Kim — I agree that the depth of the discussion here indicates good things about the book. Thanks so much for the info about the COVET paranormals.

In fact, here’s more information on her new COVET paranormals:

JR: Angels on Harleys! Angels on Harleys! And each one gets a book. I’m really pumped to start them, I think they’re great although I’ll still be doing the brothers as well of course- like Wrath would have it otherwise?! LOL

I have most of it mapped out at this time, there is a finite amount of books but then again there was with the Brothers two so yeah, we’ll just see about that! So far as I’m aware, the hero of the whole series is a guy named Jim Crane who’s a carpenter and it’s all about him going up against the devil (who’s a very hot brunette, btw) with the help of his two partners, a scruffy dog and his bad attitude. There are other heros who come in along the way and there is a love story in every book. Things may change as I get into the writing, but the bare bones are set and I can’t wait to get started!

Yeah, you are right about the credit card thing — I had forgotten that. But why give the mother checks? It seems like a recipe for trouble.

Oh, I agree that both she and Sean can be read within certain gender stereotypes (but I also think each veers away in interesting ways). I guess my sense is that you’re holding Lizzie to a higher standard than Sean in this regard.

Probably true. I think I cut Sean a lot of slack because of what he suffered as a child.

Re. Lizzie’s decision to sleep with Sean even though it wasn’t her usual policy,

But doesn’t this cut against her “good girl” status? That was one of the things I thought was interesting about Lizzie — that she admitted to herself that this was a deviation from her usual pattern, but she was willing to change course because IMO she obviously needed something in that coupling, too (she decides, “this raw, incendiary moment, was too enticing to walk away from”).

No, I don’t feel this cuts against her “good girl” status. It reminds me very much of the many, many good girl heroines I encountered in my category romance reading days back in the 1990s, who were almost always virgins or near-virgins, but who made an exception from their usual policy of no casual sex for the hero. Ninety times out of a hundred, this was the case. Something about the hero was different so sex without commitment was okay, as long as it was with him. I’m afraid I’ve probably read this scenario too many times and am probably therefore a little too jaded about it.

I want to make it clear that I can and do enjoy books with this setup (including this book), but I don’t consider the scenario itself subversive.

I also liked that she knew Sean was attracted to her (remember when she is surprised that he didn’t try to kiss her because she senses his interest in doing so?), because it IMO showed a lot of self-awareness rather than that innocent, ‘oh, you like me!’ surprise of some heroines.

That’s an interesting perspective. I took her awareness more as a sign that the attraction between them was palpable and powerful.

Okay, but that’s from Sean’s perspective, right? IMO he had a strong investment in seeing Lizzie like that; in fact, IMO he vacillated between seeing her as a Madonna and as a gold digger when it came to how she reacted to *him* and to *his* revelations and feelings, and it was his journey to see that she was neither.

That’s a very thoughtful reading of the book. I didn’t get that out of it — to me, his vacillation between madonna and gold digger was part of his journey and his skewed perspective, but it was also part of his path to recognition that ultimately, Lizzie was a good girl (who would give all the money she inherited to charity, even when she needed it herself), rather than a gold digger.

I’m not quite sure what disturbed you about the second quote, as I read that section in terms of Sean’s inadvertently revealing something about himself, a vulnerability, that would give Lizzie a bit more information about him (strengthening the bond between them).

It was this exchange:

“You don’t mind?” he said softly. “That I’m not a big talker?”

“Not at all, Sean. Just being out in the sun with you is enough for me.”

I mean, it clearly wasn’t true. She did mind, (”It was hard to fall in love with someone who couldn’t share himself with you”), so clearly just being out in the sun with Sean wasn’t enough for her. But she said that it was. This is the kind of behavior that in my female friends, and sometimes in myself, too, can drive me crazy — when we say we are okay with something when we aren’t.

I think part of my problem is that I don’t really understand your point about her sublimating her feelings; I mean, Sean did the same thing, all the time, with the emotional trauma of his father when it resurfaced. He sublimated all those feelings of helplessness into asserting a lot of control over his environment, whereas Lizzie pulled farther into herself, trying to create an internal order she didn’t experience externally, IMO. Now you may say that it bothered you because it’s gender stereotype, but again, IMO Sean is the same in that, and I think he’s getting kind of a pass here relative to Lizzie.

