Content warning: eating disorder; sexual assault; child prostitution
So, you saw those content warnings and you’re feeling concerned? Will it help if I tell you that this is a book where scary plot turns appear to be just around the corner—and the dark backstory of the hero makes bad things feel inevitable—but in the end Relationship Material is just an angsty romance where most of the tension is about falling in love?
Evan is a nurse in Portland, Oregon who has been in witness protection and on the run for the past 15 years. He reconnects with his twin sister Caro, now a prosecutor, and finds himself drawn to her new bestie, fellow prosecutor Malcolm. The siblings’ reunion is tumultuous, and much of the first part of the book follows the three characters as they untangle what happened to Evan and Caro all those years ago.
The book drops you right in the middle of the story with a mystery about the violent crime Evan witnessed as a teenager. Evan is living his new Portland life when Caro relocates to town, running into the brother she wasn’t sure was still alive. Ignoring Evan’s fears for her safely, Caro is desperate to find out where Evan has been and why he left. Evan is reluctant to share the extent of his trauma, and struggles to revisit painful memories because of PTSD and anxiety. Malcolm, well, he’s the awkward third wheel Caro insists on bringing along. He and Evan initially dislike each other before they tentatively begin to build trust. Mutual lust is better than a trust fall. And Evan’s adorable service dog’s love for Malcolm helps arguably just as much.
I’ve always found witness protection fascinating and the early setup made this feel like a thriller. I spent the first two-thirds of the book filled with tension, sure a tragedy was just around the corner.
Don’t fall into the trap I did. This is not romantic suspense.
Relationship Material’s main challenge is that it sends mixed signals about what type of story it is. There’s a sense of foreboding in this book—Evan’s constant anxiety and thinly veiled terror made me sure something terrible was about to happen. Potential villains are foreshadowed but never materialize. Ultimately the story teases many themes without fully settling on any:
- Our heroes are barely enemies before they become lovers;
- They consider being friends with benefits but never quite manage it; and
- Our hero has a fake identity that he rapidly sheds without leaving a significant impression on the plot.
After starting Relationship Material I quickly wondered what I’d gotten myself into. From the moment Malcolm and Evan met, my criticisms piled up. But by the end of the book I was swept away by the sweetness of their romance, and honestly just overjoyed that none of the terrible twists and turns I’d imagined had come to pass.
The plot consists of regurgitating awful childhood memories, having lots of sex, and falling in love. There’s some dramatic personal growth from Evan but in many ways he and Malcolm/Mal’s lives are pretty similar at both the beginning of the book and the end. Sometimes quiet romances are comforting, and sometimes they’re boring. I was in the mood for something straightforward, without dramatic twists and villains, so this worked for me. However, Evan’s backstory is dark which might be upsetting for some readers.
Evan’s mother was a sex worker. At 16 years old he became one as well in order to distract her pimp from becoming interested in his sister. He ends up being kidnapped and raped after witnessing his mom’s murder and participating in the death of her pimp. He initially believes prostitution was his choice, but Malcolm and Caro help him see the responsibility of other people who were involved.
I really loved the depiction of Evan as a survivor. He’s built a fulfilling life for himself and learned to adapt to chronic anxiety. He isn’t perfect but he’s a lovely human being with a lot of self-awareness. I enjoyed the way he and his dog, Dulcie, worked together to manage his anxiety. The book clearly showcases the work of psychiatric service dogs and normalizes anxiety in a refreshing way. The assisted living facility where Evan works is the setting of many adorable scenes where we see how deeply he cares for his patients—even though they can be difficult and frequently hilarious. I’m always down for direct and unapologetic older characters and these entertaining interactions help communicate his personality to readers. Evan’s a gruff sweetheart who doesn’t see himself as worthy of a serious relationship. Yet he also models setting clear boundaries to keep himself safe. He can be emotionally inarticulate with Malcolm, but handles his sister’s emotional wounds with ease. Evan is easy to root for.
In contrast, Malcolm just didn’t come together as a character for me at first. The puzzle pieces of his characterization felt discordant and inconsistent. Mal is frequently referred to as an “asshole” which he originally blames on resting “jerk face” but later seems to revel in being a snarky ass. Evan describes him as looking “like Dean Martin’s sexier brother” which required me to a) image search Dean Martin and b) decide I found him not remotely hot. When the story is told from Mal’s point of view, we initially hear him thinking about how he’d use his prosecutorial interview techniques on Evan, which felt manipulative. Malcolm says he likes wounded men, though at first the book focused only his obsession Evan’s physical appearance. BUT, Malcolm randomly nerds out about comic books. He takes his homophobic mom out to dinner every week. And he eventually finds a lot to say about about Evan’s personality instead of just his butt, which won me over. I do wish there were more space in the book devoted to Malcolm’s personal growth. We see Evan shift through the story, but Malcolm remains largely unchanged.
