This year I'm participating in @SuperWendy (blog) 2021 #TBRChallenge! I think a lot of us booklovers have TBR piles that have books on it that have languished an embarrassing long time. Besides the theme months, this is a pretty relaxing challenge. On the third day of every month participants are encouraged to use the hashtag TBRChallenge and discuss the book they plucked from obscurity. I decided to make a personal rule that a book had to be in my TBR for at least 5 years.
January's theme was 'Comfort Read' which immediately made me think of authors that I turn to for the feels . An author's book who I reread a lot of when wanting something quick but fulfilling and always recommend when someone wants a contemporary with heat, is Willing Victim by Cara McKenna. I've read other books by McKenna and have enjoyed them, she's top notch at gritty emotion. So, I looked at my virtual TBR on GoodReads and lo and behold, Unbound has been on there since 2014. 7yrs!
For the #TBRChallenge, I'll be making posts like how I do for Buddy Reads. The longer, all my thoughts/comments with book quotes posts will be on my blog and GoodReads and Twitter will get shorter snippets with a link to blog post.
Still time to join! Can't wait to find some TBR gems and clear off the duds :)
Chapters 1-3 discussion (spoilers will be in posts)..........Eeek, ok, this starts off with an email exchange between Merry (our heroine) and two of her friends. In them we learn that Merry just lost almost a hundred pounds of weight, her mother has died, and she's going on vacation. One of her friends does an accidental reply all and talks shit about Merry. It hurts Merry but she shrugs it off.
She’d broken some unspoken, fat-girl solidarity pact she’d subconsciously entered into with Lauren.
Wondering if we'll get a scene with the friends and some complex women relationship stuff later on?
her mom had raised her to accept praise graciously, never to deflect or apologize. Save your deflecting for the insults—there’ll be plenty. Swallow the kind words whole.
What amazing advice and probably something we all could do better at.
The weird thing was, she still felt like the old Merry inside—caring, competent, fun, loyal. But now people were reacting differently to the package those qualities came in. Guys from work who’d never said more to her than, “How do you change the toner in this thing?” were suddenly asking about her weekend, her vacation, her opinions on the latest reality-TV scandal. While part of her was thrilled—male attention was a side effect of the weight loss she’d been hoping for, after all—another part had to think, Caring, fun and loyal don’t really count for much, do they? Not unless they came wrapped in a pleasing female shape.
This paragraph is doing some heavy lifting. Any insecurities I've spent emotional or mental energy on have not included my weight (I mean, most people probably do to a certain extent but I would never presume to put myself in the category that has suffered inwardly or outwardly because of it). I can't specifically speak to it other than having those struggles with the overall package deal of being Western America 'conventionally' attractive that media and consumerism pushes. I'm sensing this story is going to deal with these emotions a good amount, so while I'm going to relay quotes I think do heavy lifting, I might not always discuss them because I don't think I'm the best equipped to do so.
Thirty-one, and she’d never been in love. She’d been infatuated, sure. She’d been in love in a guy’s general direction, but she’d never felt that light and heat shining back on her.
McKenna has that ability to get in the emotional trenches but also add that touch of humor. I'm a gallows humor person, so maybe I enjoy it or look for it more. But the "never been in love" with the next line "She'd been in love in a guy's general direction" adds that short quick haha needed to not get bogged down. Also, bonus points for a sort of Monty Python moment.
Her extra weight had been defensive, something to hide behind, not to embrace. Now the armor was gone. She felt exposed, but the sensation was as thrilling as it was scary.
Oooh, a hint at some hurt in her past? She seems to have had a loving relationship with her mother. Hmmm
This new Merry’s off to walk across Scotland. And she’s not coming back until she’s fucking found herself.
I'm only 10% in and already I'm cheering hard for this heroine.
McKenna names the path that Merry is walking through the Highlands and I love when authors do this! The Great Glen Way I'm now following along with Merry, lol. Also, I ended up taking an hour break as I clicked on every picture I could. But now I so clearly see this from Merry's eyes and Rob's cabin, which makes the story and experience so richer.
