Title: The Woman Left Behind
Author: Linda Howard
Series: n/a
Plot’s a tad messy, hero’s a stranger, heroine had her moments
Goodreads says this is part of a series called Go-Team that includes Howard’s last novel, Troublemaker, but I haven’t seen this information anywhere else, e.g. Amazon or Fantastic Fiction; most notably, it’s listed on Howard’s own website as a standalone (since when does she have a website?). It’s certainly possible that these books are related somehow, but don’t worry about needing to read Troublemaker before this one. I don’t recall reading anything here that reminded me of Troublemaker—though, admittedly, I don’t remember Troublemaker much at all, just that I wasn’t impressed with it.
Anyway. I wasn’t sure what to think about this novel. I both liked and disliked it.
Notes in no particular order:
The beginning didn’t grip me because I didn’t really understand what was happening or who the people were, but I was intrigued enough to see where it went. I just tagged along until training started, then I had a better grasp of what was going on.
Some of the inactive passages—inner dialogue, exposition, etc—lacked color, but they weren’t so boring that I stopped paying attention.
With hindsight, I don’t think the Joan Kingsley/Ace MacNamara plot thread was necessary. I understand that it set up the ambush and an important point in Jina’s character arc, but I think those events should have been managed with other circumstances more relevant to Jina and the team. The JK/AM plot was the backbone of the narrative yet had nothing to do with the team directly; they were pretty much collateral damage. It doesn’t sit well with me that the book was essentially about the team, yet the suspense/intrigue plot that led up to the most important scene in the book had nothing to do with them. Does that make sense? Also, the JK/AM plot felt like a story I should already be familiar with, but I wasn’t, and since they weren’t characters I gave two shits about, their plot didn’t mean squat to me. I was always impatient to return to Jina and the team.
The skydiving sequence overstayed its welcome. It needed to be there, absolutely, but it didn’t need to go on that long.
Jina had kind of an abrasive personality. I liked her well enough, but I didn’t love her. Her determination was superhuman, inspiring and intimidating at once. Her pride rivaled Mr. Darcy’s. She was snappy and snarly and sassy—but not always in a good way. Some people would probably consider her a whiny bitch, and while I don’t want to go quite that far, I can understand why others would.
I appreciated Howard’s efforts to give Jina feminine qualities, but I didn’t really buy them. I could maybe see her painting her nails, but keeping her hair long and fussing over shams seemed out of character. (Are shams even still a thing? I don’t know anyone who owns much less uses them.) We were fed a line about her suppressing her femininity to better integrate with her team of macho men, but outside of the team she still didn’t come across as all that feminine. And that’s okay; not all women are girly-girls. Howard just needed to own it.
One thing I found very powerful about the narrative: Jina’s emotional arc. Some might think her decision to quit was demeaning or that it weakened her as a character, but I found it realistic. I think it actually took a certain kind of strength for her to finally realize that it’s okay to quit when a job is doing you more harm than good. Recently I was in over my head with a job I wasn’t suited for, and while I didn’t want to quit on principle, I chose to for the sake of my sanity. I understood her decision 100%, and it was one thing about her I found very sympathetic.
It was tempting to get fed up with Jina when she held the grudge against the guys for leaving her behind, but honestly, considering what Levi told her at the beginning, I probably would have felt the same way. Howard must have been nervous about how the audience would receive Jina’s grudge because she made sure to mention several times that Jina knew, logically, that Levi had made the best decision he could, but that emotionally, she still felt abandoned and expendable. I understood that dichotomy very well also.
I don’t think the scenes with Jina’s family at Thanksgiving were necessary, and we didn’t need to spend time with her brother, though he seemed pretty cool. Her family didn’t have anything to do with the story except to demonstrate how training had consumed/changed Jina’s life. It would have been more appropriate if the team had missed Thanksgiving and decided to celebrate the holiday together. That was the family we needed to care about here.
I didn’t think much of Levi. We learned hardly anything about him. I have no idea what his personal life was like. He and Jina avoided each other like the plague for most of the book in order to resist temptation, so they never really talked and got to know one another—therefore the reader didn’t get to know Levi, either. I didn’t feel that there was enough between them to keep them together after they finally scratched the itch.
My favorite moment between them—maybe in the entire book—was when Levi explained he got his PBJ tattoo one night when he was wasted and apparently hungry. It was so humanizing; that tiny piece of information, of silliness, did a lot to endear him to me. But it wasn’t enough. For most of the novel, except perhaps while in Syria, he was just a stony-faced hardass suppressing his emotions.
I did appreciate that Levi and Jina honored the rule of team members not getting involved. So many other romances would probably have had them giving in for the sake of drama, but they had the integrity to hold themselves to the same rules as everyone else, and I respect them for it.
The bit I was most disgusted with was the proposal at the very end—it was gratingly gratuitous and didn’t suit either of the characters.
Lastly, I was seriously impressed by Howard’s apparent knowledge of military procedure and training and jargon and all. Maybe a lot of it was contrived, I don’t know much about the military besides what I see on the screen or read, but it felt realistic to me, and I respect the research she must have done to gather all that knowledge.
Overall, there were aspects of this story that left something to be desired, but it wasn’t terrible. I still look forward to whatever Linda has in store for us next.
If it helps any the Axel MacNamara/Joan Kingsley storyline was carried over from her previous book Troublemaker.