It’s very true that I am giving Sean more of a pass than I am giving Lizzie. But as a victim of severe abuse, it’s a wonder to me that Sean functioned even as well as he did. I will agree he’s getting more of a pass from me, but I don’t know if it’s because he’s male or because he was abused so badly as a child. I see him as having no choice but to sublimate his feelings as a survival mechanism. Had he felt them while he was in his father’s custody, it would have devastated him and left him unable to cope. With Lizzie, I don’t see the same degree of necessity for it.

Well, I think she does curtail her mother’s spending, and she tells Sean that it usually isn’t a problem, so I got the sense that this was not a regular thing.

Doesn’t she say or think at one point that her mom has a knack for developing expensive hobbies? I got the impression that it was an ongoing thing, and her denial of it to Sean was partly sublimation, and partly not wanting to seem weak or needy in front of him.

But I have to say, just as a practical matter, how would you go about complaining to a woman like her mom?

I dont know. I’d have to think about it. I think that dealing with mentally ill or mentally challenged family members is very draining and difficult for those people who are in that situation.

But ultimately, it seems to me that it’s not about complaining to or trying to explain to the mentally challenged person something they can’t understand. It’s about trying to normalize life for the healthier people as much as possible. The ones who aren’t so healthy have to adjust themselves to the rest of the world, rather than vice-versa. Otherwise that illness or dysfunction just encompasses the healthy people too.

So yeah, in that scenario Lizzie’s mom might have to suffer a little more so Lizzie could have a normal life. Lizzie might have turned her mother’s guardianship over to someone else, or put her in a state facility that would be covered by her mom’s social security benefits, if her mom had any of those.

Taking on a second job so that mom can continue to live in her delusional state, even with all the best of intentions, doesn’t seem like the right solution to me. Ultimately, her mom won’t learn that there have to be financial limits, and Lizzie, in real life, would be more likely to collapse from stress or develop some health issues of her own rather than be married by a billionaire.

at least there is IMO consistency and foundation to Lizzie’s personality, not simply an assertion of her being a good person without some context (that’s the kind of goodness in Romance that makes me crazy — the virtuous by means of being a (near) virgin). Like Sean’s a-hole behavior (that scene where he almost made Lizzie pay for dinner had me wanting to crack my open hand across his jaw, lol), Lizzie’s has been conditioned by her upbringing, IMO.

I see what you are saying. I think we got less of Lizzie’s childhood in the book than we did of Sean’s. Perhaps if there had been as many flashbacks to her past, I would have cut her the same degree of slack.

I hate to say this, but I had a strong personal understanding of her reaction there. And on an intellectual level, I would have thought she was loony had she not been a nurse. But knowing someone who took an entry level nursing position in Kaiser for more than $125K plus a signing bonus, I knew her faith in finding alternative work was well-placed.

While I know that nurses can make an excellent living, I didn’t feel that this was acknowledged in the book. Lizzie was so poor that she even took Sean’s father’s old table because she couldn’t afford one of her own, and this with *two* nursing jobs. So while I would agree with you in real life, I felt that in the world of this book, Lizzie’s financial situation was precarious.

Re. Xhex, we’ll see. I like that she is being paired with John Matthew so far, and I am really enjoying their interactions. I’m going to go along for the ride and not make any assumptions that could interfere with my enjoyment. If Xhex turns into another Cormia, I’ll vent my frustrations here.

My own grade for the book was definitely in the B range, too,

Yeah, I did enjoy it and am glad I read the book.

IMO it would have done some good to stop her mother from ordering those expensive art supplies that Lizzie couldn’t afford by only authorizing her use of Lizzie’s credit card up to a certain limit, if at all.

She did, actually, at $500 bucks. But the mother wrote a check when she couldn’t get the credit card to work, and because Lizzie had spent the night with Sean, she forgot to cancel the delivery of the kiln and the check first thing in the morning. It’s a good question, though, as to whether she had legal guardianship. My sense was that maybe there was no legal divorce from the father? But I could be misremembering or projecting that. IMO it would be really difficult to press for legal guardianship over one’s only present parent, especially when she wasn’t elderly, and it’s tough to know whether that would have made things better or worse for her mother emotionally, IMO, even if it would have eased Lizzie’s financial burden. We know later on that her mother can feel very ashamed in those more lucid moments, and I can imagine it would be tough to risk that being a more permanent state.

