Grade: C+

The only romance novel I have ever read where the male or female protagonist wasn’t white was Tempting Danger by Eileen Wilks. The heroine in that one was Chinese and the hero was white. I don’t set out to pick out romance novels with only white people in it; it just happens that way. I would be interested to find out the ratio between romance novels with white protagonists and a romance novel with non-white protagonists that are being published in today’s market. In this case, the female protagonist is black and the male protagonist is white. I don’t know why this pairing doesn’t happen more often. It’s really hot. I saw this really, really bad movie once called Supernova (it’s kind of like Event Horizon, except 10 times as bad) with Angela Bassett and James Spader and they do it in this anti-gravity chamber and boy, that was hot (there’s a rumor that the bodies actually belong to Robin Tunney and Peter Facinelli and Angela Bassett and James Spader’s features were just super-imposed during post but it’s hotter if you replace them with Angela Bassett and James Spader, ne c’est pas?). Smack me around if I’m being ignorant, but black women are less likely to date outside their race, right? I mean, whenever I’m out and about, I would see black men walking around with a white girl, an Asian girl, or a Hispanic girl, but rarely do I ever see a black woman walking around with a man who isn’t black. Anyway, I wanted to read a good interracial romance, and a few people recommended this book to me. Luckily, I had a copy in my TBR mountain (I don’t even know what I have anymore). The cover’s cool, the hero could be oblivious to the point of stupidity, the heroine could use a good kick in the head, but the book never bored me and I finished it in one sitting.

Our heroine Leah Downey is a graphic designer for a small publishing house, shares a spacious brownstone with her older sister Gail, and is currently dating a handsome, intelligent, and ambitious black man named Allen. Leah is happy enough with her life, even though her nights are plagued with nightmares of a man who had assaulted her and almost killed her just a few months ago. She has never told any of her friends or family members about this attack because she doesn’t want to worry them. Leah is the kind of person who doesn’t want anyone fussing over her. This means she never complains, never asks for anything, and even though her sister Gail bullies her from time to time, Leah never confronts her about it or tell her to back off. Mostly, Gail harasses her about Allen, telling Leah that Allen doesn’t treat her right. Meanwhile, Leah’s boss at the office compliments her all the time on her great relationship with Allen and tells her that she would like to have a relationship with a man like the one that Leah has with Allen. Leah has been with Allen for two years and where there should be passion and excitement, there’s only tedium and predictability. One day, she encounters a white man sitting on the front stoop of her brownstone and remembers him as the same man that had bumped into her and Allen, causing Allen to drop his bottle of wine. Gail tells her that the man is nothing but a bum and that they should call the cops. As soon as Gail is out of sight, Leah prepares a cup of coffee for the man and gives it to him on her way to work. Leah thinks nothing more of it until a month later, when the man comes back cleaned up and looking mighty fine to ask her if she would have a cup of coffee with him as a gesture of thanks for the kindness she bestowed upon him.

Our hero, Jason Horn, is a “kiddie” cop. This means he takes care of mostly juvenile offenders and does everything from counseling these kids to coaching athletic activities for them so that they would stay out of trouble. He is divorced, but he’s okay with that, and has a girlfriend or two that he keeps around for booty calls because he’s not really interested in long-term committed relationships after the mess that was his marriage. He would like to spend more time with his son, but because he and his ex-wife aren’t the best of friends, Jason doesn’t see him as much as he wants to. One dark day in September, his son dies in a school bus accident, and Jason finds himself in a black hole of grief where he turns to alcohol for solace. Somehow, he ends up in front of a brownstone in Brooklyn where its owner inexplicably hands him a cup of coffee and gives him a kind smile. From that day on, Jason is unable to forget the woman, so he goes back to her place, and asks her if she would have coffee with him just so he could repay her for the coffee. A cup of coffee turns into a date for dinner and before Jason knows it, he is seeing the woman regularly, and wondering if he is in love with her.

The relationship between Jason and Leah develops very slowly. Leah is wary that Jason—a white man—could be really interested in her, but at the same time, his kisses make her feel… something, the very something that is missing from Allen’s kisses. Jason, on the other hand, can’t stop thinking about Leah. He wants to be with her all the time, even when his very own partner—a black man—won’t stop giving him shit about trying to get with Leah. Not one person approves of the two of them dating, telling them that there’s no way they could last because they are two worlds apart. The most vocal of their protestors is Leah’s sister Gail who is absolutely disgusted that Leah would even consider dating a white man and thinks Leah is just setting herself up for a very disgraceful fall. Because of the relentless assault and criticism on their relationship, pretty soon Leah and Jason begin to feel the strain. Jason tells himself that he is not ready to fight the world just so he could be with Leah and Leah doesn’t think she can turn her back on her friends and family to be with Jason. They don’t talk about it. They don’t discuss their feelings. They push each other away.

