I have done a lot of complaining lately-- complaining about weak contemporaries with seriously unusual plot-age, complaining about Kresley Cole and how much I love her but it's-just-not-how-it-used-to-be.
Behold, a positive post.
Jill Shalvis' Instant Attraction was recommended by SB Sarah, and as everyone knows, we take SB Sarah's recommendations very seriously. Even if it's a "this book is so bad, you must read it" piece of wisdom.
Instant Attraction did not fall in the latter category. Katie and Cameron are thrown together pretty literally when he walks in one night to find her asleep in his bed. This is not a new convention of romance, but Shalvis handles it with a perfect bit of realism. Cam's been gone for a year and his family lets her use his room, not knowing when he's coming back. Simple as. Now he doesn't pull the macho alpha-male thing and insist on sleeping in the bed anyway, and he is actually a little annoyed by Katie before things settle down, but he in no way assumes she is a harridan and becomes prejudiced against her for the rest of the book.
The reason that Katie is in Cam's bed in the first place is that after a pretty major life-trauma she has decided to live life "balls out," which includes accepting a temporary book-keeping gig at the resort Cam owns with his family in the Sierras. Cam, too has had a pretty intense life-trauma and has been on what amounts to a walkabout for the past year.
The pair essentially bond and come together in the recovery stages, helping each other along the way. While there is a fairly typical "I really want in your pants! But I can't! And we shouldn't!" vibe on Cam's end, both of them enter the relationship with the clear-eyed knowledge that the relationship will be as temporary as her job.
Naturally things evolve beyond that and Cam makes one of those miraculous heroic journeys that enables him to beat the heroine home to surprise her with his enduring and eternal love.
While the relationship between Cam and Katie was not in any way "weak" I do have to say it might have been the weakest part of the story. What really impressed me was the portrayal of Annie, Cam's aunt/maternal figure and her husband of 20 years-- they've hit a rough patch stemming from the complacency of middle age and she demands a divorce before he knows what hit him. Of course, he refuses to give it to her and they fight like cats and dogs, until they both straighten out, remember to appreciate each other, and have lots of sex in the kitchen.
Another could-have-been-cliche portrayal was that of Cam's ex-girlfriend, Serena. She is really bitchy and rude to Katie for the first three-quarters of the book, but never devolves into caricature. The best part for me was that when she and Katie finally came to an understanding, Serena's attitude didn't change-- she didn't suddenly become cute and squishy, but rather remained standoffish and abrasive, which went miles toward excusing some of her earlier bitchery.
Shalvis has set this up as a brother series (there are two more just like Cam for your convenience) and the heroines are set, too-- the local doc and the local mechanic are already giving Stone and TJ the runaround, respectively. For a second I was afraid that Serena was being setup to be a love interest for one of them, but I didn't want that for the same reason I don't want Xhex and John Matthew together. It's 100% fine for her to have slept with someone else, less fine for it to be someone we know, and really really not fine for it to be a brother.
Don't tell Boy Scout, but I already have Instant Gratification and Instant Temptation in my possession. More soon.
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