I’ve been trying to push thru this book for most of it, for various reasons, but there’s 1.5 hrs to go (audio), and you know what? I’m not even going to finish it!
I’M SO PISSED OFF AT IT!
Starting with the general annoyances...
- it’s taking FOREVER to do very little
- it’s gliding over the top of most of it, not getting ‘into’ the characters lives or world, were just skipping like a rock
- it seems to be religious. Not bible bashing thankfully, but lots of gods will, and gods blessing, he/she’s a-MORAL-person-so-it’s-ok-to-like-them and other phrases and comments that are blatantly ’GOD’, rather then just general life comments and affirmations
- no cussing or the like (all the same ‘voice’), so I kept thinking it’s a ‘clean’ book, but they have sex. I keep expecting they to point out pre marital sex means they aren’t not moral people
- I can’t tell the difference between the mother and the pre-tween daughter. They ‘talk’ the same. So do most of the other characters
- I think I was pushing thru because I wanted to find out the H was Max’s son. I got the generation wrong, he would have been Max’s grandson, but when it came time for the reveal, there was no reveal. She granny with dementia just says, ‘I would have liked him to know, but it doesn’t matter now’. To be fair, they might clarify that in the last hour and a half, but I’m done.
- he has a big secret which he keeps from her, and he makes her decisions for her by denying her the knowledge and making the choices without her
- his big secret is possible infertility, and it never once crosses his mind that there are options.
- his obnoxious, arrogant, controlling, estranged father wants to snap up their land/business and turn it into a ‘meat factory’, fighting the H on every ethical animal welfare principle he has, and the h keeps thinking, maybe I will sell my half of the business and the land to the dad since I don’t (in the current break up) want to have to see the H around anymore.
- and I hate to bash the audio narrator, but I don’t think she help this book at all. There are so many times were (IMO) her timing, tone, inflection or emphasis was just all wrong. But saying that, there’s not a hell of a lot she can do it all the characters a written the ‘same’.
What was the final straw for me? The H has been mumbling about an accident might have made him infertile since his first scene... we are talking about 6mths ago. He has been putting off finding out, even tho he knew from the start the h wanted more kids, and he was ‘courting’ her, so it was gunna come up. He FINALLY got tested, after he rejected her without telling her why (after he’d spent months courting her and her kid). And, I gotta be honest, it feels like he’s been waiting for these results for almost a month. I’ve no first hand experience, but that seems excessive. Any way, he rejected her. She forgave him and decided friends is better than nothing. Then she has an epiphany that ‘must have baby’ was just a coping strategy to imagine what would make her world perfect, but turns out she realises, just being friends with him and having him in her and her daughters lives makes it perfect... awww. So he’s finally taken the test and they start to actively court again, and she’s all tell me everything, and he’s all, it’s bad but I’m not telling you anything until I know for sure. And they turn into bad moral people after a few drinks and her lust filled brain says ‘he’s it, he’s the one, he is magically MEANT to be hers and there’s NOTHING that could be so bad that she would turn her perfect person away’... awwww.
Come morning. She elated. Then she’s not quite so lusty. Then she not quite sure she should have slept with him without knowing what this big bad is. Then she worried. Then she’s opening her mail mindlessly that he has accidentally mixed with his, and she’s horrified to find out that he’s lied to her and deceived her and how could he keep that he was infertile from her since he KNEW that top priority for her and her daughter was sibling, pronto. What a horrible awful (immoral?) human being...
So remember that epiphany she had about a baby not actually being the be all and end all? No, neither does she. Remember how he was trying to put them off until he found out something very important? No, neither does she. Remember how she actively pushed for them to forget it all, commit and sleep together last night? No, neither does she.
And neither one of them considers that they could get a donor, or, given she and her late husband took 7years to get pregnant with their second child (who she lost), there’s no guarantee they could have had a child anyway.
Now remembering that I quit this crap at the start of their blow up, break up... and being a book, they are going to sort their shit out. They may well come up with all these options. And she has only known about his issue for a few seconds, but she hasn’t once considered she may not have another child ‘that she is going to have to make her and her daughters lives perfect’, especially given the trouble she had with her second, and the fact that she was refusing to date before he stumbled in... and at every pothole they hit, she went straight to ‘never trust, never open up again, can’t do it, too scary, the universe is out to get me, it won’t let me be happy’. Her odds were fairly low without him anyway.