Fools Rush In
While I'm enjoying Fools Rush In I am a little uncomfortable with the stalking aspect. Conveniently memorizing your crush's schedule in high school is one thing but crouching in the bushes outside his house so you can learn when he leaves each morning so you can time it to be conveniently near by is, well, it's flat out stalking. They've issued restraining orders for less.
And while Millie does seem to realize that her behavior is, well, pathetic, she's not behaving like a self-aware adult. Or even a giggly teenager. She's behaving like a crazy person who doesn't recognize a boundary even when she's leaping over it.
So my problem with this book isn't that the main romantic pairing is going to be Millie and her ex-brother-in-law (I'm assuming. This is what the blurb says but I'm nearly halfway through and nothing's happened yet). I can get past that slightly weird plot point. It's the stalking that bugs me. And I can't believe her friends encourage her rather than sitting her down for a "you're acting like a nutjob" intervention. Friends don't encourage your stalking habits when you're 30, they tell you you're acting insane and unless you want to get arrested you better fucking stop.
I'm halfway through the book and it's just now to the point where she's getting asked out by the guy she thinks is her dream guy. Which means I still have to get through to the point when she realizes he sucks and then get to the point where she wants to make out with Sam!
Ok, seriously, I have less than a quarter of the book left and Sam and Millie have had one mildly intense staring session in a bathroom. I have yet to see him be distracting or her enjoying his company as anything other than a friend. And, oh yeah, THEY ARE DATING OTHER PEOPLE!
The problem with Millie not even looking at Sam as anything other than a hot friend until THE END OF THE GODDAMN BOOK is that it seems tacked on. Like she realized he dream guy wasn't a dream, had nothing else to focus on because she'd spent 16 years focusing on Joe, and now that she doesn't have that she transfers her stalker like tendencies to Sam.
I feel like we're meant to assume that Millie is having a Clueless moment where she's putting together all the nice things Sam's done for her, how much she enjoys his company, how jealous she's gotten of his girlfriends and suddenly fountains are spurting water and she's announcing that she's totally "butt-crazy" in love with Josh Sam. Only coming almost as soon as she's dumped Joe and has admitted that she's lost her 16 year old hobby (stalking Joe) and that she misses being in a relationship and having someone to focus on, well, it doesn't make her feelings for Sam seem genuine.
If it had all happened even halfway through the book I'd have less an issue with the sudden revelation. But now there's only 70 pages left for Millie to accept she loves Sam, to let Sam know she loves him, and for him to admit the same thing and they haven't even kissed!
For a first book it's not bad. It certainly has the dialog and the humor and the characters I've come to expect and enjoy from Kristan Higgins.
My biggest problem is the romance between Sam and Millie. If you can even call it that. The back blurb makes it sound like Millie spends the book wanting and trying to get the guy she has built up as her dream man but keeps getting distracted by Sam. This is absolutely not the case.
The first quarter of the book is Millie getting herself into shape so she feels worthy of Dream Man. She interacts as Sam but as a friend and ex-sister-in-law. Because Higgins writes in first person from the heroine's POV we do know what she thinks of Sam and what Sam's done for her. We know that she thinks her sister is an idiot for cheating on such a great guy. She knows that Sam was kind to her even when she was an overweight, braces wearing, acne sporting teenager. She acknowledges that he's handsome in that All-American football start protect & serve kind of way. We see that Sam does care for Millie. They hang out occasionally. He picked her up when she and her friend got smashed. But the only reason you even think to look at those moments as hints to Millie's true feelings are because the back blurb tells you to.
You spend most of the book reading about Millie's relationship with Joe the supposed Dream Man. This is something that Kristan Higgins does in her books. She puts two men side by side, so to speak, and you see which one is perfect for the heroine and which one isn't. Typically one is who the heroine thinks she wants and the other is the one she's never thought about that way. The difference between this book and the others is that with the later novels the relationship with the right man is more prevalent. He's a prominent fixture throughout the book either because he and the heroine are in a relationship throughout the novel or not. Most of the time I felt like Sam was a secondary character and I shouldn't feel that way about the hero.
I would've been perfectly happy with Millie's Clueless moment with just 80 pages left because once she has it you can look back on the times when she thought about Sam or indicated jealousy that he was thinking about dating and they're clues that Millie's feelings aren't platonic even though at the time she thinks these things she has perfectly valid platonic reasons for them. I would've even accepted her best friend going "duh, of course I knew you were in love with him" had it actually seemed like that was her reason for not dating him herself when Millie tried to set them up but her reasons had nothing to do with Millie. She never even tried to hint to Millie her real reason.
