I know a culture where it’s frowned upon for someone to marry into a family someone else in your own family already married into. Hmmm….did that sentence even make sense? Sorry in advance! Example is a couple who is married, then his brother and her sister end up dating then get married. In more recent years these unwritten rules are a bit more lax but there is still gossip that goes around when something similar occurs.

The closest I’ve seen that resembles this book’s plot is a woman died and her best friend married her husband. This was an older couple and it was a little scandalous when it happened but I think it was mainly because it was very soon after the wife’s death – I’m talking months. But in the end no one knows what went on between them and it’s their lives so their decisions. The adult kids had some difficulty with it but in the end wanted to see their parents happy.

Enough of my rambling…

It’s the women’s fiction/romance ratio that concerns me. I want romance. I don’t mind massive conflict and/or massive moral issues–where’s the fun otherwise? But I want my romance centered on the love story.

(Or, if it isn’t completely romance centered, as tends to be the case for Kristan Higgins’s books, it has to be fun.)

Do you think it would work for me given my very narrow and demanding tastes then?

I haven’t read any of JKJ, and this book seems loaded (overloaded?) with issues. I can relate to the “hmmm” aspect of the rather-quick-to-start-new-relationship-aren’t-we? plot point, as I pretty much ended one marriage in the same nanosecond as I started the new one. Surrogacy is an interesting wrinkle that, of course, gets ironed out completely in the HEA.

But what most caught my attention is the point about the difficulties that the kids experience. I’m re-reading some Glenda Sanders’ Harlequin Temptations in preparation of a guest blog post at Monkey Bear Reviews, and she too handles some painful home truths in her romances. I don’t mind a tear or two just before the HEA (in fact I rather enjoy it!), but Sanders had me really hurting almost from the beginning by a plausibly homeless heroine in A Human Touch (1991).

Back to JKJ, though — a lawyer enjoying a sauna before court? I don’t know whether to envy the guy, or be disgusted by his arrogance! I’m usually on the courthouse steps early and anxious to boot!

I generally love these more complex romances, although I prefer to have scenes where I can see the couple happy, too. I’m cynical enough to need that to believe in happy endings.

I will look for other titles by this author that don’t hit quite so close to the personal for me!

They’re not “easy” reads. She doesn’t skimp on the conflict. And, this can’t be stated firmly enough, she writes the kind of books that are a smack in the face of the stereotypes many readers have of category (OK, Harlequin) romances.

No, people. They’re not all fluffy, escapist fantasies about Greek tycoons, virgin secretaries and secret babies. You can find fulfilling, thought-provoking reads in category format. Truly. You just need to put your stereotyping on the shelf, roll up your sleeves, and be willing to look for them.

I was hoping to avoid a JKJ glom – because dang, her backlist is impressive and dang, my TBR is mammoth. Sigh.

Sleeping with the wrong brother in the dark, though? Gross!