Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-1-335-21661-8
Contemporary Romance, 2018
Something about You is another standalone entry in Bridget Anderson’s Coleman House, and this one is all about horticulture described in beautiful technicolor. If you are into organic living, and you can’t think of anything better than to live in luxury amidst greens, this one is written for you. That is, if you hadn’t put down the book after two chapters because you are so bored and there are so many more interesting things that you could be doing instead.
Of course, this isn’t a story about poor farmers worried about their crops – that’s not romantic, oh please. The Colemans are loaded, and hence, they have all the time in the world to be beautiful, live lives of leisurely productivity free from mortal concerns, and of course espouses organic food and all other types of healthy stuff that are beyond the means of the common folk. Kayla Coleman, our heroine, is working on her PhD when she is not leading tours around organic farms, lending her free time to various charities, and speaking at various events. Our hero is Miles Parker, a former baseball legend turned entrepreneur (don’t worry, he’s still hot, muscular, and wealthy), and they meet at one of those hipster food events. Sparks fly, and that’s basically it.
And my god, this story is as long as it is because the whole thing moves at the pace of a turtle suffering from a heart attack. And it’s also horribly repetitive. The author has this tendency to describe in detail every single thing the characters do in one single day, and hence, despite me already knowing all about the heroine and her back story after the exposition in chapter one, I will continue to be bombarded with characters telling Miles all about Kayla, and then Miles meeting up to Kayla and the two then introducing themselves to one another, before Kayla once again sharing her story with him… all of this in long, interminable info dump realness. By the time I reach the middle point of this story, I feel like I’ve been reading a phone book for six thousand years and I’m ready to die now.
Things do get more interesting after the middle point – that is, more interesting compared to the previous half, because finally there is some conflict. Even then, it’s the same old “this land is mine” drama that tends to show up in stories of this sort. Meanwhile, characters still takes pages after pages to move from one end of the room to the other end, and they all love to talk about how awesome their lives are. I’m still bored.
Also, Kayla becomes quite an annoying know-it-all in this second half, lecturing Miles about how he should or shouldn’t be feeling about this and that, and I wish someone will stuff an organic eggplant down her gob.
Ultimately, Something about You is a painful read because it is so dry and devoid of fun.
