This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Flo. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.
The summary:
In this beautifully rendered, affecting novel, a young widow’s world is shattered when she meets her late husband’s identical twin—and finds herself caught between honoring her husband’s memory and falling in love with his reflection.Haley’s whirlwind romance and almost three-year marriage to Sam, an army medic, ends tragically when he is killed in Afghanistan. As she grapples with widowhood and the upcoming birth of her son, her attempts to create a new life for herself are ambushed when she arrives home one evening—and finds her husband waiting for her. Did the military make an unimaginable mistake when they told her that Sam had been killed?
After a twelve-year estrangement, Stephen hopes to make things right with his brother—only to discover Sam died without revealing Stephen’s existence to Haley. As Haley and Stephen struggle to navigate their fragile relationship, they are inexorably drawn to each other. Haley is unnerved by Stephen’s uncanny resemblance to Sam, and Stephen struggles with the issue of Haley loving him as Stephen—and not as some reflection of his twin. How can Haley and Stephen honor the memory of a man whose death brought them together—and whose ghost could drive them apart?
Somebody Like You reminds us that while we can’t change the past, we have the choice—and the power through God—to change the future and start anew.
Here is Flo's review:
I came close to DNFing this book many times, starting with the meet cute. Stephen shows up on Haley’s front porch. Haley, a firearms SAFETY INSTRUCTOR, pulls a gun on a non-threatening stranger. Stephen seems very understanding of her using a deadly weapon. Then he shows up to the gun-toting whacko’s house the next day, also unannounced. Negative points for being a numbskull on both sides.
Still, I read on, because it can’t get any crazier, and I’m already knocking off IQ points by the handful so my expectations won’t be too high, right?
Yeah….
It’s a plot driven book. The right people come into the right scenes to say the exact right things at the right times. Technically, the sentences are sound and the story travels in roughly the right direction; I just couldn’t believe that the characters were advancing as a couple. They wallow in their angst individually, but rarely tackle problems together. Brief sentences describing weeks or months of interactions that were the bulk of how Stephen and Haley got together. Then he proposes in the final pages of the book, something that will mean moving with a baby, her getting a new job (or maybe staying home?), etc., etc., Haley goes for it without discussing any plans for the future, just like her first marriage that was an emotional failure. Wholly unrealistic, and really, really disappointing.
God was a surprise. I looked to see if my library had a copy, read the back cover blurb, thought it looked good, and signed up to read and review. It wasn’t until I was a couple chapters in that I realized this was an Inspirational. I have no idea if the plot over character story telling is common in Inspirationals, as this was my first. I can say that everyone talks to God, and God talks back, which is what finally convinces our h/h that marriage is a grand idea.
At least God can be forgiven for saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. Haley’s mom suggests that Stephen and Haley are good for each other the very first time she meets him, a nurse in the hall tells Stephen the perfect baby name, the birthing instructor quotes exactly the right verse… it felt like the story was mechanical. The plot moved, and the characters bobbed along in its wake, rather than the characters’ actions advancing the story and driving the plot. So many people came onto the page just long enough to say what the h/h needed to hear, then disappeared. It made the whole world feel flat, and made the main characters feel as emotionally deep as a teaspoon.
If Stephen were any more of a saint, he’d have wings pop out of his back, a harp would spring to hand, a halo would snap into place over his head, and he’d fly away to Heaven.
The potshots the author takes at Haley were endlessly irritating to me, because it upholds the toxic gender binary to knock a woman for “independent” or “unfeminine” ways. It was also saddening, as Haley is someone who, with a slightly different presentation, could easily be one of my favorite characters. She’s a strong-minded woman, works at a gun range, has an “I’ll do it on my own” attitude, and is a fan of John Wayne and junk food. In Somebody Like You she reads like a flat cardboard “tough chick” who uses a gun when she’s upset, is passive in the face of necessary decisions, waits until her friends make choices for her, and needs to be rescued from her inability to tell a flathead from a Phillips screwdriver. But she played real tackle football with her brothers, so y’kno she’s not really a ‘normal’ girl. *sigh*
It really didn’t help that the author chose to shoehorn gun stuff into Haley’s inability to be stereotypically feminine, nor has Haley researched the very basics of motherhood:
“…[M]y baby isn’t going to keep me up at night.”
“Spoken like a delusional first-time mom-to-be. No newborn sleeps through the night.” Claire eyed the [curtain-less] window. “Do you sew?”
