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This Can’t Be Love by Kasey Michaels

July 16, 2005

Books


Grade: B-

The back of the book describes the heroine, Molly Longstreet, as “free-spirited”. The first thing that came to my mind when I read that was aw, crap, she’s going to be one of those TSTL shitheads who rush headlong into danger without thinking if she could endanger herself or others. The second thing that popped into my mind was that episode of Family Guy where the Griffin family is sitting around, watching Dharma and Greg on TV. On their TV screen, we see Dharma standing on the coffee table (for no reason whatsoever) and Greg is all, “Dharma, come down here right now,” then Dharma says, “No, silly, why don’t you come up here,” to which Greg affectionately replies, “Oh, Dharma, you’re such a free-spirit”. Funniest shit I’d ever seen, I tell ya. This is also a boss-fall-in-love-with-the-nanny story. Sigh. By the way, the back of the book says Molly is “gorgeous”, so at least I didn’t have to read about her crying to anyone who will listen about being ugly and thus unworthy of the hero’s love, when really, she could be a fucking Victoria’s Secret model, if she would only take off her glasses and paint-splattered coveralls.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Molly Longstreet is a 28 year old “free spirit” who is “gorgeous” and vivacious and perfect from her bouncy-bouncy hair to the tips of her beautiful pink toes. She is also a rich girl who inherited a shitload of money from her parents, but may only access the money if she can keep a job ten months out of the year or if she got married. Because she’s a “free spirit”, she has to keep moving, from job to job, from city to city, because she never ever wants to be bored. This means she has been everything from a lingerie model (natch!), to a cocktail waitress, to a dog-walker, in cities all across America. She has a cousin named Jane (don’t worry, she has her own book), whose family took Molly in when her stupid parents died in a car crash (at least they didn’t get crushed by a meteor like Lana Lang’s parents). Plain Jane is a bore who owns a daycare business and is supposedly the complete opposite of Molly. When Molly becomes disenchanted with her newspaper job, she convinces Jane to trade places with her, which means Jane would go to Washington in her place for the story Molly is supposed to be working on, and Molly will watch over Jane’s daycare business (what the hell kind of person would leave a place like that to a woman who has no experience with children?).

Dominic Longstreet, a hotshot Broadway producer (who is not gay), is a workaholic type with no hobbies (except for expensive cars and women), no joy, and no sunshine in his life. Oh, come on, people, you’ve seen this song and dance before. Who else could you pair up with a “free spirit”? Didn’t you see that awful movie with Keanu Reeves as a hotshot workaholic ad exec and Charlize Theron as a “free spirit” slut who sleeps with a different man every man and has a debilitating disease that somehow keeps her pretty, pretty, pretty? Anyway, Dom’s idiot brother leaves his plot contrivances—err, children to Dom and goes off to Greece for a second honeymoon with his wife. Dom, of course, has no experience with children and has no time nor patience for them, as he is dead inside. When Molly and Jane decide to shut down the daycare center for the summer, Dom has nowhere to take his niece and nephew. Molly, who was also abandoned as a child by parents who were too busy gallivanting all over the world to take care of her, instantly feels sorry for the little monsters (sucker!), and volunteers to be their nanny. Oh, by the way, Dom wants to bone Molly from the second he sets his eyes on her (or this wouldn’t be a romance novel). Because she’s hot and has hot, hot legs. A big deal is made about these legs.

Though Molly is all fucked up in the head because of her abandonment issues, she is a super-nanny and a frickin’ expert on child psychology. This kind of pisses me off because she has no difficulty reaching the kids and they’re immediately a one big happy puppy pile. These kids love Molly and Molly loves the kids. Good for Molly and good for the kids. Dom, to his credit, is not a tight-ass who can’t smile without short-circuiting or his internal computer breaking down. He actually cares about his nieces and nephews, but would like to care for them from far, far away, and with their parents around. He also wants them to stay out of his way while he works on his new production. Molly, of course, nags him to death about spending more time with the kids (why? They’re not his kids, stupid!), and gets him so stressed out that he almost has a heart attack and starts hyperventilating (like me, this guy pops antacids like Pez). Anyway, busybody Molly (YOU WERE HIRED TO TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS, MOLLY) decides that he needs to relax more and sets out to help him have more fun, even canceling rehearsals for his new play for the next two weeks. Sigh.