That Milllie has her moment literally minutes after running into Dream Man just weeks after she dumped him, that her revelation comes after she admits to herself that she misses the act of liking someone, it just doesn't give it the weight it deserves.
Had the moment come soon after the dance she chaperoned where she and Sam danced and he was obviously gobsmacked by her in a hot dress and she realized that Joe was not for her it would've made sense.
As it is the realization and initiation of a relationship, the Big Misunderstanding, and the HEA all happened in about 80 pages. Sam kissed Millie, they admitted they loved each other despite behaving only as friends throughout the entire book (minus one tension filled moment in a bathroom and the dancing), and then Sam's ex-wife/Millie's sister walked in on them and tried to throw an "I want to get back together with my husband" wrench in the works. Millie assumed Sam would go back to her because that's how he was, she went into hiding at her friend's B&B, Sam tracked her down to set her straight, they dated, and in the Epilogue that got married and Millie made peace with her sister. ALL IN 80 PAGES. It was like reading a goddamned Harlequin.
I need to reread Just One of the Guys to remind myself that Kristan Higgins can set up the friends becoming more scenario a little bit better.
I didn't hate the book but I think my expectations were probably more because I have read all of her other books but this one and this was the first. Had I read it without reading the others I probably wouldn't be as critical.
*****
Aww. Some people were disappointed with the season finale of Life and all of season 2. I think they're insane. But I'm a rather simple girl when it comes to shows I love and if I really love a show I totally admit to having blinders to its faults (you have to fuck up on a scale reached only by SGA/BSG to get me to say an episode was bad).
*****
"Did you just make a joke?" "No." "Because that wouldn't be like you." Heh.
"Sports terms, Bones. Remember? We talked about this."
Oh goddammit it's the British grad student. PICK ONE ALREADY. PICK WENDELL AND IF NOT WENDELL PICK CLARK BUT JUST GODDAMN PICK ONE. (Although on one hand it is probably cheaper to have a revolving door of grad students than to hire a full time cast member)
Angela's dad! Yes! And apparently he's going to kill Hodgins? Yay!
"You simply want to fire a cannon at a dummy." "You staying or going?" Wendell would be all over this! I'm just saying.
Ahaha! Booth! "What the hell was that?" As he slams Bones against the wall totally unnecessarily. And then they high tail it out of their before lockdown as Cam tells Hodgins he's grounded. Ha!
"What did I tell you?" "That we're not allowed in a room together without supervision." "Why?" "Because we were stupid enough to fire a cannon indoors." Hee!
The Booth and Bones parts are feeling a little flat. Mostly because I think that Bones and all the super smart science people, but mostly Bones, are trying to make Booth feel dumb because he doesn't know are their super smart sciencey stuff and there's no reason for it. Bones had gotten better about being condescending to Booth when he didn't know what she was talking about but not in this episode. She's laughing at him and telling him he wouldn't "get it" and it's grating.
I do enjoy Booth being annoyed at the casual sexual relationships and that he doesn't think it's "rational". Heh.
"He enjoys this stuff way too much." "Basically Hodgins sees himself as Dr. Nemo." Hee! Oh my god the turkey bounced into Angela's face! Omg. That is really gonna piss here dad off.
Hee! Hodgins is scared of Angela's dad.
Haha. Booth is telling Bones the scientist dude is gonna make a move on her because it's the "rational and smart" thing to do.
Ahaha! Billy Gibbons is playing on the street and Sweets is gonna talk to him. And then Sweets is gonna run away from him. Hee.
"Hodgins! You gotta run." "You talked to Angela's father." Haha! "You know what? I secretly had a thing for Angela. Now it's gone. Like wiped from the memory banks." I knew it! Ha! I'm still mad at Angela but I could totally watch Angela and Sweets make out.
Well there brains can't turn to pudding!
It was not a mutual break up! It was Angela being dumb! I still love that her dad is freaking Bill Gibbons. Heh.
Haha. He really is going to hit on Bones. "Here we go." "Here we go what?" He asks her out." "Wow!" "Told you." Hahaha.
"You know what, you're the only smart person I really like."
And we're at the bar again. Having after work drinks. Seriously. They're pretty much dating. I'm going to develop a theory that Booth is totally doing it on purpose.
"You just gotta stop hanging out with geniuses because you're going to figure out I'm really stupid." Haha. And she's not making it better. "I don't care how stupid you are." She didn't make it better.
"Wow. Back hand full of knuckles with that compliment." Heh. Sweets.
Omg her dad put him in the desert with a tattoo. Of Angela! AHAHA. AWESOME. Don't fuck with ZZ Top's kid apparently. Heh.
