ROAD TRIP ROM COM: HERE WE GO AGAIN

I absolutely love road trips.  I am happy to get in the car and drive 13 to 14 hours to go and visit my daughter and granddaughter in Indiana.  I’m pretty happy to get in a car and drive almost anywhere.  And I also love good books about road trips, like The Mostly True Adventures of Tanner and Louise, and everyone knows I love a good romantic comedy.  So when you have a romantic comedy about a road trip, you’re in my sweet spot, which is why I loved Here We Go Again, by Alison Cochrun, so much.

Actually, there’s a lot to love about this book.  It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s moving and in many ways it’s surprising (all good ways, I might add).  The characters are lovable (for the most part; there are some you’re not supposed to love, and that’s fine, too), the plot moves right along, and there are none of those rom com cliches (especially about how the couple breaks up and finds their way back together) that annoy me so much. It even starts with a couple of very funny (and painful) disasters to introduce our main characters (I always like a rom com that starts out with a funny scene).

Logan and Rosemary are both teachers at the local high school.  They are also enemies.  Once upon a time, when they were growing up in the town where they’re both now working, they were the closest of friends, and on the verge of becoming more than friends when everything blew up for them.  When they were both in high school, they took English classes from Joe Delgado, a legendary teacher who saw the strengths in each of them even when they were loudly opposed to each other.  Joe was gay and out, and his acceptance of his own sexual identity made it easier for each of the girls to admit to her own queerness. 

But now Joe is dying of cancer, and he asks both Logan and Rosemary to take him on one last road trip, to a cabin he owns on Mount Desert Island in Maine (they’re starting out in Washington State).  Though neither one wants to spend a lot of time in a car together, they both feel such an obligation to Joe that they agree to do it. And off they go, on a cross-country adventure that takes up most of the book.

There are some things you know from the outset: Joe is going to die by the end of the book (this isn’t the kind of book that has a miraculous recovery), and Logan and Rosemary are going to end up together by the end of the book. 

The fun of the book is watching how Logan and Rosemary get together, and discovering both new things about Joe (including the love of his life), and wonderful things about America.  I’m a little bummed that their trip up the east coast is covered in a page or so, though I understand why it happened that way.  On the other hand, their side trip to the Grand Canyon, their overnight stay in Idaho (which turns out to be surprising) and their sojourn in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, are wonderful, making me want to travel to all those places and experience them for myself.

There’s sadness in this book, of course – I did mention that Joe’s dying, didn’t I? – but it’s a romantic comedy and so yes, there’s a happy ending, a soul-satisfying happy ending for all the characters you’ve come to care about.

The next best thing to a road trip is a great road trip book.  Here We Go Again definitely qualifies.

HAPPY EVER AFTER ON SKIS: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A PUPPY

You’ve got to love a book that opens with a scene in which an out of control (but goodhearted) golden retriever is running head on toward an elaborate wedding cake with destruction on his mind, and the main character rushes to stop the dog from destroying the cake and the whole wedding.  Not only dramatic, but funny, and a great introduction to the main characters, Kendall (a wedding planner, not necessarily by choice) and Brody, the hunk who intercepts the dog moments before he destroys the cake and any chances Kendall has of establishing her family’s resort as a wedding destination.  Four Weddings and a Puppy, by Lizzie Shane, gets points from me for a great opening scene.  And, unlike some rom coms which start with great funny characters misbehaving and then forget about the funny characters for most of the book, in this one the dog, Banner (whom Kendall is “fostering”, though you know from the outset that she’s going to end up keeping him), repeatedly appears and causes havoc of one kind or another.

Kendall and Brody have known each other their whole lives.  They practically grew up together on this mountain in Vermont where Kendall’s family has been running a ski resort for generations.  Kendall was always the daredevil of the two, constantly challenging Brody to ski faster and better, and even though he was her brother’s best friend, Kendall always had a crush on Brody, which she never acted on.

The two of them both became Olympic-hopeful skiers, until a tragic accident ended Kendall’s career.  Brody, by contrast, has continued his quest for gold, winning all kinds of medals in the meantime and becoming something of a minor god in the world of ski aficionados. Kendall has watched his exploits from afar, while she struggles to keep her family’s resort going after her father (her first coach) spent a ridiculous amount of money on her medical bills and physical therapy after the accident.  She feels she owes her father a debt she can’t repay, which is why she’s working so hard even though running a resort and especially doing wedding planning for people at the resort, is not her forte at all.

