Constance Harman, $0.99, ISBN 978-0463912430
Historical Romance, 2018
Constance Harman’s A Giving Heart makes me laugh, although I’m sure I’m laughing in a way that is unintended by the author.
This is because this story tries so hard to create romantic tension when there is absolutely none.
You see, Lily Morgan is besieged by masculine attention when she’s in town. We’re talking about handsome, wealthy blue-blooded men here, so it’s not like our poor dear has to fend off groping hands while dealing with a working-class existence.
No, she spends the early parts of the story receiving fabulous gifts from some bloke that refuses to leave his name, so she has to speculate whether it’s Eric Lawson, the hot and wealthy friend that she grew up with, or that other handsome and wealthy guy or maybe that that other handsome and wealthy guy.
Seriously, the suspense is killing me. I’m sure everyone can tell.
Then she goes to Cabren, where she is treated like a VIP because she is, after all, the hot daughter from a wealthy family, and then she discovers the identity of the hot and wealthy bloke that has been sending her gifts.
Wow, talk about an exciting story. I’m definitely shocked, in a good way, that it’s this hot and wealthy bloke and not some other hot and wealthy bloke. I can finally sleep easy now that the mystery has been resolved.
Even then, the story has been reasonably readable if one didn’t mind reading a story that is disturbingly close to touching oneself in immodest places in front of a mirror while moaning about how hot and sexy one is, had the author ended with the heroine meeting the guy. That ending would be on a sweet and high note.
Instead, the author drags the story on into an unnecessarily second act with is mostly the hot and wealthy guy giving a long exposition about how he regretfully couldn’t immediately be the worshipful simp that the hot and wealthy heroine deserves from the get-go. He then spends what’s left of the story affirming that the heroine is indeed awesome and worthy of being loved and pampered by hot and wealthy men all over the world.
Seriously, that second act is just overkill; it offers nothing that hadn’t been already said in the first act about how awesome the heroine is in being an attention magnet for hot and wealthy men everywhere. What’s the point of this whole part of the story? Escapism?
The whole thing is tad too absurd to be a good vicarious head trip, as the heroine is over the top silly as the paragon of hot and wealthy, and she and her beau have all the personality and depths of a puddle. A hot and wealthy puddle, yes, but still a puddle.
Anyway, yes, this one is readable, but there is something about it that screams juvenile and perhaps even desperate fantasy of someone that could use a lot more beauty and money in their lives. Well, I will readily confess that I could use a lot of those in my life too, but come on, I’m sure there’s a more sophisticated and grown-up way to approach such a fantasy.