*****
I'm watching SouthLAnd beccause a) svilleficrecs told me to c) all of the other shows I'd watch at this time had a season finale (seriously, what happened to May Sweeps?) and c) Ryan Atwood.
Even if the commercials for the show make me think it's COPS all fictionated.
And while Millie does seem to realize that her behavior is, well, pathetic, she's not behaving like a self-aware adult. Or even a giggly teenager. She's behaving like a crazy person who doesn't recognize a boundary even when she's leaping over it.
So my problem with this book isn't that the main romantic pairing is going to be Millie and her ex-brother-in-law (I'm assuming. This is what the blurb says but I'm nearly halfway through and nothing's happened yet). I can get past that slightly weird plot point. It's the stalking that bugs me. And I can't believe her friends encourage her rather than sitting her down for a "you're acting like a nutjob" intervention. Friends don't encourage your stalking habits when you're 30, they tell you you're acting insane and unless you want to get arrested you better fucking stop.
I'm halfway through the book and it's just now to the point where she's getting asked out by the guy she thinks is her dream guy. Which means I still have to get through to the point when she realizes he sucks and then get to the point where she wants to make out with Sam!
Ok, seriously, I have less than a quarter of the book left and Sam and Millie have had one mildly intense staring session in a bathroom. I have yet to see him be distracting or her enjoying his company as anything other than a friend. And, oh yeah, THEY ARE DATING OTHER PEOPLE!
The problem with Millie not even looking at Sam as anything other than a hot friend until THE END OF THE GODDAMN BOOK is that it seems tacked on. Like she realized he dream guy wasn't a dream, had nothing else to focus on because she'd spent 16 years focusing on Joe, and now that she doesn't have that she transfers her stalker like tendencies to Sam.
I feel like we're meant to assume that Millie is having a Clueless moment where she's putting together all the nice things Sam's done for her, how much she enjoys his company, how jealous she's gotten of his girlfriends and suddenly fountains are spurting water and she's announcing that she's totally "butt-crazy" in love with Josh Sam. Only coming almost as soon as she's dumped Joe and has admitted that she's lost her 16 year old hobby (stalking Joe) and that she misses being in a relationship and having someone to focus on, well, it doesn't make her feelings for Sam seem genuine.
If it had all happened even halfway through the book I'd have less an issue with the sudden revelation. But now there's only 70 pages left for Millie to accept she loves Sam, to let Sam know she loves him, and for him to admit the same thing and they haven't even kissed!
For a first book it's not bad. It certainly has the dialog and the humor and the characters I've come to expect and enjoy from Kristan Higgins.
My biggest problem is the romance between Sam and Millie. If you can even call it that. The back blurb makes it sound like Millie spends the book wanting and trying to get the guy she has built up as her dream man but keeps getting distracted by Sam. This is absolutely not the case.
The first quarter of the book is Millie getting herself into shape so she feels worthy of Dream Man. She interacts as Sam but as a friend and ex-sister-in-law. Because Higgins writes in first person from the heroine's POV we do know what she thinks of Sam and what Sam's done for her. We know that she thinks her sister is an idiot for cheating on such a great guy. She knows that Sam was kind to her even when she was an overweight, braces wearing, acne sporting teenager. She acknowledges that he's handsome in that All-American football start protect & serve kind of way. We see that Sam does care for Millie. They hang out occasionally. He picked her up when she and her friend got smashed. But the only reason you even think to look at those moments as hints to Millie's true feelings are because the back blurb tells you to.
You spend most of the book reading about Millie's relationship with Joe the supposed Dream Man. This is something that Kristan Higgins does in her books. She puts two men side by side, so to speak, and you see which one is perfect for the heroine and which one isn't. Typically one is who the heroine thinks she wants and the other is the one she's never thought about that way. The difference between this book and the others is that with the later novels the relationship with the right man is more prevalent. He's a prominent fixture throughout the book either because he and the heroine are in a relationship throughout the novel or not. Most of the time I felt like Sam was a secondary character and I shouldn't feel that way about the hero.
I would've been perfectly happy with Millie's Clueless moment with just 80 pages left because once she has it you can look back on the times when she thought about Sam or indicated jealousy that he was thinking about dating and they're clues that Millie's feelings aren't platonic even though at the time she thinks these things she has perfectly valid platonic reasons for them. I would've even accepted her best friend going "duh, of course I knew you were in love with him" had it actually seemed like that was her reason for not dating him herself when Millie tried to set them up but her reasons had nothing to do with Millie. She never even tried to hint to Millie her real reason.
That Milllie has her moment literally minutes after running into Dream Man just weeks after she dumped him, that her revelation comes after she admits to herself that she misses the act of liking someone, it just doesn't give it the weight it deserves.
