Bed of Roses by Nora RobertsMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
1.5 stars
Emmaline and her three friends own a wedding planning business and Emma is in charge of the flowers. Fun, cute idea and I did think this second in the series had less of the annoying acronyms (MOB – mother of the bride, etc.) that clogged up the first but don't worry, they still pop up. Jack came into their friend circle through one of the women's older brothers and ever since college has been one of the gang.
Emma and Jack have peripherally found each other sexy over the years but neither wanted to mess with the friend dynamics, until they decide to.
I don't really have much to say to about this one because it bored me for the vast majority, I couldn't feel Emma and Jack's chemistry at all. Emma is a “marrying” kind of gal and Jack is a “good time” boy. Emma thinks she can just sleep with Jack and not feel anything and Jack is trying to delude himself into thinking their relationship isn't getting more serious. Great trope-y plot but the feelings weren't there for me.
What I'm going to remember the most from this is towards the end, Emma has a total and complete blow-up that made her seem like a psycho. She learns Jack's had a hard day so she decides to cook him dinner at his house, has to get his keys from his assistant, and is on a mission to finally tell him she loves him. Jack shows up shocked/surprised to see her at his house, has a pounding headache, and wants a shower. Emma doesn't like how he's reacting, he's a little standoffish but remember headache and not expecting her, and when I say she loses her shit, you all can't even imagine the level of wtf she starts spouting at him. She ends up breaking up with him and storming out and Jack barely knows what happened. It was such an over-the-top third act break-up, I'm almost in awe.
Anyway, apologies are made and kisses. The real reason I decided to put any thoughts down on this was because I wanted to quote this scene, pretty much the only highlight for me in this boring, wtf Emma, story:
“I asked you once before, and you didn’t answer. I’ll ask you again. Yes or no this time. Are you in love with her?”
“Okay.” He took a long drink of beer. “Yes. I guess it took an ass-kicking to shake it out of me, but yes. I’m in love with her. But—”
“Do you want to fix it?”
“I just said I was in love with her. Why wouldn’t I want to fix it?”
“You want to know how?”
“Goddamn it, Del.” He drank again. “Yes, since you’re so fucking smart. How do I fix it?”
“Crawl.”
I'm not sure Jack is the one who needed to crawl, not alone anyway but I loved the hit of that last word, crawl.
This was my least favorite story of this series... too sugary and not enough meaningful conflict to develop the plot.
ReplyDeleteNothing meaningful, especially in the romantic relationship was definitely the problem for me.
DeleteI have the next in the series, so I'm going to read that but this hasn't been the best Roberts seres :/
You know, the more recent her work, the more...automatic the characters behave and the steps taken feel like they are all the same. I notice this more on her paranormal series/trilogies. They are all so evidently formulaic. Some of her older romances, however, were so cute and special. My favorite series is still the Key trilogy.
DeleteI feel like formulaic happens to a good amount of authors who publish so many books, has to be hard to tweak your writing style to make it fresh but still deliver on what readers liked. I have so many of her books and read a handful, Born in Trilogy has been my fav so far.
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