Ho hum, another romance, another man with a terrible childhood. Is there a secret romance writers cabal where they all sign a contract in their own blood to include this trope in everything they write? This time it's alcoholism and sexual abuse, and of course it leads to emotional incapacity in the hero, because apparently that's the fundamental character trait for men in romance. Irritating as that is, however, it was the heroine that gave me trouble. Admittedly she improved fast and by the end I quite liked her, but her beginning was horrible. She came across as a ditz, and an entitled one at that. (Her parents paid for her entire education, gave her a trust fund and a "generous post graduation cash gift," and she inherited a house and a business from her grandmother, and Annabelle Granger still has the temerity to refer to herself as the underdog, to which I say a great fat Fuck Off, Annabelle, You Spoilt Brat.) The romance between these two actually developed decently enough, but it didn't make up for the secondary romance between Portia and Bodie, which was not very well explored and frankly difficult to credit - it needed more development than the thin sketching it got, and the few times the text shifted back to them I rolled my eyes. Finally, the heroine's family was plain flat-out mean, which wouldn't worry me if the text didn't excuse their meanness as an expression of love. I kept waiting for someone - anyone! - to say "You don't treat people you love this way" but no-one ever did.

I mean it's not completely terrible, and there are some nice moments, but the search for an unambiguously likeable contemporary romance goes on.