Her Man Advantage: Post 19

Chapters 14: Surprisingly Anticlimactic

Given that this is a novel about a former gang member visited by his past, having his new potential love of his life threatened, all while he’s an NHL defenseman heading into the playoffs, the book’s conclusion is kind of anticlimactic. (Yeah, yeah, the climax was in the previous chapter, what with the shootout and all, but the climax of romance novels is generally the couple admitting their feelings, which has yet to happen in this novel.) But we have 12 pages to tie up all the loose ends, so things have to happen quickly.

Fortunately, that’s not too difficult in a book that is mainly made up of unlikely and/or convenient events. First there’s the police to deal with. Even though Axel is quite irritated at having spent the entire night in the police station, things have gone pretty easy on him and Jennifer because much of the station is made up of Phantoms fans (phans?) who want to give Axel advice on how the team should play against the Boston Bears.

Well, that piece of information (Boston Bears instead of Bruins) tells us that this alternate NHL is not just borrowing the NHL teams’ AHL affiliates. (There is an AHL Bears team, but they’re in Hershey, PA and they’re the Washington Capitals’ affiliate, not the Bruins’.)

Second there’s the motorcycle club, the Destroyers, who are being charged with weapons possession. And those bikers were easily induced to implicate Jaako Latt, the Finnish biker, since he hadn’t planned on sharing any of the blackmail money. So that takes care of them.

For reasons that aren’t clarified, the police are finished with Axel sooner than they are with Jennifer. (They’d been separated so that the police could compare their stories.) Given that Axel was the potential blackmail victim with all the connections back to the motorcycle club, I’m really unclear as to why they’re spending more time with Jennifer other than because it was necessary so that Axel and his foster brother Kyle could have a conversation alone.

Kyle starts their conversation but trying to convince Axel to tell their dad (Axel’s foster dad) what’s going on so that the family is warned and to get help. When that doesn’t work, Kyle says he’s actually already called their dad who has hired a publicist for Kyle. Must be nice to have such connections and money. At first Axel doesn’t want to “spin” the situation but Kyle convinces him to call the publicist, which Axel does in time for the evening sports news (apparently the NBA playoff games went very late.) So that takes care of the third loose end, or at least starts to.

Axel thanks his brother for having his back, then he declares that he won’t consider the whole ordeal over with until he gets his girl back.

Which is the cue for the novel to switch back to the subplot. Since Axel’s brand new publicist did manage to get Axel’s news into the papers, Vinny brings the paper and some coffee to Chelsea’s house at 7:15am.

Personally? I don’t really care how much I’m in love with someone, I don’t want that someone showing up on my doorstep at 7:15am. But Chelsea is a morning person, so when Vinny buzzes the intercom and plans to start apologizing (for inviting her to meet his parents), she immediately lets him in. She’s even waiting outside the door of her apartment when he gets to her floor.

In short sleeves, she revealed the little tattoos of his teammates’ numbers on her arms and he wondered if he’d see his somewhere. Her knit pajamas were covered in blue Phantoms logos. Even better, she wore a white T-shirt with his number on it… (139).

That’s adorable. Although I am now wondering what her tattoos look like. I hadn’t pictured them as “little tattoos” somehow (not large either, but still) so now I’m wondering if they are literally just little numbers in ordinary font. Given how expensive tattooing is and how Chelsea works in a gift shop and must spend absolutely all of her money on hockey tickets and gas for getting to away games, perhaps that makes sense. (I wonder, though. What happens when guys get traded or retire or whatever and someone else takes their number? What if she doesn’t like the new player and wouldn’t want their number on her? Or what if she really likes the new player? She wouldn’t be able to celebrate the new player. I may be thinking about this more than either Chelsea or the author did.)

More importantly, I suppose, Vinny starts telling Chelsea all the news but she interrupts him by apologizing for flipping out. Vinny asks if she’d like to go for a walk (after, y’know, dressing) since he doesn’t want to invade her space but she interrupts this, too, by flinging herself into his arms and kissing him.

“Chelsea.” He levered back, breaking the kiss. “I’m dying to hold you, sweetheart. But I need to set down the coffee” (140).

I like this couple. They’re adorable. Chelsea worries then that she’d done something wrong, since she’s inexperienced. He reassures her, she reassures him, and all is well and “Chelsea was going to be his forever mate” (141). Okay, that line is a bit awkward. (I’m used to hearing that pets need “forever homes” or “forever families” but not people, especially with “mate”, which, again, seems a bit inhuman.)

