Kimani, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-335-45843-8
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Kayla Perrin’s Undeniable Passion is a textbook example of a very predictable, by the numbers Kimani romance. I can practically see the items on the must-have list being ticked off one by one.
City gal Rita Osgood returns to small town of Sheridan Falls for her mother’s wedding to some new bloke in that mother’s life. (√)
She has to drive very slowly because people in a small town are all old and do things like stopping their vehicles in the middle of the road to talk to some passerby. (√)
Our heroine is frustrated and annoyed because she’s a city gal, you know. (√)
She for some reason daydreams and yes, runs into some guy’s big, expensive car. (√)
They exchange words and she thinks that he is rude because he dares to be annoyed at her hitting his vehicle. (√)
He turns out to be the guy she is supposed to meet. (√)
My, I have never read anything like this before! Oh wait, I have—way too many times, in fact.
The hero is Keith Burke, a realtor, or Realtor as for some reason the author wants to capitalize the R. Maybe it’s to drive home that Keith’s penis is capital, high, and proud.
Oh, and of course he’s wealthy. There’s always a super-duper rich and single bloke in every small town in America. More than one, if this guy has a passel of sequel bait buddies to show off, but alas, Kimani is dead so that’s the end of the line for the bold and beautiful.
On top of the whole formulaic feel of things here, the author decides to pile on the issues. These aren’t even interesting issues; rather, they are stale, overused, and played-out issues that had been done to death, undeath, resurrection, death again, undeath again…
Surprise, surprise—Rita has oodles of mommy and daddy issues. These issues keep being brought up as an excuse for the heroine to put out but still whining all the same that love is fake, love is a dagger up one’s rear end, and other melodramatic proclamations just because Mommy and Daddy didn’t hug her and one another often enough.
Meanwhile, here’s another shocker: Keith has evil ho and trust issues the wazoo, which is a convenient excuse for him to go into his melodramatic “You… you… we’re through!” mode when her ex shows up being an ass.
Naturally, he decides to join in the ass parade because she doesn’t immediately take a buzz saw and murder the hell out of the ex just to assure him that she belongs to him, only him, and him only.
Sure, issues are fine, but the author spends way too much time piling on the issues instead of tissues. As a result, these characters come off as bags of neurotic tics and unhealthy trust issues, but somehow I’m to believe a convenient reconciliation in the last two pages will be enough to magically erase all of these characters’ issues for that heavily ever after.
I feel that this story would have turned out, at least more believable, if not better, had the author let all the issues issue come to a boil a bit earlier in the story.
Let the characters yell and scream at one another, let everything come out—that would be healthier than keeping everything pent up inside and seething in quiet resentment, at least.
Then, the author could have let the characters spend the last few chapters hashing out the issues, so that I am more convinced that they are in a better state of mind to get hitched by the time the happy ending arrives.
As it is, this one has two people that can barely trust one another deciding to get married anyway, because the author has run out of space to keep the story going. Somehow, they will be happy forever after. Yeah, I’m not sure I buy that.
Kayla Perrin has been around for a while, so it’s not a surprise that this one is polished and readable from a technical standpoint. There is nothing about the romance that screams undeniable and passion, however, which is a pity indeed.
