Sarah Mac’s Reviews > When the Lights Go Out... > Status Update

Omg this is so lame. How is this guy a hero? 😂 There's nothing exciting about him or is the author going for insta-love?

It’s total instalove. Apparently he’s rich, has a hot body, & murmurs in Spanish during sex—but that’s the extent of his appeal so far as I’m concerned. The guy goes on & on about how he needs to ‘break the news’ to his family that he doesn’t want to inherit the family business because of his brother’s death—the guy is almost 40 years old & his bro died when they were like 8! My god, MAN THE HELL UP! So he mopes about that & falls in instalove after 3 lines of dialogue; pretty sure that’s a record even for Harlequin. 🙄 Also he goes on & on about how he wants the heroine to be ‘in control’ even tho he’s never been particularly into dominant women in bed, but he won’t make the first moves because he wants her to feel so comfortable, blah blah blah.

I find her really annoying too, because she goes on ad nauseam abt her professionalism & yet falls into bed with him the same day they meet because they’re stuck in a basement together during a storm. 😑 Then she brags about her compartmentalizing skillz & her stoicism & flees her dead mother’s house to show up at his rental—after giving him a rather abrupt dismissal from her life, supposedly—& basically bulldozes him into sex because she just ‘can’t deal with the grief’ & needs a distraction. The way she phrases it & goes about it left me with a really sour taste, because she didn’t need him so much as a big dildo & it felt like he was nothing but a useful sex object, esp when he says “you can use my body to feel better.” Wtf?? I don’t like that attitude in any of my leads, whatever their gender—sex isn’t a cure for grief. And I can’t help thinking the roles were reversed readers would not be rating this 5 stars.

Sarah Mac wrote: "It’s total instalove. Apparently he’s rich, has a hot body, & murmurs in Spanish during sex—but that’s the extent of his appeal so far as I’m concerned. The guy goes on & on about how he needs to ‘..."

Jeez, sounds like this author has implemented almost everything she learned from her Gender Equity course and is determined to virtue signal all the billion and one ways a guy is supposed to genuflect at the feet of the heroine while righting all the wrongs that have been (inadvertently) done to heroines in the past, by vintage alpha males.

And this wimpy excuse of a man is supposed to be some hunky Spanish stud? 😂 I haven't visited Spain, so I don't know if the guys there are like him but I definitely know that Latino guys in my part of the world, would fall down laughing if I described this guy to them.


JFC, is it Harlequin's current aim to figuratively castrate the "alpha male" so that he's just there to satisfy the woman's needs and desires while his own are insignificant in the bigger picture of her life?

Correction, for the sake of accurate reporting (since it doesn’t matter outside that :P): the brother died when they were 13, not 8. They were twins; the bro was the older.

…But the summary of his neutered ‘tude & wimpiness is correct. At one point she literally says to him (after listening to his moaning, passive summary of Life Problems) “how can they know you’re not happy if you never told them?”—because he just finished whining about how he doesn’t want to DISAPPOINT them by not actually enjoying the biz. He was dumbstruck at the wisdom! Boy, you’re almost 40 fucking years old & this is only now occurring to you?!

Sadly, I think you’re right about the castrated alphas. When they’re apart (which is much of the book), she’s not the same personality as when they’re together; when they’re together she has to be shown as in control of everything & he’s nothing close to alpha, ever. He’s the quintessential example of new age blow-up hero—his sex stamina is mindblowing, but beyond that he’s got all the backbone of those purple plastic dragons you float atop in the pool.

Sarah Mac wrote: "Correction, for the sake of accurate reporting (since it doesn’t matter outside that :P): the brother died when they were 13, not 8. They were twins; the bro was the older.

…But the summary of hi..."

It's pitiful that he's such a whiny idiot. This author needs to do some deep thinking and come up with more realistic "rich man problems" that don't make readers roll their eyes. LOL. I find it wimpy that a grown man is still carrying around angst related to a sibling's death. Most of us have had to deal with the untimely early demise of beloved family members and we didn't have millions of dollars, to cushion us in the aftermath, unlike this H. In real life adults have to learn how to be adults and I hate when Harlequin's authors (it happens in HP too) create these fking overblown "non angsty" back stories that we are supposed to buy, especially when they've created an emo Beta male H, masquerading as an alpha.

Right? If it was just that seeing something—like, say, two boys play-wrestling in the front yard—that triggered a bittersweet memory, that’d be one thing. Everyone feels those occasional pangs of loss over fam or close friends or animals. But this continual overwrought angst—for nigh on thirty freakin’ years!—is just too much. You can move on with your life & still treasure memories, y’know? Combine it with his childish terror of confronting his parents—who are, by his account, two supportive, caring people in their own right—is simply pathetic. I can’t feel lust for a pathetic hero, or even like the guy enough to be glad he found someone to love. He’s just an alpha-wannabe weenie. Sack up, dude. 🙄