Let’s talk about the kids. The older girl is one of those creepy kids in romance novels who know too much and talk like she’s forty-five years old. Her baby brother is kind of adorable, though. Okay, that’s all I’ll say about the kids or I’ll start ranting about how much I HATE CHILDREN in romance novels.

The one thing I like about Molly is that she knows what she wants. When she finds herself attracted to Dom, she doesn’t get all neurotic and weird about it. She’s totally cool about wanting to have a fling with him. She’s not one of those stupid bitches who act weird and creepy around the hero, then decides to have sex with him just once before she embarks on a life of celibacy, so she can have that special memory forevah. She’s not a frickin’ martyr about it. I even understand that she’s reluctant to get emotionally involved with him because she does have some HEAVY ASS abandonment issues (get in therapy, chick, seriously). She is willing to have an affair with Dom, willing to have sex with him for the next two weeks, as long as he doesn’t wig out about it when it comes time for her to leave. Molly is a lone wolf. That’s cool, I dig that. I also like that she doesn’t question his feelings for her. She’s not like “does he love me?” or “does he only want me for my body?” or any of that bullshit. No, Molly knows that Dom cares about her and just worries that they will just both get hurt when it’s time for her to take off.

Oh, and she’s afraid of the dark. That’s kind of cute. I’m afraid of the dark, too, but that’s because the headmistress at the elementary school I attended locked me in a dark closet once for kicking a teacher, but that’s a long, boring story, and you’ll need therapy after you hear it.

Dom… Dom is a sweetie. He is not a weirdo temperamental Broadway geek, but a nice guy who just happens to be a workaholic. He doesn’t patronize Molly, doesn’t leer at her, nor does he disrespect her. He and Molly are actually pretty nice to each other for about 80% of the book. They become friends, lovers, and seem to genuinely enjoy hanging out with each other. There’s a scene in the book where Dom, Molly, and the children are all having dinner for the first time, and the ungrateful little bastards don’t like what the housekeepers has slaved over a hot stove all day and served. Molly and the kids decide they’re going to order a pizza and leave Dom at the table, feeling all sad and left out. So cute. Dom is also respectful of Molly’s feelings. He doesn’t push her or pressure her into anything, but when he realizes that he is in love with Molly, and she will still leave when the kids’ parents return, he becomes adorably desperate thinking of ways to woo her into staying. Adorable.

Why am I not giving this book an A? The secondary characters ANNOYED THE SHIT OUT OF ME. There’s Cyanara, an aging Broadway star who is suddenly off-key and rapidly becoming a liability to Dom, but I just pictured her as Bette Davis in All About Eve, and didn’t mind her so much. There’s Derek, her former lover, who annoyed me every time he showed up, and I don’t know why. These two become involved again in the course of this story and serve as a parallel to Molly and Dom’s courtship, because Derek is a commitment phobe just like Molly. There’s a VERY anvillicious scene here that I could have definitely done without. There’s also this songwriter friend of Dom’s named Taylor, who keeps telling Dom that he shouldn’t get romantically involved with Molly, because he doesn’t “want Dom to get hurt”. Whatever, dude, he wants Dom for himself, the little queen. Lastly, there’s this stupid, twitty thirteen year old girl who is a complete prima donna and her annoying, psychotic stage mother. Throughout the entire book, they are very unpleasant to Molly and the kids, but their comeuppance just wasn’t as big nor as satisfying as I had expected. I wanted them to be dropped into a vat of boiling acid, but alas! That does not happen. They should have been at least stuck in a burlap bag and beaten with sticks, but that doesn’t happen, either.

The end of the book also gave me a “that’s it?” feeling. The pay-off just wasn’t there. When Molly finally decides that she loves Dom and wants to stay with him, I didn’t hear a herald of angels singing or trumpets. There wasn’t a sudden burst of confetti or a “surprising refrain” in the soundtrack. It was just… there. These two have a nice, pleasant relationship, but it wasn’t… hot, you know?

Also, what the hell kind of a Broadway production is this without the requisite flamboyant gay sidekick (Taylor doesn’t count, because he’s not flamboyant enough and still in the closet)? I did not get a “HUGE BROADWAY PRODUCTION” vibe. It felt very dinner theater. I totally dug the whole Margo Channing thing with Cyanara, but there was not ONE character in this story that I wanted to spend time with… well, except for the housekeeper. I bet she makes awesome cookies. Oh, and Molly’s lawyer was hilarious! The housekeeper and the lawyer definitely need a sequel where they travel across the country in an RV, having wacky adventures.

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