I Finally Finished The Book.

First of all, I think we can all agree that I need to become a better headline-writer. My "other" (soon to be abandoned?) blog begins all of its headlines with "A Statement," and I didn't want to carry that here (they are different, after all). However, I might be persuaded to shamelessly copy Patricia C. Wrede and begin everything here with "In Which..." Will have to think on it.

Moving swiftly onward, I finally, finally finished Instant Gratification last night, much to the delight of my mother who has been waiting for me to be done for about four days now.

This is the second book in a trilogy by Jill Shalvis. If you'll recall, I wrote a review of the first book, Instant Attraction, recently.

Instant Gratification is the story of the middle Wilder brother, Stone, and the local Doc's doctor daughter, Emma. Emma has recently been transplanted from New York to run her father's practice in the aftermath of his rather severe heart attack. Since they have been estranged for the majority of her life, Emma is reluctant to return, and still further reluctant to be living in the smallest town ever as opposed to her beloved metropolis.

Let me start off by saying that I did not like this book as much as I liked Instant Attraction. Where I cared about the characters in Instant Attraction, I had no such devotion to Stone and Emma. I did feel bad for Emma, although that mostly has to do with the fact that everyone ever was telling her she was a bad person and too uptight to exist.

The message that was hammered home time and time again was the fact that Emma was cold, aloof, and emotionally detached from the people and things going on around her. I had a problem with this mostly because the reasons that this might be are more-or-less glazed over, with only brief mentions about the relationship between her mother and her stepfather, and the estrangement from her father which is Not What It Seems.

My issues with the mother situation are up first. Emma's mother died six months before the story took place. She raised Emma, did the best she could, worked 60 hour weeks to make ends meet, etc. etc. etc. Saint, right? WRONG. This is apparently a woman who kept her ex-husband from seeing his daughter, from communicating with her, and then went to him to obtain money to pay for her daughter's college education, essentially taking all of his savings and retirement money. And then took credit for coming up with the money herself.

OK, so the woman Emma keeps hearing in her head (in a non-crazy way, of course), is actually someone Emma has the right to be very, very angry with. Like, check-yourself-into-therapy-and-sort-out-your-life anger. Is Emma ever angry? No.

So she shows up to help in this small town and is greeted with bad attitudes and ingratitude almost from the beginning. Apparently "newcomers" aren't welcome, and female doctors even less so. And Stone et al have the absolute gall to wonder why she wouldn't want to stay in town?

We won't even get into the manipulation of Stone and her father with regard to communication and "convincing her to stay."

If I were Emma, I would have run away as fast as possible and shacked up permanently with Spence, her friend with benefits who flies in to provide sexxoration for the fabulously bitchy Serena.

None of these complaints are going to keep me from finishing the trilogy, and I'm hoping for a little more development between TJ and Harley. Instant Gratification had fine characters and a fine plot, I'm just not sure they actually went together-- the story of the girl dealing with her family secrets did not mesh well with the girl waking up and smelling the roses about What's Important in Life. Not to mention an emotional detachment from all of the major emotional issues in the story. It just didn't work.

At least, it didn't work for me. Let me know if it worked for you.