Rachel Gibson’s books are a bit hit and miss for me. Unfortunately, True Love & Other Disasters falls into the latter category.
Faith Duffy is a former playmate and trophy wife to octogenarian billionaire, Virgil Duffy. When Virgil dies, he leaves her his prize possession: the Chinooks, a professional hockey team. Faith knows nothing about hockey and fully intends to sell the team to her stepson, Landon. When Landon makes the tactical error of humiliating Faith in front of the team, she sees red and decides not to sell after all.
Ty Savage is Chinooks captain. He’s a Canadian player and new to the Chinooks, replacing the former captain after he had an accident. Ty is disgusted when he learns his team is now in the hands of a Playboy bunny. Ambitious to a fault, Ty is determined to win the Stanley Cup that season and doesn’t want that goal jeopardized by a ditsy team owner.
Naturally, Faith and Ty are irresistibly drawn to one another and begin an affair. Their future happiness is threatened by Faith’s insecurity, Ty’s ambition and a rather ridiculous suspense subplot involving Landon Duffy.
The premise of the story is fun but it ultimately failed to live up to its potential. Comparisons to Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s It Had to Be You are inevitable, and True Love & Other Disasters is by far the inferior book.
Faith and Ty are cardboard characters and I failed to connect with either of them. Faith’s mother and Ty’s father are caricatures who annoyed me in every scene in which they appeared. The only person I actually liked in the book was Faith’s assistant, Jules.
But my principal criticism of this book is its myriad of inconsistencies. I’ve already blogged/bitched about Ty’s father being in his late fifties on page 5 and suddenly being 65 years old on page 43. There are several such incongruities throughout the book. Most galling, however, is the depiction of Virgil Duffy. In Gibson’s previous hockey books, Virgil was described a cantankerous and lecherous old man. In this book, he’s suddenly an expert on all things hockey and a benevolent father figure to Faith.
If you’re a particular fan of sport romances, you might want to give this a go. Other than that, I’d pass. Grade: C