Brody appears at the first of the four weddings in the book (and no, in case you’re wondering, the fourth is NOT Brody and Kendall’s), that of his cousin, where he is fortuitously placed to intercept Banner and save the day.  What he hasn’t told anyone is that he’s dropped out of the world of Olympic skiing with a dumb excuse about his knee, and he has no idea what he’s going to do with his life, beyond wanting to prove to his family and friends that he isn’t married to skiing and he can be relied upon.

One of the things I like about this book is the way the two main characters are struggling with something other than their attraction to each other (though of course they are attracted to each other however much they may try to pretend otherwise).  Kendall has issues of grief and guilt and loss to deal with, facing the death of her dreams of what her life would be like, which is especially difficult when she sees Brody, who, as far as she knows, is living her dream.  Brody is dealing with an early mid-life crisis – maybe it’s a mid-career crisis – where he looks at everything he’s been doing and realizes that none of it matters that much to him anymore, and now he has to come up with a self-image that’s not built on his success as a skier.  They both have family expectations to confront, and it takes each of them a while to do that (Kendall’s comes practically at the end of the book, in fact), and because they have some of the same issues, they’re able to help each other ask the right questions and face the people and expectations they’ve been avoiding.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a little sexual and romantic tension between the main characters (isn’t that half of what romantic comedies are all about?), but it’s refreshing to see the characters connecting on another level as well.

The supporting characters, at least on Kendall’s side, are her best friends, who are there for her and for each other.  They’re distinctive and sweet, and Charlotte, one of the people getting married over the course of the book, is responsible for a funny disaster of a bachelorette party (orchestrated by Kendall) that leads to Kendall and Brody getting closer to each other in the aftermath.  Brody has a sister who’s sort of a character (another of the people getting married in the course of the book), but she doesn’t spend much time with him and is more of a walk-on. That’s a shame because Steph comes across, when we do see her, as a character who could probably carry a book all by herself.  I do wish female writers of rom coms would give the male leads as strong a friend group as they give the female leads, or at least give them interesting and rounded supporting characters.  This isn’t the first rom com I’ve read this year where the heroine has friends and family who have lives of their own and the hero has at most a couple of people who could be switched for each other without any readers noticing. 

Of course there’s a happy ever after, which resolves the characters’ life choice issues (and thankfully their problems with identity and self-worth are not resolved by their romance but by their working on those issues with the help of their romance) and feels satisfying and earned.  Even Banner ends up where he belongs, which of course we expected from the outset, no matter how many times Kendall said she was just fostering him. 

For a fun read that will make you want to learn how to ski (or almost make you want to; I have long ago resolved that nothing in the world will get me to attempt to ski down any kind of sloping surface, and even the most charming book in the world isn’t going to change my mind) and will give you some smiles and giggles, check out Four Weddings and a Puppy.

A ROM COM THAT SWITCHES THINGS UP: BEAR WITH ME NOW

“Exit, pursued by a bear” is the most famous Shakespearean stage direction (in fact, it might be the greatest stage direction of all time, Shakespeare or not), and it turns out that it’s also one of the great meet cutes of all time, as evidenced in Bear With Me Now by Katie Shepard, a funny romantic comedy that slyly breaks a lot of the conventions of the genre while still delivering on everything you want in a rom com.

Teagan Van Zijl, our male lead, is wandering through the wilds in an effort to escape from a (humorously and vividly described) wilderness therapy retreat in Montana when he encounters a grizzly bear.  Being a city boy and having only the most limited experience of wildlife, of course he panics and has no idea how to escape. Enter our female lead, Darcy Albano, who’s working as handywoman at the retreat, who has vast knowledge of the outdoors and wildlife, and who rescues him from the bear. She gets him medical attention but only after making him swear that he will not mention the bear when he explains how he got these cuts and bruises.  