Part of why I’m not a fan of enemies to lovers tropes is because I want to see characters who like and respect each other fall in love. Evan describes Mal as a “hot asshole” while he’s considering accepting his first sexual proposition. That just isn’t super hot to me. I rolled my eyes at the idea of Mal as a great catch, which both Evan and Caro initially assume:
Mal Umbertini was Relationship Material. The kind of man you introduced to your family, made long-term plans with. Evan Doyle was not Relationship Material. He was Occasional Hookup Material at best. Evan had stopped being fit for guys like Mal a long, long time ago. In fact, Mal wasn’t just out of his league; they weren’t even playing the same game.
I didn’t love Evan’s low opinion of himself. It was hard to see him struggle to see himself as worthy of Mal, but also made me look forward to Evan realizing he was also a catch. I eventually got my wish after Mal fell fast and began desperately trying to convince Evan to date him. Luckily, Mal’s prickly mom has moved to Evan’s assisted living facility in an attempt to rebuild their relationship. She’s #teamEvan and shifts from homophobe to matchmaker:
“Of course he’d be interested. You’re an attorney.” Mal had never exactly found this to be a relationship slam dunk, but didn’t say so; she pressed on. “Evan lives all by himself in a little cabin in the boonies, with no neighbors. I’m sure he’s lonely. You should ask him.”
It was weird, because Mal was not accustomed to his mother’s wishes aligning with his own. But that was exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to ask Evan. To court him with gifts and compliments and tokens of esteem. He wanted to woo him, and gain his trust, and win him. He felt like a suitor, and Evan a damsel in a tower.
He smiled at his mother. “Should I?”
“Why not?”
The damsel line reminds me that this is the point where I should mention my main problems with Relationship Material, starting with Evan’s sister Caro. Caro is described as “tough” but she felt frail and incompetent in an occasionally gendered way. She’s an incredibly frustrating character who looms large in the first part of the book as she and Evan recall their awful upbringing…and then fades into the background leaving me to wonder when she was going to stop dating losers and get some therapy.
Despite her oft-mentioned bond with Evan, she doesn’t demonstrate an ability to put him first in any way. Evan has panic attacks, is traumatized, and fears for his life. Caro refuses his requests and won’t accept his boundaries. She researches his past, even when he asks her not to. She calls in favors from friends in law enforcement to gather more dirt on Evan. She initially promises Evan not to tell anyone that she’s found him, and then brings along a stranger, Malcolm. People ignoring personal boundaries is one of my pet peeves.
Caro also seemed unwilling to believe that she might not know Evan well after 15 years and a lot of trauma. She triggers Evan’s anxiety by focusing more on her need to know/share information about his past than Evan’s need to keep himself safe. This all made Mal start to look pretty peachy by comparison. So while Caro was annoying, she offered many opportunities for Mal to step in and try to advocate for Evan.
Evan, Malcolm, and Caro all feel emotionally younger than their actual ages of 31-ish. Partly this is due to the many pages of Evan and Caro reliving their childhood by sifting through one another’s stories. None of them has had a functional romantic relationship. Evan doesn’t even appear to have friends. The result feels like a story of young first love, which isn’t my favorite. Evan has the best excuse for this social stunting, but Mal is still hung up on a relationship he had at eighteen. What happened to the decade of their 20s for these two? They’re both clearly very competent in their careers, yet struggling to communicate in their burgeoning relationship.
My tolerance for misunderstanding-driven plots isn’t high, and luckily that’s not the driving force here. Yet I couldn’t help but long for just one straightforward conversation between the two of them about their feelings for one another. There’s much that’s only said to the reader, internally, and around the middle of the story I started to lose patience with them. For example, Mal wishes Evan would stop running away after sex and talk to him about his day or his feelings. But he doesn’t say anything, instead waiting for Evan to heal and/or turn into another person. I found that troubling, for both of them. The tension of waiting for the inevitable conflict threatened to become less delicious and more boring. Once the two of them really started talking and sharing with each other, I was happily absorbed back into the story.
