Genre: Harlequin Blaze (Contemporary Romance)
POV: 3rd Person from both heroine and hero’s persepctives
Sensuality: Hot
Violence: None
My Grade: C+
Midnight Resolutions by Kathleen O’Reilly has a cute premise. Unfortunately, my dislike of the money-obsessed heroine negatively impacted my overall impression of this book.
Ian Cumberland is a former investment banker whose job was a victim of the economy. He now works as an employment counselor at The Manhattan Office for Employment Displacement. (For some strange reason, the book’s blurb describes Ian as a temp agency owner, but that’s not accurate.) Ian has a drastically reduced income in comparison to his days as a banker, but he’s surprised at the amount of job satisfaction he gets from helping unemployed people find work.
Rose Hildebrande has always dreamed of marrying money. She’s spent her whole life preparing for a wealthy husband, saving her virginity for Mr Rich. She schmoozed her way into a job as personal assistant to a society dame and tries hard to emulate her. I despised Rose on so many levels it is not funny.
Ian and Rose meet by chance on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Rose loses her date in the crowd and Ian helps her locate her cell phone. When the clock strikes Midnight, they share a passionate kiss before Rose runs back to the eminent surgeon who is her official date for the evening.
When Ian places an ad on Craigslist looking for his mysterious New Year Cinderella, Ian and Rose reconnect and start an affair. For some bizarre reason, Rose decides not to save her virginity for Mr Rich after all. Her attraction to Ian is, apparently, something she needs to get out of her system before she marries her surgeon.
The rest of the story follows a predictable path. Rose wavers between Ian and the surgeon. Ian falls in love with Rose and tries to persuade her to choose him. Rose rejects him when he refuses to take a lucrative banking position and wishes to remain an employment counselor. Naturally, Rose eventually sees the light and they supposedly live happily ever after.
Had it not been for Kathleen O’Reilly’s superior writing style and Ian’s character, I would never have finished this book and/or my grade would have been much lower. I found Rose’s obsession with marrying well repellent. If she had career ambitions for herself, I could have accepted it, but her snobbishness and old-fashioned insistence that a man should support her was nauseating. I wanted Ian to find a woman who could appreciate him for the man he was, not the man she wanted him to become.
{ 12 comments }
I think I may have read some of her Blazes (will have to check) but I don’t recall. I just know that lately I’ve heard quite a bit of buzz about this author, though I don’t think this one is one I will be reading. I feel the same way you do about the greedy heroine. Instant dislike. Sorry it wasn’t a better book, but I appreciate your thoughts and will steer clear of this one. Thanx Sarah!
Oy, this heroine does not sound likeable.
@Stacy ~: I’ve enjoyed some of Kathleen O’Reilly’s previous books, especially Hot Under Pressure and the Sexy O’Sullivans trilogy. This one just didn’t do it for me.
@Janicu: Nope!
Well, I’m disappointed — I like Kathleen O’Reilly (not that I know her personally, but you get the impression she’d be a cool person to hang out with) and I’ve enjoyed her books.
But this is the problem with conflict that’s generated internally — if the hero is perfect for the heroine what insanity is keeping her from clutching him to her bosom (figuratively or literally) and not letting go? You kind of see what O’Reilly might have been aiming for — “This has been my childhood dream and I can’t let it go,” but couldn’t she have been more receptive to his explanation that sometimes greater happiness trumps greater wealth?
I think the insufficiently compelling conflict (or in this case, the ineffably distasteful conflict) is more likely to be a problem in Harlequin Blaze books — all that hawt sex and still they can’t be a couple? Really?
I haven’t read Midnight Resolutions (and, like Stacy, I may not bother — thanks, Sarah, for reading this book so that we don’t have to), but I have read several of O’Reilly’s other books. Here’s what makes the Blaze line challenging for even writers of O’Reilly’s quality: There has to be lots of hawt sex. Done. But we all know a relationship is about more than hawt sex, so there should be an equal amount of relationship stuff. Only that’s not really the premise of the Blaze line. I hate to sound (even for a nanosecond) like Alan Elsner, but love is not the same as sex. I wouldn’t want to read about a couple who didn’t have (at a minimum) major sexual attraction/tension, but they still have to come to love each other. And imho, that’s not what’s going on between the sheets (figuratively or literally — O’Reilly’s couples don’t always wait for a bed!).
Thanks for the great review, Sarah!
@Magdalen: I suspect my negative reaction to Rose is due to my real life experience of women like her. You know the type: they trade on their looks to get ahead and seem to think netting a rich husband will solve all their problems. Gah!
Ew! This heroine doesn’t sound appealing at all. I have heard a lot of good things about O’Reilly, but maybe I should avoid this one.
Unfortunately I agree wholeheartedly with your review. O’Reilly is an auto-buy for me because normally I love her books, but this one was so disappointing. I had exactly the same problems you had, and found myself far more interested in the brief secondary romance between Ian’s best friends.
In addition to all the issues you mentioned, I also couldn’t figure out why, given her backstory, Rose was so determined to make herself financially dependent on a man. Wouldn’t that be the exact opposite of what someone who’d been through that want? Wasn’t that the position that her mother was in? Why would she want to duplicate her mother’s dependence, albeit with a much richer man? That didn’t make any sense to me.
I’m still looking forward to O’Reilly’s next release in May, because one dud won’t make me give up on an author, but I’m really hoping that the May book is nothing like Midnight Resolutions.
@Jill D.: No, I wouldn’t start with this book if you’ve never read Kathleen O’Reilly before.
@Katie Mack: I’m also looking forward to her next book. Like you, I’m not going to write her off on the basis of one disappointing book.
Thanks for this review! I was on the fence about getting this when Hot Under Pressure left me disappointed. Now I know to stay away and go reread Sex, Straight Up.
I was talking yesterday with a gf about my age — we were talking about jewelry & she said she had never bought any for herself: all had been gifts from family/former dh. In contrast, my dd is saving madly for a piece of very expensive bling — I cannot imagine how bizarre she would find this story. A young woman saving her virginity for Mr. Richie Rich? Maybe Doris Day could play her in the movie! I didn’t particularly care for Hot Under Pressure and as for this — thanks Sarah for reviewing it for us all
Have to agree with Magdalenb — hawt hawt hawt sex in this particular HQN line — sort of prescribes the storyline doesn’t it?
Uhg, Rose needs to be shot. Then Ian and the surgeon can have a relationship.
Wow, I must really be in the minority here… but I loved this book. Yes, Rose was a pain in the butt, yet O’Reilly really let her past become an integral part of the story. By the end of the book, I was rooting for Rose and Ian to make it work… As for Ian, one of the best heroes I’ve read in a really long time. His POV was authentic and allowed for a truly original charater.