Kimani, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-335-45841-4
Contemporary Romance, 2019

In Kianna Alexander’s Then Came You, we meet Robyn Chance, a veterinarian that will also inherit Cattle Chance Enterprises, one of the biggest ranching and beef companies in New Mexico.

However, she wants to see the outside world, or at least life outside of New Mexico, so she accepts a post at the San Diego Wildlife Conservatory. She has three weeks to pack and settle her things here, and already she is wondering how to tell her parents and everyone else.

Meanwhile, her people hire Troy Monroe as the new ranch hand. Now, if someone thought it’d be cute to throw back at me some guy that stood me up at junior prom and left me devastated, that person can expect me to treat them like they have never existed in my life. Hey, that’s why I’m not starring in a romance novel, throwing my life away for a douchebag. Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself.

For a while, this one is a pretty unremarkable but okay story of these two reigniting their romance—or whatever passes for romance when one was in junior high, that is. Sure, the characters all talk like they were guests on a talk show given a script to memorize and monologue to the camera, but eh, I’ve read worse.

No, my biggest issue, and the sole overriding issue that makes me see red is Troy.

This is a guy that happily decamped when he felt like it, but now he acts like he’s the arbiter of other people’s loyalty to their family and hometown just because he is forced to come back due to his “father’s mother” falling sick, and spending 24 hours in town now makes him the expert.

Worse, when he realizes that Robyn is leaving, he insists that she has “wronged” him, because how dare she set him up like he set her up ages ago for ditching her without a word? He loves her, so she must stay here. She must!

Because, you see, all that matters is what he wants. Does Robyn have a good reason to want to take up the post in San Diego? It never crosses his mind that she may. All he cares about is that she dares to want to leave him, and so, he’s going to be a supreme douchebag to her.

Naturally, she decides to stay in the end because she loves him, and she needs to be honest with herself or some nonsense. I can only hope she doesn’t wake up one day to realize that she’s thrown away the best years of her life on a selfish piece of chewed gum soiled by fecal material.

Now, you may be saying right now: don’t be so hard on the author. For all I know, this whole story is an allegory or something, with Troy being the author and Robyn being the Kimani line, so the author is just mad that the line dares to go away just like that.

That or, who knows, maybe this story is the author’s revenge; she wants to inflict as much hurt on the people in Kimani that will have to read this thing as she walks out the door.

Still, that’s no excuse to involve a poor innocent bystander like me, surely? Don’t they have shrinks for this kind of angst?

So, in conclusion: to paraphrase Lily Allen, fuck you very much, Troy Monroe; please don’t stay in touch.