A "fling to forever," small-town romance
Diana Crawford, a botanist with a PhD, who is presumably in her early 30s, lives in a small town a few hours north of New York City. Every few months she heads to a bar in the big city to pick up a yuppie businessman for a one-night stand. After being badly burned by her ex, who stole her ground-breaking, graduate research and has illegitimately profited from it, she doesn't want to fall for any man ever again. Sex for her is merely a temporary distraction and stress reliever.
Asa Wexler is a 32-year-old, billionaire, Jewish venture capitalist. He has never had a committed relationship. His father impressed upon him from a young age that romantic relationships interfere with his primary responsibility to the family business. Rather than being proud of underwriting the creativity and genius of brilliant scientists, especially when they have been unable to obtain government research funding, he is ashamed that he makes a profit from doing such a noble deed. Up until the moment he meets Diana, he has been just fine with meaningless, one-and-done interludes with beautiful, patrician women, followed by a kiss-off gift of expensive jewelry. But he's never met any woman as special as gorgeous botanist, Diana. He is drawn to her quick temper and sharp tongue, and her lack of any personal adornment, after years of boringly compliant, couture-decked socialites. Within hours of meeting Diana, he effortlessly seduces her.
I was intrigued to read this novel, because I'm always on the lookout for STEM heroines, and I had recently read a novel by this author that I enjoyed due to its delightful, metrosexual, cinnamon-roll, male protagonist. I was not drawn to this novel, however, because of its small-town setting. I was raised in several different very small, Midwestern towns. As a result, it is difficult for me to slide into the prevailing literary and political fantasy in the USA that all of our rural small towns are inevitably utopias.
At any rate, this novel is not a typical, small-town romance, which tends to be of the Hallmark Channel variety, and either G-rated or with closed-door sex. There is plenty of graphic sex in this novel. In fact, during their first sensual rendezvous, Asa and Diana engage in semi-public, nude sex inside her small shop on Main Street, Houseplant Haven. It occurs during normal business hours, and any nosy townsperson (all of whom, we are informed throughout this novel, love to gossip) could have peered into the front window and not only gotten an eyeful, but could have chosen to capture their sleazy tête-à-tête with their cell phone and posted a video online. Personally, instead of being vicariously titillated by public sex scenes in romance novels, all I can think is, these two people are idiots for carelessly putting themselves on the knife's edge of destroying their lives, for a measly few minutes of cheap thrills.
Sadly, multiple other things about this romance novel were not to my personal taste either:
1. This novel is falsely billed as a "laugh-out-loud romance." It contains not a single humorous moment.
2. I don't, in general, enjoy "fling to forever" romances unless there is some accompanying, emotionally fulfilling aspect to what is, essentially, by it's very nature, a tawdry encounter. That did not happen in this novel because, even though Asa is inexplicably fascinated with Diana, her frequent, disrespectful sneering at him makes it abundantly clear that she neither likes nor respects him.
3. I don't find promiscuous protagonists appealing, in particular, when they use other human beings as convenient lust receptacles, and the act of sex itself is no more significant to them than a trip to the toilet. In this novel, both protagonists share this narcissistically callous attitude.
4. I dislike romance plots in which the main romantic conflict is that one or both of the protagonists is a jerk, in this case, Diana, who, from the moment they meet, is rude for no reason to Asa. An additional problem with this trope is that it is completely unrealistic that a handsome, young, wealthy man, who has always had women falling all over themselves to please him, would be romantically, or even sexually, interested in someone who treats him like dirt, as Diana does Asa throughout most of this novel.
5. I find it irritating when, as is the case in this novel, educated, strong, independent, professional women, far beyond the age of 18, refer to themselves as "girls."
6. In every book I've read so far by this author, most of the main, female, adult characters toss down hard liquor like it's water, frequently going on drunken binges with their buddies. It is irresponsible for any author to glorify that kind of addictive, self-destructive behavior.
7. As it is a major requirement for the romance genre, this novel does indeed provide an HEA, but the only one who makes major, true-love sacrifices to be together is Asa. The only "sacrifice" Diana makes is to surrender her stubborn determination to trust no one and go it alone in order to allow Asa to make all of her professional dreams come true, as well as continuing on as her exceedingly accommodating lover. I much prefer more balanced and coequal romance relationships in a current-day novel. This lack is especially lamentable, given the fact that this author actually knows how to write coequal HEA's, because she has created them in other novels.
8. Asa comes from an observant, Jewish family, and there are multiple scenes of him and his parents engaging in religious rituals together. In one such scene, Diana is enraged at Asa for bringing her to a religion-based family dinner with his parents, without warning her ahead of time what would be happening. It makes no sense for an author to, in the name of inclusive "representation," offer a hero who is a member of a persecuted, minority religion, and pair him up with a woman who has no interest, apparently, in religion of any kind, and entirely ignore this reality when manufacturing an HEA for the two of them. Believing in that HEA involves the enormous, unrealistic leap of logic that their religious differences will not be a major stumbling block to the survival of any eventual marriage or shared parenthood between the two of them.
9. Asa's personal growth arc in this story involves his ultimately deciding that it is morally abhorrent to him that he has been profiting, as a venture capitalist, off of the startup seed money that he loans to scientists doing extremely important work. This feeds into one of the most despicable historical stereotypes of Jews as usurous moneylenders, and I was shocked to see it in this novel.
10. This is the second book I have read by this author that has the romantic protagonists convinced that they can be legally married by simply purchasing a marriage license that is signed by two witnesses without an accompanying formal ceremony performed by someone who is legally allowed to do that. That person has to also sign the license. This is the law in New York State, where this story occurs: "In order to enter into a valid marriage in New York, you must obtain a marriage license and have the marriage ceremony conducted by a person who is allowed to perform such ceremonies.... the completed license is returned by the officiant (person who performs the marriage ceremony). It serves as notice that a record of the marriage is on file." Also, New York State does not legally recognize common law marriage, in which a couple can be married by simply declaring that they are. Note that this book was published in 2019, four years before a new law in New York State: "Beginning on March 28, 2023, any person eighteen years old and over can solemnize a Marriage Ceremony in New York State after obtaining a One-Day Marriage Officiant License from the Office of the City Clerk. A One-Day Marriage Officiant does not have to be a resident of the City of New York or New York State." But even in the case of that new law, there has to be an officiant before one is legally married, which does not occur for the marriage in the epilogue of this novel.
I obtained free access to the audiobook version of this novel through Hoopla. Unfortunately, the female voice talent does a mediocre job narrating this novel, which made it extra painful for me to keep slogging through it.