I’m a huge Brenda Jackson fan and have been since reading Delaney’s Desert Sheikh. I’ve been hooked on her sexy tales of family and romance. And if I’m brutally honest, I also love her for representing different ethnicities, although most of her stories feature African American characters.
In Bachelor Unclaimed, she introduces marine biologist Winston Coltrane, another Bachelor in Demand, who has sworn off permanent relationships with women after a heartbreak in college. He meets Ainsley in the bar off the island where he lives and is instantly attracted. Ainsley, a former reporter, comes to the island to heal and recover her pride after losing the mayoral election in her hometown. She is disheartened and jobless and in need of a night on the town to recover, when she meets Winston.
The problems I had with this story were not due to writing; no, Jackson has never let me down in that regard. My problem was a sense of something missing, that I narrowed down to a wish for more description or backstory on Winston and Ainsley. I kept waiting for explanations or demonstrations as to why certain actions or thoughts progressed.
Winston goes to extraordinary lengths to protect his privacy (possibly as a result of this incident, although I was never clear on why), setting up a fake Facebook account and using a photograph of his grandfather for his bio, but these didn’t feel like legitimate measures. It seemed kind of silly that a man with his wealth couldn’t do more than that to guarantee he would be left alone
And Ainsley’s family was such motivation in her life and in her decision to run for mayor, yet we saw nor heard nothing from them. Just a brief mention in the beginning about her leaving Claxton after her dad had recovered. I would have appreciated seeing the how her family shaped the woman she became, since she had run for mayor based on her family’s history. Instead, we are given a glimpse of her motivations and desires through her best-friend and former boss, neither of which mention her family. However, I felt the interactions between Ainsley and her best-friend and boss served to make Ainsly look bad in comparison to the person her words presented her to be.
For the most part, this was an okay read. Honestly, I think it was because it was Brenda Jackson story, and I have a marked preference for her titles, that I rated it as I did. If I hadn’t known the author’s name before hand, I might have felt differently. It featured too simplistic characters that made me skim pages I would have normally read thoroughly and leave me vaguely unsatisfied.
*review copy provided by publisher for honest review