Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-0-373-86490-4
Contemporary Romance, 2017
I had generally good responses to Jamie Pope’s books that it is a rather jarring realization when, shortly after starting Mine at Midnight, I realize that this one isn’t working for me. The author’s last few books are a nice change from the usual formula of the Kimani line, but this one embraces the tropes through and through. This normally isn’t a problem, but here, it’s an issue because the tropes embraced are some of the most boring ones around.
Ava Bradley is the daughter of a very, very rich guy. Therefore, when she realizes that her fiancé has a family on the side, she breaks the engagement even if the custom wedding dress that costs more than all us menschs’ yearly wages combined is already sewn up, and retreats to the lovely tropical island of Hideaway. Naturally, she gets to shag the mayor there, Derek Patrick, and it’s all true love through and through. The moral of the story is: it is so much easier to heal from a bad relationship when you are loaded enough to just drop everything to do R&R in some tropical island, so go rob some old people today.
Meanwhile, Derek has issues because his mother used to be a social climber, sticking to and leaving rich men. It never occurred to him that Mommy’s ability to get the Washingtons from her boyfriends might have led to the opportunities in his life to do his own social climbing and become the wealthy, loaded, and hot mayor that he is today. No, it’s all about angst related to how Mommy didn’t love him enough – at least, enough in his estimation – wah, wah, wah.
So, we have two impossibly gorgeous people, who are loaded enough that they seem to work only to fill the time when they are not schmoozing, hanging out with sequel baits, and gazing at their well-plucked navels to sigh about how hard it is for beautiful and wealthy people to find happiness in life. Sequel baits show up and don’t really do much aside from advertising that they have their own books, and my attention drifts away so often while trying to read this book because it is just so boring.
The chemistry is there, there is some humor, but the fundamental premise of the story is too dull for me to give two hoots about the characters in the story. With that all that privilege and beauty, it’s hard to imagine that Derek and Ava that will ever encounter any genuine problem in finding a happily ever after. So, there are not many reasons to sit down and wade through over 200 pages just to get confirmation of this.