If that isn’t a meet cute, I don’t know what is.  Consider how we’re already in an interesting place (how many romantic comedies start in Montana?), and how we’ve already reversed the roles, so that it’s a gentleman in distress and the person with the expertise who does the rescuing is the lady (though you might have some reservations about calling Darcy a “lady”).  

Teagan is suffering from panic attacks due to his high-powered job as head of a charitable organization that his late mother mismanaged so badly it’s in desperate need of money.  He’s not at all cut out for that job (he hates asking people for money), but he feels responsible because it’s the family charity and it was his alcoholic mother who drove it into the ground. His well-meaning but somewhat flighty younger sister, Sloane, accompanied him to this wellness retreat for addicted people, though she has more substance abuse problems than he does.  

Darcy, by contrast, is a woman who can do all kinds of things but who has made a mess of her life to date. She wants to be a park ranger but she can’t seem to get the requisite college degree.  She knows a tremendous amount about ecosystems and wildlife, as well as practical information about maintaining vehicles and other machinery.  She’s being both overworked and underused in the retreat, but she’s having trouble figuring out where she’s going to live and work next.

Of course she and Teagan fall for each other, but Teagan doesn’t tell her why he’s really at the retreat, pretending instead that he’s an alcoholic (he knows all about alcoholism because of his mother).  This is the classic deception that nearly causes the whole relationship to founder at the critical point (don’t all romantic comedies, and a lot of romances, have that as the turning point?).  He doesn’t want to lose her when he returns to New York City, so he persuades Darcy that he needs her to come back with him as his sober companion, and Darcy, being dedicated, does everything she can to help him combat his supposed drinking problem, which doesn’t really exist.  

There are lots of aspects of this book which switch up the usual rom com tropes.  For instance, though Teagan is a rich man (relatively), he isn’t a jerk about it like the stereotypical Alpha rich guy (I’m looking at you, Christian Grey).  His anxiety issues are real and well portrayed; you feel for him in his panic attacks, and you can understand where they come from and how frightening they are for him.

Darcy, too, is a refreshing female character.  She has made a mess of her life, basically living from temporary job to temporary job, but that’s not because she’s a bad or sloppy person.  She’s trying very hard to get the credentials she needs to get the jobs she wants, but her time in the Navy as well as her attempts to get her college degree are stymied by things beyond her control.  It becomes apparent as a reader that Darcy has some unacknowledged learning disability, and kudos to the author for showing a more realistic vision of what her dyslexia would be like.

There are a number of scenes in the book that verge on slapstick but never quite fall into absurdity.  The dialogue is crisp and funny, the kind you want to read aloud to others while you’re reading.

Of course there’s a happy ending (it’s a rom com, after all), and it feels like an earned happy ending, where the characters you’ve been cheering for overcome their issues with each other and with the world around them and end up exactly where you want them to be.

For a fun and refreshingly different sort of Romantic Comedy, check out Bear with Me Now and enjoy.

A QUIRKY ROM COM: ANGELIKA FRANKENSTEIN MAKES HER MATCH

You wouldn’t think that a romantic comedy based on Frankenstein would be a good idea, or even a possible idea.  Aside from the whole monster-kills-everyone-the-protagonist-cares-about thing, there really aren’t a lot of characters in that book who seem to deserve a happily ever after (though I personally have always felt some sympathy toward the creature).  So how does Sally Thorne manage to make Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match work?  Simple.  She doesn’t actually use the characters as they’re set out in Frankenstein, or follow the plot of that book too closely, and it works.

She starts by creating an all-new character, Victor Frankenstein’s younger sister, Angelika, who has spent her life helping him with his reanimation work.  He’s determined to prove himself to the world, and especially to show that he’s a better scientist than his peer, .  Angelika, despite being rich (the Frankenstein family is wealthy) and good looking, is odd enough that she is afraid she’s never going to find a man who’s willing to marry her.  So, in true Frankenstein fashion, she decides she’s going to make herself a perfect man.  Or at least a man who’s got a perfect body.  While Victor makes his creature, Angelika takes parts from a handsome corpse in the morgue and makes one of her own.  What could possibly go wrong?

