Good characters … but the conflict lost me

Romance and the characters

I love reading romance, I’ve read a lot and I can be a little critical. Obviously, romance is all about the characters and I liked the characters in this book a lot.

The male lead, Quinn, has come from a tragic background but he’s made good. He’s successful, handsome, wealthy … and single and unable to commit because of his tragic family background. Quinn has come back to small town Idaho to be with his dying former foster mother, Jo.

The female lead, Tess, is beautiful, a former high school cheerleader, popular, and tragically widowed. And she’s one of the hospice nurses assigned to working with Jo.

Tess and Quinn, former high school peers, cross paths again. He remembers how cruel she had been to him at high school, even lying to create major problems for him. Of course, she did this because she loved him but she was immature and self-centered … and she’s changed. He doesn’t know that – yet.

The story unfolds nicely and Tess and Quinn fall in love. It’s sweet, it’s touching. But in romance we all know that something is going to drive them apart. In this case, the hint was that Quinn would need to return home to Seattle, to keep running his prosperous business.

Romance and the conflict

This was where the book lost me. I was waiting for a big powerful conflict. Instead, right after a passionate love-making scene, Tess turns on Quinn when he says he wishes he didn’t have to leave. Why? Because she doesn’t believe he is ever going to want to marry (because of his tragic family background. Spoiler alert: his father murdered his mother and then committed suicide).

He wants to try the long-distance relationship. She says it’s over and she’s not going to take a chance to see if he comes around to marriage. At this point I’m asking “does she really expect him to propose after just a few weeks? Isn’t it just a little too early to be questioning why he hasn’t committed to a long-run relationship?”

So this bothered me. She’s in love like never before and she’s loved him ever since high school. People in love like that don’t just throw it away because the distance thing might not work and he might never want to marry. They do crazy things; they take chances. In actual fact, Quinn has shared things about his past with her that he’s rarely shared with anyone before and he’s professed the depth of his feelings for Tess. There’s every reason to believe that this is the relationship that will change him, will free him from his past and enable him to take a chance on marriage. Everything points to this and yet she says, no, I’m not willing to take a chance.

I just couldn’t buy that. I don’t regret reading the book — I liked the characters and I liked that they ended up happily ever after (as good romances are supposed to do!). But I didn’t feel the pain of the forced conflict and I didn’t feel crushed when the story came to an end. Sorry.