Out here, her body wasn’t a collection of desirable parts and shameful ones, a thing to be tricked and punished and outsmarted, outwilled. It was merely a vessel for food and water and sunshine, a structure of muscle and bone, a capable and ready thing. A machine primed for this trip—170 miles on foot, nearly three weeks to ponder all this natural beauty and appreciate her success. Numbers that qualified her efforts instead of tallying her female value.
During the Hell Year of 2020, I spent the most time I have in my life at State Parks and I feel what Merry is thinking here.
“Hello,” she said dumbly, feeling drunk, stabbed in the guts at random intervals by the cramps, stabbed in the temple by her throbbing cut. “I may be dying. I’m not sure.”
Our heroine first meeting the hero. 😂
As he stirred, his blue eyes seemed to ask the mug, Why? Why? Why? Merry was chatty at the best of times, and out here, having not seen or spoken to anyone for four or five days, she couldn’t help herself.
Oh my god, is this, could this be, grumpy + sunshine! I let a grumpy + sunshine languish on my TBR for 7 YEARS?!?
“My entire life puts me out.” His tone gave her no clue whatsoever if this was a joke or not.
Dry humor or wallowing? I think Rob is giving us a touch of both.
At some point in his twenties, Rob had known how to talk to women. Enough to get dates, to pull, to fall in love and get married. Then the darkness had come, and that man had been lost. Rob had gotten good at shouting, though. Demeaning, hateful words aimed at his wife in the grips of the inevitable hangover, and who knew what slurred venom when he was drunk. And he’d been drunk every fucking night, those final three years of his so-called civilized life.
Oof. Ok, so our hero is divorced and an alcoholic. McKenna making good on that gritty emotion I mentioned earlier.
Here in the hills, he had no mirrors. But in town, every set of eyes offered a reflection, and the man staring back at him was ugly and mean, unforgivably cruel. It made him ache for a drink,
Damn, McKenna prettily saying something ugly
It had taken the wilderness to make a civilized man of him, and he longed for this place every second he was away from it. Even more than he longed for a drink.
Well, we seem to have come upon Rob after the war was won but with the forever skirmishes alcoholics face. Strength and vulnerability, characteristics I love from my characters.
It was the ugliest dog in creation, some unfavorable terrier mix the color of dust, with stumpy legs and a head like an anvil. His fur looked perennially greasy, even when Rob took the time to wash him in the basin. Deaf as a rock to boot. But sweet.
********
Useless though it was, he loved the dog. He owed the dog. It had likely saved his life. Three years ago, after his wife left him and his father passed away, Rob had come up to the Highlands on a whim, knowing in the back of his head he’d chosen it as the spot where he’d likely take his alcoholism to its natural conclusion. Drink himself to death in the only place he’d ever known any real joy.
*********
And somehow, watching the dog grow stronger and put on weight had been more compelling to Rob than drinking himself into oblivion.
Stahp, you've given me grumpy + sunshine, I can't handle a ragtag doggie emotionally and in turn physically saving the hero. 😢
It smelled of a dozen trips north with his father and older brother, stalking red deer, forgetting for a weekend the stresses of childhood and the sting of whatever words his mum had last lashed him with.
"whatever words his mum had last lashed him with". Do we have an element to Rob's alcoholism?
He studied her face as she thought, unsure if he felt unsettled or envious at how easily she let her most personal thoughts tumble from her mouth. It made him want irrationally to kiss her, if only to see if he could taste something there—her honesty or humility.
I think our hero is bamboozle-ly intrigued by the heroine. Now we're only 10% in but look how McKenna has already given these layers to the characters and while there is attraction, it in no way feels insta and shallow.
He didn’t lust for women, though he longed sometimes for their nearness and affection. His lust was reserved for drink, it seemed. And other things. But nothing that could ever love him in return.
"But nothing that could ever love him in return." Just, gah, the emotional wreckage going on here.
I can't believe how much there was to talk about in this first 10%. I can't wait for Merry and Rob to interact more.
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