It’s a romantic comedy, so of course things go wrong. Victor’s creature runs off into the night, terrifying the locals whenever they see him and thwarting all Victor’s efforts to find him.  Angelika’s creature is a little better behaved, but he’s freaking out because he can’t remember anything of his prior life, and even though his body reacts favorably to Angelika, he doesn’t feel he can allow himself to be a part of Angelika’s life if he was already married or committed to someone else.  Which means Angelika has to help him find out who he was, without actually letting anyone else know how he was raised from the dead.

Add in Victor’s fiancee, Elizabeth (who suffers a bad fate in the original Frankenstein, but who’s a real character with personality and humor here) and Captain , who’s clearly falling in love with Angelika (to add tension to the situation) and Victor’s creature (who gets named Adam over the course of the book) and assorted other characters, and you have a fun book that plays with the questions Mary Shelley didn’t choose to worry about and that ends, as the original doesn’t, with a well-deserved happy ever after.

The book is so enjoyable that even though there’s a hint that these characters are the inspiration for Frankenstein itself (shades of “and that’s the book you’ve just been reading”), I found it charming rather than annoying. 

You don’t have to have read Frankenstein to appreciate and enjoy this book, and if you did read Frankenstein you might have a prejudice against Victor (who is such a tool in the book) that might get in the way of liking this Victor.  If you’re in the mood for a romantic comedy with some heat (nothing too graphic), likable characters, a unique plot and a good sense of humor, check out Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match.

GRIEF, GUILT AND BASEBALL: EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER

At first glance, Evvie Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes, seems like a rom com.  The cover, with its charming house and its cute lobster (indicating that this takes place in Maine), suggests that, and the inside cover description of the plot also makes it sound like a standard sort of romantic comedy: young widow living alone, isolating herself from the town, baseball player who can’t pitch anymore comes to stay in an apartment in her house, sparks arise between the two of them.  You’re thinking you’ve seen this movie before.  But all of that is a bit deceptive.  It’s not a classic romantic comedy, like, for instance, I Hate You More, or To Have and to Hoax.  It’s much closer, in a lot of ways, to Beach Read, by Emily Henry, than it is to either of those lighter, more cheerful (and even silly) books.  

Which is not to say that it’s not a good read.  I’m just trying to give you a little advance warning of the kind of book it isn’t, so you can, if you read it, appreciate it for the book it is.

People in town think Evvie Drake, widow of Dr. Drake, a beloved local doctor, is in deep mourning because her husband died so suddenly in a car accident and she’s just not ready to deal with it.  Evvie is suffering, and is isolating herself from the people in her small town, and may be borderline depressed, but there’s more to her pain than the loss of her husband.  The truth is, she was getting ready to leave him, to the point of having packed her bags and loaded up her car, when she got the call that he was in an accident (this isn’t a spoiler; you see this at the beginning of the book).  Nobody knows that, not even Andy, her closest friend and confidant, just as nobody knows that Evvie’s husband was emotionally abusive and their marriage was a mess. Part of Evvie’s issue is that she thinks people expect her to be feeling a certain way, and she’s feeling guilty because she doesn’t feel that way and she’s lying to everybody about this.

Dean, the boarder, is a former pitcher for the Yankees who’s gotten the “yips,” where suddenly and for no apparent reason, he can’t pitch anymore.  His whole identity was wrapped up in baseball, and so this is a major issue for him, even before you add in all the harassment from the media and people on the internet, and his name being used as a synonym for choking. He’s a friend of Andy’s, and Andy steers him to Evvie’s house because Evvie could use the rent, and Andy also thinks Evvie needs to stop isolating herself.

In a certain type of story, what would happen is that Dean would discover his pitching again because of the love of a good woman (or his getting away from it all in Maine), and he would help Evvie deal with her guilt and her grief and the two of them would end up happily ever after. And there’s a point in this book where that almost seems about to happen, but fortunately for us all, the author doesn’t take the easy way out, any more than Evvie or Dean does. They find their way to their own resolutions, and while there is a happy ending (in this, we definitely have the rom com standard), it’s not the obvious one, even though it feels right for these particular people in this particular situation.

