Grade: C-

The heroine of this novella is a twenty one year old girl named Virginia Bennett, but she likes to be called Gina. When she was sixteen years old, she was in a freak motorcycle accident where she almost choked to death because her scarf got caught in the back tire of the motorcycle. AWESOME! Her voice box was crushed, so she now has a husky voice that made Kathleen Turner famous, but after a few surgeries to fix her throat, she also has a bunch of really ugly scars around her neck that she hides with well-placed ribbons and scarves. Gina comes from a family of money-grubbing, power-hungry sluts, so naturally, as a romance heroine, she is more subdued and a bit of a prude. To separate herself from her family, she becomes a children’s book illustrator, which irritates her mother to no end because she thinks it is a plebian endeavor. But Gina is not like her mother and sisters, damn it, she’s a sensitive artist! SHUT UP!

Anyway, because she’s desperate for love and attention, she gets a little drunk at one of her mother’s parties one night, and allows herself to get talked into having a little somethin’ somethin’ by a smooth operator who, as it turns out, is just setting it up so that his wife would walk in on him with another woman and divorce him. Bastard! Unable to defend herself because her throat clams up when she’s nervous, Gina is branded a slut and a scarlet woman by the woman’s family, and all the blame is put upon her shoulders. To get her out of the funk she’s in, her editor tells her of a private Fijian island where she could vacation for a while and concentrate on the novel she’s trying to write. Gina reluctantly goes and continues with her woe-is-me whining in a beachfront bungalow on an island paradise, shaking her fists at the heavens, crying out that she’s ugly and deformed and no one will ever love her because she’s a whiny crybaby and she’ll be alone forever. Or maybe she just paints and shit. Whatever.

The hero, Leonard Sterne, publishing magnate, is the brother of the woman who was married to the bastard who tricked Gina. Naturally, he thinks she’s evil incarnate and the biggest slut in the world, so he calls her a slut and a tramp and a hussy to her face EVERY CHANCE HE GETS. Seriously, this guy walks around with a giant chip on his shoulder and a surgically attached stick up his ass. He’s also kind of pissed because his evil ex-wife (is there any other kind?) just thrust upon him a sullen seven year old boy, who is deaf because of complications from the measles, and the little boy pretty much hates him because his evil ex-wife told the little boy a bunch of horror stories about him.

When he finds out that his poor handicapped son has been escaping to the other side of the island where Gina’s bungalow just happens to be, he flips out on a massive scale that would scare even Tom Sizemore for two reasons: 1) his son hates him and would rather hang out with the biggest slut in the universe 2) Gina is a slut! A HOMEWRECKING HUSSY! A money-grubbing, power-hungry whore like her mother and sisters! Never mind that Gina actually did his sister a favor by ruining her marriage to a selfish, greedy asshole. Would Leo have preferred that his sister stayed married to that prince of a guy? What a jerk. What pisses him off more is that he’s still attracted to Gina even though she’s a slut! a hussy! a tramp! because it only proves that Gina is using her sexiness and heady sensuality and woman powers to manipulate a prize like him.

When a plot contrivance in the form of a cyclone gets these two stuck together—Gina’s bungalow is destroyed—Leo blackmails her into staying in his mansion with him and his son. He thinks she’s a slut! a whore! a tramp! but for some reason, his son likes her and can’t stand to be apart from her, so Leo thinks he can use Gina as a bridge between him and his son. When Gina confesses to him that she is a children’s book illustrator and a budding novelist—with a male pseudonym, Borelli, whom Leo first believes is her lover—Leo pretty much laughs in her face because he’s an asshole. He treats he like shit at every turn, yells at her and humiliates her in front of his kid who idolizes Gina, and pretty much follows her around all brooding and creepy whenever she’s out with his kid.

