Review: Cheating "hero"
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 2, 2013
Sweet holiday romance? With a cheating hero? I think not.Ben Sheridan is already in a relationship when he meets Abby Devereux. Not that this stops him from asking her out. Admittedly, he's egged on by his friend Dean, who doesn't like Ben's girlfriend. Still, Ben's a big boy and is responsible for his own decisions. He asks Dean, "Is it horrible that I don't feel that bad about asking Abby out?" Yes. Yes, it is.They meet up, do the horizontal tango, she invites him to join her family for Christmas. But he pretends that he's spending Christmas with Dean's parents, which he does every year... except this year, he's agreed to follow his girlfriend home for Christmas with her folks. Of course, he can't tell Abby that. Because she's not supposed to know he has a girlfriend.Abby is all hopeful about the budding relationship because Ben's a great guy and she has a wonderful time with him. Then she arrives at her parents' home, and her sister walks in the door with Ben in tow... and all hell breaks loose.Somehow, the author wants us to continue believing that Ben is a good guy despite it all. Although Abby does struggle with feelings of anger and betrayal (I'll give the author props for that), she also remembers how much she liked/likes Ben, so there's a war going on inside her. At the same time, she feels it's hopeless, because how could she possibly poach her sister's boyfriend? In the end, she comes to a place where she tells herself he didn't lie to her, because she'd never asked him if he was already attached. Seriously, if a guy asks me out, don't you think I would naturally believe him free of other commitments? Do I really have to ASK?!So, if you like this scenario, feel free to read the book. Obviously, lots of readers didn't feel this was a turn-off (there are 11 five-star reviews and one four-star review as I'm writing this). But to me, it was just... yuck! What kind of guy does that? How could Abby ever trust him again?The author tries to make us feel sympathetic for Ben and paint him as a "victim" of Abby's man-eating sister, Lucy. This doesn't quite work because, as I said earlier, Ben is a big boy. He knew what was the right thing to do. He knew he should end the relationship with Lucy before starting something with Abby, but he didn't. So what if Lucy is as a promiscuous spoilt brat who schemed to get hold of Ben? That just makes me think he's a weak man. He doesn't know what he wants; he's only known Lucy for a month and already she's his girlfriend? And now he meets Abby and within four days, he's sleeping with her.I also thought the author went overboard with the contrast in Abby and Lucy's characters, to the point that they feel like caricatures, not real flesh-and-blood people. Abby is practically a saint, the kind of person who is perenially cheerful, loved by everyone, hard-working, kind-hearted, generous, thoughtful. Lucy, on the other hand, is lazy, manipulative, irresponsible, self-centred, and generally has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Then why does Abby love her so much and feel so loyal to her? It didn't make sense.If the characters had been different -- if the "hero" had been honourable, if Abby could've found some other reason for forgiving Ben instead of "he never lied to me, since I never asked him if he had a girlfriend", if the author had given some reasons to help me understand why Lucy is the way she is, I would have rated this story four stars, because I liked the writing itself and the way the author developed the story. It was sweet, yes... EXCEPT for the cheating hero.