Review: Donovan's Child (Bravo Family Ties) by Christine Rimmer

Donovan's Child (Bravo Family Ties) by Christine Rimmer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I picked this one up because it's a RITA nominee I was able to find in the bottomless abyss that is my public library's uncatalogued book racks.

Ready for this? I was actually really enjoying this book up until the part where the hero and heroine got together. Trippy, right? Talk about a mindfuck. It was like the heroine lost all her spunk and became a limpet. Here's an example. Dude's in a wheelchair, right? So he rents a handicapable van that's going to meet him at the airport. His plan is to get into the van and drive to meet the heroine at the house he's going to be staying at. So she wants to meet him at the airport and he says, "No. I'll have the van waiting. There's no point." Totally logical and full of common sense, right? And then she thinks to herself, "[O]f course there was a point. To see him. To be with him as soon as she possibly could." She talks herself out of saying anything "[j]ust because she loved him didn't mean she had to turn into some wimpy clingy vine" (pg 176). It says all the right things, but I felt the implication was, oh, she's being noble and he's being a jackass.

In the beginning of the book, when the hero was being a jackass, she was a charming smart-ass who didn't let him get away with shit. Now she's in love with him and the smart-assery went 'poof!' It's just not healthy. If the heroine was my friend, I'd be getting ready for a 'Have you thought this through?' talk. It all works out, of course, because they break up for like three weeks, the hero goes away, apparently has some kind of off-screen epiphany, and then comes back to grovel. The groveling was well done and, to her credit, she didn't take him back as soon as he showed up. Still, I would have like to seen the hero's revelation because it felt like it was very convenient and out of nowhere.