D
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
Theme: Bodyguard, Opposites Attract
Archetype: Actor/Actress/Celebrity
I was so, so excited for The Protector by Jodi Ellen Malpas. I mean, look at that cover! Look at it!
When I was a kid, we watched three movies on rotation at every sleepover: Dirty Dancing, The Cutting Edge and, my favorite, The Bodyguard. That cover is clearly a reference to The Bodyguard and when I saw it I was light-headed with nostalgia.
So I picked up the book and I was prepared to love the hell out of it…but I didn’t. I didn’t at all. I thought the plot was fine. I liked the heroine. The issue was the hero–Jake Sharp. He’s just awful really, and since half the book is told first person from his point of view, that awfulness just hit me right in the face. Jake really, really likes to use the word pussy, and not in a dirty-talking kind of way. No, in a derogatory kind of way. So I enlisted some fellow enraged pussies to help me with this review.
Okay, Jake Sharp is a former solider, all-around tough-guy turned bodyguard. He’s got broken man emotions and as a result he can only feel things with his penis. Jake watched two of his friends die in war and blames himself, and now he’s all broken etc etc. I’m not discounting the trauma of watching two of your friends die; I’m discounting using PTSD as an excuse to be a giant douchecanoe to everyone.
So Jake lives for three things: booze, sex, and protectin’ people. I’m a little alarmed at his pretty obvious alcoholism given the fact that he’s pretty much always armed and, according to the text, able to kill people with his pinky nail or something. Anyway, he’s busy drinking himself blind and smexing strangers when he gets a new job.
Camille Logan is the spoiled socialite daughter of a bajillionaire. Some creepy fucker has made death threats against her, so daddy has called in Logan to protect her. Camille is fresh out of rehab, has a modeling career, and is famous for being attractive and wealthy. She’s legitimately trying to get her shit together though and she does not appreciate Jake following her around being a bossy jerk. Too bad he’s hot and she wants to jump him.
Jake is also not coping well with living in Camille’s “champagne and cocaine” world of fashion and shopping:
“She’s doing this on purpose. I swear, all this girlie shit is turning my brain pink. All in all, I’m feeling pretty fucking pussy-ish right now.”
I’m not sure what feeling pussy-ish means. Does Jake feel powerful and remarkable? Like he’s capable of delivering human life into the world? Like he’s made of tissue both capable of experiencing sexual gratification AND possessing the materials needed to grow and sustain life?
Or does he just want to nibble on some salmon and catfish entree and rub his face on the corner of a laptop? Does he want to shit in a box? Do tell us, Jake.
Anyway, Jake wants to bang Camille and Camille wants to bang Jake but they both annoy each other. Camille is very feminine and not appreciative of Jake’s awesomeness. Jake orders Camille around and interferes in her life. Still though, they want to smex.
Jake is troubled by this:
I need a drink. And a good screw. Anything to ride my head of these stupid, pussy thoughts.
In case you’re wondering, “pussy thoughts” are not thoughts of adorably batting around a ball of yarn. “Pussy thoughts” are a yearning for physical and emotional intimacy. So basically all human beings have “pussy thoughts.” You might be having “pussy thoughts” right now.
Once Jake and Camille inevitably give into their pants feelings, Jake is troubled by this new feeling bubbling up in his chest. It’s not gas. It’s not his liver crying for sweet, sweet release. It’s not even an alien baby trying to bust out his ribs. No, IT’S LOVE. Now, this is a man who isn’t concerned about frequently getting black out drunk and having sex with total strangers. Having affectionate, loving feelings for his sex partner, though, that’s fucking terrifying:
I’m Jake Sharp, for fuck’s sake! Arsehole extraordinaire! I don’t love, I screw!
My thoughts grind to a screeching halt and I physically recoil. Lucinda frowns at my sudden, unprovoked jerk, watching me as I rewind through my thoughts. When I find what I’m looking for, I double over and nearly throw up. Love? Camille Logan has a habit of reducing me to a pussy, and she’s doing it again.
I mean, I read a lot of books with emotionally constipated heroes, but I love how the idea of being in love makes Jake almost puke. Based on earlier descriptions of the guy, he’s probably syphilitic with cirrhosis of the liver, but love makes him physically ill. I’m willing to withstand a little bit of the alphahole with his head up his butt, but Jake really takes the cake.
Eventually, however, he gives in to his feels and he and Camille have naked picnic sex in a meadow. Then the threat that’s been hovering in the corner materializes, and Jake has to do his goddamn job and rescue Camille:
I lift my arm and aim for [redacted for spoilers]’s head. “You have ten seconds to tell me what the fuck you’ve been hiding before I blow your brain out.” And he’d better not question my intention. I pull back the slide of my gun.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, backing up in his chair like the pussy I know he is.
