Title: If Not for You
Author: Debbie Macomber
Series: New Beginnings #3
A chore to read
I would like to thank Debbie Macomber, Ballantine Books, Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Beth Prudhomme has moved to Portland, Oregon, to live near her Aunt Sunshine, because she got along far better with Sunshine than her parents in Chicago. Out from under her mother’s thumb, Beth is determined to become independent and cultivate a life for herself. Seizing new opportunities, she takes a job as a music teacher at the local high school—and agrees to a blind date.
Sam Carney has been burned by love before and is terrified of being burned again. When his buddy Rocco invites him to dinner, Sam knows there’s a catch, and sure enough, Rocco—or more accurately, Rocco’s wife—wants him to meet one of her friends. After much protest, Sam gives in because he didn’t want to disappoint his closest friends.
The dinner is a disaster, and both Sam and Beth leave as soon as politely possible. Neither had any interest in the other—until Sam witnesses Beth’s horrific car crash on the way home. An inexplicable bond is formed as he holds her hand while they wait for the medics…and Sam finds himself caring about a woman he’d thought he’d never see again.
Debbie Macomber’s writing never really suited my tastes, partially because she annoyingly toes the line between mainstream and inspirational (Christian) fiction. A few years ago I tried a few of her Blossom Street books, and though I didn’t hate them, I sure didn’t love them. But I came across If Not for You, and the cover was so pretty, and the synopsis sounded somewhat interesting, so I thought why not give it a shot? I’ve always liked opposites-attracting stories.
I remained optimistic through the beginning, but by a quarter of the way through, I found myself coming up with other things I needed to do instead of reading this book. And that’s saying something for me! Usually once I start a book, few things can stop me until I’m done. But my problems with the book mounted until I wanted nothing more and nothing less than to finish it.
Beth
I didn’t dislike Beth until she’d been in the hospital for a few days. Understandably, she’s feeling kind of gross. Her friend Nichole realizes that, so she goes out and gets her a hairbrush, a comb, dry shampoo…and makeup and a curling iron. Because everyone’s top priority, in the freaking hospital, is to look fabulous.
I don’t care if Sam was coming to see her every day. Beth was just in a car crash, had just fractured her hip and ribs and had her spleen, or at least part of it, removed. She should not have been worried about eyeshadows matching her skin tone or getting her hair curled. Sure, she wanted to look nice for this guy she had really started to like, but when you’re exhausted and in terrible pain, “looking nice” means a clean face, clean teeth, and maybe clean hair. And if Sam didn’t want to be with her because he hadn’t thought she’d looked pretty in the freaking HOSPITAL, then good riddance. No woman needs that kind of man. BUT Sam didn’t care if she had makeup on or if her hair was curled. He just absently said that she looked different. He was more concerned about how she was feeling, if her pain was under control. So her efforts were wasted anyway.
And fact-check: at one point Beth said she wasn’t sure how unkempt she looked because she didn’t have a mirror. Um, I’m pretty sure most hospital rooms, except those in the psych department, at least have a mirror over the sink in the bathroom. And I know she was mobile and able to get to the bathroom because they had her up and walking around inside two days. Also, the hospital would have provided a comb, among other basic necessities for hygiene, so Nichole didn’t need to buy one. And a curling iron would be a BIG no-no. At the hospitals where my mom and brother work, things like curling irons wouldn’t be allowed unless approved by Maintenance. And my mom’s unit doesn’t allow the patients to wear makeup while they’re getting treated because it can irritate their skin and cause problems. So yeah, the “makeover” bit was just dumb all the way around.
Okay. So Beth had this deal with her parents that they wouldn’t bother her for six months. Specifically, she didn’t want her mother calling ten times a day and flying out twice a week to nag and browbeat her. I get that. But Beth was in a car crash. She was really hurt. There’s a huge, blurry gray area here, dependent upon individual situations, but I think Beth should have suspended that deal, because seriously, wouldn’t all mothers—hell, all loved ones—want to rush to the side of the injured party and provide care and support? It’s only natural. I was horrified that Beth downplayed the severity of her accident so her parents wouldn’t be concerned, especially when Beth got that blood clot in her lung. Sure, the hospital had rushed to treat her right away and she was fine, but I’d still be freaking out a little. Blood clots aren’t trivial. They could kill you like THAT. *snaps fingers* Personally, I’d be seriously shaken. I’d want my mommy.
