I like Carole Matthews’ way of telling multiple-viewpoint stories. I think she’s the only author I’ve ever found who’s had one first-person narrator and various people in the third person. It works well in the Chocolate Lovers series but it’s even better in this book. Maybe it’s because Emily is such a big character, you get used very early on to the fact that she features both as “I” and “Emily”. In the Chocolate Lovers series, first-person heroine Lucy is barely mentioned in the section from other people’s points of views but Emily is central to everything that goes on in the book.
It took me a while to get to like her. She spends a lot of time early on telling us how her friend Cara really isn’t normal. She does have a point about that. Cara is very New Age and into spells, massage and dreadlocks. But considering Cara has just come to Emily’s rescue by giving her a place to live when her boyfriend posted a saucy picture of her on the Internet, Emily probably should have been nicer about her.
Besides, it’s not as though Emily is so very normal herself. On the very first page of the book, she is wailing like a banshee in public. I might have been more forgiving if she was a natural crybaby but she manages to be very brave for the rest of the book even though her life is full of disasters. So the banshee wailing seems like attention-seeking to me.
Also, while I haven’t really delved into the sex lives of most people I know because I’m really not interested, I shouldn’t imagine most women spend their bedroom time dressing up in Saucy Santa outfits, writing Ho Ho Ho on their bottoms, and allowing their boyfriends to photograph it. She wasn’t to know that he was going to put it on the Internet and that her bottom was going to turn into one of the Internet’s most-viewed pages but still, I think most people wouldn’t do it in the first place. And if I’m wrong about that, I think I’d rather not know about it really.
When Emily says she’s a normal person, it’s difficult not to laugh. When she says she’s organised and competent, I found it hysterical. And then I found out she was a teacher… now I’m not saying teachers don’t or shouldn’t have a sex life but you just can’t take this book seriously.
A Compromising Position is loads of fun and Matthews really keeps you guessing. I had no idea who was going to end up with whom. Emily and Cara are both in love with Adam, whose ex-wife Laura is married to Barry but seems more inclined to share her problems with Adam. Emily’s ex-boyfriend Declan is also keen to get back with Emily, at least when he’s not enticing Cara into someone else’s hot tub.
Then there’s Chris, who is such a total typical lad, I was just waiting for him to fall in love. The fact he insisted on carrying a picture of Emily’s bottom around with him and kissing it made me wonder if he might fall in love with her. I quite fancy him actually. At least he knows what he wants from what girl (though it probably helps that he wants the same thing from all of them) and he’s honest about it. I don’t want to sleep with him though. I just want to look after him. So I’m not sure we’d get on. Then there’s this guy called Sebastian, who has connections to almost all the main characters but they don’t know he knows all of them. If they had known, this book would have been a lot shorter.
It is very funny the way Adam and Emily fall in love with each other at first sight (not that it stops Adam from shagging Cara and worrying about Laura, or Emily from considering taking up with publicist Jonathan Gold) without realising that they kind of know each other already. Adam knows Cara has a friend called Emily whose bottom has been on international news (he has seen a photograph of her but presumably he didn’t really look at her face) and Emily knows Cara fancies a guy at her work called Adam. But then they have a chance meeting in a bar when Emily’s dyed her hair (and isn’t flashing her bottom) and they don’t really talk. They just drool and Adam tells her she has sauce on her nose and Emily is so humiliated, she runs off. They then spend half the book trying to find each other. This does go on a bit long. There’s a limit to how many times Emily and Adam can narrowly miss meeting one another. When Emily finally realises who he is and she decides to jump out of the window in order to avoid meeting him, things really have got a bit silly.
So it’s definitely not a book to take too seriously. It’s quite satisfactory the way all the coupling works out in the end but there’s nothing to tell you these are the ‘right’ characters, or that they’re going to live happily every after. And it’s not all that realistic. Emily might be nice-looking but she’s thirty-two. About ten years older than most successful glamour models. And I’m sure that if I created a website and put my bottom on it, I wouldn’t start earning lots of money from it, like Declan does when he puts Emily’s nether regions on the Net. I’m not even sure how he does manage to earn so much money from it. Is it pay-per-view? Perhaps, but once the national newspapers have got hold of it, and once Chris has forwarded it to his Facebook friends, there’s no need to look at the original.
