Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-1-335-21696-0
Contemporary Romance, 2018
Another Chance with You is among the final batch of Kimani releases, with the line sporadically pushing out “2-in-1” collections of leftovers in the pile that it is already contractually obligated to publish throughout 2019. The line is officially dead by the end of this month, and my goodness, the books it is putting out in its death throes. No wonder it dies, if this book is anything to go by.
Landon Trent and Jadin DuGrandpre once upon a time eloped in a fit of passion, but when he signed up to be part of the Secret Service, she decided that she didn’t a hubby that could die on her any moment. So she left. That was then. Today, she is about to be married to Michael, and her family is going to receive the big announcement when lo and behold, Landon shows up to “claim” her (yes, that’s the word used). Apparently he never signed the divorce papers and she “forgot” to follow up on it, and now Jadin has to choose between a man who is relentless in insisting that she belongs to him and a man who predictably enough shows his hand early as an asshole. The asshole is Michael, by the way, in case some readers are understandably confused, and my goodness, Jadin takes the entire book to make her decision.
2018 is coming to a close and I’m already annoyed that my final review of the year is going to be this pointless waste of paper and time, so let’s just make this a quick one.
One, the heroine is a horrible, horrible person. When Michael discovers that the woman he has been going out with and proposed to is already married, she has the temerity to berate him for being so insensitive as to make this all about him. Yes, because this matter has nothing to do with him at all – he, like everyone else, should be on their knees comforting her and paying her all the attention she demands! She then spends the whole book stringing Landon along while waffling between both guys like the embodiment of every spoiled, pampered rich miss-bitch in existence. As the story progresses, she’s like oh, Michael isn’t romantic at all, unlike Landon, and oh, Michael is this and that… damn it, then why does that stupid thing go as far as to accept his marriage proposal? Is she brain damaged? Oh, right.
I don’t like Landon. This is a guy who takes his time to have affairs with other women, while insisting that he’s still married to Jadin. This is okay, the author perfectly assures me, because he’s thinking of Jadin at the back of his mind all the time. What, does he think he’s some Middle-Eastern sheikh or African warlord, and he’s going to marry seven women or something? When he decides that it’s finally time to collect the wife at his own convenience, he decides to “surprise” her with his appearance, as if she’s supposed to be thrilled or something. She left him – what makes him think she’d want him back? The rest of the story sees him telling me what a nice gentleman he is while his behavior suggests that he’s more of a “nice guy”. You know, the kind that acts all sweet and nice towards a woman because she’d then be expected to put out to him.
Naturally, everyone else in this story will tell Jadin what a loser Michael is, and they have always wanted Jadin to be pounded by Landon anyway because everyone here is in his cheerleader squad or something. Who cares about the hero and the heroine working out their issues on their own? The louder the secondary characters scream that Jadin has better put out to Landon or else, the more convincing the romance will be.
Unlikable turds that refuse to be flushed down the toilet in the lead roles, a “romance” that is basically a creep putting the moves on a selfish and self-absorbed imbecile while the crowd of secondary characters insist that what I am reading is true love, and a narrative style that resembles a block of wood being pounded on my head repeatedly all make Another Chance with You a terrible, terrible thing to behold.
