TEST
Ruby Heart was the Olympian distance runner who lost everything by doping, and Micah Blackwell was the reporter who broke the story. Five years later, Micah (who is paraplegic) spots Ruby at an ultramarathon and wonders if who Ruby has become could be even better for his career – and for himself. Also, there’s a dog!
I love detailed stories which teach me about completely different lives, and it’s especially fun to find contemporaries that do it. Since I have always argued that if God intended me to run, He would have placed a lion six feet behind me at all times, I know about as much about running as I do about African apex predators. I really enjoyed the detailed description of Ruby’s life as a runner, and the personality which matched her success. She’s self-centered and her emotional and social growth is stunted (she’s twenty-nine and lives at home with her parents), but she’s aggressive, competitive, and very good at what she does. The author notes the dangers of her life in the public eye, which include omnipresent threats of physical and sexual violence on any news articles about her online.
Similarly, Micah is authentic as a reporter (he’s possessed of a compelling charm which makes people open up to him) and – at least to someone who has little exposure to the life of people in wheelchairs – as a person living with a disability. To an outsider, the details of his condition (like needing a catheter to stay over at Ruby’s so he can pee), and his mentality (his desire not to be type cast to the ‘disabled sports’ beat, his frustration about people asking him if he had considered suicide, his observation that able-bodied people never consider people in wheelchairs to be dangerous unless they’re homeless) ring true.
I liked the centering of sexual attraction between two protagonists who don’t have conventionally sexy bodies. Micah’s disability makes him by far more unusual (although Ruby’s thin, muscled frame is atypical), and the author doesn’t shy away from letting us see Micah as a sexual person. He lusts after Ruby, and Ruby lusts after him, and they act on that lust. They have detailed and frank conversations about Micah’s body – what it can and can’t do, and what Micah does and doesn’t enjoy. I hope it wasn’t prurient for me to find this interesting, especially because I feel that it was an important reminder to me to see someone like Micah the way he’d want to be seen: like a man (or woman), including sexually.
What I wished for more in this book was… more of this book. At 381 pages, it’s at the absolute longest end of Harlequin’s longest line, and I’m sure editorial constraints played into the fact that not everything was developed as much as it could have been. I wanted more narration in Ruby’s head while running, a slower ending sequence, more of the documentary they were producing, and more of her and Micah’s relationship. But on the whole, “I like this so much I wish you’d given me more of it” is not a terrible complaint about a book.
Buy Now: A/BN/iB/K
Grade: B+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 24/11/17
Publication Date: 09/2014
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm a history geek and educator, and I've lived in five different countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. In addition to the usual subgenres, I'm partial to YA, Sci-fi/Fantasy, and graphic novels. I love to cook.
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Sorry for the typos, and extra words….*Your grammar; and “its sounds like..” should read as “a book like this…”
Caroline, thanks for replying. It was not you grammar, per se, that confused me, but the author.
“The author’s original assertion was that disabled homeless people in wheelchairs are considered dangerous, but disabled people in general are not”
That is a lot of wtf, in my mind. Then again, I do not live in the States, so perhaps this assertion is isolated to geography. I think both vulnerable communities deserve better than what this author tried to convey.
As to body type: I am 52; I was a long distance runner in school, and SLIM=sexy has been thrown at us women from every angle for decades. So again, I think the author is off the mark. All around, it sounds like a book that would frustrate me to no end. so thanks for the review. I’ll pass.
I have not read this book which was published four years ago, but I am confused by “his observation that able-bodied people never consider people in wheelchairs to be dangerous unless they’re homeless) ring true.” I know a few disabled people–none homeless–and I know a few homeless people, though not disabled. If anything the disabled, the homeless, are more vulnerable to attacks from able bodied people, not the other way round. How does the author address the issue that able-bodied people view HOMELESS disabled persons as dangerous?
As to the physical form of a long distance runner: being thin is more the norm than atypical. .
Seems like my grammar was unclear on both counts. The author’s original assertion was that disabled homeless people in wheelchairs are considered dangerous, but disabled people in general are not. Also, I meant that Ruby’s body type is atypical for romance heroines and for what society calls sexy, not for long distance running.
My grade was a fair bit lower than yours. Ruby, I appreciated – I haven’t read many heroines in the genre who have committed a real moral transgression, and she was an original and interesting character. But maybe an extra few pages could have been used for Micah to engage in some self-reflection? Because to me he read as a judgmental, smugly superior jerk. His surprise at the abuse Ruby had been through rang false – a sports journalist who’s unaware that female athletes attract all sorts of ugly attention or that dopers are seen and treated as the most eeeeevil people in the world? I don’t buy it. And while Ruby grew and learned from her mistakes, Micah never did. By the time he blamed her for getting him fired (she didn’t) and accused her of being self-centered (because she had her own issues to deal with), I was ready for Ruby to succeed without him.
Hm, yes, he was wrong to put the blame on her – but he also realized that. And she IS self-centered,
Everybody weights different things in their grades. I agree with you that the relationship wasn’t as well developed as I wanted, but some other aspects of the story – especially how original and memorable it was, and the interesting way it transported me into different lives – brought this up for me on average.
Micah didn’t really realize he was wrong. He realized he was unhappy without Ruby. She’s constantly made to apologize and atone for her sins, but he’s never at fault and never responsible for anything – even though in his on way, he’s just as self-centered as she is. I’m not the kind of reader who needs a grovelling scene, but the dynamic here was really uncomfortable for me and Micah should have apologized for being a dick to Ruby.
By the way, while it’s suggested that Ruby got off lightly for her doping offense, her punishment was actually disproportionate for a first-time offender. I’m not sure if it was an authorial choice (so that Ruby would have five years to reflect on her sins) or shoddy research, but athletes can’t be banned from non-sanctioned competitions (which is why Lance Armstrong still competes in certain races) and lifetime bans are for repeat offenders or people whose actions were especially egregious. I mention this because I think the stakes would have actually been higher if Ruby had the option of going back to what she’d done before.