At least in Sean’s POV, I think Lizzie is shown as noble and self-sacrificing.

Well, compared to him, she was, lol.

And notice the way they fall into gender types — in your own words, Sean toward independence and emotional coldness, Lizzie toward sacrfices and difficulties she has to shoulder. That’s *exactly* what didn’t work so well for me about the book — it was a little too old-fashioned for me in this regard.

Oh, I agree that both she and Sean can be read within certain gender stereotypes (but I also think each veers away in interesting ways). I guess my sense is that you’re holding Lizzie to a higher standard than Sean in this regard. I’m not going to argue that she’s a good example of first, or even second wave feminism, but I think we readers are often much easier on heroes who conform to gender stereotypes than we are on heroines who do the same.

Yes. But the willingness to get involved with him with no expectation of any kind of commitment from him, even though that wasn’t usually her policy with men, frustrated me a bit. If she had been the type to occasionally indulge in casual sex, it wouldn’t have, but since she wasn’t, it seemed like she was making an exception for him at her own expense.

But doesn’t this cut against her “good girl” status? That was one of the things I thought was interesting about Lizzie — that she admitted to herself that this was a deviation from her usual pattern, but she was willing to change course because IMO she obviously needed something in that coupling, too (she decides, “this raw, incendiary moment, was too enticing to walk away from”). I also liked that she knew Sean was attracted to her (remember when she is surprised that he didn’t try to kiss her because she senses his interest in doing so?), because it IMO showed a lot of self-awareness rather than that innocent, ‘oh, you like me!’ surprise of some heroines.

That Madonna-like expression troubles me, in context of Lizzie’s hurt feelings over being shut out of Sean’s life later on in the book.

Okay, but that’s from Sean’s perspective, right? IMO he had a strong investment in seeing Lizzie like that; in fact, IMO he vacillated between seeing her as a Madonna and as a gold digger when it came to how she reacted to *him* and to *his* revelations and feelings, and it was his journey to see that she was neither. Just as, IMO, it was Lizzie’s journey to find a good balance between asserting herself in authority and allowing others to live on their own terms. That’s what I get out of those quotes you referenced relative to Lizzie not pushing Sean. Two of the three occurred in the context of her trying to press him for more info. So IMO it wasn’t that she didn’t try to push deeper, but that she was only able to make small steps with Sean. Does that make her unreasonably patient? I don’t know. I think that she’s just as confused, just as unsure of what’s happening between them to have a really good handle on the relationship, and I kind of liked that.

I’m not quite sure what disturbed you about the second quote, as I read that section in terms of Sean’s inadvertently revealing something about himself, a vulnerability, that would give Lizzie a bit more information about him (strengthening the bond between them).

I think part of my problem is that I don’t really understand your point about her sublimating her feelings; I mean, Sean did the same thing, all the time, with the emotional trauma of his father when it resurfaced. He sublimated all those feelings of helplessness into asserting a lot of control over his environment, whereas Lizzie pulled farther into herself, trying to create an internal order she didn’t experience externally, IMO. Now you may say that it bothered you because it’s gender stereotype, but again, IMO Sean is the same in that, and I think he’s getting kind of a pass here relative to Lizzie.

She never complains to her mother or does enough to curtail her mother’s spending;

Well, I think she does curtail her mother’s spending, and she tells Sean that it usually isn’t a problem, so I got the sense that this was not a regular thing. But I have to say, just as a practical matter, how would you go about complaining to a woman like her mom? Especially in the context of the conversation they have near the end of the book:

“Hi, Mom.” When there was just silence on the other end, she frowned. “Mom? Are you okay?”

“Yes, Lizzie-fish. It’s just…the oddest thing has happened.”

“What?” Oh God. “Mom? You there?”

“Someone likes my pottery.”

Lizzie deflated from relief. And exhaustion. “That’s great, Mom.”
“They really like it.”

“I can see why.” Unlike a lot of her mother’s “work,” the pottery was gorgeous, both decorative and functional. The vases were all flowing, organic lines; the mugs wistful and quirky; the plates uneven and charming. When Lizzie had seen some of it during her overnight trip to Essex, the first thing she’d thought was that the objects were just like her mother: beautiful and fey and somehow not of this world.