Next, there’s this guy Kier. He’s a spoiled, arrogant, stereotypical trust fund guy from Chicago that Beth’s mother was trying to match with Beth. He shows up in town, never giving an explanation for why he was there, though it’s not-so-subtly implied that he was sent by Beth’s mom to screw up Beth and Sam’s relationship. Beth despises him—yet she inexplicably agrees to meet him for dinner. She later admits that she shouldn’t have and only did it to please her mother. She makes this huge internal announcement that she was cutting the umbilical cord. … But I don’t understand. I thought she’d already arrived at this point emotionally. I thought moving to Portland to get away from her mother was the grand cutting-the-umbilical-cord gesture. I mean, as gestures go, moving 2,000 miles across the country is about as grand as it gets. So her agreeing to dinner with Kier seemed redundant and backwards and nonsensical. I believe it would have made more sense for her character and her arc if she’d lied and excused her way out of seeing him, or even better, agreed to see him but took Sam with her. But she didn’t, so my next question is, why didn’t she just lay it all out for Sam when she told him? Why was she vague? It seemed blatantly contrived to create tension. His reaction was equally frustrating; I’ll get to that later. Anyway, watching Beth agree to go out with Kier was like watching the dumb girl in a horror film follow the strange noises to the creepy basement. I was like, “Don’t do it, you idiot!”
There were a couple other moments of redundancy that frustrated me. One is when Beth is trying to figure out why her mother and aunt don’t get along. At one point Beth asks Sunshine if it was over a man. Sunshine says yes. Beth asks if his name was Peter. Sunshine confirmed, but wouldn’t tell her the story. Then a couple chapters later Beth again asks why the discord between the sisters, and Sunshine says because she loved a man. And Beth thinks internally, “Peter. It had to be him.” Like she wasn’t sure if it was him or not. And I’m sitting there like— “Well, yeah. Didn’t we already establish that?”
Then, in chapter 31, Beth tells Sam that she isn’t sure what went wrong between Sunshine and Peter, she just knew her mother had something to do with it. Well, as I just explained, she knew the discord between Sunshine and her mother had something to do with a man named Peter. You could kind of put two and two together there. Furthermore, Sunshine told Beth back in chapter 26: “Ellie knew how I felt about him and stole him away from me while I was studying in Europe. He was at fault, too. When I returned, they were together. I moved to California shortly thereafter.” I’d say that explains it. Beth should have been pretty sure of what had gone down by chapter 31.
At first I was disgusted with Beth meddling in other people’s relationships, but she got her what-for, so I’m disregarding it. So lastly, Beth said one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read, and she wasn’t being sarcastic: “Who knew taking care of a baby could be so demanding?” Um, anyone who knows anything about babies. Jesus.
Conclusion: Beth isn’t the brightest bulb in the box.
Sam
Sam was a conundrum. I couldn’t get a bead on his character. In the beginning, he’s described as “not like any other guy you’ve ever dated,” “hard to explain,” “coarse,” and “unconventional.” The last was elaborated with “he swore a lot,” which is an irritatingly pretentious line of reasoning. He’s got long hair, tattoos, and a beard, and he’s a mechanic. This all put me in mind of a hero a la Jay Crownover and Kristen Ashley—a bad boy that’s unpolished, unapproachable, gruff, crass, crude—maybe a criminal—but has the biggest heart on the planet, is fiercely protective, and always does what he thinks is right. A take-no-shit badass whose pride must goeth before the fall.
That was not Sam, except perhaps the protectiveness. Kind of. I get the feeling that Macomber wanted him to be all that, but wasn’t capable of writing that kind of man. He seemed like a normal bachelor to me. His physical appearance wasn’t very tidy, but in my perception he wasn’t “unconventional” at all. And he cut his hair and shaved his beard when he met Beth’s parents, so then it’s just down to the tattoos and the occasional curse. Tame.