“Not even a button on a blouse. If something rips, it ends up in the thrift store pile.” She stared Claire down. “What? We each have our talents. Can you drive tacks with a Glock at twenty yards? Disassemble and reassemble a Walther PPK in under a minute?”
Her astounding lack of understanding of what caring for infants entail is terrifying, given that she’ll soon be a single mother. It’s not a flattering portrayal. If we’re supposed to be laughing here, we’re laughing at Haley, not with her.
To say that my suspension of disbelief kept breaking is putting it mildly. I never got a good sense of what the conflict was supposed to be. Sam was a man-child chasing his next adventure, and while he was a good medic, he was not a good husband, so it wasn’t hard for Haley to untangle the twins. Stephen hadn’t had any contact with his brother in twelve years and there never was any closure on that. The HOA stickler was more an annoyance than a bad guy. Stephen and Haley weren’t angry with God about their lots in life. Stuff just… happened. And it went in such a way they ended up together.
That’s the minimum standard for a romance. I want more than “they get together.” I wasn’t rooting for anyone at the end. I read the whole thing, hoping for something to bring me into the story, to make me empathize with the characters, and it never happened because every milestone popped up right on schedule, whether the h/h had to work for it or not. I don’t believe their HEA.
D+: I feel like I’ve wasted my time watching something formulaic go by.
Hmm… From your description I don’t see why you rated this D+ instead of D or D- (the grades for “boring, boring, boring”) or even F (not just bad but offensive, given the way the book treats Haley). D+, I think, means there’s one redeeming feature (for example, “The humans in this story were a waste of ink but the parrot was great!”) So what was the redeeming feature in your opinion? The fact that Haley was a tomboyish firearms instructor, even though the author seems to mean that only as an indication that she’s on the wrong path and needs to give all that up to become a normal woman?
P.S. I immediately thought when seeing the cover that this was an inspirational — it depicts a woman in concealing white clothes and a demure pose, directing a troubled look out over a landscape as if gazing at the sky…
“At least God can be forgiven for saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.”
*spits coffee*
Vasha, it’s a D+ because Haley and Stephen do have individual arcs where they deal with the loss of Sam (or the ideas and hope he represented). As for the cover art- this is not the cover on the library book. Additionally, the blurb I read was missing that critical last sentence, or I’d have known that it wasn’t just Contemporary Romance (where it’s nominated for the RITA). That’s in part my failure to research enough. I went in expecting a romance/women’s story about grieving, healing and finding love.
I am also aware not everyone is a gun nut, and might not be immediately irked at the “I shall pull a gun on this non-threatening stranger” meet cute. For an F, things have to be poorly written as well as poorly plotted or characterized, at least for me. The writing is solid, but not to my tastes.
I could easily see this being someone’s comfort read. It just didn’t do it for me.
“God was a surprise” is definitely one of my new favorite review lines! Thanks for that, and thanks for taking one for the team here… I don’t think I’d have gotten past the first encounter.
“The plot moved, and the characters bobbed along in its wake, rather than the characters’ actions advancing the story and driving the plot. So many people came onto the page just long enough to say what the h/h needed to hear, then disappeared. It made the whole world feel flat, and made the main characters feel as emotionally deep as a teaspoon.”
It came out in my podcast that I am Christian, but what you said here is exactly why I can’t stand the inspirational romance novel. They aren’t honest. What you describe above just isn’t what happens in the life of the most sincere believer. Life is much too messy for that. There are too many options and shadows. God created us with free will and brains with the ability reason. Sure, we pray and seek guidance from the Holy Spirit and those we trust, but life is never as pat as it comes across in this story. Whenever I have read an inspirational, I have always felt cheated because it seems the emphasis is more on the message than it is on telling an honest, compelling story that could actually happen.
And it’s a pity, because the heroine of this book sounds like a woman able to stand on her own two feet. Although the future probability of child endangerment is scary.
The best and most memorable lines come from SBTB reviews. I am still chuckling over the review for the Cuddlefish shapeshifter review. You had some wonderful lines: “God was a surprise.” My other favorite is “At least God can be forgiven for saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.”
Thank you. I won’t be reading this book but you have convinced me that your review of it is far more entertaining.
This: Haley, a firearms SAFETY INSTRUCTOR, pulls a gun on a non-threatening stranger.
Also the stuff that drives me to question. Great review, thank you!