The scene reaches its apex when Chelsea tells Vinny that she thinks it’s fate that they’re ending up together because his number was his first tattoo and she got it over her heart.

In response, he licks said tattoo. It, uh, reads better in the original, I suppose.

Finally, the text goes back to our main couple for their final scene (no epilogue wedding or epilogue pregnancy this time around; no epilogue). Axel demands to take Jennifer home. She’d been talking on the phone with her boss, and before that Jennifer had been contacted by the Murphy family’s lawyer to make sure she was taken care of. Dude, everyone needs a Murphy family; they’ve got things covered.

Because this is a romance novel, we have to end with one more standard trope, in this case that Jennifer is worried that Axel still thinks they shouldn’t be together and fears that he’s now acting distant and worries that when they were crouched behind the makeshift bar would be the last time he ever touches her.

The text follows this up with another trope in which Axel tells Jennifer that she’s too impulsive and she tells him he’s too stubborn, and there’s bickering to cover the fact that they were both worried about each other. They solve this problem, however, when Axel has a suggestion.

“How about you stay with me and then neither of us will get into trouble without the other?” (145).

He points out that Jennifer will be able to find social causes to try to solve via film making in Philadelphia, obviously, and that this way he’ll be able to keep her safe. Jennifer responds with “My own personal defenseman” (145) which makes the title of the book make sense. (I approve. The book doesn’t actually use the title (Her Man Advantage) but alludes to it. It’s far less generic than Body Check, and it makes a heck of a lot more sense than Play the Man.)

Jennifer agrees (obviously) and suggests that maybe she could learn to enjoy a big house and Axel might eventually appreciate a hybrid car. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that latter one, but he does suggest that Jennifer’s sister might want to move to Philadelphia too, which is sweet (and Jennifer doesn’t immediately say that that’ll happen, she’s just happy that her sister could stay for summers if she doesn’t want to move to Philly full time.)

Then there’s the kissing and the camera man who interrupted them at the beginning of the book interrupts them again, this time to tell them that a reporter is at the rink, wanting to do a story on Axel’s life. Jennifer tells him to tell her she has to just watch the next installment of the documentary, and Axel quips that Jennifer’s answer could just have been that he gets “one hell of a happy ending” before kissing her some more (147).

So, that’s the end of Her Man Advantage. What I liked about it was the fast pace and the amusing situations. Granted, what amused me most was how incredibly unlikely the various events and backgrounds of the novel were, but none of them were downright impossible. The author clearly has a pretty good understanding of hockey (and the stench of hockey gear!!) and I’d be pleased to read another of her books at some point, particularly the other hockey novel about Kyle. (I won’t run out and get it for this blog, though, because I suspect a critique of it here would be too similar to this critique, at least without letting some time pass. On the other hand, I’m sure you’re all wondering what happens between Kyle and his new girlfriend, the matchmaker whose mother was a popstar.) 

I'd also like to point you back to the cover of this novel, as I talked about in post #1 for Her Man Advantage.  As you may recall, at no point in this book do the hero and heroine end up in the locker room together, let alone in such an awkward pose. Apparently the "Double Overtime" target was a reference to the documentary, which seems quite odd-- although I assume it's actually the title of this 'series' since the book about Kyle Murphy also has the same logo on it. I'm still thrown by the position of Jennifer-- butt or hip, that does not look comfortable. Not that Axel looks all that relaxed, either.  

Oh well. Tune in next time for …. A book. I dunno yet, since I haven’t picked the next one yet….

Her Man Advantage: Post 18

Chapters 13: A Swarm of Hogs

Then the main plot takes over again with Axel driving his Escalade and surrounded by bikers. (The phrase “a swarm of Hogs bearing down on him” (130) I must admit made me laugh.) The bikers push him off the road and Axel knows what to expect.

…there would be a representative goon out there. Axel understood the job of the enforcer all too well. It was a role he’d taken on with every team he’d ever played for (131).

I feel that this might be trying a little too hard to shoehorn in the similarities. Plus, there’s a whole herd of biker surrounding Axel’s car, so aren’t they all enforcers?

The “representative goon” tells Axel to follow them or they’ll go back and hurt Jennifer, so they all drive on and end up in some run-down suburbs and a convenient, boarded-up warehouse. Because of course they do. As they approach the Warehouse of Clichés, Axel can hear the guitar riffs of Stereotype Southern Rock. From this formulaic Biker Land appears Jaako Latt, apparently the long-time boss of the Helsinki branch who speaks in sentences that are presumably meant to show off that English is not his first language but which sound like Generic Foreigner. Some examples:

“The internet is not secure for our business, I do not think” (132).

