Title: First Star I See Tonight
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Series: Chicago Stars #8
first half is SEP at her best. tone and agenda change in second
Piper Dove owns a struggling detective agency. She becomes involved with Cooper Graham, freshly retired quarterback of the Chicago Stars, when she’s hired to investigate him. Not long after they meet, he’s hiring her himself for a whole list of reasons, one of which happens to be figuring out who is mugging him and vandalizing his things. They fall in love along the way.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to give this a three- or four-star review. I wanted so badly to cut SEP some slack and give it four, because I love her books so much, but the story takes such a startling one-eighty that honestly, I’m kind of upset about it. Maybe I’m the only one who saw it this way, so what follows is only my opinion.
Let me first mention the small things I liked, because there were several. The setting (Chicago) was described with great detail, down to naming street names, but not so much detail that it felt like you were reading a guidebook and was irritating. Just enough to make the setting real to you. Also, she described Cooper’s hair color in one of the more inventive ways I’ve read recently–“burnt toast drizzled with honey.” I thought that was so cool. Then there was Piper’s disguises, particularly Esmerelda Crocker. That scene was hilarious. I also busted a gut when I figured out what a Tinkle Belle was. And SEP taught me a new word, “cornpone.”
As to the bigger picture, I’m still a little bemused. The first half of this book started off really, really strong–fast-paced with so much witty banter I thought my birthday had come early, and an energy that kept me riveted. Then Piper and Cooper get back from Two Harbors, the suspense plot takes center stage, and suddenly it’s like a public awareness campaign for sexual assault and child sex trafficking. It came out of nowhere. The second half of the book slowed to a crawl and the witty banter disappeared under the weight of utter sobriety. It’s like SEP started writing a light, funny contemporary romance–which she does best–then tried to switch to a serious suspense thriller with a message while halfheartedly carrying on the romance plot line.
As for the subplots…meh. They weren’t completely shoehorned in, but they did have a sort of randomness when considering the plot and story as a whole. The Middle Eastern royalty, while unique and intriguing, was unnecessary, and probably could have been taken out and the story would still have made sense with minimal tweaking. Same goes for the Berni plot line. If she’d traded those in for more time spent with Jada and Karah, then their plot line wouldn’t have seemed random. But I get that SEP was going for misdirection to make the twist more shocking. It’s disappointing because I don’t read her books for the twist. I read her, and love her, for her characters.
And unfortunately, I have problems with them. Cooper was an okay hero; rather typical, an arrogant, egotistical hardbutt who thought he could get the world to spin however he wanted it to because he’s successful and rich. A winner. We skimmed the surface of his background but didn’t delve as deeply into the roots of his character (both noun and adjective) as we did Piper.
This is me rolling up my sleeves. Remember, only my opinion/interpretation.
We got to know Piper very well, and I was quite okay with that, because I related to her a lot. She wasn’t ashamed of who she was and met nay-sayers head-on. She had a very modern attitude: she could do anything a man could–though she was honest enough to admit that men can still do some of those things better. For example, she knew Jonah would beat the crap out of her if she went toe-to-toe with him, but she was still determined to challenge him because she knew it was the only way she’d get through to him. Also part of her attitude was the lack of desire to get married and have kids.
What upset me was that her attitude does as much of a turnabout as the tone of the story. In the beginning, Piper wanted to be her own person, do her own thing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with a woman deciding not to get married or have kids. She can still fall in love and make a commitment. Piper fell in love and all of a sudden she didn’t know who she was anymore. She was meek, she was jealous, her spirit was gone, and her quips were dull. She was very un-Piper, and got pretty depressed, and I could understand it. Falling in love was a new and frightening experience for her, so she lost her way a bit and needed some time to reconcile and regain her balance.
But while she was going through all this emotional turmoil, Cooper went through some twisted thought processes of his own, and his solution to everyone’s problems was to manipulate her into marrying him and guilt her into feeling like she had no other choice but to do so–because if she didn’t, she’d break his heart, and she didn’t want to hurt him, did she? And because he told her getting married was what he wants, what she *should* want because they were in love, she abandoned her entire way of thinking and hopped on board. She just bent over and took it.
The more I think about it, the more I think that being involved with Cooper changed her, and not in a good way. I’m starting to think she’d have been better off without him. She drank his Kool-Aid. And of course, because when you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound, so the epilogue has them domesticated with a set of twin toddlers. Then she has everything a woman could want, right? A husband who played dirty to get her to marry him (it was supposed to be funny but I’m not laughing) and two children when she’d wanted none–though she’d agreed to one because her husband wanted one, and out popped two. Ugh.
I apologize for the bitterness. Convention and expectations are sore spots with me. I don’t believe a character’s arc has to involve a personality transplant.
In a possible defense, it could be reasoned that Piper had only *thought* she didn’t want marriage and kids because her father had raised her to be a self-sufficient tomboy, and when she’d finally gotten in touch with her feminine side (hear me scoff) she realized that of course she wanted marriage and kids. Naturally.
So anyway. I’m going with three stars, and it’s breaking my heart, because I love SEP and the beginning of the book was so promising. But I can’t pretend I liked the ending. But the cover sure is something, isn’t it? Absolutely beautiful. And speaking of the cover–she tried to connect the title to the story, but the throwaway line made me wince, it was so cheesy. They should have left the line of dialogue out and just let us assume “First Star I See Tonight” was referring, in a weird way, to the fact that Cooper played for the Stars.
Oh, and this could probably be read as a standalone well enough, but there were a couple inside nudge-nudges that only those who’ve read all the Chicago Stars would pick up on.
I recommend the first half, but not the second.