There are some great secondary characters in this book as well (one of the things I look for in a rom com), and I especially liked the relationship between Evvie and Andy. It’s so unusual and refreshing to see a deep friendship between a man and a woman that’s purely platonic without even a hint of “will they or won’t they”.  It’s not a perfect relationship, and the two of them have to work on their boundaries and trust issues, but they care enough about each other that they do that work.  Andy’s daughters, whom he’s raising as a single father, are also fun characters in their relationship with Evvie as well as with their father.  They come across as real, if quirky, children, which is another thing I appreciate (I’m tired of the precocious kids who come across like adults in smaller bodies).  You get the feeling this is a real world, with people who all have their own lives that they continue to live even when the author isn’t paying attention to them.  

While there’s definitely humor here, and there’s also romance, it’s not really a book that’s heavily into either of those things.  It’s a good read, with characters you care about and a plot that feels realistic as well as charming. For a light read that’s not too frothy, that’s romantic and sexy but not excessively so (and I realize everybody has their own drawn lines on what’s excessive; this was muted enough to pass muster for me), you could hardly do better than Evvie Drake Starts Over.

HOW MUCH MISERY IS TOO MUCH? ONE PLUS ONE

Reading Jojo Moyes One Plus One is not exactly like reading a rom com, though there are things it has in common with that genre, including a couple who (kind of) meet cute, a relationship that develops between them despite the obstacles that block them from each other, and a series of misadventures.  There is even, though I really doubted this was going to happen in One Plus One, a happy ending.  I take happy endings for granted in rom coms, no matter how dreadful things may seem in the course of the story, which is one reason I read them avidly.  One Plus One does not give you that assurance (though I just did as a spoiler, because this is the kind of book where you need that kind of spoiler), and it’s possible that if this weren’t one of the selections for my senior citizens’ book group, I wouldn’t have read it, and I would have missed out.

Jess, our main character, starts out under a major cloud, mostly financial.  She’s raising two children by herself (only her daughter, Tanzie, is actually her biological child; her other child, Nicky, is the child of her ex-husband by another woman).  Her ex hasn’t lifted a finger to help support the children, claiming to be too depressed to get a job or get himself together, and Jess is kindhearted enough not to push him.  She also has a dog, Norman, whose main skill seems to be flatulence.  Jess works two jobs, as a housecleaner and as a barmaid, and barely scrapes by. Nicky is constantly getting beat up by the local family of thugs.  Tanzie, younger than Nicky, is brilliant in math but isn’t really able to do anything about her intelligence in the school she goes to.  When her teacher proposes that Tanzie start in a private school for math geniuses, with a potential scholarship, Jess obviously wants that for Tanzie but knows in her bones that she can’t afford it by any stretch.  However, there’s a math olympiad in Scotland which Tanzie could qualify for, and if she can win that competition, she could have enough money to cover her school fees for a year or two, and Jess is sure they’d be able to work something out by the time the moneys would wear out.  There’s one problem, though: they have no way of getting to the competition.

Enter our second main character, Ed, a tech millionaire who’s lousy at human relationships (is that a cliche or what?), who is in major trouble for insider trading.  If you could imagine the most innocent way a person could accidentally give away insider information, you’d probably be close to imagining what Ed did.  Blocked from his workplace, in imminent danger of being arrested, tried and sent to jail, Ed is in a bad place when he gets drunk at the bar where Jess works.  As she gets him in a taxi and sends him home, she discovers that he dropped his wallet in the cab, with enough money to get Tanzie’s time-limited application for the private school.  

Though Jess is a goody-goody’s goody-goody, she can’t resist that temptation, and she takes the money and uses it, without telling Ed, of course. So when her effort to drive herself and the kids to the competition ends in abject failure (and police involvement, which doesn’t bother Jess as much as the fines and associated costs she’s going to be stuck with when she’s already in over her head), and Ed drives by and, for no reason he can articulate to himself, volunteers to drive them to the competition, the whole time they’re together, Jess is aware that she’s done something wrong, that she’s unworthy of Ed’s reluctantly given help.

This is a road trip book to a large extent, and there are various adventures and misadventures along the way, and yes, as you would expect, the characters begin to bond in the confines of Ed’s car, which he’s forced to drive at no more than 40 miles per hour because of Tanzie’s serious motion sickness (which, of course, extends the time the group is stuck together).  Think of an English version of Little Miss Sunshine, with a budding romance happening between the two main characters, and you have some idea of how the book goes.

