What She Doesn't Know

- Beverly Barton -

Am only a couple of chapters into this, but so far it has a couple of plot points that I haaaate so, in the hopes of the author defying expectations and going in a different direction, I want to write about them here and hope I am pleasantly surprised later.

Jolie Royale was sent away from home after an attempt on her life, a second attempt that followed the murders of her mother & aunt and their gardener and the almost fatal injuries she suffered in the same attack. When her father marries his mistress, the same woman he was screwing whilst the murders where taking place, six months after her mother's death, Jolie refuses to returned home to the family plantation again and has been estranged from her father and most of her extended family for almost 20 years.

When her father finally dies, Jolie returns home for the funeral and reading of the will in the hopes of finally enacting revenge on her stepmother, Georgette, and reopening the investigation into the murders. Georgette's son, Max, who Jolie once had a childhood crush on, is there to protect him mother and the half sister he and Jolie share, and try to prevent Jolie from hurting his family.

The part of all this set up that I strongly object to is the suggestion, already spoken via entreaties from her aunt and an old family friend, that Jolie is wrong to have hard feelings, or be unwilling to accept her step mother, whilst the step mother is so far being portrayed as weak, but essentially in the right.

If the narrative of this plot follows through to the conclusion that seems to be coming so far, Jolie will ultimately forgive her stepmother, shack up with Max and all the rest of the family and they will all live happily ever after.

Again, I really, REALLY hope I am wrong, because it just drives me insane that a woman who went through seeing her father shagging another woman, discovered the bodies of her aunt and mother, was shot herself, packed off to boarding school only to have her father marry the other woman, all within a period of six months, isn't entitled to some majorly negative attached to the whole experience.

I want to see Georgette, as well as Max and the little sister, Mallory, for that matter, acknowledge that she was, and continues to be with her petulant attitude towards Jolie, in the wrong.

I also want Max to drop his self-righteous 'how dare she not forgive and forget' attitude and acknowledge that Jolie is entitled be plenty pissed off with her dad over his actions.

Fingers crossed any of it actually happens!

And the verdict is....

Mixed. While there wasn't quite the prostration of "OMG, I am so terrible" from Jolie that I was afraid of, it was never really explored in all that much depth. She just sort of...got over it.

Depth was pretty much the problem with the whole book - there was no depth to any of the relationships. Max and Jolie never appear to really even get to know each other much beyond the sexual attraction between them, yet all of a sudden there are very impassioned declarations of true love for ever.

I also really, really disliked the way the storyline for the younger sister, Mallory, was dealt with on pretty much every level. In a deeply uncomfortable scene she gives up her virginity to a 23 year old playboy, RJ, who comes across as an opportunistic sexual predator (case in point: the first time they are having sex, even though Mallory is telling him she is uncomfortable, his internal monologue consists of "Oh well, too late too stop now. You asked me to do this.") He then decides the sex would be even better bareback, so without a word to Mallory he forgoes a condom the next time, leading to the inevitable teenage pregnancy storyline, which is also resolved absurdly easily with Mallory having the baby just in time for RJ to return (having ditched her and taken off before she discovers she is pregnant) and vow to be there for Mallory and the baby forever.

This resolution is all taken care of in a matter of sentences in the epilogue, in conjuction with Jolie also discovering she is pregnant (Max and Jolie's relationship is all of nine months old at this point. But of course they are already married). I am beyond irritated with the recurring theme in romance novels where the author feels the need to tie the entire story and/or relationship up a in a happy little bow and, instead of just giving us the happy ending of the two people finding love together, feel compelled to add the obligatory marriage/babies/perfect life, irrespective of the time lines involved and the riduculousness of the assumption that marriage and babies would be the ultimate happy ending, as opposed to just leaving us with two adults, happy and content with each other and their relationship.

I also felt the massacre resolution was spectacularly anti-climactic here, especially considering the emotional stakes involved. And really? Georgette knew her brother had killed multiple people and was just totally fine with that? Ugh. So much ugh.

The writing itself here was fast pace and engaging, but without the character, relationship and plot development to back it up, it's just not enough.