There are other elements of the story I want to address, both as critique and for content awareness. Evan and Caro are recovering anorexics, and they each struggle with short-lived lapses when extremely stressed. We see them largely managing it, although it’s clear that Evan is regularly tracking calories. There are specific calorie counts mentioned in the book. This felt unnecessary to either character or the plot and I didn’t enjoy reading about it. But eating disorders in men are underrepresented in fiction, especially in romance fiction.
I also didn’t love the occasional throwaway bi erasure line or the way bisexuality was (not) represented. An example:
“Manny Hernandez got Arista Jones pregnant senior year. I went to their wedding.”
“Really? Well, junior year he liked dick. Maybe it was just a phase.”
Evan’s only previous relationship was with a woman but he identifies as gay. There’s more nuance and explanation shared midway through the story that made me feel better about how Evan’s sexuality in particular was described, but I didn’t appreciate the casual lack of acknowledgement of bisexuality that popped up occasionally. There was also a line that assumed only penetrative sex counted as sex, which felt very heteronormative to me.
Overall, I appreciated the fluidity of the writing in this book. Just before the story might have turned into an overabundance of trauma, the focus narrows to Mal and Evan’s relationship, with side trips to the wacky characters at the assisted living facility. Many of my favorite scenes involved them. The trajectory of Evan’s patients’ from acceptance to support of his relationship felt realistic. Opportunities for homophobia were neatly sidestepped, which I appreciated after being put through the emotional wringer of the first part of the book. Evan’s chronic anxiety is handled exceptionally well, and stressful parts of the novel felt like intentional echoes of his emotional state. I also loved the intensity of Mal’s feelings for Evan. I adore a pining hero and Mal gave me lots of feels in the second half of the book.
However, I’m never going to unilaterally praise a novel that clumsily ignores bi/pansexuality. Moreover, this book felt like it was trying to shove too many tropes, traumas, and ideas into one story without exploring any of them fully—and I haven’t even mentioned the drug dealers, suicide, and Caro sleeping with married men. I wish Mal’s character had been more fully fleshed out and that poor Caro had a story arc giving her more to do than just offer opinions on her brother’s relationship.
Still, Mal and Evan’s relationship was my favorite part of the story. I appreciated the way Mal and Evan negotiated sex in a way that would minimize Evan’s triggers, tiptoeing just to the line of magic healing peen without crossing over. Their romance made me enjoy Relationship Material, despite its flaws.
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Ok, I read this review but this line made my brain stutter:
“been in witness protection and on the run for the past 15 years. He reconnects with his twin sister Caro,”
What? What?!!! I’m pretty sure that if anyone from your old life finds you in Witness Protection you are automatically moved and given another identity!! Not ‘oh this is fine, please reconnect to your sister who may or may not know people from the life you had to flee.’ WTF?!!!
@EP: agreed. A good witness protection story is Jill Sorenson’s RIDING DIRTY (although cw/tw for violence and assault—including of a sexual nature). The heroine is a therapist who is in the witness protection program. She devises a plan to try to manipulate one of her clients (an ex-con) into taking revenge against the men responsible for the crime that put her in witness protection. Naturally things don’t go as planned. There are some very good scenes about what it means to give up your identity and your past—such as when the heroine remembers her bachelorette party and is saddened by the knowledge that she can never again contact her girlfriends from that time in her life. I recommend the book with the caveat that there is violence.
Sounds like this could’ve used a lot of editing. A lot.
I just checked and Jill Sorenson’s RIDING DIRTY (which I mentioned above) is 99-cents in the kindle store.
@DiscoDollyDeb Holy moly, that is one GIANT ethical violation on the part of the therapist heroine.
@Leigh Kramer: I must admit, romances where a female therapist falls for a male client are a bit of a jam for me. Most writers do manage to skirt the ethical violations, but Sorenson’s heroine (who admits she’s in a downward spiral) blasts right through it. Sorenson does some interesting things with the narrative: although you only see the story through the eyes of the heroine and the hero (the ex-con), there’s a third character—a rather dodgy D.A. who plays an important part in the story. Each of the three characters is ostensibly doing one thing while trying to play the other two characters in order to bring about a different desired outcome. I think it’s a very good book, but—yeah, there’s undoubtedly reason for the heroine’s license to be revoked.
@EP I tend to agree, but I heard an interview with a WITSEC person who had to move 3 times and eventually decided to stop running. He was the son of a mob boss who testified against his father, so plenty of incentive to keep going, but I guess he was just tired of it?