Review: Brava!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2014
Back when Nia Forrester briefly introduced the character Chris Scaife in Commitment, I was poised to dislike him very much. In him I saw shades of Suge Knight crossed with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. I think I may have said this to Ms. Forrester at some point, too. Fast forward to a few days ago, when Afterwards was deeply discounted, I went scrambling to my kindle to make sure I had a copy. Thankfully, my copy was waiting snugly in my kindle for the day I would crack it open and give it a serious read (Yeah, my TBR list is so long, I’m afraid I’ll never get to read all the books I have in there. Just saying.).When my current work-in-progress decided to go south on me, I began to read Afterwards, and a miraculous thing happened. While I went into it expecting to dislike Mr. Scaife, his present-financially-but-otherwise-absentee father status notwithstanding, I found myself about a third of the way through the book actually rooting for the brother. What the heck? Somehow Ms. Forrester was actually able to make this character likeable, despite his taciturn demeanor, his patent disdain for women in general due to his history with two very beautiful, yet shallow baby mamas. As a classically flawed character, there were so many layers to him and his emotions, one just couldn’t help but look forward to peeling them back and seeing the many facets of Chris Scaife reveal themselves to you.Robyn was another matter. While I have seen many women like her in real life, and I felt like she was at least on the surface, the kind of woman Chris needed to bring him out of the carefully crafted shell he’d constructed over time, there were many ways in which she sold herself short. Granted the ex had done a real number on her and her psyche. There is a difficulty women, in particular, suffer when they believe infertility is their fault. Couple that with a selfish man who doesn’t quite know how to handle a star of a woman in both academia and the career world, you’ve got a recipe for a failed marriage. Sometimes women have a hard time letting go of the guilt of failure. While these circumstances for Robyn were unfortunate, as a reader, you so wanted to see her triumph over the sub-par ex, but it crippled her relationship with Chris in ways, though not irredeemable, it took so much longer to convince him that there could be more for them.This didn’t make me dislike Robyn’s character in any way,  it just makes for a more delicious story conflict-wise, and gives one the desire to throw one’s reading device when the character doesn’t see things as clearly as you do. Afterwards is a great read, and I look forward to reading Afterburn, which also now happens to be on my TBR List, taunting me!