My biggest problem with One Plus One, which may be more of a reflection on me and where I am at this point in my life than on the book itself, is the sheer amount of bad luck and misery the author throws at the characters.  It’s not enough that Ed’s in danger of going to jail for his insider training; he also has a father who’s dying of cancer whom he’s been avoiding out of shame.  It’s not enough that Jess has a useless ex husband and no end of money troubles; she has a stepson who’s being badly beaten by neighborhood thugs the local police won’t touch, and she loses one of her jobs and discovers that her ex is even worse than she suspected, and things go wrong (and badly wrong) for Tanzie as well.  

As you’re reading along, every time you think things might take a turn for the better, they go in the opposite direction.  Ed shows Nicky how to fight back against the local thugs, and they retaliate in a terrible way.  Tanzie makes it to the competition, only her glasses which she needs to read are smashed right before she gets there, so she can barely see the papers for part of the timed competition.  Jess is relentlessly upbeat and optimistic but the author has to beat her down to the point where she’s practically collapsed in depression (and what rouses her out of her bed isn’t something that’s fun or happy, either). That kind of thing happens again and again

The characters are real and flawed and you care about them.  Ed becomes less of a cliche as you get to know him, and Nicky, for all his sullen exterior, has a great heart.  Tanzie is a math genius, but she’s also crazy about her dog and caring about her mother and their situation.  Jess is clear sighted and warmhearted and struggles mightily to make things work. You want good things to happen to them, and every time the author tightens the screws, it’s harder to keep reading.  How much misery is too much?

There are some great redeeming moments, which I will not spoil here, unless telling you that something good happens counts as spoiling (and if it does, too bad), and there is the aforementioned happy ending. Because it comes after so much unhappiness and so much struggle, it definitely feels earned and realistic.  These characters absolutely deserve the good stuff they get by the end of the book, and, while the ride there was a bit darker and more miserable than I would have liked (I would have been much nicer to these characters as an author), I’m glad I read it.

Whether you’ll like it or not sort of depends on how much you’re willing to go through to get to the happy ending.  If you’re of the “one tragedy per book” school (no judgments there – whatever works for you), you’ll want to give this one a miss.  But if you’re made of sterner stuff and you’re willing to see characters suffer a lot before good things happen to them, give this book a try, and you’ll enjoy it.

JUST WHAT I NEEDED: I HATE YOU MORE

A week ago I was talking about how much I needed to change up my reading, give myself a palate cleanser of sorts, after a series of really dark and violent books I’d been reading. I had a mental picture of what kind of book I wanted: something with characters I liked, something that made me laugh (if it made me laugh out loud that would definitely be a bonus), something that ended up leaving me feeling better about the world than I had when I started reading it.  I went through one book that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, didn’t quite give me what I wanted, but then I got lucky and read I Hate You More, by Lucy Gilmore, and I have to say, it was EXACTLY what I’d been looking for, and might be what you’re looking for, too.

I Hate You More is a rom com, so there are a few things you know at the outset before even looking at the plot description: there are going to be two people who are going to each have issues that keep them apart even as they’re finding each other attractive; there are going to be misadventures and misunderstandings that build on each other until you reach the point where, almost inevitably, the characters are apart and it seems as if the relationship is doomed, and then you have the happily ever after, earned by both characters growing as people and as partners. 

This one has all of that and, to quote Shakespeare in Love, “a bit with a dog.”  Actually, there’s a lot of bits with a dog.  Our protagonist, Rudy, is a nurse’s aide working in a nursing home, and she is inveigled by one of the residents into taking the resident’s not-very-prepossessing dog, Wheezy (the name is perfect) to a local dog show and making him win best in show.  It happens that Ruby has considerable experience with shows and competing on looks and the like, since in her youth she was a contestant in any number of beauty contests, pushed into competition by her mother.  Wheezy, however, is a much longer shot in this contest than Ruby ever was in any of hers, being grossly overweight, possibly not a purebred Golden Retriever (the dog’s owner swears he is, but that doesn’t mean anything), and only inclined to obey commands if Wheezy feels like it (which doesn’t happen often).

