Perfect Timing by Brenda Jackson
Perfect Timing by Brenda Jackson
This was a genuinely interesting romance novel which, after a slow middle, dealt with some serious issues in the latter part of the story. The book is nominally about two best friends, Maxi and Maya, who drifted apart after high school, leading the reader to think that getting the two back together will be a major subplot of the story. (It wasn’t. It took one chapter and probably wasn’t worth mentioning in the blurb.) What was more interesting is that Maxi’s life has fallen apart after the death of her fiancé while Maya’s marriage to her high-school-sweetheart-turned-NFL-player is threatening to hit the rocks. Their troubles seem to be reaching a crescendo when they both agree to go on a high school reunion cruise.
That cruise was the weakest part of the story and takes up most of the first half of the book. Maxi is accidentally put in the same cabin as her high school crush, Christopher, who happens to have the same last name as her. This happened because they both, separately, ordered single cabins and the cruise line decided on its own that they must be married because they have the same last name so they would put them together. Then the cruise line refused to fix the problem arguing that since they had been in high school together it must be okay. For the record, this is totally unbelievable and was equally unnecessary to the story. The only thing it accomplished was to make it easier for the author to continually thrust these two together. Unsurprisingly in a novel with so much sex in it, there is a lot of thrusting in that cabin.
The only other thing the cruise accomplishes is to bring Maxi and Maya back together—something a phone call should have accomplished ten years earlier—and to drive home the fact (made before the cruise started) that Christopher was not respected in high school (and of course no one knows he is now super successful and super wealthy). It also leads Christopher, who has extraordinary commitment issues, to offer to father the child Maxi desperately wants before she has to get a hysterectomy.
Okay, so the book has a lot in common with some of the crazier soap operas, but stick with it because there’s a lot of good too. When Maya and Maxi get back to their lives, things continue to fall apart for them—and it’s in dealing with these problems that Jackson shows her strength as an author.
In the first plot, Maxi wants Christopher’s child, but she’s frustrated that he’s not part of the deal—as in marriage. Of course, he’s around for making the baby. (And yes, the sex is too good for them to seriously consider invitro fertilization.) Christopher clearly wants her too, but there are those very profound commitment issues.
In the second plot, Maya’s husband has strayed—not completely, but enough that any self-respecting person would be hugely upset by his actions. This is really the strongest storyline in the novel because it is the easy for readers to imagine themselves having to deal with similar problems. There is a lot of pressure on Maya to simply forgive her husband including from her minister, but she’s upset enough that I couldn’t predict how the story would end.
The minister brings up another subtle strength of this story. These are people for whom religion and prayer are important parts of their lives. They are not preachy in your face zealots. They are everyday Americans who believe that God and religion have a place in their families. I thought this was a very well-done aspect of the story.
The narration was also very well done. Leon Nixon reads a good book, but I must admit to being surprised that a man was chosen as narrator when two of the three POVs were female. It makes me wonder if for the author, the Christopher storyline was the most important.
And I think that’s the key to why I liked this book so much, even though I have poked a bit of fun at it in this review. As I listened, it made me think—not deep profound thoughts—but about what was going to happen and whether I could imagine my high school class doing things like this. And when I am wondering that much about what a character should do, it tells me I’m really enjoying the book. I think you will too.