The first two-thirds of the novel is pretty relentless in showing the reader that the world doesn’t want Jason and Leah to be together and I began to think that it might be overkill, but I stopped to think about it, and realized that I’m just really naïve. I grew up in California where I’m pretty used to seeing interracial couples (my mother is Filipina, my step-father is black; I’m Filipina, my partner-in-crime is white), but as Tim tells me, it doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist in California; people just know how to hide it better behind their smiles and their patronizing “you look so cute together” bullshit. As I continued to read this book, I realized that what really bothered me about this book is the way the author practically demonizes Allen, Leah’s boyfriend, just so Jason would look like a much better choice in comparison. SPOILER: As it turns out, Allen and Gail have been sleeping together behind Leah’s back and Allen wanted Gail all along and was just using Leah to get to her. There is also a very disturbing scene where Allen practically rapes Leah as an attempt to get back at Gail for bringing a date to Leah’s dinner party. It made me sick to my stomach. We get it already, Ms. Kitt. Leah + Jason= good, Leah + Allen=bad. But did you really have to make Allen look like Gargamel just so Jason would look like Leah’s white knight in shining armor who’s come to save her from the no-good black man?

Another thing that really bothered me was Leah’s complete and utter lack of spine. Gail browbeats her at every turn, Allen tells her what to do, even Jason himself walks all over her, but she doesn’t do anything about it. Jason’s idea of a date is to take her to a handball practice for his juvenile delinquents and Leah doesn’t tell him to fuck off? She and Jason would rather have sex than talk things out and this doesn’t bother her? Sure, she and Jason talk it out later on and decide that they’re just going to tell the rest of the world that they can go fuck themselves, but it really doesn’t make up for the fact that Leah REALLY NEVER COMPLAINS about anything. She’s worse than a fucking doormat. I don’t know what’s wrong with this girl. It’s as if somebody surgically removed her spine or something (probably Gail and Allen with a rusty pair of pliers). Plus Leah is constantly haunted by her nightmares of the man who attacked her, but she doesn’t do anything about it. Psychiatric help? What’s that? The girl is obviously suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but nobody seems to care!

And Jason? Even when he sees the juvenile delinquents harassing Leah, he doesn’t do anything about it. He won’t defend his relationship with Leah to anyone who talks shit about it and when it gets to be too much, he runs off to one of his old girlfriends (we know that Leah is his one true luuuurve because he can’t get it up with the other woman), and later on gives Leah some bullshit, saying “it doesn’t mean anything”. Fuck that. Leah should have kicked his nuts and let loose like Tina Turner in that scene in What’s Love Gotta Do With It where she beats the crap out of Ike in the limo and runs away.

Once Jason and Leah talk things out and decide that the rest of the world can go to hell because they’re gonna stay together forevah, the book markedly improves. Unfortunately, this is also the last fifty pages of the book. Ms. Kitt knows how to tell a tale in a way that didn’t bore me and even though I was starting to think that Jason and Leah is a bad idea (not because of their races but because they’re both spineless assholes), Ms. Kitt kept me turning the pages just so I could find out if Leah will suddenly go homicidal and kill her detractors. Sure, Leah was an annoying doormat, but I still cheered her on (I kept praying that she would find her inner Tina, but she never does), even when she never really gave Gail and Allen the comeuppance they richly deserved. As for Jason, I adored the relentless way he pursued Leah, even when Leah kept giving him the brush-off and even though I wished he could have been a stronger, more don’t-fuck-with-my-woman kind of guy, I couldn’t help but like him, either. All and all, this is a pretty entertaining read, even if I found myself wanting to tear it up into little pieces and setting the pieces on fire a couple of times while reading it.

Oh, by the way, if you’re the kind of reader who’ll shed bloody tears and tear out hair at the sight of a typo or a grammatical error, you’ll probably want to stay away. When I saw that Jason and his ex-wife divorced, citing “unreconcilable differences” (p. 88), I practically had an aneurysm.

Best line in the book: “Color isn’t an issue when men begin to act like assholes. When you’re being stupid, you’re all pretty much the same.” (p. 291)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 26th, 2005 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: C, Romance: Contempo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.