“Well, the someone wants to sell them, Lizzie.”

“Boy, wouldn’t that be great.” A little extra money was always good. “Is it the little craft store next to the grocery?”

“It’s the Mason Gallery in Boston. On Newbury Street.”

Lizzie’s eyes popped. “What?”

“Mr. Mason was up here buying antiques with his wife and I happened to be taking a stroll with my morning coffee. He saw my mug and when I told him I made it and had others they came back to the house. He liked what I did and wants to send a truck to pick up fifty pieces.”

Good…Lord. The Mason Gallery specialized in selling one-of-a-kind objets d’art to the high-rent crowd in Boston. Lizzie had only ever walked by the window because she knew the prices inside were way out of her league.

“What should I do, Lizzie?”

“Well, do you want to sell your work?”

“I think so.” There was a slight pause and then her mother’s voice grew soft, almost ashamed. “But, Lizzie, you know I’m not good with money. Will you take care of all that stuff? I mean, I am not…good with money.”

Lizzie closed her eyes, knowing there was so much more in that comment. Her mother was rarely self-aware, but in this moment, she was totally present and obviously clear about her mental deficiency.

The shame was painful to hear. And so very unnecessary.

I just think it would be extremely tough to have a parent like that, and IMO it provided a good reason for Lizzie’s hyper-responsible disposition. Of course I realize it doesn’t get Lizzie out of the woods in terms of her responsibility being connected to the fact that she has to mother her own parent, and therefore rests on a certain level of gender stereotyping, but at least there is IMO consistency and foundation to Lizzie’s personality, not simply an assertion of her being a good person without some context (that’s the kind of goodness in Romance that makes me crazy — the virtuous by means of being a (near) virgin). Like Sean’s a-hole behavior (that scene where he almost made Lizzie pay for dinner had me wanting to crack my open hand across his jaw, lol), Lizzie’s has been conditioned by her upbringing, IMO.

and even wants to volunteer for the clinic when they take away her job.

I hate to say this, but I had a strong personal understanding of her reaction there. And on an intellectual level, I would have thought she was loony had she not been a nurse. But knowing someone who took an entry level nursing position in Kaiser for more than $125K plus a signing bonus, I knew her faith in finding alternative work was well-placed. Although I think the fact that she worked for the community center was not itself a particularly subversive element to her character.

I won’t disagree about the women in the BDB series, since with the exception of Marissa (whom I like almost depsite myself, perhaps because her embarrassment makes it hard not to sympathize with her) and Xhex

Oh, I am so afraid of what’s going to be done to Xhex in her story (can a woman in that series ever have the power of a hero?), because I actually think Marissa was more interesting as a character until she became mated with Butch, and Xhex being soo ballsy, well, suffice it to say I am very, very afraid . . .

I do see the Cinderella fairy tale as being about goodness rewarded (and in the case of the stepmother and stepsisters, evil punished), and I felt that this book was riffing on/playing with the Cinderella trope, in a way that made it fresh enough for me to enjoy the story, but was not quite subversive enough for me to love it.

My own grade for the book was definitely in the B range, too, and I agree with you about the riffing. Where we differ, I think, is that I see Lizzie as the more interesting of the two and you see Sean as the more interesting of the two.

Robin —

Like you, I’m not an expert on abused kids. I’ve known a few adults who were abused as children, but the nature of the abuse was different from what Sean suffered. I am willing to be persuaded on this point, since I do think it’s common for different people to have disparare views of the same person. I will say that Sean’s view of his father might have been more convincing to me if one of his brother’s had shown a somewhat different perspective.

As to Lizzie, I still feel differently about her than you did, and I’ll try to give some examples to show why as well.

She reflects on how much her mother’s voice on the answering machine is “draining” and there are several points in the book where either she or the narrative shows her frustration (”To Alma Bond, the world was a place of beauty and magic; practical matters rarely permeated her fog of inspiration.”). But she doesn’t show it to her mother, because she knows it won’t do any good to, given her mother’s “mentally challenged” state and fey, childlike personality.

