Having Justin’s Baby by: Pamela Bauer
I have been paying way too much attention to my ehalelquin.com emails the past couple of weeks. Like almost all other sites, they too have started using my past purchases as a guide to choose books that they think I’ll enjoy; which make the emails that much harder for me to resist. I’m telling you all that to help explain my insanely large to-be-read pile of books that I have bought –not borrowed from the library like a good librarian – but bought, that is sitting on my coffee table.
Anyway, that long introduction leads me to a perfect example of why I should not peruse eharlequin.com during my lunch hour. I bought this book w/ great hopes of enjoying it; that was not to be. The heroine of the story annoyed the hell out of me and the hero was a bit of a wimp. The story starts out with a bad breakup for Paige. Her fiancé leaves her for another woman and runs off to Vegas to get married. Paige, in her extreme grief, ends up drinking too much and has sex with one of her two best friends since childhood, Justin. Ok, so this is not so unheard of and doesn’t set it self up to suck…but man did it. Paige wakes up the next morning and is pissed at Justin. She completely blames him for everything that happened, refusing to take any of the blame herself. Now, I’m not a saint, I’ve had a few drinks too many before and I’ve never done anything that I didn’t want to — I was always aware enough to make choices. My past experience leads me to assume that Paige was also able to make a choice and knowing that, her behavior was that much more annoying! What didn’t help the situation any is that Justin just kept taking it. He didn’t stand up for himself and finely when he does – it felt like it was too little too late.
This crazy night happens just before an annual college reunion trip that continues with more of the same. Paige whining about how Justin shouldn’t have let it happen and how she’s so angry w/ him and Justin trying to pretend to everyone else that nothing is out of the ordinary, as neither of them wants their group of friends to find out what happened. That hope is soon dashed when Paige finds out that she’s pregnant and shocker, she doesn’t handle it well. Justin doesn’t react well to the news either, but rallies pretty quickly and seeing as how he has been secretly in love with her their entire friendship, offers marriage. The story is not helped any by the third person in this trio of best friends, Kyle, who has also been in love w/ Paige for years. Kyle decides to be angry at them both, though mainly Justin…b/c he should have known better and oh yeah, he broke some guy rule. It was just so insulting. I mean, why should Paige not have to take responsibility for her own actions?
Maybe I’m being too harsh but I really don’t think so. The happy ever after at the end seems forced to me and I just honestly didn’t enjoy the journey of getting to it. The author tries to give Paige some depth w/ the death of her mother and an estrangement w/ her father but it doesn’t give the special oomph I needed to like her. Needless to say, I was disappointed in the story and if I hadn’t been at home sick all last week I probably would not have bothered to finish it.
Grade: D
9 Comments
March 5, 2008 at 3:34 am
Ewwwwwww! A love triangle! The heroine not taking any responsibility for her actions is certainly a big turn-of, but dang mention a love triangle and I’m running (sprinting!) for the hills.
And welcome to Romance Bloglandia!
March 5, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Okay, that sounds like one that I would have thrown across the room before I got halfway through it. I applaud the fact that you finished it.
I know all about the huge TBR piles. The last time I counted, mine was over 90 books.
March 6, 2008 at 1:27 am
Thanks for the heads up : ) You and Wendy should have lines on your blogs that say “We read the drek so you don’t have to!”
Welcome to blogland.
March 6, 2008 at 1:52 am
Welcome to the madness. For me category romance is either good or it’s not. When someone really gets the short book format down I’m there.
March 6, 2008 at 5:26 am
Oh, I just hate it when heroines do this! And when the nice guy best friend lets them walk all over him. She just comes off as even more of a you-know-what. Yuk.
March 6, 2008 at 11:39 am
Hello! I saw your blog mentioned at The Misadventures of Super Librarian and had to come over. I once read an older Harlequin Romance where the hero was a poor rancher with a big chip on his shoulder towards the heroine’s wealthy background so he treated her like crud through the entire book except for the last two pages where he made a mediocre turn-around. And the heroine bought it! But I was so desperate for something to read to take my mind off of a yucky work situation that I actually looked forward to the few minutes I could grab here or there to read it!
March 6, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Hi, Jessica! Nice review and welcome to blogging. I’m a novice — BIGtime, but follow a few blogs here and there. Wendy’s is one of them.
March 6, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Great review Jessica. The title of the book would have drawn me in too, wondering what the story would reveal. I wonder if any time the book mentions how UNSAFE having unprotected sex is. Was there anything socially responsible about the book, given that teenagers might be reading? Perhaps a sentence or 2?
On another note, I could also do better in my collection of books. Amazon has me hooked! I know I should be perusing the shelves of my local library, but when you can grab it with the click of a mouse, it makes it veeeerry tempting to forgo a trip to the library!
Keep the reviews coming!
KM
March 6, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Kathy,
I’m trying to remember what the book said about unprotected sex and I think there was a brief mention about how Justin would not normally do that…but it certainly was not a theme. There was very little mention of it at all. One more reason to be unhappy with the story.