Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, here’s the link to my new review:

http://shinybookreview.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/susan-donovans-not-that-kind-of-girl-when-opposites-attract/

As always, I had more thoughts than I could cram into any one review — some being irrelevant from a reviewing standpoint — so I’m going to elaborate on them here.

I really liked Susan Donovan’s writing style; it’s perky, blunt, and gets the job done without interfering with the narrative, which is a lot harder to do than it sounds.  I also liked her take on the whole soulmate concept, with a matchmaker with a gift (that may be Divinely inspired) to bring two people together who normally wouldn’t give each other a second glance; this being the third in a series and me not having read the other two didn’t stop me from understanding what was going on at all.

All that being said, the way the two at the heart of this story, Roxie and Eli, make love just made me feel sad.  Or want to throw things.  (Or maybe both.)  Because here you have two people who fall in love quickly and are right for one another, but the guy has to always prove he’s dominant at all times, never letting his guard down at all, never being playful, never enjoying the moment for what it is.  And that does not ring true to me.  Not at all.

Look.  I’ve made no secret of it that I found my soulmate in my late husband Michael.  The two of us, on the surface, would’ve been much like Roxie and Eli in that Roxie’s passions are all on the surface (me) and Eli’s calm, cool, collected and seems to hold all of himself in reserve unless it’s needed (Michael).  Granted, this is at best a rough approximation — I’m leaving out Michael’s delightfully rude sense of humor here, or the fact that I’ve taught a lot of young kids music lessons so if I hadn’t learned a bit of patience now and again I’d have done them no good whatsoever — but I can see enough parallels here to want to discuss why the way these two in NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL don’t behave right in bed.

Simply put, I don’t think a guy who’s always that calm and controlled externally is going to be that way in bed.  So I don’t see why someone would insist on behaving the “alpha male” at all times — there’s no need for that between two lovers who wear no masks and understand each other intimately in all senses — nor do I see how a love affair can proceed without some humor in the bedroom, especially as there’s plenty of humorous moments going on outside of it to make me believe the couple at hand does understand when something is funny.  (And trust me; down deep, where it matters, the way we make love as human beings has to be about the most inefficient process there is.  We may as well make fun of it, and ourselves, as we abandon ourselves to it.  Otherwise, why bother with it at all?)

So Ms. Donovan did her job — the couple is realistic enough that I wanted to scream at Eli to knock it the Hell off, thank you — but the way that all happened just did not sit well.  I realize some people have relationships like this — psychosexual behavior being what it is, some people must need that, right? — but Eli the dog whisperer had none of the other markers for this personality type.  And Roxie — well, I can see why she’d want to get “permission” to be abandoned in bed (this is fairly common), but why would she put up with a guy who’s so damned humorless in the bedroom when she obviously has enough smarts to make a living at her man-hating Web site “I-Vomit-On-All-Men?”

So there you have it; a pleasant, funny beach read that has this one sour note in it.  As a musician, I guess I can’t help it that this one sour note keeps drowning out the rest of the harmony and the melody, and as a writer/editor, I wonder why it is that someone didn’t ask Ms. Donovan to please put something in there that showed that to Eli, this was all a game, not to be taken seriously, rather than the dead serious “I am Mr. Macho Man at all times” Caveman nonsense.