Hello everyone!
Usually, I will try and steer clear from writing blog posts about romance books. At least, the kind of romance books where you know there's going to be drama, and miscommunication, and drama, and back and forth he loves me-he loves me not, and drama ...
You see what I mean.
But I've been making my way through a bundle of books connected to bodyguards and their charges and generally feeling as if I was actually making a dent in it.
Then I had to chew through Billionaire Bodyguard, the first in a series of books by Kristi Avalon, and figured, this is something I have to rant about, really.
Now I have nothing against the romance genre, or even the bodyguard/charge romance. Honestly, I've liked some of these I've read, and I don't mind most of them if they're done right. Namely, they need to have some rhyme and reason.
I'm not entirely sure this one falls under that category.
The story in itself is straightforward enough: Logan Stone, a former Special Ops team member and current CEO of his own security company, had a one night stand with Allison Dupree, someone he hired to work with him on a new security program, and ends up getting her pregnant. Allison has her own skeletons in the closet, namely an ex-husband with a psychotic streak who can't let her go, so you know what's bound to happen no sooner than the thought passes the page.
Logan is determined to get Allison, however, because he's kind of obsessed with her and wants to repeat the night they had together, but she keeps shutting him out - that is, until she realises she's pregnant.
And at the same time that Rick, Logan's best friend, has probably alerted Trevor (her ex) about her whereabouts by doing a search on the man which would ping back right to her ex-husband without so much as giving her a chance to think about it.
Doesn't matter the idiot had been searching for her for years anyway.
Logan does what Logan knows how to do best - which is gets Allison to move in with him on his secure compound, and starts a relationship with her because he honestly wants her in his life.
Allison, of course, does what Allison does best, which is to not let him close enough and having issues letting Devon, a fellow employee of his, close to be her friend while she's at it, not that the other woman is having any of it.
Initially hesitant, she finally succumbs and thinks maybe her life might not be in such shambles if she let Logan take some care of her (she has an independent streak a mile wide, and considering her past that's understandable), which comes to a head with another Trevor sighting and a near-miss with Allison and the baby.
Logan amps up the security and drives both of them insane by keeping them locked together, which eventually prompts Allison to leave since she can't take even being shadowed by one of his guys since he hadn't told her about the protection detail.
Of course in the aftermath, Trevor gets to her through Devon, who she's staying with, and only Logan's quick thinking actually saves the day because he got a gut feeling being unable to reach either of the women by phone, and the confrontation ends pretty well for all of them considered: Trevor goes to prison, Allison and Logan admit they love one another, and Allison agrees to marry Logan on the basis that he truly isn't as bad as her ex because he never actually wanted to be controlling - just protective.
All's well that ends well with a wedding for the pair of them and a baby boy on the way, as well as a promise of a sequel that is Devon's book, which I actually want to read.
But my problem lies elsewhere.
Namely, why is it that authors think that readers can be duped, nowadays, into reading books where characters so blatantly don't communicate whatsoever? And I'm not talking about them standing in a room yelling at one another. That's not communication. Communicating is where you actually sit down and listen to the other party before you start spewing out your own theories, and not just running out the door when things get rough.
Oh no wait, I know why. Because our modern society is currently based on the motto that if a vase is broken, you throw it out as opposed to fixing it.
And I despise this kind of mentality.
I wanted to snap both Allison and Logan out of it. They both had issues, and both were equally at fault, but laying into one another and being mean never solved anything. It didn't for them, either, and while I appreciate some drama in my reading material, plain stupid just doesn't work. In the case of a vindictive ex-husband, you can bet your pretty handbag I would have hunkered down and not budged away from top notch security until he was six feet under, no matter what anyone else said.
In any event, I liked the book for its base, and the characters, on their own, were actually pretty fantastic. It was the execution I had an issue with, and more so than this I'm annoyed at the trends I see today.
Honestly, we don't need more of this stuff. We really don't.
But that doesn't mean I won't read the second book because ... I have problems haha!
xx
*image not mine
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