Right. You were her bodyguard, Jake. You shouldn’t have let naked meadow time get in the way of
Anyway, there were things I liked about this book. I liked that Camille starts off as a stereotypical spoiled rich girl but is revealed to have actual depth. She feels stifled by her life and does her best to navigate the challenges that come with it (like the paparazzi) gracefully. She loves her best friend, Heather, and even though she’s more famous and could leave Heather behind, she’s determined to make their dream of fashion design happen together. I love heroines who have friends, and who don’t live in a vacuum.
Overall, though, as much as I liked Camille, I couldn’t deal with Jake’s voice taking up half of the book. I wanted Emma Peel to show up and punch him in the head every time he thought the word “pussy.” I wanted someone to sit him down and explain what “feelings” are and how human beings process them. I wanted him to stop being a jerkwad to the random women he picked up.
Basically he’s a walking embodiment of Axe Bodyspray and I hated him.
So my overall take on this book?
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Well, thank you for the warning. I’m getting thoroughly sick of misogyny in contemporary romance, and it sounds like this is a prime example. Shame – the scenario sounds like a really good one that I’d have enjoyed.
Is it weird that I almost think it’s another form of sexism when romance novels resort to portraying their heroes like this? There are a lot of popular tropes out there, of course, and not everything is everyone else’s cup of tea, but I kind of feel like perpetuating the “This is how bad-ass men think about sex and women and intimacy” stereotype is just as crappy as the actions of the characters themselves. (Even ignoring the fact that male characters more often have their personalities dictated by their professions… if you’re a businessman, you have to be cold, aloof, and domineering. If you’re a bodyguard, you have to be cocky, aloof, and domineering. It’s just boring and predictable.)
The swaggering jerk who is a sex god and is also crippled by any display of emotional intimacy is such a popular archetype in contemporary romance, and I feel like the problem there is that the male characters so rarely are given the development and emotional arcs of their heroines beyond “Feelings suck, but now I’m okay having feelings for THIS person” that it feels like a missed opportunity to create more nuanced characters and stories for them. It’s part of the reason why I tend to get frustrated with a lot of romance novels… that I feel like I’m reading about the same characters (or loosely combined set of traits that sort of resemble a character) over and over, and one half of the romantic equation, the guy, isn’t as interesting as the woman he’s paired with.
Don’t misunderstand, this isn’t #notallmen or whatever, just something that occurred to me upon reading Hazel’s comment on the misogyny of the character that I realized is part of the reason why I end up abandoning some books like this halfway through. I just think I would probably stick with more of them if the authors put as much effort into developing their male characters as they did their female ones.
Basically he’s a walking embodiment of Axe Bodyspray and I hated him
This is such a perfect description of that kind of character. Thank you for the warning. (I wish we could get a book with Camille and her friends, and a better MMC. Camille sounds marvelous.)
Thanks for the heads up. Also, I’m warning you now that I’m borrowing the “Basically, he’s a walking embodiment of Axe Bodyspray and I hated him,” either whole or in part because it is glorious as well as ridiculously accurate of far too many male characters. Thank you, Elyse.
PS: the cat gifs killed. Loved them.
Yup, “walking embodiment of Axe Bodyspray” is down right perfect.
Also, I’m now just waiting for someone to use the word “pussy” in that way in my hearing, because I’m memorizing that list of questions from “Does Jake feel powerful and remarkable?” to “Does he want to shit in a box?” Of course, I don’t never remember anyone saying that word in that way in front of me, but now I’m prepared.
Thank you for a great review.
Can I just add to the current chorus of NOPE that I hate the “spoiled rich girl” trope? Why is it that rich heroines are typically spoiled brats but rich heroes are masterful alpha lords of sex?
OMG Elyse, this wins the award for Best Use of Cat Pictures in a Blog Post. Holy crap was this awesome. Well done.
Hard pass.
But +10 for the cat with its little ears back, because that right there is my spirit animal.
Brilliant review, and as other readers pointed out, this really illuminates some of the issues in contemporary MMCs’ personality flaws.
I’m also saving up the “pussy” questions to ask people who use the word in a derogatory way! Perfect!
Thanks for the review. This would have been an instant by based on the overview but you’ve steered me away from it. It would have been a regret buy that I would have permanently deleted from my Kindle account.
Wow, this is like a bizarro world version of my October release. It has the former military bodyguard, the rich socialite with the close female friend, the stalker-type…except my hero is a pansexual feminist. Lol.
This book would have totally pissed me off, too. Which is a shame, because I (obviously) love the trope. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen The Bodyguard.
Thank you for the laughs and cat pictures!
Read the first book of one of her previous trilogies this week and though I had all three checked out from the library, I ditched the other two without reading. (The “One Night” series)
I too find sex with strangers or near-strangers much less threatening than the prospect of being in love, but oddly enough I’ve never noticed that this prevented me from, you know, seeing people as people and trying to be nice to them. I guess because I’m a woman so… blah-blah something-something pussy thoughts?
