Hard To Handle

Hard To Handle
by Jessica Lemmon
Rating: Did Not Finish, 1 of 5 stars


My Review:
It's really hard for me to give reviews this low, but I've tried to get through this one, three times now and somehow I just can't force myself to do it. I didn't care for the writing style and then on top of that the characters just bugged me a lot. They're whiny, irritating and totally unable to make me care about them except for the desire to slap them. Eventually I skipped to the end and read the last 20 pages just to see if it got better and I'd believe their happily ever after and then start caring about the rest. Didn't work, I was still irritated with them at the end.


I don't even know what world Sadie's living in. She dresses provocatively and yet she's so modest and fragile. The idea behind those things being explicitly stated, leaves me feeling like the book is trying to pigeon-hole Sadie into a whore/virgin dichotomy instead of just letting her be a self-assured heroine. See, Aiden is attracted to her because of the way she dresses, but he's MORE attracted because she's really so modest and fragile – because in Aiden-land, if she weren't modest and fragile, she wouldn't be as worthy of the small amount of manly respect that he gives her. In fact, if she weren't so secretly modest and fragile, I think he would have lost interest and moved on. In his manly world, he's only interested in her still because he hadn't gotten into her pants before.


Aiden is sort-of trying to win Sadie back, but he's manipulative, unapologetic and your basic whiny brat. He behaves like a spoiled child and instead of walking away, Sadie just sits and cries about it. I swear these two had the emotional intelligence of toddlers. Sadie has every right to be angry with Aiden for the way he treated her but mostly she's just whiny and pitiful. Like even after a year away from him, she's still throwing herself a pity-party.


Plus there's Sadie's business sense that just seems to be missing. She's the second best salesperson at this company, but somehow she managed to put this whole huge amount of stuff into the contract that was just signed. Including things like she will personally buy up all the competitor's stock from the store if it doesn't sell. Seems a bit shady and even more confusing to know that someone else at the company's legal department supposedly vetted it and put all the details together.


I swear, it felt like the book was trying to prove how Sadie was nothing important without Aiden. Like she's just too “feminine” and “emotional” to live her life on her own. She needs someone big and manly like Aiden to take care of her because she's just too fragile by herself. Even if it's an emotionally abusive, manly man who runs off and angrily pouts if he's told “no”.


Bottom line, these two really needed to get away from each other and grow up on their own. Maybe after they matured, they could think about having a relationship. But for right now, they don't work together in a healthy way and I didn't care enough about them to slough through the
whole book for an ending that still felt manipulative and co-dependent.



I received a complementary ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

In Love With The Man

In Love with the Man 
by Marjorie Lewty
Rating: 1 of 5 stars

My Review:
Oh the things you can find at library book sales.  So many books that you're not really sure about, but for 25 to 50 cents, how can you go wrong...

This is the story about "the Man". "The Man" is important. "The Man" makes the decisions. "The Man" is smart and capable and will do what needs to be done. But wait. This is a romance novel from the 80's. There needs to be a female. We need to know all the feelings that she's having. But don't forget, this story is about "The Man".

Any time anything exciting might happen, the heroine is confined to the hotel room while "The Man" takes care of things. One time she's allowed to go and sit in the lobby, drinking tea, while business is taken care of. She's allowed to go because she broke down crying about how alone she felt being left behind.

This woman is really, really a doormat and she's supposedly smart because she got this job as an almost programmer, but we never see her do anything smart. "The Man" even tells her at one point to stop thinking (and not in a "don't over analyze" way, it definitely felt like "you're the woman, I'm the man, so I'll do the thinking for us").

There's a vengeful woman/ex who visits the heroine to imply that the hero is involved already, but one word from the hero and this heroine doesn't care. This book is really good at showing you, quit your job, don't care if the hero is two-timing you, don't ask for explanations, don't tell a man what you want. He's "The Man" and he'll give you what he deems you need and that's as good as it gets.