This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Aislinn K. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.

Here is Aislinn K's review:

I just…I still…What the hell was this book?

The trigger warnings alone…I had to take notes as I went so I wouldn’t miss any. Check out this list:

• child abuse (emotional and physical)
• drug addiction
• mental illness
• emotionally toxic parent
• child death
• mentions of child sexual abuse
• memories of marital rape
• attempted suicide/suicidal tendencies
• fat shaming
• slut shaming

The thing is…only half of these were relevant to either the plot or the development of the characters. It’s like the narrative threw increasingly grim things into Maisey’s (the heroine) past and present for reasons unknown.

Take, for example, the mentions of child sexual abuse. They were an offhand thought about her third stepfather that had touched her inappropriately and then never mentioned again. So what was the point of that on top of all the other things that the heroine was dealing with?

She has a mother that is incredibly toxic (more on that later) and a drug addicted and suicidal brother. Her child had died of SIDS a year or so ago, and in the aftermath of her grief her husband had cheated on her. But before that, he had coerced/guilted her into sex a week after her baby’s death when she didn’t want to – which was another unnecessary element of misery that was mentioned about ⅔ of the way into the book and dwelled on briefly, before never being mentioned again. It was only there to make the hero (Rafe) look better in comparison because she had just spent the night in his bed while upset and he hadn’t made a move on her. If you have to compare your hero to a cheating rapist in order to make him look good, then is he really a hero? (Honestly, Rafe was a decent guy, but the comparison was really heavy-handed and unnecessary.)

The slut shaming, too, was brief and unnecessary. Rafe’s daughter Laney was birthed by a stripper. The instant that Rafe had found out about her profession he had broken it off because – why? It doesn’t really say. Just the fact of her being a stripper is apparently horrific enough.

And the fat shaming on top of everything else…

A secondary character is overweight. She is also very sweet and goodhearted. But it is ‘obvious’ to everyone that she is deluded for thinking that the heroine’s brother might reciprocate her feelings for him. She comes across as sad and pathetic, in too-tight clothes (the author’s description, not mine), and pitiable for thinking a man might care for her. Like, really? I hate that trope. Hate it.

Speaking of tropes I hate! When Rafe and Maisey have sex for the first time they did that whole “you don’t need to use a condom because I’m on the pill” thing. Which…can we just put a moratorium on that trope right now? It’s not sexy. Safe sex is sexy! And avoiding STDs is sexy! At this point, she fully believed that this guy was a player due to his past, but she didn’t worry about catching something from him? I just…why is this still a thing?

This is not the only stupid thing the heroine does. She is proud to the point of self-destructiveness. She slept on a beach because she couldn’t bear to ask Rafe for help in moving in some furniture into her new cabin. She tries to go swimming in unpredictable waters when she’s upset and fights Rafe when he tries to stop her. (And she is the first to admit that she hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly in the year up to that moment and was not very strong). I couldn’t tell whether her borderline-suicidalness was intentional, or if she was just the very definition of a TSTL heroine.

I mentioned earlier about the toxic mother. Well, this goes back to Redheadedgirl’s review of Mother’s Day and how the toxic mother in the film was forgiven just because she was Kate Hudson’s character’s mother. The exact same thing happens in this book. Their mother is unbelievably toxic. Not just slightly problematic, but really bordering on evil. She is emotionally abusive to her children, and has been all throughout their lives. But she also used to physically beat her troubled son. (He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.) Worse, the heroine calls this action ‘justified’ because he was so difficult. Um….? No. No no no.

Both children hate their mother so much that when they find out they had an older sibling that disappeared, they both – completely separately – jumped to the conclusion that she murdered this child. Both Maisey and her brother fully believe this for about half the book. And we are meant to buy that by doing absolutely nothing, she has redeemed herself enough to be a significant part in her children’s lives? Ugh.

All of this negativity is the backdrop to what is actually a fairly standard contemporary romance relationship development. Maisey falls for the man next door (the guy she lost her virginity to in high school). He’s a single dad with a blind daughter who is pretty sweet as far as kids in romance novels go. I actually enjoyed him as a character. He wasn’t as self-absorbed as Maisey, and seemed like a genuinely decent human being (one of the few in the book).

I didn’t however, buy the resolution of their romance. They went from ‘both genuinely not ready to move in together yet’ to ‘getting engaged’ without anything at all in between. It was the weirdest resolution to an otherwise fairly convincing romance plot.

That wasn’t the only plotting issue with this book. Despite all the periphery drama, not a lot actually happens in this book. It takes a long time for the photos which start the ‘plot’ portion of the book (such as it is) to be found, but even then still nothing happens for a while. There is also a LOT of repetitive introspection that drags the pace down, and tangents into bits of information that were wholly unnecessary and largely depressing.

Additionally, there is a strange interlude in which the heroine’s ex-husband comes back. It in no way impacts either the plot or her character development (she’d already decided she wasn’t going to get back together with him, and was never tempted to change her mind) which seemed very out of place.

Despite all that, I didn’t hate this book. I was reasonably compelled to keep reading it (perhaps the crazysauce was addictive) so I finished in a few days. I didn’t find it boring except when it wandered a little. I largely listened to this in audio and the narrator was pretty good, so maybe that had something to do with it. I particularly liked her voice for Laney (Rafe’s daughter).

So, it comes to the grade. I am honestly tempted to give this the fabled F+ grade. Even thinking about it now, I am overwhelmed by everything in the story. But despite the way the storyline resolves (spoilers!) there isn’t enough craziness to justify the grade.

So, I’ll give this a D. It might be more to someone else’s tastes than mine.