And it’s also a bit disturbing that Adam takes on a job as a porn photographer in order to prove to Laura that he can look after their son Josh when she goes to Australia to find herself. Josh takes it all in his stride – he seems to know a lot more about glamour models than Adam does – but I’m not sure Laura would be too happy if she knew about it. So Adam’s pretty much deceiving her in order to get custody of Josh, and I don’t think that’s fair. But the rest of the book is so mad, it’s hard to get too uptight over these little problems. I couldn’t ever see Emily, Adam, Cara, Laura, Josh and Sebastian as real people (Chris I believe in apart from the bottom-kissing) so it doesn’t matter what Adam does really. I was amused enough to keep reading but I didn’t care about the characters.
Sunday 28 March 2010
Sunday 7 March 2010
The Perfect Lover (Penny Jordan)**
In lots of ways, The Perfect Lover seemed more like part of a big blockbuster novel than a Mills & Boon. It was written as the fifth book in the Perfect Family series, which is about a big family that’s very rich and very close. Either the hero or the heroine of each book is part of the family – and in some cases, they both are. But of course, in a blockbuster novel, all the family members’ stories can happen at pretty much the same time. In a Mills & Boon series they have to take it in turn to fall in love.
A lot of The Perfect Lover is set in the past. In a previous book in the series, Louise was in love with her cousin Saul and wanted to spend some more time with him so she took Saul’s girlfriend Tullah into a maze (presumably a maze owned by the family) and left her there. It’s fair to say Saul didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms after that. In this book, we see how Saul’s rejection of Louise has affected her life. Her university work has gone downhill and her new tutor, Gareth Simmonds, is putting real pressure on her to direct her attention back to her work, which she doesn’t feel capable of doing.
We then have the parallel story of Louise in the present. She has graduated from university (albeit with a lower grade than expected), she has a good and very challenging job, and she’s a great deal more grown-up, with no romantic feelings for Saul whatsoever. Gareth reappears in her life when he gets a new job that is in some way connected to Louise’s job (I didn’t really take in all the details, it all sounded a bit boring) and they have no choice but to develop a working relationship.
If the story had been about Louise and Gareth rediscovering one another and falling in love, that would probably have made quite a good book. It would probably be quite a strange and interesting experience, meeting your old university tutor and discovering not only that he is human, he’s actually quite sexy as well. The fact that Gareth had once caught Louise crying drunkenly over Saul would only increase the embarrassment when they met again.
But Penny Jordan adds a twist to the story – one which for me spoils the book. Gareth and Louise don’t fall in love when they meet again – apparently they fell in love when they were tutor and student. And not only did they fall in love, they had sex.
Even if they’d admitted to each other that they liked each other, it would still have been a bit dodgy – I find it very unprofessional of Gareth to have sex with his student in any circumstances. But the fact Gareth didn’t know that she loved him makes it worse. As far as he was concerned, she was in love with Saul – and therefore on the rebound and in a bit of an emotional mess
Gareth and Louise don’t seem to love each other at all. They don’t even like each other. Gareth thinks Louise is a stupid, spoiled baby. Louise thinks Gareth is horrible and overbearing and interfering. And I agree with them – that’s exactly what I think of both of them. There’s no real sexual tension between them, or reluctant admiration, or a meeting of intellectual equals. It’s just Spoiled Brat meets Sex Mad Idiot. It doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven to me.
It’s true that Louise did, in a sense, invite Gareth to have sex with her. But it was hardly a romantic invitation. All she told him was that she just wanted to have sex – she didn’t care who it was with. Gareth than apparently “lost control” because he loved her.
Now, I have heard that men have less control than women. There is probably a point where they can’t help themselves. But there was never any need for Gareth to reach that point. He could, for example, have kept his clothes on. And his love for Louise really doesn’t seem like a good reason for taking advantage of her. Surely, if you love someone, the last thing you’d want to do is to take advantage of them when they’re vulnerable and force them into something you’ve got every reason to believe they don’t really want. Louise is unhappy and heartbroken – she’s in a situation where not many people would be able to think straight. She is a virgin at nineteen so she’s obviously waiting for someone special, and while Louise might think no-one will ever be as special as Saul, Gareth presumably knows there’s a good chance this won’t be the case.