I can’t remember whether Lizzie had legal guardianship of her mother or not, but IMO it would have done some good to stop her mother from ordering those expensive art supplies that Lizzie couldn’t afford by only authorizing her use of Lizzie’s credit card up to a certain limit, if at all. And certainly Lizzie’s mother’s “mentally challenged” state did not require her to be at an expensive arts camp that Lizzie could barely afford even though she held two jobs. This is where I felt Lizzie was very softhearted and self-sacrificing where her mother was concerned. Yes, she was frustrated by the situation, but she did not do enough to change it, or to curtail her mother’s spending and dabbling in expensive hobbies, which IMO she could have done.

The one area where I did feel she was *too* understanding was about her father, whose abandonment of both her and her mom she seemed to accept with a lot of grace, IMO. Although I’m not sure, honestly, if we’re supposed to see Lizzie as a character who accepts too easily or who simply doesn’t show her emotions very readily.

I think some of both. At least in Sean’s POV, I think Lizzie is shown as noble and self-sacrificing.

Re. the scene where Lizzie talks about her father’s abandonment,

I think we’re supposed to read that scene as an opportunity to see Lizzie through Sean’s eyes, where the “saddness” in Lizzie’s eyes gave away more than was going on under the surface of her words.

I agree with that, but in my case, that sadness was part of what made me see her as long-suffering (and often suffering in silence).

That unlike Sean, who let his past drive him (to financial independence and emotional coldness), Lizzie was determined to keep moving forward, because if she stopped, she’s probably topple like a house of cards under all the sacrifices she knew she had to make and the difficult choices she had to shoulder.

Yes, exactly. But for me, this is exactly the kind of Cinderella quality that made me feel she had to be rewarded with financial freedom at the end of the book. And notice the way they fall into gender types — in your own words, Sean toward independence and emotional coldness, Lizzie toward sacrfices and difficulties she has to shoulder. That’s *exactly* what didn’t work so well for me about the book — it was a little too old-fashioned for me in this regard.

So in that context, I understood Lizzie’s willingness to hold onto Sean for a little while, to feel a certain level of pleasure, even if it was mostly physical, to give her a break.

I understood it too. I was sort of torn between a lot of empathy and sympathy for Lizzie at times, and at other times, a bit of exasperation and impatience with her innate goodness.

Especially since I don’t think she ever thought of a permanent relationship with him, given that he did not live in the house or want anything to do with it.

Yes. But the willingness to get involved with him with no expectation of any kind of commitment from him, even though that wasn’t usually her policy with men, frustrated me a bit. If she had been the type to occasionally indulge in casual sex, it wouldn’t have, but since she wasn’t, it seemed like she was making an exception for him at her own expense.

I didn’t see that as long-suffering or too patient; I saw it as about the way Lizzie and Sean both push their feelings down in order to take what the world has given them. In Sean’s case, it makes him a powerhouse financial success as an emotional prick, whereas in Lizzie’s case it keeps her financially struggling but emotionally giving.

Yeah, it was that “financially struggling but emotionally giving” that bothered me. It seemed to me that she was also financially giving, with her mother, and with her willingness to volunteer at the clinic right after they let her go from her paid position there. It’s not that I have anything against volunteering, but she already had another job, as well as had to search for a second job to replace the one she’d lost. It was like taking on too much was her M.O.

But I think one of the things that won me over to Lizzie is that she wasn’t passive-aggressive

I agree and disagree. There were times when Lizzie did a bang up job of standing up for herself, and you’ve quoted some of those, but there were times when she didn’t, and I’ll quote some of the ones that bothered me.

Here’s one, from Sean’s POV:

“You like to push yourself, then.”

“Yeah, I do. So do my brothers. We’re like that.”

“Why?”

The question made warning bells go off in his head. He and Billy and Mac were all driven to the point of obsession and the root cause, he suspected, was in the ugly past: every day, they ran without running.

Time to switch the subject.

Sean shrugged. “We’re just like that. So tell me more about your mom. What kind of art is she into?”

God, he was a liar, wasn’t he?

And she knew it. Her smart, level eyes told him that.

Lizzie smiled at him, and it was the smile of a Madonna, all-knowing, very kind. “It’s okay, Sean. I’m not going to push.”

Crap. Now he was the one flushing. Imagine that. “I’m not into talking about myself much.”

