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A review by jackiehorne
Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O'Keefe
2.0
I'm not really big into romance novels with major league sports guys as heroes, but O'Keefe's first book in the Crooked Ranch series, CAN'T BUY ME LOVE, was one of my favorite reads this past summer, and so I was pleased to receive an advanced copy from Netgalley. CRAZY THING started off strongly, with a second-chance storyline (my favorite romance trope!) and a potentially interesting take on contemporary masculinity, with a hero known for his aggressive hockey skills and persona suddenly confronted with a coach and a league newly concerned with player safety. The heroine's determination to carve out a life for herself so that she isn't just the wife of a famous athlete also made this seem like the book would be a perfect fit for my ROMANCE NOVELS FOR FEMINISTS blog.
Yet as I read past the first few chapters, I found myself less and less interested. Because we don't see much of why the heroine, Maddy, found her married life so painfully unsatisfying, we're just told that it was, Maddy comes across as a self-centered, uncaring person, making it difficult for readers to root for her. And the way she swings back and forth between having hot sex with Billy and then rejecting him for no real reason besides thinking he's going to hurt her again seems completely unmotivated, serving only as a way to keep the two separated for the sake of additional page length. The flashbacks to their initial romance show why the two loved each other, but one short scene of Billy taking Maddy (and not on purpose) to a strip club so he can hang with his new NHL teammates is not enough to demonstrate what the real problem was with this marriage.
Billy, for his part, has some serious anger management issues, but he never gets therapy, or even seems to recognize that his angry outbursts are the sign of a person with scary emotional problems. Bring on some cute/recalcitrant kids, and suddenly we're supposed to believe that Billy won't ever get angry again? Personally, I would have found it scary to be with such an easily angered person, and worried about the safety of those kids.
And P.S. Having crazy monkey sex in the room down the hall from where your 13-year-old niece is awake and reading is so not cool.
Wish the publisher hadn't been in such a rush to get three books out in such a short span of time. This one had a lot of potential, but would have benefited from another round of content-editing before it hits the stands.
Yet as I read past the first few chapters, I found myself less and less interested. Because we don't see much of why the heroine, Maddy, found her married life so painfully unsatisfying, we're just told that it was, Maddy comes across as a self-centered, uncaring person, making it difficult for readers to root for her. And the way she swings back and forth between having hot sex with Billy and then rejecting him for no real reason besides thinking he's going to hurt her again seems completely unmotivated, serving only as a way to keep the two separated for the sake of additional page length. The flashbacks to their initial romance show why the two loved each other, but one short scene of Billy taking Maddy (and not on purpose) to a strip club so he can hang with his new NHL teammates is not enough to demonstrate what the real problem was with this marriage.
Billy, for his part, has some serious anger management issues, but he never gets therapy, or even seems to recognize that his angry outbursts are the sign of a person with scary emotional problems. Bring on some cute/recalcitrant kids, and suddenly we're supposed to believe that Billy won't ever get angry again? Personally, I would have found it scary to be with such an easily angered person, and worried about the safety of those kids.
And P.S. Having crazy monkey sex in the room down the hall from where your 13-year-old niece is awake and reading is so not cool.
Wish the publisher hadn't been in such a rush to get three books out in such a short span of time. This one had a lot of potential, but would have benefited from another round of content-editing before it hits the stands.