I can quite see that Gareth might want to stop Louise from losing her virginity to the first random bloke who comes along but manhandling her onto the bed himself seems a bit off. Everyone quite rightly makes a big fuss when Louise takes Tullah into a maze and abandons her – it was a horrible thing to do. But I’d say Gareth’s behaviour is much worse. Tullah was probably frightened and upset but nothing was likely to happen to her. Louise isn’t going to get her virginity back. So why would Louise want anything to do with Gareth after that? Gareth didn’t rape her exactly but he did take advantage of her when she didn’t really know what she was doing
And wouldn’t he rather sleep with someone who actually wants him?
It would have been much more convincing if Gareth loved Louise enough to turn her down. The fact she propositioned him is still going to make her feel embarrassed enough to want to change courses. But this way, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Louise could still realise later on that she likes him. And the fact he was able to turn down sex that was offered on a plate is only likely to increase her respect for him. It must have been hard in more ways than one but Gareth could and should have said no.
Another problem with their relationship is, what does Gareth see in her? She might be pretty. She’s probably extremely intelligent. But as Gareth points out to her at every opportunity, she’s one of the most immature people in the world. (Trust me. It takes one to know one.) She might have the ability to pass a law degree, to argue her points convincingly, and to write a good essay about them. But that doesn’t mean she has the maturity to deal with adult relationships. You hear about child prodigies who go to university at ridiculously young ages and pass degrees but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of adult relationships. Louise probably should be capable of it – but because she’s had nineteen years’ experience of life rather than because she’s capable of passing a law degree. Gareth might admire her brilliant mind and she might have a nice body but emotionally she hasn’t grown up at all.
That’s not a criticism of Louise particularly. Everyone grows up at different rates (and Louise might well have had a very sheltered upbringing) and even if you’re not a bunny boiler, it probably is really hard when the guy you love marries someone else. But she is a baby, Gareth knows she’s a baby (he tells her so at every opportunity)… and yet he falls in love with her?
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if that’s as far as it went. He can’t help who he falls in love with. But the fact she lacks the maturity to know what she wants just makes his decision to have sex with her even more disturbing and creepy.
Then they meet up again three years later and they argue and Louise tells herself and the readers that she hates Gareth. And the only reasons I have for doubting her are that she’s in a Mills & Boon, and Saul has already been married off. But then right near the end of the book, she decides she does love Gareth after all, and she always has, and she didn’t love Saul. The girl just can’t make up her mind! Then she tells Gareth she loves him and Gareth says he felt the same way about her all along and he wouldn’t have slept with her if he hadn’t loved her. Well, that’s one point in his favour, but he still shouldn’t have done it and the fact that he did do it shows that he can’t have cared about her all that much.
I would love to believe that Louise and Gareth are perfect for each other. They do, after all, have two of my favourite names ever. But there was nothing in the book to suggest they would make a good couple. Most of their time together has been spent arguing and shagging. We never (except in the throes of passion) see them enjoying each other’s company. When Louise is a student, there is no indication that they like one another. That part of the story is told from Louise’s point of view and she thinks of nothing but Saul. Gareth said he realised he loved her when she was arguing passionately about something during a tutorial. But we’ve seen Louise argue. She sounds like a spoiled brat. A child.
So it’s a bit of a mess. For both of them. And when Louise blames Gareth for the fact she changed her degree course and didn’t get a first, I can only sympathise with her. What else was she supposed to do? Carry on having private tutorials with him? Regardless of whether she loves him or not, he’s shown himself to be unprofessional and a bit of a sex maniac.
It should have been interesting to see them getting to know one another again. It’s not every day you meet your university tutor who had sex with you once after you told him you wanted a shag and you didn’t care who with. But you hardly see them together at all. They snap at one another a few times (they don’t see one another that often) and then they both get involved in a crisis where they don’t really have much option but to be polite to one another.
True, Gareth gets to see Louise doing her job well, and later he sees her behaving in a mature manner during the crisis, which involves her cousin Jack. Louise gets to see that Gareth is capable of behaving responsibly and kindly towards a distressed teenager without getting into bed with them. But this only takes a day or two. The next day, they’re engaged.
As far as I can see, the marriage is completely without foundation. Whether they did secretly love each other or not, Louise has changed a lot. She isn’t a brat anymore (although she does a good imitation of one on the few occasions she can’t avoid talking to Gareth). She’s grown-up, responsible, and actually pretty boring. Gareth doesn’t know the new Louise well enough to know if he loves her or not. And Louise might go off him completely once she’s actually got him. Maybe she only loves the guys she can’t have. They don’t have enough time either to fall in love if they weren’t in love before, or to work out whether they still love each other.