Just adding some more applause for the review.
I also really like the cover of the book, but I don’t want to go near the contents. Ugh.
@Cynthia, I had pretty much the same experience. I checked out the first One Night book from the library last week. For an erotic romance, I was finding it decidedly unsexy. I think the “nuclear bomb” going off in her crotch was the last straw for me. I skimmed the rest and will not be checking out the sequels even though it ended on a cliffhanger.
Oh my goodness!! Authors are really struggling to find metaphors. I find this as reprehensible as the male character who had grenades exploding in his testicles as he orgasmed.
A thousand hearts for Dora’s comment. Yes, it’s sexist to portray men in such limited, cliched, stereotyped ways, and I’m so very tired of it. I now reserve my romance reading time for those authors who make their male characters as fully realized as their female characters.
A different Hazel here. Thank you for suffering through this so that we don’t have to.
Thanks for the warning because the cover is so lovely but I just can’t do dudebro heroes.
A friend loaned me the One Night series and I read all three books because I thought, this has to get better. It did not. In the meantime, the first in the This Man series was a euro on KOBO and I thought, why not. What’s a euro? That infuriated me more than the One Night series. Don’t get me wrong, there are times in my life when I think that having a guy come along and be all in charge and hit me up with some hot sex would be just the ticket because life is exhausting and I could get him to take care of the bill paying and the taking out the bins and I could catch up on my Netflix queue and my TBR pile in between all the hot sex. But these alpha males were full on possessive, manipulative, and abusive, and the heroines were talked over and talked about like they were cute pets to be coddled.
And then while googling the author, I found out that she left her husband two years ago with the headlines saying it was because he wasn’t as passionate as the hero in her This Man books. She went on to say that they married young and she knows better what she wanted after ten years of marriage which is fair enough but I really don’t think I’d want the guy from This Man to be the model for finding a future partner.
Best. Review. Ever.
Looks like that fantastic cover is wasted on this book. Shame, because I was really looking forward to the release day. The hero sounds less like an actual well-developed character and more like a human-shaped bag of stereotypes and misogyny. What a waste. Thank you for the review, Elyse.
I put this book on my TBR list solely for the cover! Oh, so disappointed my bodyguard fantasy in a cover is a disappointment. I’m so thankful for your review Elyse. I would’ve been hella mad and would have wanted to tell the hero to stop being such a fucking man-baby and pussy up, loser.
The pussies (uh, cats) are wonderful! Thanks for this review; I’m going to stay far away from this book. 🙂
Love the cat pics! They had perfect expressions! Also excellent review. You are a must read.
My secret, unpopular opinion is that actually a surprising number of romance authors are not good enough just as writers, as prose stylists, as authors who are able to understand complex humans and their weird motivations, and so instead they end up zeroing in on ideas like “Okay, he’s a traumatized veteran! He feels bad about his own emotions!” but they can’t really take it any deeper than that. It just goes around and around and they don’t know what to do with it or how to turn that into a story about an actual human man.
And I think that’s really rough when that author writes romance novels in particular, which are essentially novels where character depth and interaction are the entire enchilada. Like, COULD there be a book about a dude who has a problem with his own masculinity being messed up and toxic? Who labels all of his own soft emotions really viciously, cruelly, and misogynistically? Who falls in love? And changes? Heck yes and I want to read it. Do romance writers typically actually write that book? Well, you know. Probably not so much, no.
Cordy – Yes! All of that! I think this all the time! Nothing turns me off faster than only surface emotions.
“Walking embodiment of Axe Bodyspray” – best.
@Cordy!!!!!!!!
Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is what I have been trying to say, albeit far more clumsily than you did.
I 100% agree with you. It is my feeling that a lot of these writers don’t take the time to research. What are the true effects of PTSD? Survivor’s guilt? What is treatment like? What if the person refuses treatment? Realistically, how does a person recover?
Romance novels already have the reputation of being fluff pieces. A book such as this one only adds to the impression that romance writers are only in it for the money and aren’t “real” writers. And yet, as we all know, there are some brilliant writers out there whi happen to write romance.
I have this weird aversion to the word “pussy” in any usage – kinda like some people hate the word moist. Anyway, I both cringed and LOL’d all the way through your review.
Also, cat pictures make everything better. Great review.
Thank you for such a fabulous review! I laugh snorted my way through!
Just so you know, in my head there’s an unwritten but beautifully crafted epilogue in which Jake’s life is cut suddenly, tragically short by a rampaging case of neurosyphilis that is untreatable due to advanced cirrhosis and renal failure leaving Camille free to move on to her true love and an amazing career. Sad for him, but on the bright side…Jake does have a lovely funeral well attended by cat lovers.