“You will pay to keep the crimes of your past a secret from your American fans and the woman you kiss on television. This way, you protect your endorsement deals, yes?... One time payment. Cash. Say, three million?” (133).

Axel is about to agree, mostly to keep Jennifer safe but also a little bit because he thinks Jaako is right about the endorsement deals. Given how long ago Axel’s ‘crimes’ were and mitigated by the context of his youth, I have a hard time thinking that he’d lose all that many deals. He’d be celebrated for turning his life around and making good. I really don’t understand the biker gang’s thought process on what they think they have hanging over Axel (except Jennifer, but she showed up on their radar after they’d started threatening him.)

Speaking of Jennifer, she answers for Axel, having randomly shown up at the Abandoned Warehouse of Biker Clichés, having been captured by a biker who found her in a tree. Yes, in a tree. She was trying to film what was going on, but apparently though a boarded-up window. I’m a little unclear on how she planned on succeeding, but I’m also unclear as to how the “half-wit teenage biker” (133) found her in the tree.

Jennifer immediately starts pointing out that even though they have now broken her camera, all the data immediately uploads so she has evidence of blackmail. I know that back at the beginning of the book we covered the fact that the video cameras immediately upload all data, but that was at the practice rink which I assumed was set up with wi-fi. I have a hard time imagining that the Run-Down Suburban Abandoned Warehouse of Motorcycle Gang Stereotypes is particularly set-up for high-speed uploading. But sure.

Jennifer’s claims, regardless of their veracity, don’t bother Jaako, King of the Helsinki Bikers. He points out that she won’t use the film because it would ruin Axel’s career. See above re: my point that I personally don’t believe it would hurt it his career all that much but whatever. Jennifer believes it and immediately backs down. On the bright side, she was clever enough to call the police so they’re apparently on their way.

But all of Jennifer’s self-recriminations, which she briefly castigated herself with about becoming a liability in the situation, are short-lived because Axel finally declares that he’s going to go “public with [his] past” and points out that even if he doesn’t make it back safely that night, Kyle will go to the media with the information. He goes on to explain, although frankly this hardly seems the time as they are surrounded by heavily-armed biker clichés, that he’ll use his background to help kids stay out of similar trouble.

Then the police sirens start and the bikers flee. Axel grabs Jennifer and forces her to crouch with him behind the Suburban Abandoned Warehouse’s makeshift bar. She’s all confused, thinking that he’s hiding from the police, but then gunfire starts and Axel protects her body with his.

As soon as said gunfire ceases, which as far as I can tell is pretty much immediately, all Jennifer wants to know is if Axel wants to be with her. Seriously, lady? You couldn’t wait until you aren’t hiding behind broken crates, maybe a few more minutes since you and Axel were threatened at gunpoint. You couldn’t maybe more about how he is physically or emotionally, having faced his past’s boogeyman? Nope. But she doesn’t get an answer because the police actually use a bullhorn to announce at them “Come out with your hands up!” and the chapter ends (136).

Her Man Advantage: Post 16

Chapters 12: Double Overtime

The name of this post is taken directly from the text—it’s evidently the name of the documentary series. Since the series is supposed to be about the Phantoms on their playoff run, I’ll allow it. (If it were about the regular season, I’d make more fun of it, since there aren’t double overtimes during the season.) As it stands, it’s a better name than most of the hockey romance novels’ titles.

The whole team is over at Kyle’s house to watch the first episode in his super fancy movie theatre viewing room full of leather reclining chairs.  Jennifer and Axel are at the back of the room. Axel doesn’t want to be watching but he figured he couldn’t get out of it. (Also, Kyle’s girlfriend, the matchmaker, is playing hostess, passing popcorn bowls and refilling drinks. Given the backstory that the novel gave her, with her former pop star mom and everything, you’d think the author would name her. Also, I can’t help but wondering if there isn’t a whole other novel somewhere about Kyle and his girlfriend.)

Answer: Yes.  Yes there is.  One ManRush is about Kyle.  And I just stumbled onto two more books by Joanne Rock featuring the Cape Cod Murphys, although neither involves hockey (they both involve yachting, it looks like. Making a Splash and Riding the Storm.) Okay then.

Where the heck was I? Right. They’re watching the documentary series’ first episode, and when the Vinny shows up onscreen, everyone’s all “Where’s Chelsea?” and it turns out she’d accepted a volunteer shift at the homeless shelter. Meanwhile, Axel receives a text.