“That’s all right. You’re really good company anyway.”

That Madonna-like expression troubles me, in context of Lizzie’s hurt feelings over being shut out of Sean’s life later on in the book.

Here’s another moment, that comes when Sean loses his necklace:

She looked around. She had her purse and he had the blanket and the bag of food and they’d left no trash. But something was off.

When she ran her eyes up and down his chest, she realized what it was. “Your cross. It’s missing.”

Sean’s hand snapped to his heart, and though he tried to fight it, she could see panic in his eyes.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” she told him.

They walked the area he’d played in, but it seemed hopeless as he’d covered a lot of distance during the game. Then she remembered. Where had he fallen with the other guy? She headed over to where she thought he’d hit the ground and began crisscrossing the vicinity.

She was about to give up when she saw a flash of gold in the cropped blades of grass. “I’ve got it!”

Sean came running over and as she held out her hand he sagged in relief. He took the necklace and inspected the clasp, then put it back on.

“Don’t know how it fell off,” he said. “Everything seems okay.”

“You should get it checked.”

“I will.” His hazel eyes lifted and met hers, then he bent down and kissed her. “Thank you,” he whispered against her mouth. “Just…yeah, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” As he pulled back, he was gripping the cross so hard his knuckles were white. “It obviously means a great deal to you.”

He glanced down. “Mac gave one to me and to Billy and kept a third for himself. I wear it because…hell, I don’t know.”

Abruptly, his lids dropped over eyes that had gone deliberately blank.

She squeezed his hand. “Let’s go.”

And here’s another moment, from Sean’s POV again:

“What was your mother like?”

“She died when I was very young.”

Lizzie lifted her head. “I’m so sorry. Do you remember anything about her?”

Sean broke the contact of their hands. The idea that secrets were escaping him, that revelations were being made that he couldn’t retract, that she was getting into his head, made him twitchy. In the home he’d grown up in, and in the profession he excelled at, vulnerabilities were used against you.

Silence was safety.

He brushed his finger down her straight, slightly freckled nose. “So how about that nap for you?”

She smiled and closed her eyes. “I’ll stop prying.”

In the silence that followed, Sean frowned, thinking there had been no censure in her tone. Just acceptance. The fact that she didn’t get on him made him feel grateful…and even closer to her.

“You don’t mind?” he said softly. “That I’m not a big talker?”

“Not at all, Sean. Just being out in the sun with you is enough for me.”

Again, that “no censure in her tone, just acceptance,” doesn’t work so well for me, given that later on she gets upset about not being included in his life.

Here’s why I feel that way — a moment that comes at the end of the scene you mentioned, in which Lizzie doesn’t allow Sean to sleep next to her after they had sex:

Keeping herself in check, she watched him shut her door then listened to him go up the stairs and settle directly above her.

He was sleeping on the couch again.

As she went back to her bed, she wondered why he did that. And was reminded of why a relationship would be so difficult with him.

It was hard to fall in love with someone who couldn’t share himself with you.

So, while I liked all those sections that you quoted, and was glad that Lizzie stood up for herself at times, there were still other times when I felt she’d sublimated her feelings. To be hurt that Sean didn’t share himself with her, after she displayed Madonna-like kindness and understanding and patience with him many of the times when he wouldn’t tell her what was going on with him, does strike me as a little bit passive aggressive.

And when he admits to her that he lied to her because he was afraid she wanted his money, like other women before her, she gives him no quarter:”Your poor choices, not my fault.”

I loved that line.

I loved that she stood up to him and didn’t treat him with kid gloves, that she didn’t act like she could make it all better for him. I think that’s why I don’t see her being “rewarded” with a billionaire any more than I think all Romance protags are “rewarded” with love.

When I said that, I meant it in reference to the Cinderella fairy tale. Cinderella grows up toiling in hard labor and never complains, and in the end, she becomes a queen. I saw a reflection of that in this book — Lizzie works two jobs, supports her mother, and even wants to volunteer for the clinic when they take away her job. She never complains to her mother or does enough to curtail her mother’s spending; she does feel frustration but she keeps it to herself, and in the end, she gets a big diamond and becomes a billionaire’s wife.

