Samhain Publishing, $4.50, ISBN 1-59998-934-4
Contemporary Romance, 2008
Stay With Me is interesting in that it is one of the few stories out there that deal with what happens after the heroine has embarked on a polyamorous relationship with two men. Do you think she will get fed up with having to deal with two husbands? Heaven knows, one husband can be a handful enough.
Well, ask Catherine Cullen-Wellesley. Both her husbands Rhys Cullen and Logan Wellesley are always too busy. You know how it is, I’m sure – business meetings, late night works, et cetera. When the two men not only stood her up in the past at way too many restaurants, they also have the nerve to suggest that they postpone the fifth anniversary trip to Jamaica, she’s had enough. She’s going to Jamaica on her own if those two men would rather pay more attention to their business than to her. Oh, and she hasn’t told them that she’s pregnant when she decides to quietly leave for her vacation. She also has to decide whether she wants to go back to them, of course.
Stay With Me makes a pleasant story if you like to read about men scrambling to pieces trying to repair the damage they have done through their own stupidity. I personally think the two men – who are interchangeable here – have been really, really stupid here and I love how their smug confidence that Catherine will forgive them for everything takes a merciless beating.
The thing is, by the time the story ends I don’t really get anything else from this story. I don’t know why Catherine wants to take back these two block-headed twits because I don’t know why she loves them in the first place. In this story, the two block-headed twits don’t seem that lovable to me. Therefore, I find this a better story of men groveling desperately rather than a romance novel.
So, if you are in a mood where all men seem like thoughtless bastards and you want to read something that will let you vent off some steam, this book may be good for you if you aren’t keen on making all the way to the nearest bookstore to check out some of Christina Dodd’s more emasculating male-grovels-oh-so-prettily stories. But for a more “complete” polyamorous story, I’d suggest maybe some of the author’s other stories.
