February TBR Challenge: AAR DIKs
Truly Idaho is a small town where everyone pretty much knows everyone else's business. The one thing nobody in Truly knows is the full story of what happened between Loch and Rose Hennessy 29 years ago. The Hennessy men have been running their bar and proving irresistible to the local females since Prohibition and Loch was no exception. He was a charming womanizer and serial adulterer, but he always went home to Rose and she always ignored his indiscretions. Then Alice, a 24 year old with a taste for married men, took a job as his waitress and things rapidly got out of hand. The love triangle ended in tragedy when Rose shot Loch and Alice and then turned the gun on herself, leaving three innocent children orphaned.
Loch and Rose's son and daughter remained in Truly with their grandmother. She hated to deal with anything unpleasant so inside their home they rarely talked about what had happened to their parents and "that waitress". All the talk outside their home more than made up for it though. Meg and Mick's childhoods were tormented by the gossip that took years to die down. Mick escaped by joining the Army, but after 12 years away he returned to Truly to be near Meg, who is raising her son Travis on her own. He likes running Hennesey's and has even purchased a 2nd bar. However, he feels stuck and a bit suffocated by small town life and the fact that Meg seems to need him too much.
After the murders Alice's daughter Maddie was sent to live with her great-aunt. She was spared having to deal with the Truly gossip mill, but she still had plenty of pain. Instead of being raised by the mother who adored her she lived with a woman who preferred cats to children. Maddie ate to sooth her pain and ended up the "fat girl" who was teased and ostracized by her classmates. As an adult she is a successful writer of true crime books about serial killers. Both her past and her present have left her with serious trust issues.
After finding her mother's diaries Maddie becomes determined to write a book telling the full story of her murder and moves to Truly to do research. In order to get people to be honest with her she uses her pen name and doesn't tell anyone that she's Alice's daughter. When she meets Mick she doesn't want to like him, but can't help herself. She knows that she should tell him the whole story but she can't bring herself to do it. For his part Mick doesn't want to have anything to do with the author who is stirring up all the old gossip and threatening Meg's fragile emotional stability, but he can't stay away from her either. Soon the two are falling in love and Maddie has to reveal her secret and hope that she can make Mick understand why she has to write her book.
Those who have read Truly, Madly Yours, Gibson's previous novel set in Truly, need to know going in that this book has a very different tone. TMY is basically a comedy and Tangled Up In You is definitely not. That said, Gibson handles the serious subject matter well. Both Mick and Maddie have their flaws and good qualities and both of them have suffered terribly for things they didn't do. Neither one can fairly be painted as the bad guy and Gibson wisely doesn't take sides. When Maddie tells Mick who she is it's so easy to understand both of their points of view that the fight they have is just painful. Gibson shows real skill in creating believable growth for both characters that allows them to reunite without betraying their essential selves or sweeping the past under the rug.
Grade: A-
That said, this isn't a DIK for me. There were a couple of things about Maddie that I found really off-putting. For example, during sex with Mick she calls out another name. I was rather unreasonably weirded out by whose name it was (and no, it wasn't Loch).
Speaking of Loch, I also couldn't completely get past the idea that it really was a little icky for Maddie & Mick to be together. When he finds out who she is Mick immediately makes the connection to their respective parents and is horrified. Later he comes to the conclusion if they're really over the past it doesn't matter who their parents were. I see what he's saying, but it doesn't feel entirely true to me even though I really wanted them to get their HEA.
I freely admit that these are my issues and obviously plenty of other people don't share them. Still, I can't give DIK status to a romance that leaves me feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the couple.
I also read two other books from my TBR than were given DIK status. Neither of them were DIKs for me either. This isn't much of a surprise since I realized a while ago that my personal taste is not often in line with the reviewers at AAR and I no longer put things on my TBR based strictly on a DIK rating.
Driven
If You Dare
No comments:
Post a Comment