Kimani, $6.50, ISBN 978-1-335-21681-6
Contemporary Romance, 2018
Event planner Sofia Silva caught her fiancé texting naughty things to some floozy, and given that that wasn’t his first time doing that particular tango, she called off their engagement shortly before this story begins. However, her family is very conservative and in their eyes, she is practically married already, so what she wants to do right now is to get that cheating SOB to still play at being engaged to her, until they can break it off quietly after her mother’s upcoming birthday party. And then she meets the hot, sexy, and of course loaded like lead Jonathan Gunther…
I hope I haven’t made Nadine Gonzalez’s Unconditionally Mine seem exciting, because my god, the whole thing is an autistic blow-by-blow detailed account of everything these people do day by day. What they eat, what they wear, where they go to, whom they chit-chatted with when they went there, the back story of these people (most of whom are one-scene wonders so who the hell cares, really), where they eat next, where they go to next, whom they talked to when they reached the next place, the back story of those people… oh my, after a while I wonder whether this whole thing is some kind of elaborate joke. This isn’t a story, it’s an itinerary. Our hero and heroine supposedly have jobs, but they spend all their time swimming in pools at luxurious mansions, chatting with friends while shopping or dilly-dallying at hours when most people with jobs would normally be… you know, working, and best of all, Jonathan is a lawyer that apparently doesn’t need to have any clients to tend to.
The author has a chatty, bubbly writing style, but the humor here is on the bewildering side. For example, the author’s idea of show me how feisty and sassy Sofia is is by having our heroine accuse the hero of all kinds of nonsense the moment they meet. When she realizes that he is a lawyer, for instance, she demands to know whether his clients are killers. What? I wish there is some kind of context to make Sofia’s question seem sensible, but no, she just asks things like this out of the blue and in the process comes off like a vapid idiot. Because of this sort of “comedy”, the whole thing is just a head-scratching mess. It’s like following a comedy that is being played out in a language I’m not familiar with.
On the whole, this story is like one of those meandering diary-style reality TV show on some vapid people’s lives, only, this particular show doesn’t have skanks, hos, douchebags. and other kinds of sleazy things that may make the whole thing come off as kind of Jackie Collins-style guilty pleasure. Jonathan’s idea of sexy “how do you do” borders on sexual harassment, while I have no idea how to even describe the mess that is heroine, and these two spend the entire story playing out a most boring “Dear Diary” kind of life.
If you ask me why you should buy Nadine Gonzalez’s Unconditionally Mine, well, my answer is that maybe it’s because you are her family member or friend and are hence obligated to. Whether you should read it… well, I suppose you can always pretend that you have done so and quickly check Goodreads for a plot synopsis or something if you have to gush about how awesome it is. Seriously, with so many books published these days, there is no reason to pick this one when there are so many more interesting options out there.
