Life hands Liberty Jones a lot of hard knocks from a very young age. Her father dies when she's still small, leaving her mother Diana to raise Liberty alone. Diana knows the value of independence and tries to instill it in Liberty, but unfortunately Diana is ultimately one of those women who can't live without a man. Liberty grows up feeling lonely as an only child and a bit confused by her mother's need for the string of unemployed losers she dates.
When Liberty is 13 Diana decides to live with the latest loser and the family ends up in a trailer park in Welcome, Texas. The family is poor and life is hard. When Diana finds herself pregnant shortly after kicking the loser to the curb Liberty is the only one who is excited by the news. After the baby arrives Diana is depressed and overwhelmed. She leaves most of Carrington's care to Liberty, who is happy to sacrifice her childhood for her sister. Aside from the baby Liberty's only real interest is their neighbor, Hardy Cates. Hardy is a few years older and Liberty is smitten with him at first sight. He initially treats her like a younger sister, but by the time Liberty turns 16 Hardy returns her interest. However, he refuses to act on it. He needs to get out of Welcome as soon as his younger siblings are old enough for his family to manage without him. As he tells Liberty; he can't stay, he can't take Liberty with him and if he gets involved with her he won't be able to leave her, so he refuses to get involved.
Liberty is heartbroken after Hardy leaves, but soon has far bigger things to worry about. Diana is killed in a car accident leaving her to raise Carrington with nothing but a high school diploma and no job skills. She ends up going to cosmetology school and then getting a job in a high end salon in Houston. While working there she meets wealthy older man Churchill Travis. He takes an interest in her and eventually convinces her to work as his personal assistant and move with Carrington into his mansion. Liberty gets along with everyone in the household except Churchill's oldest son, Gage. Hostility eventually gives way to passion, but just as it seems that Liberty has found happiness Hardy comes back into her life and offers her the chance to have the love she thought was lost forever. This sets up a love triangle that forces Liberty to decide which man, and which future, is really right for her.
This is my first time reading a Lisa Kleypas novel. I've heard good things about her for years, but her previous books were all historicals and since I read very few of those she never made it onto my TBR. When I heard she had written a contemporary I thought I would give it a try. In the end this book struck me as more woman's fiction than romances and served mostly to remind me why I don't read woman's fiction. The writing wasn't bad, but the book was a joyless experience for me.
There were several things about the book that bothered me. It's written in first person, which I generally don't like. I also felt that most of the plot and characterizations are very cliched. Those things aren't deal breakers though and I've certainly enjoyed other books that had the same issues. Unfortunately there were other things I couldn't get past. My main problems were with the way the "sugar daddy" concept played out, the justification for the way the triangle was resolved and the epilogue.
While Liberty is working at the salon she gets to know several coworkers who have sugar daddys and she realizes that the relationship is uncomfortably close to prostitution. Later Liberty not only ends up with a sugar daddy of her own, she discovers that her mother had one too. Instead of dealing with the implications of that Ms Kleypas makes both of the relationships chaste. The wealthy man gives gifts out of unselfish love and therefore the women can accept them without being labeled gold diggers or whores. I thought that was basically a cop out. If you don't want to deal with the moral ambiguity inherent in that type of relationship then don't name your book Sugar Daddy.
As for the triangle, I have to admit that as a rule I hate them. I root for the underdog almost reflexively, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to be disappointed by the outcome. That said, I thought there were a couple of things about the way the Liberty-Gage-Hardy triangle played out that were especially problematic.
Hardy comes back into Liberty's life as a ruthless businessman who is willing to do anything, including use her, to get ahead. I think Gage was correct in his assessment that Hardy is a man going down a rather ugly road and clinging to the idea of Liberty as the one person who can save him from his fate. I also think he's right that Liberty can't actually save Hardy. I think it was good that Liberty was finally able to see Hardy in a realistic way, instead of idolizing him. The problem is that she simply idolizes Gage instead. She asserts very confidently that Gage would never use her the way that Hardy did. When Hardy points out that Gage's life of privilege means that he would never feel that he needed to take similar action, Liberty brushes him off.
Hardy is wrong to try to use his background as an excuse for his bad behavior, but he's correct that Gage's behavior isn't necessarily a sign that he's the better man. That's especially true considering that Gage was having Liberty followed even as he claimed that he trusted her. I consider his "trust but verify" attitude at least as big a deal as what Hardy did, but Liberty forgives Gage with no hesitation. I think Liberty reacts this way less because Gage is the better man for her and more because she needs to have a perfect hero and she can't really forgive Hardy for leaving her in the first place.
When they were young and Hardy refused to sleep with her Liberty got very angry with him. When he said that he was trying not to hurt her she responded that he was really just trying not to get hurt himself. That was at least partially true, but it was a perfectly reasonable position for him to take. He had very good reasons for needing to get out of Welcome. Liberty knew that and still acted as if he was being unconscionably selfish or cowardly for not wanting to start a relationship that at best would make leaving more painful and at worst would actually make it impossible for him to go. That's an understandable attitude for a young girl in the throws of first love. It's much less understandable coming from someone who is supposed to be a mature adult. Because the book is written in first person the fact that Liberty's views aren't realistic or accurate never gets addressed. This made the resolution very unsatisfying for me.
Even with all of these issues I still planned to read Hardy's story, Blue-eyed Devil. I wanted to see him find his way back to the kind, caring person he once was and get his HEA. Then I went and looked at the description and realized that he ends up with Gage's half sister. I have no interest in Hardy remaining tangled up in Liberty's world and I have no interest in reading any more about the Travis family. I wanted Hardy to get a totally separate life of his own. Since that's not what happens I think I'm going to pass. Hardy's story will just be one of the ones that I write in my head instead of reading in a book.
That brings me to the issue of the epilogue. I know that there are many readers who consider a romance incomplete unless it ends with marriage and babies. I'm not one of those people. I think it's the right ending for some characters, but not for others. Liberty has basically been a mom since she was 14 and a single mom since she was 17 or 18. She and Gage haven't really known each other for that long and marrying him is going to change Liberty's life in major ways. Being the live-in employee of a wealthy man is very different from being a member of the family, so she's facing yet another round of huge life adjustments. Even positive changes require some effort to work through. In light of that, the idea that a pre-wedding unplanned pregnancy is her HEA just doesn't work for me. The fact that Ms. Kleypas thought this was the happiest outcome for Liberty makes me think that her idea of an HEA and mine are different enough that I probably won't be reading any more of her books.
Grade: C-
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