It’s such a shame. Penny Jordan is a good writer and she has created some strong characters who would be really interesting if they weren’t the hero and heroine of a Mills & Boon and therefore expected to live happily ever after. In a big blockbuster novel it would probably make a great storyline as their relationship is so complicated and has various angles which can’t really be examined in a feel-good romance. They could take months, even years to get to know one another again. And if their marriage didn’t last a week – which I don’t think it would – it really wouldn’t matter.
A lot of The Perfect Lover is set in the past. In a previous book in the series, Louise was in love with her cousin Saul and wanted to spend some more time with him so she took Saul’s girlfriend Tullah into a maze (presumably a maze owned by the family) and left her there. It’s fair to say Saul didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms after that. In this book, we see how Saul’s rejection of Louise has affected her life. Her university work has gone downhill and her new tutor, Gareth Simmonds, is putting real pressure on her to direct her attention back to her work, which she doesn’t feel capable of doing.
We then have the parallel story of Louise in the present. She has graduated from university (albeit with a lower grade than expected), she has a good and very challenging job, and she’s a great deal more grown-up, with no romantic feelings for Saul whatsoever. Gareth reappears in her life when he gets a new job that is in some way connected to Louise’s job (I didn’t really take in all the details, it all sounded a bit boring) and they have no choice but to develop a working relationship.
If the story had been about Louise and Gareth rediscovering one another and falling in love, that would probably have made quite a good book. It would probably be quite a strange and interesting experience, meeting your old university tutor and discovering not only that he is human, he’s actually quite sexy as well. The fact that Gareth had once caught Louise crying drunkenly over Saul would only increase the embarrassment when they met again.
But Penny Jordan adds a twist to the story – one which for me spoils the book. Gareth and Louise don’t fall in love when they meet again – apparently they fell in love when they were tutor and student. And not only did they fall in love, they had sex.
Even if they’d admitted to each other that they liked each other, it would still have been a bit dodgy – I find it very unprofessional of Gareth to have sex with his student in any circumstances. But the fact Gareth didn’t know that she loved him makes it worse. As far as he was concerned, she was in love with Saul – and therefore on the rebound and in a bit of an emotional mess
Gareth and Louise don’t seem to love each other at all. They don’t even like each other. Gareth thinks Louise is a stupid, spoiled baby. Louise thinks Gareth is horrible and overbearing and interfering. And I agree with them – that’s exactly what I think of both of them. There’s no real sexual tension between them, or reluctant admiration, or a meeting of intellectual equals. It’s just Spoiled Brat meets Sex Mad Idiot. It doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven to me.
It’s true that Louise did, in a sense, invite Gareth to have sex with her. But it was hardly a romantic invitation. All she told him was that she just wanted to have sex – she didn’t care who it was with. Gareth than apparently “lost control” because he loved her.
Now, I have heard that men have less control than women. There is probably a point where they can’t help themselves. But there was never any need for Gareth to reach that point. He could, for example, have kept his clothes on. And his love for Louise really doesn’t seem like a good reason for taking advantage of her. Surely, if you love someone, the last thing you’d want to do is to take advantage of them when they’re vulnerable and force them into something you’ve got every reason to believe they don’t really want. Louise is unhappy and heartbroken – she’s in a situation where not many people would be able to think straight. She is a virgin at nineteen so she’s obviously waiting for someone special, and while Louise might think no-one will ever be as special as Saul, Gareth presumably knows there’s a good chance this won’t be the case.
I can quite see that Gareth might want to stop Louise from losing her virginity to the first random bloke who comes along but manhandling her onto the bed himself seems a bit off. Everyone quite rightly makes a big fuss when Louise takes Tullah into a maze and abandons her – it was a horrible thing to do. But I’d say Gareth’s behaviour is much worse. Tullah was probably frightened and upset but nothing was likely to happen to her. Louise isn’t going to get her virginity back. So why would Louise want anything to do with Gareth after that? Gareth didn’t rape her exactly but he did take advantage of her when she didn’t really know what she was doing
And wouldn’t he rather sleep with someone who actually wants him?