I do see the Cinderella fairy tale as being about goodness rewarded (and in the case of the stepmother and stepsisters, evil punished), and I felt that this book was riffing on/playing with the Cinderella trope, in a way that made it fresh enough for me to enjoy the story, but was not quite subversive enough for me to love it.

I won’t disagree about the women in the BDB series, since with the exception of Marissa (whom I like almost depsite myself, perhaps because her embarrassment makes it hard not to sympathize with her) and Xhex (who is easily the most interesting one and whose story I am really looking forward to), they don’t do that much for me. I get a lot of enjoyment from the BDB books, but there’s no question that they are more hero-focused.

guess where I disagree is that my impression (which may be wrong) is that most abused kids do love their parents despite the abuse. Not necessarily because the parents have earned that love, but because children need to love and trust someone, and if the only person they have who takes care of them is abusive, they will still pin their hopes and their love on that person.

I don’t know a lot of a abused kids, and the work I did with them briefly when in school a long time ago certainly made me no expert, but my own scope of experience tells me that it’s not unrealistic for a kid who was drunkenly beaten and who felt he had to protect his brothers from a father exhibiting alcohol-induced rage and who had no therapy over the years to cope with the feelings of fear, and who was still having flashbacks/nightmares to, as an adult, have a pretty uni-dimensional view of his father. Not that what I’ve witnessed in a few others is clinically universal or even believable within the context of a fictional book, but even in the most “normal” circumstances I have seen kids demonize parents in adulthood (basically intentionally forgetting and nuances in the parent’s behavior, shaving down an image into something relatively unsubtle). And I’ve known formerly abused kids basically shut down completely as adults to their abusive parent. Plus, as I said earlier, I think that view Sean had of his father served him — it drove him to be “different,” it kept him from getting close, all of which served his own fears of being hurt again without him having to investigate them further. So IMO that view was a defense mechanism, and in that I think it was consistent with his character.

My feeling that she was too patient stemmed from my really feeling her hurt when he wouldn’t tell her what was going on with him, and yet she sublimated that hurt, which I don’t think I could do.

I went back last night and skimmed through the book to try to refresh my memory, and I came away with the same impression of Lizzie as the first time I read the book: that she’s a worker bee girl, a young woman who has too much responsibility but who has basically decided to make the best of what she’s got. She reflects on how much her mother’s voice on the answering machine is “draining” and there are several points in the book where either she or the narrative shows her frustration (”To Alma Bond, the world was a place of beauty and magic; practical matters rarely permeated her fog of inspiration.”). But she doesn’t show it to her mother, because she knows it won’t do any good to, given her mother’s “mentally challenged” state and fey, childlike personality. But IMO we see it.

The one area where I did feel she was *too* understanding was about her father, whose abandonment of both her and her mom she seemed to accept with a lot of grace, IMO. Although I’m not sure, honestly, if we’re supposed to see Lizzie as a character who accepts too easily or who simply doesn’t show her emotions very readily. For example, when she’s telling Sean about her dad, she’s seemingly stoic:

There was a quiet moment. Then she murmured, “I think it’s hard for him to see me. I look a lot like her and our voices sound the same. To him, I am the younger version of her.”

“So what? He should man up and get over that.”

Her eyes flipped to his, and as he saw the sadness in them, he wanted to hunt down her father and yell at the guy for dumping his daughter.

The urge got even stronger when she said with dignity, “It is what it is. I used to hope he’d be different, but he is who he is and it’s better for me…healthier…to accept him and move on. Waiting for change is hard and not all that realistic.”

I think we’re supposed to read that scene as an opportunity to see Lizzie through Sean’s eyes, where the “saddness” in Lizzie’s eyes gave away more than was going on under the surface of her words. That unlike Sean, who let his past drive him (to financial independence and emotional coldness), Lizzie was determined to keep moving forward, because if she stopped, she’s probably topple like a house of cards under all the sacrifices she knew she had to make and the difficult choices she had to shoulder.

So in that context, I understood Lizzie’s willingness to hold onto Sean for a little while, to feel a certain level of pleasure, even if it was mostly physical, to give her a break. Especially since I don’t think she ever thought of a permanent relationship with him, given that he did not live in the house or want anything to do with it. So she didn’t dig, but she wanted to:

The thing was, the shutdown happened fast. Literally in a moment, they were gone and you were talking to a two-dimensional likeness of who they really were.