Had the moment come soon after the dance she chaperoned where she and Sam danced and he was obviously gobsmacked by her in a hot dress and she realized that Joe was not for her it would've made sense.
As it is the realization and initiation of a relationship, the Big Misunderstanding, and the HEA all happened in about 80 pages. Sam kissed Millie, they admitted they loved each other despite behaving only as friends throughout the entire book (minus one tension filled moment in a bathroom and the dancing), and then Sam's ex-wife/Millie's sister walked in on them and tried to throw an "I want to get back together with my husband" wrench in the works. Millie assumed Sam would go back to her because that's how he was, she went into hiding at her friend's B&B, Sam tracked her down to set her straight, they dated, and in the Epilogue that got married and Millie made peace with her sister. ALL IN 80 PAGES. It was like reading a goddamned Harlequin.
I need to reread Just One of the Guys to remind myself that Kristan Higgins can set up the friends becoming more scenario a little bit better.
I didn't hate the book but I think my expectations were probably more because I have read all of her other books but this one and this was the first. Had I read it without reading the others I probably wouldn't be as critical.
*****
Aww. Some people were disappointed with the season finale of Life and all of season 2. I think they're insane. But I'm a rather simple girl when it comes to shows I love and if I really love a show I totally admit to having blinders to its faults (you have to fuck up on a scale reached only by SGA/BSG to get me to say an episode was bad).
*****
"Did you just make a joke?" "No." "Because that wouldn't be like you." Heh.
"Sports terms, Bones. Remember? We talked about this."
Oh goddammit it's the British grad student. PICK ONE ALREADY. PICK WENDELL AND IF NOT WENDELL PICK CLARK BUT JUST GODDAMN PICK ONE. (Although on one hand it is probably cheaper to have a revolving door of grad students than to hire a full time cast member)
Angela's dad! Yes! And apparently he's going to kill Hodgins? Yay!
"You simply want to fire a cannon at a dummy." "You staying or going?" Wendell would be all over this! I'm just saying.
Ahaha! Booth! "What the hell was that?" As he slams Bones against the wall totally unnecessarily. And then they high tail it out of their before lockdown as Cam tells Hodgins he's grounded. Ha!
"What did I tell you?" "That we're not allowed in a room together without supervision." "Why?" "Because we were stupid enough to fire a cannon indoors." Hee!
The Booth and Bones parts are feeling a little flat. Mostly because I think that Bones and all the super smart science people, but mostly Bones, are trying to make Booth feel dumb because he doesn't know are their super smart sciencey stuff and there's no reason for it. Bones had gotten better about being condescending to Booth when he didn't know what she was talking about but not in this episode. She's laughing at him and telling him he wouldn't "get it" and it's grating.
I do enjoy Booth being annoyed at the casual sexual relationships and that he doesn't think it's "rational". Heh.
"He enjoys this stuff way too much." "Basically Hodgins sees himself as Dr. Nemo." Hee! Oh my god the turkey bounced into Angela's face! Omg. That is really gonna piss here dad off.
Hee! Hodgins is scared of Angela's dad.
Haha. Booth is telling Bones the scientist dude is gonna make a move on her because it's the "rational and smart" thing to do.
Ahaha! Billy Gibbons is playing on the street and Sweets is gonna talk to him. And then Sweets is gonna run away from him. Hee.
"Hodgins! You gotta run." "You talked to Angela's father." Haha! "You know what? I secretly had a thing for Angela. Now it's gone. Like wiped from the memory banks." I knew it! Ha! I'm still mad at Angela but I could totally watch Angela and Sweets make out.
Well there brains can't turn to pudding!
It was not a mutual break up! It was Angela being dumb! I still love that her dad is freaking Bill Gibbons. Heh.
Haha. He really is going to hit on Bones. "Here we go." "Here we go what?" He asks her out." "Wow!" "Told you." Hahaha.
"You know what, you're the only smart person I really like."
And we're at the bar again. Having after work drinks. Seriously. They're pretty much dating. I'm going to develop a theory that Booth is totally doing it on purpose.
"You just gotta stop hanging out with geniuses because you're going to figure out I'm really stupid." Haha. And she's not making it better. "I don't care how stupid you are." She didn't make it better.
"Wow. Back hand full of knuckles with that compliment." Heh. Sweets.
Omg her dad put him in the desert with a tattoo. Of Angela! AHAHA. AWESOME. Don't fuck with ZZ Top's kid apparently. Heh.
*****
I'm watching SouthLAnd beccause a) svilleficrecs told me to c) all of the other shows I'd watch at this time had a season finale (seriously, what happened to May Sweeps?) and c) Ryan Atwood.
Even if the commercials for the show make me think it's COPS all fictionated.