It would have been much more convincing if Gareth loved Louise enough to turn her down. The fact she propositioned him is still going to make her feel embarrassed enough to want to change courses. But this way, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Louise could still realise later on that she likes him. And the fact he was able to turn down sex that was offered on a plate is only likely to increase her respect for him. It must have been hard in more ways than one but Gareth could and should have said no.
Another problem with their relationship is, what does Gareth see in her? She might be pretty. She’s probably extremely intelligent. But as Gareth points out to her at every opportunity, she’s one of the most immature people in the world. (Trust me. It takes one to know one.) She might have the ability to pass a law degree, to argue her points convincingly, and to write a good essay about them. But that doesn’t mean she has the maturity to deal with adult relationships. You hear about child prodigies who go to university at ridiculously young ages and pass degrees but that doesn’t mean they’re capable of adult relationships. Louise probably should be capable of it – but because she’s had nineteen years’ experience of life rather than because she’s capable of passing a law degree. Gareth might admire her brilliant mind and she might have a nice body but emotionally she hasn’t grown up at all.
That’s not a criticism of Louise particularly. Everyone grows up at different rates (and Louise might well have had a very sheltered upbringing) and even if you’re not a bunny boiler, it probably is really hard when the guy you love marries someone else. But she is a baby, Gareth knows she’s a baby (he tells her so at every opportunity)… and yet he falls in love with her?
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad if that’s as far as it went. He can’t help who he falls in love with. But the fact she lacks the maturity to know what she wants just makes his decision to have sex with her even more disturbing and creepy.
Then they meet up again three years later and they argue and Louise tells herself and the readers that she hates Gareth. And the only reasons I have for doubting her are that she’s in a Mills & Boon, and Saul has already been married off. But then right near the end of the book, she decides she does love Gareth after all, and she always has, and she didn’t love Saul. The girl just can’t make up her mind! Then she tells Gareth she loves him and Gareth says he felt the same way about her all along and he wouldn’t have slept with her if he hadn’t loved her. Well, that’s one point in his favour, but he still shouldn’t have done it and the fact that he did do it shows that he can’t have cared about her all that much.
I would love to believe that Louise and Gareth are perfect for each other. They do, after all, have two of my favourite names ever. But there was nothing in the book to suggest they would make a good couple. Most of their time together has been spent arguing and shagging. We never (except in the throes of passion) see them enjoying each other’s company. When Louise is a student, there is no indication that they like one another. That part of the story is told from Louise’s point of view and she thinks of nothing but Saul. Gareth said he realised he loved her when she was arguing passionately about something during a tutorial. But we’ve seen Louise argue. She sounds like a spoiled brat. A child.
So it’s a bit of a mess. For both of them. And when Louise blames Gareth for the fact she changed her degree course and didn’t get a first, I can only sympathise with her. What else was she supposed to do? Carry on having private tutorials with him? Regardless of whether she loves him or not, he’s shown himself to be unprofessional and a bit of a sex maniac.
It should have been interesting to see them getting to know one another again. It’s not every day you meet your university tutor who had sex with you once after you told him you wanted a shag and you didn’t care who with. But you hardly see them together at all. They snap at one another a few times (they don’t see one another that often) and then they both get involved in a crisis where they don’t really have much option but to be polite to one another.
True, Gareth gets to see Louise doing her job well, and later he sees her behaving in a mature manner during the crisis, which involves her cousin Jack. Louise gets to see that Gareth is capable of behaving responsibly and kindly towards a distressed teenager without getting into bed with them. But this only takes a day or two. The next day, they’re engaged.
As far as I can see, the marriage is completely without foundation. Whether they did secretly love each other or not, Louise has changed a lot. She isn’t a brat anymore (although she does a good imitation of one on the few occasions she can’t avoid talking to Gareth). She’s grown-up, responsible, and actually pretty boring. Gareth doesn’t know the new Louise well enough to know if he loves her or not. And Louise might go off him completely once she’s actually got him. Maybe she only loves the guys she can’t have. They don’t have enough time either to fall in love if they weren’t in love before, or to work out whether they still love each other.
It’s such a shame. Penny Jordan is a good writer and she has created some strong characters who would be really interesting if they weren’t the hero and heroine of a Mills & Boon and therefore expected to live happily ever after. In a big blockbuster novel it would probably make a great storyline as their relationship is so complicated and has various angles which can’t really be examined in a feel-good romance. They could take months, even years to get to know one another again. And if their marriage didn’t last a week – which I don’t think it would – it really wouldn’t matter.
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