It made her want to dig to find out what had happened in this apartment, what had caused a father and son to split so irrevocably.

I didn’t see that as long-suffering or too patient; I saw it as about the way Lizzie and Sean both push their feelings down in order to take what the world has given them. In Sean’s case, it makes him a powerhouse financial success as an emotional prick, whereas in Lizzie’s case it keeps her financially struggling but emotionally giving. But I think one of the things that won me over to Lizzie is that she wasn’t passive-aggressive. OMG I am so sick of that trait in Romance heroines, and I liked that Lizzie didn’t play those games. Plus I have to admit to knowing a number of women who resemble Lizzie, lol, which certainly shapes my view of her.

I don’t remember exactly. It wasn’t that long before she got mad at Sean for not staying in touch with her when he went back to Manhattan, and then for lying about who he was, but she got back with him after that and still did not ask the questions about his relationship with his father.

She didn’t fall back into his arms, though. He calls her and she’s done with him. Then he shows up in the middle of the night and begs her to let him in, which she does, reluctantly, and he begs her to give him another chance. They have sex, and — in a move I adored — she refuses to let him sleep with her in her apartment. Then she reluctantly accepts a ride to work the next morning when her car dies. Also, she does bring up his dad when she talks with him on the phone:

He heard her exhale. Heard a mouse clicking. “God, you must have really hated your father.”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you know how hard he struggled to pay for his medications and his doctor visits? I mean, I doubt it would even make a dent in—oh, look, here’s your net worth. Yeah, whoa…wouldn’t even be couch change to you.”

“This has nothing to do with him.”

“Yeah…and you know what? I don’t think it has anything to do with me, either.”
God, he wished he’d left a couple of messages on her phone. Maybe this would have been easier. “It does, though. Damn it, Lizzie—”

“Do you think I was after your father for money? You did, didn’t you? And you figured if I knew you were loaded I’d glom on to you, too.”

“Look, like I said, I didn’t know you. And why wouldn’t I be suspicious? You mean you’ve never heard of that kind of thing?”

“Hey, check this out. You gave away a million dollars last month to the Hall Foundation. How generous.” Her voice grew heated. “Good Lord, Sean, do you have any idea how tough these last few years have been on your father? You could have helped him. You should have helped him.”

Okay, that was not a good topic to get on, Sean thought. Because he couldn’t be civil about the fact that his father had obviously poor-little-old-me’d her.

“I’m not going to discuss him.”

“Oh, that’s right. Closed-door policy on that.”

“Lizzie, no offense, but you don’t know a thing about my father.”

“Funny, the same could be said of you. I don’t think you knew him very well, either.”
Sean’s hand curled around his BlackBerry. As he fought to rein in his temper, he reminded himself that she had no way of knowing about the past and that people, even his father, could present many different faces to the world.

“Let’s keep this just to us, Lizzie. We’ll get further.”
She exhaled sharply, which he didn’t take as a good sign. “You know what? Let’s forget about us going anywhere, okay? Let me know about the house sale when you can. Goodbye.”

She hung up on him.

And when he admits to her that he lied to her because he was afraid she wanted his money, like other women before her, she gives him no quarter:”Your poor choices, not my fault.”

I loved that she stood up to him and didn’t treat him with kid gloves, that she didn’t act like she could make it all better for him. I think that’s why I don’t see her being “rewarded” with a billionaire any more than I think all Romance protags are “rewarded” with love. And Sean was, IMO, a mixed bag of a “reward” — a guy who needed some serious therapy to get over being able to flip into total coldness with the person he supposedly loved the most (IMO it takes someone really strong emotionally, really able to withstand emotional disappointment, to stay in a relationship with someone like that). I also think you could argue that Sean was the one being more rewarded with a woman who he could trust really loved him for himself.

So, yeah, I see her as kind, compassionate, and practical, but not saintly or unrealistic. Especially relative to the women of the BDB, with whom I could not help but informally compare her as I read. I find Lizzie a bazillion times more believable than those BDB women, all of whom give up their freedom and their lives to live in a glorified cave with a bunch of guys who have some of the stupidest slang conversations I’ve ever read and who are constantly in danger from the Forces of Evil.