Yes. The fearsome Destroyers international motor cycle club texts. Badly.

Looks like U can still fire a shot. We’ll expect U @ target practice tonight. Leave your brother’s house alone. Someone will meet you. (118)

Man, even international bikers can’t seem to be consistent. The “U”s annoy me, but why is the last one spelled out?

Naturally this would be the time when the documentary starts talking about how the team is a family so that Axel can reminisce. He’d been looking for family when he joined the Destroyers, he’d gotten a better one when he was adopted by the Murphys. But he’d angered the Destroyers and now that’s “festered” (119).

The opening episode also shows the big kiss between Axel and Jennifer and she confides in him that she’d done her best to get it cut. Since she’s not going to make the documentary about social media bullying, her bosses no longer had leverage, except she’d already signed the waiver.

It touched him that she’d listened to his advice and consulted her sister about the project. It touched him even more that she’d gone to bat for him with her boss. That, more than anything, told him he needed to distance himself from Jennifer while he still had a prayer of pulling away (120).

I know that this is about fearing to be too close and putting Jennifer in danger and blah blah blah, but without context it makes me laugh. It’s such a romance novel thing to write, too. “Oh s/he’s perfect and wonderful and I might love him/her, so clearly I must run! Run!”

Jennifer tells him he needs to go to the police which warns Axel off even more. “The time had come to protect her even if it killed him” (120). Maybe because I’ve read ahead a bit or maybe because I just can’t take the International Biker Gang who makes finger guns gestures and text messages using “U” all that seriously, but this just seems overwrought to me.

Axel and Jennifer leave the media room to talk away from the others which leads to one of the more awkward moments in the book. Axel is trying to Jennifer what’s going on and she keeps remarking on Kyle’s house.

“Kyle has quite a spread doesn’t he?”

“You mean the trophies?”…

“I mean the house” (121).

Axel agrees it’s nice and said that it had belonged to a former football player, then continues to try and talk about the bigger situation.

“But about tonight—“

“Professional athletes have some seriously nice digs.” … “Sorry to gawk, but I’ve never hung out with hockey stars on my jobs before. I’m usually camping in some overheated trailer and feeling guilty about all my luxuries as I film the lives of –“

“Jen, this is important” (122).

Can’t she tell he has something to say? I mean, they did just sneak out of the media room and her documentary screening in order to chat. And I get that she doesn’t come from money, but there’s been no reason given for her to be so over the moon about the expense on display other than that she doesn’t want to be a trophy wife.

Anyway, Axel tells her he needs to deal with the situation and Jennifer insists he goes to the police. He refuses because he fears that they’re useless in this situation and also he might be deported. This strikes me as unlikely, between the clout that the very incredibly immensely rich Cape Code Murphys must have and also that Axel is, y’know, an NHL player who hasn’t done anything wrong on US soil. But sure.

Axel explains that the Destroyers have insisted on seeing him that night and that he knows what’s going to happen—they’ll try to intimidate him, then they’ll blackmail him by threatening to reveal his past, and if he doesn’t give them what they want, they’ll go after Jennifer next. I … don’t really understand what they have to blackmail him about. Yeah, I suppose it doesn’t look good to have had an NHL player deliver drugs (unknowingly!) as a kid in some ways, but in other ways it’s a great story. Rags to riches! Hard work over poor parenting! Hockey success! The threats against Jennifer I can see as being potentially troubling, however. And Jennifer has researched the Destroyers and found out that they’re “bad eggs” (123) so she’s suitably nervous. But this apparently also solidifies her feelings for him, and she “suddenly” doesn’t “care about their differences” (124) and just wants him to stay safe.

When Axel declares, “This isn’t going to work,” (124) she assumes he means his plan. In actuality, he’s breaking up with her. Because of course he is. He insists it’s not just because of the current gang situation but because of their lifestyle differences, their geographical distance, and how she’s a “social crusader with a mission for justice and equality” (125). Jennifer insists that these differences are just “superficial.”

“Right. And you’ll always see them as superficial, even when I buy another new car instead of donating to a charity.” He had hit her in a vulnerable spot, since the cars did strike her as over-the-top. “I saw the judgment in your eyes when you looked at the vehicles in my garage last night” (125).

Not a euphemism!

Axel says he has to leave and insists that she not follow him because that would be putting her life in peril “for a relationship that was never going to work anyhow” (126). Which might work on someone else, but not on a heroine in a Harlequin novel! Especially not on a heroine who has just! Now! Suddenly! Realized that she’s in “l-o-v-e” (125, emphasis original). But he storms out.