To make matters more complicated, there’s Spencer, one of the judges in the contest and someone who lives by the rules, and his identical twin brother, Caleb, who moonlights as a dog trainer and has a very different attitude toward rules.  Both brothers are immediately smitten by Ruby (though she only has eyes for Spencer), and Caleb agrees to take on the immensely difficult task of turning Wheezy into a show dog.  Since Caleb lives with Spencer for reasons both of them would prefer to keep quiet, that means that when Ruby takes the dog to be trained by Caleb, she finds herself frequently in the company of Spencer.

Their attraction is hot and believable.  I’m not one who’s into a lot of explicit detail when it comes to characters having sex.  I want to know that they’re having a good time, I want to make sure the sex is realistic (as compared to books in which a woman practically orgasms at the slightest touch from her crush), and I want to see enthusiastic consent on both sides.  Dirty talk can be fun, up to a point (read this book and you will never think of the word “porcupine” in quite the same way), and playfulness carries a lot of weight with me, but I don’t need or particularly want anatomical descriptions or soft core porn stuff.  This book hit just the right balance for me.

It’s funny how a well-written book can overcome some of my personal prejudices.  For instance, I’m not thrilled with the cliche where the male character is always talking about how beautiful the female character is, as if nobody who’s not spectacularly beautiful in a conventional way could be attractive or sexy.  However, here Ruby was a former beauty queen, so Spencer’s (and other characters’) noticing that she’s a knockout feels perfectly natural.  I’m also less than a fan of the character’s having a long term problem that gets cleared up with just a conversation with someone else, but when the brothers in this book reconcile, it really is that simple and I was okay with it (though I do think Caleb should have had to work a little harder).  The cliche of one character deceiving the other and then worrying about being caught in that deception is another thing I’m not thrilled with, but in this case Ruby’s deception (that she’s a doctor instead of a nurse’s aide) isn’t the real reason she and Spencer have their biggest fight.  They fight because she thinks he’s offering her the easy way out because of her looks, and she wants to earn whatever she gets and not coast by on her looks, and that is not only totally believable in context, but also a realistic problem for the two of them, one that could be a deal breaker for someone like Ruby.

My favorite aspect of the book, I have to admit, is the humor.  It is in fact laugh out loud funny. I was reading it in the local coffee shop and complete strangers asked me what I was reading because I was laughing so hard (of course I told them). The characters are witty, the situations in which they sometimes find themselves (the senior citizens erotica book group, which leads to the aforementioned porcupine reference, and no, I’m not going to give that away here, or the circumstances in which Wheezy inadvertently ingests a large quantity of cannabis, for examples) are ridiculous enough to be funny without being so absurd you can’t imagine them happening.  The supporting cast is full of life and personality, from Wheezy’s owner to Ruby’s mother to Spencer’s parents to Spencer’s friends, and their observations of what’s going on between our two main characters are on point and funny.

And yes, there is a happy ending, and I was pleased to see that the author didn’t strain credulity and make Wheezy a transformed dog who might possibly win best of show in any but the most charitable dog show.  Wheezy does develop a bit over the course of the book, but there is no way in the world he would ever get to be a champion show dog from where he’s started (this isn’t really a spoiler, by the way; if Wheezy did win the show at the end, you might be tempted to chuck the book at the wall for cheating so outrageously).  Both Spencer and Ruby deal with their personal issues and of course end up together, exactly the way I wanted them to.

So if you’re looking for a palate cleanser of your own, something charming and funny and also kind of sexy, look no farther.  I Hate You More will hit your sweet spot, the way it hit mine.

WHAT MAKES A ROM COM WORK: THE SECONDARY CHARACTERS OF SECOND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Romantic comedies are the comfort food of my reading life.  There, I’ve said it. 

Sometimes you just need to read something that you KNOW will make you feel good by the end, something that you can pretty much guarantee will not be depressing or dispiriting, something that might even make you laugh and get you a little weepy (but the good kind of weepy, if you know what I mean), and for me, that’s a good Romantic Comedy novel.  Over the last year or two, I’ve been mixing my usual dark and quirky reading fare (you know, mysteries and thrillers and the occasional Murderbot book) with palate cleansers of the Rom Com variety and it’s worked for me.  

