*****REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*****
Heroes or heroines who have a child with someone else is not a theme that I typically want to read, but as I won this book for free, I thought I’d take a peek to see if it interested me at all.
However, now I know why I avoid them…. Ethan & Chrissy are 16 and have been dating for 6 months. When story opens, she has told Hero that she is pregnant after they had just had sex. Hero proposes but she tells him she doesn’t want to be a mother. She had planned to abort or put the baby up for adoption but Hero tells her that he will take care of the baby himself. He has her sign legal documents to give up her rights.
Eight years later, Ethan is now a single father & a cop. He has the support of his family who have helped raise his daughter. He meets Honor, the heroine, when she rents a room at his house and they immediately form a relationship. (Heroine by the way is running from a crazy Step-father & Step-Brother who want her to marry some man. There's a bit of drama on that front).
It’s not too long afterwards that they say ILY. However, on the night that Carson, Ethan’s daughter, asks him to marry Honor so that she could be her mom, things go downhill. First, he is hesitant/reluctant to propose to Honor because he feels maybe she will leave them eventually like his ex did.
Then on the same night, his ex suddenly shows up asking to see her daughter (the one she no longer has any claim to). She is now a doctor & living in CA and just came to see her & then go back home. Hero is furious that she doesn’t want a relationship with their daughter and kicks her out.
Then he doesn’t tell heroine anything about the ex showing up (Hero’s mother had to fill her in). Instead, he says some cruel things to her, shuts down & tells her that they need a break from each other. Days go by and the douchebag keeps ignoring heroine and states the following to his friend & family;
“Come again?” He rocked back on his heels and gave me a dirty look. “Let me see if I understand this. Honor’s been in your house two months—give or take. You’ve been sleeping with her nearly that long, you’re in love with her, and your daughter is close to her. Close enough, she’s asking if Honor’s gonna be her mom. The woman who donated her eggs in the creation of your child shows up at your house, and you didn’t talk to Honor about it?”
“Nope.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Not a damn thing. I need to wrap my head around what’s going on before I talk to anyone. Besides, I told Honor we need to slow this shit down. Things are moving too fast, Carson could get hurt.”
“I couldn’t even make the girl who was carrying my child stay. There was supposed to be some sort of bond between us. Fuck!” I pulled at my hair until pain radiated over my scalp. “Goddamn it. We love her. If she leaves us, we’ll break. Both of us. Chrissy showing up today reminded me I fucking failed. I couldn’t even give my kid the one thing all children should have—a mom.”
“Why didn’t Chrissy feel the same way? For eight years the question had plagued me. Was it me she hadn’t wanted a child with? Did I do or say the wrong thing? Was I not good enough? Carson? What was it that made Chrissy leave us?”
So then the heroine is in a car accident and badly injured. The ex (who was following her) saves her life and he is so grateful that he asks her if she wants to spend time with their daughter (when all along he was resistant to that because he didn’t want his daughter hurt – especially since her mother was going to leave again!). The ex says, no, that he was right. And then he asks her:
“Was there something I could’ve said or done back then to make you stay?” She says no that she was not “mother material”. So then he goes back to heroine because apparently his first choice was not available to him.
So THIS is why I hate these type of tropes. All through this story, I kept wondering if the ex had changed her mind and wanted to work things out, would the Hero have dropped the heroine? Absolutely YES! And by the way, others may disagree with me and that is okay, but for me, I always felt reading this that he only made things happen with heroine because he needed a mother for his daughter & a sex partner. There was no romance in this story for me and I am so mad at myself for wasting my time. I guess that’s what I get for accepting a free book!
In terms of Safety, Hero is not a Manho. His father stated that he had ONS once to twice a year. Heroine I think only had one lover too that didn't go well. There is no rape or cheating.