off (sort of like finding out you have to pay to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and pay to keep it up which is why some folks who have had short and not necessarily distinguished, careers manage to get a star). I hate to make that accusation but, as I said, it’s based on what I’ve been seeing for a while and I cannot come to any other conclusion.
I haven’t read this one, but thank you thank you thank you for calling out the legal ethics problem! As a fellow lawyer, it drives me up a wall that so many books, movies, TV shows, etc. not only paint totally unethical conduct involving lawyers and their clients as romantic and sexy, but, more importantly, hand-wave the abuse of power problems. Writing about people breaking the rules is one thing, but pretending they’ve done nothing wrong is just all kinds of no – at least for me.
Way to find a silver lining RHG. Or as Barenaked Ladies said:
If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft dinner
But we would eat Kraft dinner
As far as I know, the Ritas are self nominating. Like the author and her agent decide to submit the book for consideration.
Quinn is beginning to be well known. She also wrote the basketball hoop book.
Okay, even if she were not a lawyer, even if she were a mentor, a social worker, a teacher (I’m a teacher so this is a BIG ISSUE for me), if you even SUSPECT that a kid might be abused, NO! In situations of suspected abuse or neglect, you turn suspicious of all their caregivers. There is nothing whatsoever attractive about anyone who might have hurt a kid. There is zero potential to be attracted to them. Period. Full stop. Like, if a kid in my class was being raised by Gerard Butler and the kid said he hit her, my entire thought of GB would be KILL HIM WITH FIRE not, oh well she may be lying yum yum. Grrrrr. All the angry.
All I can say is I now know why I do not get all verklempt over which tomes do, or do not, make the RITAS.
Yes, the RITAs are self-nominating. All you have to do to enter is pay the fee and meet very basic criteria. They cap the total entries at 2000. No information about who the judges are, other than “published romance authors,” nor how many there are. See RWA’s page about the RITAs.
And this one could still win. It made the finalists (limited to 10 per category) and the winners aren’t announced until July.
Well, that’s a downer. I used to think that if a book was a Rita winner or Rita nominated, it must be a pretty good book and worth trying.
Why bother? Sheesh!
I’m really sorry I let you down here. I hope the rest of you will at least give this book a shot – you can read an excerpt for free. And if anyone here wants a free copy, to form your own opinion, email me at staff@tarataylorquinn.com, tell me you saw this review, and I will send you a free copy.
My daughter is a lawyer. I certainly did not intend to have her perceived as crossing lines. From my standpoint, she isn’t. I clearly should have done a better job at getting her point across and I apologize to lawyers for giving the wrong impression.
This is a book about family. And about lies and secrets that are kept to protect loved ones.
Most importantly, to me, it’s about domestic violence. I am a survivor and a supporter of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. This entire series revolves around a unique women’s shelter I created. In Once A Family we had someone who’d been falsely accused. Because that’s part of the problem. People who cry wolf and diminish the sound of real cries for help. Yet the teenager really was a victim. She just didn’t recognize that she was being abused, which is also part of the problem.
I write a lot of suspense and several of the titles in this series are suspense books. A woman in jeopardy. A bounty hunter chasing down a possible abuser. And there’s a love story involving a mentally handicapped couple as a sub-plot. I write books where the characters always have to face their shadow sides. I don’t set out to do that, it’s just where my people take me. I hope some of you will still give me a try!
And about the RITA’s – publishers and authors enter their books. The books are judged by peers. All judges have to be published authors. Each book goes to five authors who score the books on a 1-10 system. The RITA’s are outsourced and the company tallies the scores and a computer spits out the finalists.
Sorry, should have read before I posted. “My daughter is a lawyer. She…” The she does not refer to my daughter, but to Sedona!!
And the free book offer is good for one week!