Review: Stop Giggling at Inappropriate Times
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2013
There's nothing really special about this book to set it apart from the genre of a mail order bride who answers the ad of a gruff alpha male, marriage pains, followed by love and HEA.  At the end of the book, it's a typical book and the author's attempt to write some "submission" into the book fails.Where the book set itself apart, was in the character of Genevieve, and unfortumately, not in the good way.  Genevieve giggles.  Throughout the book at the oddest times.  First, she's too old to be giggling or at least for her laughter to be described as giggling and if this author really imagines her as giggling, then the character is really just odd.  Second, she's led too tough of a life to be giggling.  Third, she's described as being a smart woman so why is she giggling?  Fourth, she giggles at the oddest times and under the strangest of circumstances.  Let's see, she scared to death that her husband is going to beat her to death, but then she giggles.  And not out of fear.  She's just lost her virginity and is forced into intimacy with her husband (who she's only known for less than 24 hours) and she giggles.  Why is she giggling?  I don't have a problem with her laughing or smiling or smirking.  Or even giggling when it's appropriate.  Unfortunately, every time I read that she giggled, it stuck out as a very ugly sore thumb.Also, Genevieve isn't the only character that is so poorly developed that you aren't able to sympathize.  Trey is beyond strange to me.  His brother, Cole, is also strange.  I don't know why Adrienne is in the book.  At least Wade and his family served some sort of plot purpose.  And what has Catherine been doing all this time?  Who did she leave with when Trey divorced her?  And was she really raped by Wade or was it a consensual relationship?  That's what's wrong with this book.  I don't know what really happened.  Perhaps Trey is ok with not really knowing if he was betrayed by Catherine or if it was his jealousy that led to their eventual divorce.  But as a reader, I have a right to know what happened.  And while I understand the difficulty with secondary characters (i.e. develop them only to the extent that they are interesting but still secondary characters), this author did such a bad job with them that I think it would have been better to leave them out entirely.  After all, Trey seems to envision a life where Genevieve only sees and speaks to him. So maybe we shouldn't be introduced to other characters either.