BWL Publishing, $0.99, ISBN 978-1-77299-948-8
Contemporary Romance, 2015
Once upon a time, Cate Rollins and Rick Somers were bumping uglies, until he decided that she had no place in his future and left her ten minutes after their graduation. He wanted to be a doctor, you see, and she wanted to be a small town gal, so whatever, bye. Now she is back in town, and he wonders why she isn’t running up to him with open arms. I know men are simple creatures, but this fellow makes it hard for me to decide whether he’s just that or an entitled douche-nozzle twat.
Oh, and she has a daughter. Guess who the father is.
Seriously, I have come across many kinds of heroes in my romance stories, but this is the first time in ages that I come across a bloke that I am firmly convinced to be a hateful piece of crap. Well, outside of a Harlequin Presents story, that is.
Rick realizes that Cate has had their kid, so he went, oh, okay, so he dumped her and left without a word. Surely she could have called him if he knocked her up, though? Sure, that didn’t mean that he would come back for her, but that’s a good thing, as if they got married, he’d just end up resenting her. TL;DR: he letting her be a single mother is actually good for her.
“Why? You chose to forget the times we had unprotected sex. Did you even consider I might be pregnant?”
He glared. “Why would I?”
This guy is a doctor, and he doesn’t seem to get that unprotected sex may lead to pregnancy. Did I mention that he is a doctor?
“I’m sure your mother’s attitude toward your father colored your answers. Remember I once heard her diatribe about the man.”
The asshole left her and the author now tries to make it sound like Cate’s mad because she is brainwashed by her mother. My god. The author is hitting all the DARVO red flags: she is gaslighting me!
It is only by the mid-point of the story that the loathsome troll decides that he should feel guilty about what he had done… well, for a few seconds. He decides that he’d now “overcome the challenges” and get to know his daughter now.
I admit by that point I can’t take it anymore. I start to quickly skim the story, eyes out for parts where he sustains horrid injuries or experience a painful end. Alas, I get instead contrived plot developments to throw Cate again and again to Rick, as if she had really no option but to put out to this asshole. The people around her keep telling her, oh, her daughter needs to know her baby daddy, but come on, even if that had been the case, that does not mean she has to marry him. The guy had been only a sperm donor; he’s a thoughtless, selfish dirt bag that never had any convincing transformation of character to qualify as husband material.
Throw in some zodiac compatibility nonsense and the author is just adding salt over an open, festering wound. For the romance to work, this one needs plenty of screaming, shouting, tears, and maybe some things thrown across the room at the asshole’s head. He needs to grovel, to show remorse, and to demonstrate that he has changed to be a good hubby and daddy. Instead, the author seems afraid to let him take full accountability of his actions, which is only made worse by Cate’s single motherhood being not exactly a bed of roses. Our heroine doesn’t need a doctor, she needs a lawyer to milk as much child support from this POS as possible.
