Title: Strawberry Hill
Author: Catherine Anderson
Series: Mystic Creek #5
Likable characters but terribly unfocused plot
I liked this story, I found it both tragic and heartwarming, but it had some big problems narratively.
At the center was Slade and Vickie, two sixty-something has-been sweethearts who were to be married until distrust broke them apart forty years ago. I didn’t relate to them all that much, but I liked Slade quite a bit. Vickie was meh. My biggest problem with them as a couple was how flimsy the reason for their parting was. I just couldn’t buy that this couple, who were supposedly best friends and super close, broke up at the first, merest hint of trouble. She’d trusted him since they were six years old, and the week before the wedding, all of a sudden she’s jealous and distrustful?
Anderson worked so hard to justify the fact that neither Vickie nor Slade could have done more than they did to get a hold of/find each other—and I didn’t buy that, either. Slade had no idea where she’d gone and her family stonewalled him; there wasn’t much else he could do other than nag them and nag them and nag them until perhaps they gave him a break. But Vickie knew exactly where he was and how to get in touch with him; she could have figured something out. Maybe she didn’t have any spare coins to make a long distance phone call, but you can’t tell me there wasn’t anyone who would loan her enough to call Slade and make sure he knew he had a child on the way. Maybe her boss could have and taken the amount out of her pay? There was no one who could give her a ride home, either out of the goodness of their hearts or on the promise that Vickie’s parents would compensate for gas and whatnot?
And didn’t her parents check on her? I mean, she’d just suffered a major emotional trauma and run away with almost no way to support herself. Didn’t they worry? Wouldn’t they have given her money to call them when she got where she was going, or money to keep her afloat while she found a job and started getting paid? I don’t recall it being mentioned that they were apathetic toward her, so why didn’t they try harder to help her? And after knowing Slade since he was a kid, after knowing how close and in love he and their daughter were, did they not question his supposed infidelity? They just took Vickie’s word for it, didn’t ask questions, and held a grudge against Slade forevermore? Also, regarding Slade, what reason did she have to believe he wouldn’t want his child? Why wouldn’t she think that was odd? It was never mentioned that he’d indicated to her he didn’t want children. So yeah, Anderson tried to cover all her bases, but her reasoning was still flimsy as a cardboard cut-out.
Furthermore, she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too, regarding Vickie’s character. She wanted Vickie to be this strong, resilient, independent, little spitfire of a woman, yet she had her act immaturely. A strong, independent, don’t-take-no-shit woman wouldn’t play petty, passive-aggressive pranks like a fourteen-year-old forty years after the fact; and she wouldn’t have written a letter and hoped for the best. (Wait, she could afford stamps, but not a phone call?) No; she’d have laughed in April’s face, or failing that, would have found a way to come home and face Slade about the baby and make him do his part. She’d have found a way.
In addition to their unfinished business plot, there were two sub-threads: Four Toes the bear, and Erin and Wyatt. As they are, both should have been cut or significantly revised. Four Toes had no impact on Slade and Vickie’s plot. He was a token, just there to be there. Anderson wanted to put black bears in her story so she could raise awareness for them. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Four Toes and the impossible dilemma he presented—but he still had no business being part of the plot. Now, if Vickie had been a forestry agent or wildlife specialist or whatever and was sent to investigate rumors of a domesticated bear, then he would have been relevant. Anderson, if you’re going to put a PSA in your books, I have no problem with that—just make sure it pertains to the plot, okay?
The Erin and Wyatt thread was similarly unnecessary. I can’t think what it added to the central plot. And it was pretty misleading; we saw quite a bit of them at the beginning, then they almost completely fell away in the second half as Vickie and Slade’s plot ramped up. It’s clear they’re going to have a romantic relationship at some point, but don’t be fooled, it’s not in this book. Here they simply meet, dislike each other, then make an effort to become friends. Erin is Slade’s niece and Wyatt his foreman, but they have no impact on Slade and Vickie. This is probably the issue that most annoyed me, because I really liked the both of them! I wanted to see them get together more than I wanted to see Slade and Vickie poke at each other with sticks.
Like Four Toes, Erin and Wyatt should have been almost completely removed from this book. Perhaps we could have heard mention of them or seen glimpses of them here or there, but everything else that happened between them—their meet-cute, their budding friendship and reluctant attraction—could have begun their own book. Although, thinking on it, their meet-cute probably wouldn’t have made sense later, because they would have undoubtedly been introduced at Vickie and Slade’s wedding. Speaking of—I still find it hard to believe Erin hadn’t at least heard of her uncle’s deaf foreman in the year she’d been living in Mystic Creek. I can buy that they hadn’t been able to meet face-to-face, but surely she’d have heard about him somehow.
If Erin, Wyatt, and Four Toes had been removed, there would have been ample opportunity to add scenes relevant to Slade and Vicki. Their history, which was very important, was delivered via exposition and narrative summary, and it would have been so much more effective if Anderson had just depicted those scenes. There’s nothing wrong with jumping around in time—provided the reader can follow. We could have seen them young, carefree, and madly in love, then watched their relationship splinter. We could have run away with Vickie and sympathized with her struggle; could have seen Slade try desperately to find her and fail. Maybe if all of that had been written in scenes, the hopelessness and helplessness of the situation would have been more believable. They as characters could have been far more developed, and the story overall could have had a deeper impact.
Lastly, and relevant to the last paragraph, there was too much exposition, narrative summary, and inner monologue all trying to explain things and provide backstory, some of it completely unnecessary. The overall pace wasn’t too bad—I just became impatient for more Erin and Wyatt until it became clear they weren’t going to be fulfilled in this book—but at the scene level, sometimes momentum and tension would be disrupted by exposition. For instance, when Erin was called to take care of Espresso, something I thought was a time-sensitive problem, we had to endure descriptions of her truck, the traffic, the town, and an explanation of why she wasn’t racing to the scene before we actually arrived at the dangerous situation. Another instance: When Erin went to confront Noreen, we were treated to learning the name of Erin’s car’s nav system, why she named it that, the fact that she was having trouble finding Noreen’s house, and her finding out that was because the county had dug new culverts or some such crap we didn’t need to know at-freaking-all. We already knew what had been going on between them, we already knew Erin was planning to confront her soon—all that needed to happen was Erin knocking on Noreen’s door and the ensuing heated discussion.
Overall, there was a lot of potential here, but in my opinion, none of the stories were well told or satisfactorily resolved. Anderson just needed to cool her jets and tell one at a time.
Oh, wait! How could I have almost forgotten? I take back the tease of Erin and Wyatt being what annoyed me most; there was a bigger, much more relevant tease that was never paid off. We never got to see Slade and Brody meet! Brody lay at the heart of so much of the conflict; Slade wished he had a child to pass the ranch onto, Vickie’s motivation for confronting Slade after forty years was to ask him to help Brody’s financial straits. There was so much build up of Slade not-so-secretly wishing he’d had children, of Vickie waiting for the opportune moment to bring it up, of Brody being the spitting image of Slade and having always loved horses but was never able to have one until he was an adult. All of the conflicts and motivations revolved around a character that never made an appearance! And no, the epilogue doesn’t fucking count. We were cheated, plain and simple. The end did feel rather abrupt, and I can’t help but wonder if Anderson thought the book was getting too long and decided to cut the scene of their meeting. But if she’d cut Four Toes, Erin, and Wyatt, she would have had plenty of room!
Grr.
I hope Erin and Wyatt’s story is more focused. And next in line.