My most recent encounter has been with Second First Impressions, by Sally Thorne, and a great fun read it was, too.  Reading it, I came to the conclusion that what makes a great rom com is the secondary characters, and in this book they were spectacularly fun.

Yes, I know the protagonists are important, too, and their attraction to each other (as well as the obstacles that keep them apart for most of the book) has to be realistic.  You have to want them to succeed, even if there are times in the course of the book where you really want to smack one or the other over the head to get them to act like sensible human beings.  In this case, the protagonists are Ruthie, a sweet and good hearted if somewhat easily-put-uponable (is that even a word?) person, who’s working like a maniac at a retirement home for rich people for years, and Teddy, the seemingly feckless son of the man whose company owns the retirement home and whose company may or may not decide to kill the whole place and redevelop it as something that will make more money.  Ruthie has low self-esteem and gave up her dream of becoming a veterinarian years before; at this point she doesn’t believe she will ever leave this job.  Teddy, for all his tattoos and his apparent lack of seriousness, is also good-hearted and someone who falls head over heels in love with Ruthie, whether she believes in his love or not; he’s a kinder, better person than Ruthie gives him credit for being, as we see pretty much from the outset.  They are both good people with real issues, and they definitely deserve each other, so yes, we are rooting for them from the start.

But it’s the secondary characters who really make this book.  Let’s start with Melanie Sasaki, the temp who’s working with Ruthie as an administrator.  Mel is a firecracker, a person as full of life as Ruthie is full of repression.  Mel intends to straighten Ruthie out using what she calls the Sasaki Method, her own invention to walk Ruthie step by step from her blocked and repressed life into a life with a boyfriend and something more than just her job to look forward to. Mel is determined and clear-eyed, and she’s basically the backbone of the plot, keeping Ruthie moving in the right direction even as she distrusts Teddy as a potential boyfriend.  Mel is the kind of best friend you want in your corner, no matter how pathetic your life may seem.

And then let’s turn to the Parloni sisters, who are so much fun to read about (possibly not as much fun to work for, but we don’t have to do that, do we?).  They’re both old, Renata being 91 and Agatha being 89, but don’t think of your stereotypical old ladies.  They’re bawdy and demanding and loud and insistent on getting what they want.  What they want, or what they claim to want, is an assistant, preferably a young and good-looking man, to be at their beck and call, to run whatever errands they choose (and some of their errands are pretty out there) and basically to put up with whatever abuse they choose to dole out.  These assistants don’t last; some don’t make it through the first week.  When the Parlonis are between young men, Ruthie ends up doing their bidding, so she definitely knows what’s involved in throwing someone to the Parlonis, and she also has a serious interest in making sure they fill that position. Naturally she gives them Teddy, more as a means of getting rid of someone who seems so smug, so commitment-phobic, so unused to working for his living. To everyone’s surprise (well, maybe not Teddy’s), he turns out to be the perfect assistant for them, even bringing them to the tattoo parlor of which he’s trying to become a part owner.  It makes perfect sense that Renata would want a particular tattoo, despite never having had one in the past, and it makes even more sense that she wouldn’t tell anyone else what her tattoo is going to look like (and by the time we get to that point in the book, having seen Renata in action, I would have been willing to believe any kind of tattoo, from the most garish to the most obscene to the most all-encompassing). I believe I want to be one of the Parlonis when I grow up.

There are other secondary characters in the book, from Teddy’s half-sister, Rose, who’s been deputized to make a close inspection of the property and decide its fate, to Kurt, the owner of the secondhand store where Ruthie buys her clothes (who has something of a crush on Ruthie himself, suggesting that Ruthie’s low self-esteem might not be all that valid), and they’re all good and well-drawn, but it’s the persistence and brilliance of Mel and the old lady wildness of the Parlonis that really makes this book stand out among its peers.

Since I have been complaining lately about books that screw up their twists and don’t know how to end properly, I must say there’s a twist that comes late in this book that was not only genuinely surprising but genuinely moving (I mean, full on putting-the-book-down-to-cry moving; I can’t remember the last time I did that), and that worked perfectly in the context of the rest of the book.

Funny, goodhearted, full of life and energy, and of course containing a happy ending: if you need a good comfort read, you could hardly do better than Second First Impressions.