Susie Tate’s idea of romance is not for me. She seems to love a long-suffering heroine who often pays the price of the hero’s redemption.
TL;DR:
-Pathologically helpless spineless heroine with basement-level self-respect who accepts crumbs from the hero.
-Undeserving asshole hero who doesn’t so much as earn redemption as he undergoes a character transplant.
-No romantic development. Why are these two together?
-Poor handling of social anxiety disorder, autism, and abusive workplace culture.
Felix is a through-and-through asshole, but maybe worst of all, he’s a boring asshole. His personality is CEO. Felix has no characterization beyond being bad-tempered and emotionally immature.
(He’s also a terrible CEO: he’s personally responsible for creating a workplace culture so egregiously toxic and unsafe, his right-hand-woman installed a nanny-cam behind his back.)
I could not buy the romance. Where is the romantic development? Felix’s brand of caretaking is of the condescending and controlling variety. He calls Lucy flighty and incompetent. He shouts at her all the time. He mandates she get a makeover and wear heels (really). He forcibly lays his hands on her (but it’s all for her own good, of course). It’s clear the author wants us to buy this as swoony grumpy-hero behaviour, but this veered into disturbing coercive-control territory.
Worst of all, Felix truly sees Lucy as being beneath him. He maintains a disdain for her the entire time she’s working for him, a genuine derision and dismissiveness of her. He continues to look down on her even after they begin dating — and I’m supposed to believe his sudden realization he loves her?
He doesn’t really know her, he’s not interested in her needs, and doesn’t listen to her. He’s not curious about her as a person. He literally describes her as “useless” and “dead weight” — and this is after he’s fallen in love. Why does he like her??
Oh, and after he learns Lucy isn’t the loser he assumes she is, it’s like we’re supposed to give him bonus points for falling in love with her when he still thought she was loser.
“Unfortunately, when it came to Felix, my self-respect was sadly lacking.”
Lucy is another one of Susie Tate’s long-suffering heroines. Lucy is a doormat. Her timidity and passivity became exasperating to read. She never learns to take care of herself, and instead allows Felix and her family watch over her and see to her needs — like a CHILD. It’s as though the author tried to make her helplessness a personality quirk. Her inability to care for herself isn’t cute or endearing, it’s bloody exhausting.
She just lies down and takes all of Felix’s cutting remarks, shouting, and controlling behaviour. She readily acknowledges he’s a condescending jerk to her. Why does she like him?? She hasn’t heard from Felix in years, but takes a shitty job at his company — a job SHE DOESN’T NEED — to…what? Somehow convince him to fall in love with her? Why does she hold a one-sided “fierce, almost painful attraction” to a guy she hasn’t seen in years, a man she doesn’t really know at all?
Her feelings only grow as he treats her with cruel contempt. And after they begin sleeping together, she says she’s willing to be his fuck buddy if that’s all he wants — not because it’s at all what she wants, but because “‘Every hour I’m with you is more than I could have ever hoped for.’” Lucy comes across as deeply stunted and child-like, living in her little fantasy worlds and delusions. I think the author is going for a story where the innocent heroine reconnects the cynical hero to the magic and imagination of their childhood. The execution makes this not only pathetic, but gross.
(The story’s open-door sex scenes feel forced and artificial. I literally cringed when Lucy says to Felix, “Fuck me.” This is the same Lucy who repeatedly uses the word “numpty”. The author must have received advice to turn up the spice.)
Lucy also timidly accepts the harassment and derision of her coworkers. Mind you, this is a job SHE DOESN’T NEED. Lucy gives the lamest, most nonsensical excuses for not quitting the job, but really it’s because the author needs her in the office for plot reasons.
Also, Lucy’s social anxiety is poorly sketched; it read as though the author tossed in Lucy’s social anxiety as the reason for her lack of self-respect, and conflated social anxiety with spinelessness. This is all part of the story’s weak characterization. Like Felix, Lucy is not a fully-fleshed character. Her most enduring character traits are that she’s always cold and she’s obsessed with Felix. We’re somehow meant to believe she’s a mega-successful fantasy author, despite barely any mention of her writing career. I came away from this book knowing more about her affinity for Uggs and jumpers. Even more unbelievably, despite Lucy being a pitiable doormat for most of the book, she develops a backbone overnight.
After Felix fucks up, he makes a sudden turnaround into a human capable of compassion and patience. Overnight, he transforms from a man who literally blames Lucy for his inability to keep his hands off her at the office, into a man who vomits when he learns she’s been assaulted by one of his employees. I didn’t buy this sudden development of a conscience. Felix is a massive dick because of his Bad Dad, and oh the irony, he’s become the person he hates the most. Felix doesn’t engage in meaningful introspection, nor is there genuine growth or change. He simply flips a switch and he’s endowed with new programming.
We’re meant to believe he’s always been a good guy, deep down inside. How lucky for him that he rediscovers his humanity—and that it’s only made possible through Lucy paying the price with her suffering and trauma.
The last third of the book is devoted to Felix’s redemption and the romantic reconciliation, and all of it was painfully tedious. None of it rang true; it held the same emotional authenticity as a lame movie montage where the asshole hero “listens and learns.” He dismantles the toxic sexist workplace HE CREATED with a simple “boys’ club — begone!” decree and by implementing Taco Tuesday. Why include a serious issue if it’s not going to be meaningfully handled? It read as a plot device in service of the hero’s redemption arc.
And Lucy doesn’t actually develop a backbone or self-respect. She realizes that Felix isn’t healthy for her — NOT because he’s a self-centered scumbag, but because (1) she developed an unhealthy fixation on him, and (2) she’s “not his equal”. So Felix isn’t the problem, Lucy is. Felix steamrolls his way into her life because she is incapable of taking care of herself.
(Also, FUCK Lucy’s mother and brother for reinforcing this “Felix really is a good boy” poppycock and for encouraging Felix and Lucy’s reconciliation.)
I am exhausted by this book, but I need to mention Susie Tate’s handling of secondary character Vicky. While not explicitly stated, it’s clear she is supposed to be on the spectrum. I won’t go into all the ways Vicky’s portrayal is deeply problematic; the depiction is insulting and condescending, and reads like it was written by someone who watched “Rain Man” and extrapolated from there.