So I never really knew what to think about him, and there were times when I felt Macomber didn’t know what the hell to think about him, either, or perhaps left him vague on purpose so she could use him to propel the plot. For example, in the beginning it’s said that Sam adores baby Matthew and is always eager to hold him. I think the baby is even used a bit as motivation to get Sam to come to dinner (aka the blind date). But when Rocco asks him to babysit, Sam seemed like he would rather jump off a plane without a parachute, and handling a baby was completely foreign to him. He mentions that he only enjoyed holding Matthew when the parents were present, but his reaction still seems off to me. His discomfort with the baby propels the plot because he’s babysitting with Beth, and watching her with the baby and being all motherly makes him uncomfortable, leading to the second example:
From the beginning, it’s made very clear by Sam and others that he avoids relationships like the plague, and it’s not hard to guess why—he’d been hurt in the past. But then he developed a bond with Beth…got to know her and like her…couldn’t wait to see her…and eventually he spent as much time with her as he could. I don’t think he put up much of a fight. At one point he tried to stay away so his growing attachment wouldn’t be obvious, but he didn’t put much effort into resisting her, resisting the budding relationship. Then after they babysat Matthew—and after he’d calmly admitted to Rocco that he’d fallen for Beth—he freaks out, saying he’s not meant to be a family man, he doesn’t want responsibilities or limitations, he doesn’t want to be in a relationship. He thinks they’re going way too fast and getting way too serious—which made me laugh out loud, because at this point they’d known each other for like, two months, and pretty much all they’d done is really low-key hanging out, half the time in the rehab center. Not moving in with each other, not proposing marriage. It seemed like he was a little nervous about falling in love and blew it ridiculously out of proportion. It seemed so staged, just like—
When Beth told him that she had to cancel their undetermined plans one night because a friend (Kier) was in town and wanted to catch up. As soon as she let slip the friend was a he, Sam freaked out, accusing Beth of being embarrassed by him, wanting him to apologize for who he was, and preferring to be in the company of a man who didn’t have grease underneath his fingernails. Beth was being vague and frustrating, sure, but his reaction was unfounded and uncalled for. But it created tension, trying to spice up a pretty boring narrative.
His saying he’s not meant to be a family man is made doubly ludicrous when one considers he’s constantly thinking about how much he regretted giving in to Trish and never meeting his daughter, that he’d give anything to have had her in his life. And at one point he said he loves kids.
I was tempted to rant about his secret daughter, but it was such a gray area that I wasn’t really sure what to think about it myself.
Conclusion: Sam made no sense and his reactions were pure plot-propulsion.
A couple other tiny issues: first—Beth’s students Noah and Bailey. I have no idea why they were mentioned at all. Maybe I missed something, but it seemed to me they were completely, 100 percent unnecessary to this story. Second—Beth’s fear of water seemed fake and only an excuse to see Sam’s tattoo and get his secret-daughter conflict rolling. There had to be a more organic way to bring it up.
Style-wise the writing was okay. Nothing impressive; pretty simple sentences. One thing I noticed a few times was that the verb tense was wrong. The narrative is written in past tense, which most novels are, but it remained past tense when it should have been past perfect in spots. Which isn’t a huge deal, but personally, if I’m reading along and someone mentions a past event but it’s made to sound like it’s happening at present, it’s confusing and throws me off as I backtrack and try to figure out what the author was trying to say. (I don’t always get my grammar and spelling right, either, but reviews that nobody reads are very different from finished products that cost $27.00 a pop. Do your job, editor.)
And finally, this book was sooo cheesy, and not in an endearing way.
Overall, I feel like Macomber had a cute idea of a couple meeting/getting together through a car crash and rehab, then didn’t know how to make it an entire story and started tossing in random tension-builders. There were good bits, but it’s not what I would expect from a writer as seasoned as Macomber.
Oh, if you’re wondering about the extent of the “inspirational” theme, most of it’s isolated to a scene where Sam reads to Beth from the Bible while she’s in the hospital and a scene where Sam compares himself to David, as in David and Goliath. And there is a complete lack of sex. Like, it was never mentioned. I don’t think the word was ever even used. Which was kind of weird. Not that they needed to have sex, even off-stage, but come on—they would have thought about it.
Also, this book stands alone. I never felt the need to read the first two books in the series.
