Mills & Boon, £3.30, ISBN 978-0-263-89026-6
Contemporary Romance, 2012
Michelle Reid’s The Man Who Risked It All is a formulaic Modern romance through and through.
Yes, as usual, the title is a lie. The so-called hero holds all the power, cards, whatever that he has nothing at risk in this story. If anything, I’m the one risking my health here, as this thing is pretty good at causing sharp blood pressure spikes.
The hero is, naturally, an asshole, only this time Franco Tolle comes off as deranged in a psychotic manchild way.
A few years ago, he shagged and wed the then innocent 19-year old Lexi Hamilton, and her being a teenager when she gave it all up to Franco is mentioned quite a bit by the author to let me know that I’m supposed to find this particular age gap romantic or sexy or something.
Mind you, she may be 19 but he’s one that comes off as a mean side of 13. You see, he heard from his BFF that this BFF bandy-shagged his wife, so what does he do? Instead of confronting the wife, he sent her a tape of him getting it on with another woman and dumped her.
She had a miscarriage as a result, but hey, don’t fret, people. In Modern romances, miscarriages are like dropping an inconvenient deuce; it’s just a tidy little angst package to create some twisted conflict in which the heroine will feel guilty for some reason and the hero will somehow find the miscarriage a stepping stone to call the heroine more names.
Anyway, when the story opens, Franco finally learns that he may have done an oopsie when the BFF brags to him that he’d lied to Franco. Oh well, he doesn’t have to do much to make amends before the next thing I know, he’s badly injured in a race boat accident and his daddy forces Lexi to go to Franco’s bedside like a dutiful wife must. I can see the appeal of the men in that family, I tell you—prime target practice for one’s upcoming chainsaw-killing spree.
Thus begins the familiar song and dance of the heroine having to somehow pass the hero’s various purity tests to prove that she is worthy of his love. You’d think she’s the victim here, but no, he’s the prize that she has debase herself to in order to win his affections.
In other words, this is a Modern romance through and through. Other people may call this story a showcase of toxic relationship, but for a Modern romance, it’s just another day that ends with a Y.
So, aside from the fact that it is a quintessential Modern romance and hence an acquired taste, what’s wrong with it?
Well, this one doesn’t read like a coherent story at all. The two main characters exhibit inconsistent, almost bipolar personalities and actions more for the sake of plot than staying true to their characters.
Hence, one moment Franco is apologizing and swearing to be nice and true, but a few paragraphs later he’d be accusing the heroine of all shades of harlotry. Lexi would say no against something but she would go ahead and do it anyway, and she also glosses over or dismisses Franco’s many, many heinous treatments of her because this story needs a happy ending and the author would force them together anyway even if doing so would upset the balance of the cosmos and cause Cthulhu to break free from R’lyeh only to shake its head at the state of humanity.
The whole thing has me thinking that perhaps the author had given up even before she started on this thing. She likely took one look at the bullet plot points emailed to her by her editor and realized that she had written this same old story one time too many already. So, she just stringed words together to cover all the plot points, not caring whether her story makes sense or not, as she knew the editor would likely just chuck the whole thing through a spellchecker and then call it a day.
This story feels so much like the product of such a manufacturing writing process. There is no joy or spark in it. Even the hero’s wanton and random acts of cruelty feel perfunctory, included here because they are mandated by the editor.
Thus, this one is a big yawn. It is terrible, but it doesn’t make me feel any particularly strong sense of loathing or anything else toward the brute of a hero and the spineless wretch of a heroine. Instead, I feel like it’s just another day in the Modern circle of hell.
The only troubling feeling I get out of this is my apathy—is it because this story is so dull or is it because I am becoming desensitized to the wretches with subhuman levels of intelligence that populate the pages of so many Modern romances? The latter possibility is most distressful to contemplate. Perhaps I should see a neurologist?
