My Hero by Marianna Jameson

Whenever I read a book under less-than-ideal circumstances, I have to wonder, would I have enjoyed the book more if I hadn't been distracted by other factors? Maybe. I read this book when I was in the hospital, and as I read it, I wondered if the book seemed confusing because my brain was fuzzy. However, I've read wonderful books at times when I was sick or distracted, and found them to be the perfect escape. (I remember reading The Temporary Wife by Mary Balogh at a really terrible time in my life, and I was able to completely block out everything else when I read it.)

So, I think a great book will still be great no matter what. A mediocre book, though, might seem even more flawed, when I don't have the patience to be more forgiving of its deficiencies.

My Hero by Marianna Jameson
(2005, Contemporary) 6/18/08
Grade: 3

Romance novelist Miranda Lane is best known for her sensitive Southern heroes, but her new editor demands that her new book feature an alpha hero cop from the Northeast. She decides to spend a few weeks with a college friend in Stamford CT, and meets the perfect research subject - detective Chas Casey, who isn’t really the alpha jerk she expected.

The best thing about this book was the romance background. As a beta hero lover myself, I was amused by Miranda’s distaste for alpha heroes (she initially depicts her new hero as a grunting caveman with a truck and a gun rack). The behind the scenes look at a romance novelist was a lot of fun, and it was nice to read about a romance writer who is thoughtful and serious about her writing. However, the rest of the book was very muddled. There were some fun scenes between the hero and heroine, especially at the beginning, but their relationship didn’t seem to go anywhere. The conflict between them seemed contrived. The hero’s internal conflict about whether to remain a police officer came out of nowhere, and I never got any sense of why he was so conflicted about it. The author kept throwing in scenes with bunches of characters that the reader didn’t know, and trying to justify the hero’s “inner conflict”, but it made no sense. I found the whole thing confusing and frustrating. In the end, the book just didn’t hold together.

I think I need to get back to historicals for a while. Contemporaries are just not working for me at the moment!