Before he finds out about her accident, he also makes fun of her voice, thinking she’s just trying hard to sound sexy, and when he notices that she uses sign language to his deaf son, he thinks it’s just one of her schemes. THIS GUY IS UNBELIEVEABLE! He only becomes nice to her when he finds out the truth about the night he caught her with his former brother-in-law and that she was innocent all along. Also, she’s a virgin, and everyone knows that virgins are pure and free of sins and can do no wrong and therefore worthy of his love and attention. Jesus.

What freaks me out about all this is Gina is twenty-one years old, while Leo is thirty-five. He is fourteen years older than her, but he acts like a dumb jock from high school. Sure, Gina is a mopey little crybaby but she’s way more mature than he is. Meanwhile, Leo is a jerk, a chauvinist—no, make that misogynist—and just an all around hateful human being who doesn’t know how to deal with his deaf kid, so he’s a jerk to him, too. Jesus, if I were Gina, I would have castrated this bastard and hung him upside down, so that the blood from his own testicles would drip down to his face. I understand that his ex-wife was a cold, unfeeling, crazy bitch, but it just doesn’t explain the way he treats the people around him. He roars and yells and acts pretty much like a bear with a bruised paw, but there’s just nothing redeeming about him. He’s not a misunderstood prince like The Beast. He’s just a dick, period.

Another thing that pisses me off about this book is that all the women are either evil, scheming sluts or weak-minded, neurotic nutjobs! Gina’s mother and sisters are sluts, the little boy’s babysitter is a slut, while Leo’s sister and ex-wife are weak-minded, neurotic nutjobs. Near the end of the book, Leo’s evil ex-wife (SPOILER: she turns out to be NOT his ex-wife because Leo is a lying, cheating, hypocritical bastard) shows up to make trouble for Leo and Gina just because she can and oh, because she’s a woman, therefore very, very devilish. What is wrong with you, Susan Napier? Are you one of those women who hate other women and can’t stand to be friends with them? Did you write them this way so you can make Gina look more like a pure, virginal creature who is the only one deserving of Leo’s love? Good God, woman, who wants Leo’s love, anyway? He’s fucking crazy!

And don’t even get me started on the misplaced semi-colons. Someone get this woman a copy of Strunk & White, STAT!

The only thing that saves this book from a big fat F is the relationship between Gina and Leo’s emotionally wounded boy, Dominic. When we first meet Dominic, he is a very sullen, angry little boy, who is barely communicative. Through sign language and her drawings, Gina coaxes the little boy out of his shell. She speaks kindly to him, listens to him, and is very patient to him. These two have great rapport and chemistry. Their scenes together are touching and sad in some parts, funny and light-hearted in others, but always sincere. Gina really understands Dominic’s frustrations, but maybe because they’re closer together in age. Rimshot! Actually, Gina empathizes with him because after her accident, she couldn’t really speak, so she had to learn sign language and hung out with a lot of deaf kids. Gina knows what it’s like not to be able to communicate her thoughts and feelings, so when she tries to get close to Dominic, her efforts are genuine and heartfelt because she knows how he feels. I mean, these two are awesome together. Gina should have just run away with Dominic, adopted him, and had wacky adventures together. Eventually, maybe Gina and Dominic could go to the United States, where Gina could meet a nice, sensitive artist-type like in Seattle or something, and it would be a different book entirely, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, I really don’t know how to grade this book because I really, really liked the scenes with Gina and Dominic, but Leo is such an unreasonable, illogical, misogynistic, completely bat-shit crazy bastard, that he almost ruins this book for me. The horrible female stereotypes give this book such a fetid stench as well. Fuck Leo. Fuck Susan Napier for writing Gina as a too-nice, too-sweet, too-tragic Barbie Doll, just so she’s deserving of that fucktard Leo’s love. Gina and Dominic deserve better, damn it. Maybe if the two of them had accidentally stumbled upon a nice P.C. Cast hero, they would have been better off. The three of them could live happily ever after and trot blissfully towards the sunset (because the P.C. Cast hero is a centaur) and sing songs under a tree or something. If that had happened, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten this ugly, dirty-sock feeling in my mouth after reading this book.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2005 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Contempo, Romance: Category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.