Comadrin's Topics (139)

It wasn't bad, and I enjoyed it, but geez he was dumb. I understand that he had a certain amount of trauma, but his mother and sister adored him, and he only saw then once in four years? Sheesh!

indium is right. Cleo is a far better person than Sarah. Sarah was a moron. It's really hard to believe that she's an attorney, as she is naive and susceptible to manipulation to the point that she should have a signboard that says "Gaslight Me." With no evidence whatsoever, she listens to Mr. Slimeball Divorce Attorney, and believes her husband is cheating on her. She never bothers to question why a colleague (who is always telling her that she and her husband don't suit each other) would be investigating her husband. Then, as soon as her husband gets photographs of her entering a hotel room, she (who has always been shy and retiring in bed) basically jumps his bones and comes on like gangbusters. When he responds to this, she goes leaves because he's "dominating her through sex." She can never forgive him for not trusting her when he's presented with the undoctored photos of her going into a hotel room with a man, even though she's perfectly ready to believe that he's cheating on her on the say-so of her supercilious fellow lawyer. One would think that, after law school, bar exams, etc, that she would realize that someone who has ALL the answers about how she should handle her personal life obviously has an agenda, but NOOOO. He is also constantly appealing to her snobbishness about her husband. Then, after all is disclosed, including the colleague's devious and totally illegal methods, she merely quits the law firm they work for (after all, her husband is richer than Croesus) and lets him go on his illegal, unethical way, despite having sworn an oath to uphold the law. She's not only a moron and a snob who looks down on her hard-working, uncultured, and "under educated" spouse, she's a hypocrite as an attorney at law. Scott could do far better for himself than her.

ML basically runs from her moronic chauvinist of a father and ends up with a drama queen of a painter.

Alright. The brother was a weak punk who needed to have his ass kicked up and down the street. A thief is a thief, no matter who you're stealing from. Angie was an idiot and very immature, and was allowing herself to be her brother's enabler.
All that said: Roque (sounds like his nickname after he was named for a French cheese) was 30 years old when they were married, she was 20, and her brother would have been 15 or 16. He's 10 frickin' years older than her, for God's sake. He holds all, and I mean ALL, the power in the relationship. When he yells that he only married her out of pity, what the f*** is she supposed to think. They all acted immature as hell, but when the only supposed adult (thirty-something CEO banker) is acting no different than a 13 year old who hasn't gotten what he wants for his birthday, I know where the real blame lies. His actions on getting back together with her (nearly raping her, forcing her to tell him she hadn't been with other men, then smirking and leaving her alone) seemed as though they were designed to break her mind more than anything else. I cannot see it as anything but him acting as a vengeful sadist, and any relationship with him would be toxic as hell.
I'm 8 years older than my wife, and we were married just before she turned 19. She was pretty mature for her age, but I realized that if I started acting like a domineering a**hole, she would have run screaming, and rightly so. Roque's conduct was a deal-breaker.

Nick was a pretty narcissistic guy, but the way that his wife immediately believed her scumbag of a father and wouldn't listen to a word Nick said was abjectly stupid. Her father had lived with Nick for seven years, and given him his name, but all of a sudden hated a little boy when he found out Nick wasn't his biological son. The instant he found out who his daughter married and who his grandson's father was, he did everything he could to break up their marriage. And she went along with it. Yes, Nick was keeping some dumb secrets (which she knew, even though she didn't know what they were). So she takes their son, and goes back to live with toxic daddy. This after introducing the son to his father and letting them both get attached. Nick was a twerp, but she was a real piece of work. She's just lucky he didn't take her to court. Telling the judge he can't see his son because he wanted his inheritance would sound REAL good in the courtroom. The look on the judge's face would be priceless.

His animals weren't exploited wild animals. They were rescued animals. Perhaps bringing them into the ring isn't the best way to rehab animals, but it was what he could do with the money he had (check out how much money WWF wrestlers get vice how much money Vince MacMahon {our president's buddy} gets). I had a friend in college, an exchange student from Japan. She told me of a landowner in her prefecture. He was pretty rich, as he had a five acre tiger preserve on his property. He built it for a female tiger from a zoo that was closing down, and she was going to be euthanized. She said that he fed the tiger by hand, and played with her for a couple of hours per day. Apparently, he would only allow a few people to visit at one time, and had a large animal veterinarian on hand. It's been nearly twenty years since I knew her, and I imagine that Hime (the name he gave the tigress) has passed on. I can only hope that he, and others like him, are still taking care of real rescued animals. I support the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park and their charities and research. I actually hunt, but only what I can eat and NOTHING that is even remotely endangered. The idea of trophy hunting is anathema to me. If I was really rich, having a rehabilitation facility for big cats would be a dream for me. Tigers, Cheetahs, Leopards, Lions, Cougars, Jaguars, and all the smaller wild cats are a passion of mine. I would love to have an Iriomote Cat Habitat and Preserve. I just hope that others with more money than me can have the same passion for these wonderful animals that I share with the author.

Although the plot of this story wasn't as good as the second part of the trilogy, I enjoyed it because I really liked Flora's character. When she realized that she was in love, she didn't immediately turn into a sentimental idiot. Her character stayed pretty much the same. The author built us a character for her, and stayed with it; something a lot of authors seem to have trouble doing.

I really enjoyed reading a romance where the characters were fairly level-headed, decent people. There was none of that "instant attraction where the FL meets the ML and his studliness is so overwhelming that she almost gets pregnant from breathing the air around him." That was a lousy trope to start with, and it's been done to death (and getting worse each time, seemingly). This had two estranged brothers interested in the same girl, but neither was consumed by hatred and vengeance. The only character that kind of annoyed me was the cousin. She definitely took sides, and came across as something like a commode spy or the old Captain's Narker of the Royal Navy.

Even though I had quite decent parents, I've never understood that peculiar belief, which seems not to have changed since the time that parents owned their children and had the power of life and death over them. What kind of ego does it take to neglect and openly despise your child, and then expect obedience from them as an adult when it's convenient to you? It makes no sense whatsoever, but a large portion of the people in the world seem to think that way.

So few of this genre deserve a sequel, but this one kicks butt, and I became pretty attached to the main characters (and the secondary ones, as well). (This doesn't happen very often for me, only in cases like Heyer's "Frederica" and "The Grand Sophy" or Kobayashi Jin's "Natsu no Arashi.") I'm actually really looking forward to the other two Wilde Brothers stories as well. I'm hoping that the other stories are like this one, with no jerkwad characters, mind-numbingly stupid drama, or super contrived plots.