Oh, in future books, she does come up with reasons why Sam marries Mary-Lou beyond what is in OTE. I’m not saying you’d find it convincing though, just that I guess Brockmann recognized that needed more motivation.

The problem, narratively speaking, is that the answer (c) is totally a hold-over from earlier romances when sex was a punishment and you never got into the head of the hero so you had no idea what the heck he was doing. If you are going to have the heroine do something like that you have to have a compelling reason that’s been illustrated earlier. It’s like not letting the audience know the character has the power of invisibility or a magic sock puppet that will get ‘em out of trouble. If it suddenly appears everyone’s going to be all WTF. Which is why I hate the sudden, unreasonable withdrawal of affecitons.

it’s disorienting, like when Willy Wonka rides his charges and their parents down the river singing, “There’s no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There’s no knowing where we’re rowing / Or which way the river’s flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? /

Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes! The danger must be growing /

For the rowers keep on rowing / And they’re certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!
[screams]

Except with in the SEP book, it’s

There’s no earthly way of knowing/why my penis it keeps growing/when your angry eyes are glowing/and no feminine charms you’re showing.

@Angela/Lazaraspaste: I had made up a snarky quiz in my mind for this review, along the lines of :

After making mad passionate love to you, a man tells you he loves you. You think:

a. He loves me, fab.
b. Uh oh.
c. What? Did he just say “shove”? He wants to shove me? Despite the great sex, loving caresses, and consistent series of events over the past several days which would suggest to any rational person that he is falling in love with me, he must not like me at all. He wants me to get out of here and never come back!! [insert 4 paragraphs of elaborate mental gymnastics to reach this conclusion over and over again] But I know how to fix this!! I will be a cold bitch without telling him why.

If you answered (c) you are a character in a Brockmann book.

She’s given up the WWII flashbacks, incidentally. She only did that for about 3 books.

there is “reality” and then there is “romance reality”.

I think about it whenever I think of SEP’s football players marrying their pregnant baby mamas to make the kids legitimate. Tom Brady, anybody?

@Janine: @Ana: Well, then, I am in some excellent company.

@Marianne McA: As you figured out, that’s a typo. The book was published in 2001 (right around 9/11 actually, terrible timing for a book with a terrorist plot – wonder how it sold at first?). But I hear what you are saying: there is “reality” and then there is “romance reality”. Maili calls it “Romlandia” I think.

I do really appreciate the politics in the book, the realistic take on the sorry existence of homophobia and sexism, while refusing to embrace them.