Play the Man: Post 30

Epilogue: Your Happily Ever After Ain’t Mine

Epilogue pregnancies, such as with Body Check, are a common trope. Play the Man goes with the other common epilogue trope: the epilogue wedding day. It turns out to be the very most perfect day. There’s a whole bunch of internal monologuing from Jenna about how she and Ryan have gotten through the very worst thing that could ever happen to them and now they can celebrate.

We learn that the Ryan and Nick’s friendship never recovered.

It didn’t hurt that Ryan had put a target on his back and had taken him out at practice every chance he got (152).

This strikes me as unlikely. Again, hearkening back to the many, many times I’ve gone to watch the Coyotes practice, there is rarely much contact in practice. Why would you risk injury skating against your own teammates? Besides which, most practices are drills of various kinds—there isn’t room for taking out your teammates. (Especially recently concussed ones.)

They certainly weren’t the best of friends, but then again they weren’t before, either (152).

Really, novel? You’re going to re-rewrite history? What happened to the poor Ryan has been cheated on by the TWO PEOPLE HE TRUSTED MOST? WAAAANNNHHH. Ugh.

Before the ceremony, Alex shows up to give Jenna the bride gift. (Is this a traditional thing? The best man gives a gift from the groom to the bride? Did not know that.)

She opened the velvet box and found a strand of flawless, white, seven-millimeter pearls (153).

Alex, being Alex, makes a pearl necklace sex joke, which, I know is totally in character but kind of doesn’t fit the mood of the overall epilogue. Then the narrative specifies that the necklace is a symbol, since Ryan bought something for Jenna that better fits her style than his (unlike the engagement ring) but that the engagement ring “complemented her finger” just as Ryan complements Jenna. Overwrought, but it’s the conclusion to a romance novel so I’ll allow it.

But where does this all leave our odd man out? Nick attends the wedding, mainly because it would have been suspicious of him not to. He and Jenna have not spent any time together since the affair. He expects to leave as soon as he can congratulate the bride and groom, but then he meets Katie and they flirt and dance. (“They stood close together, although not too close” (157). Apparently Nick is leaving room for the Holy Ghost?) And the novel ends with the image of Nick and Katie smiling at each other.

BUT! That’s not the image I want to leave you with. Oh no, no, no. Instead, imagine the toasts. Apparently the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup two weeks before the wedding, so they have it at the wedding reception for Ryan and Jenna to drink from.

Her mother had given her a plastic poncho to wear, so Ryan wouldn’t spill any champagne on her wedding dress as he lifted the giant silver Cup for her to sip from (155).

Because nothing says elegant wedding photos as a plastic poncho! I like to picture it as one of the old-school Walt Disney World ones, where it’s BRIGHT YELLOW and has a Mickey Mouse on the back. Happy wedding!

Some final thoughts on Play the Man… It’s… not great. I mean, I was genuinely surprised that Jenna stayed with Ryan, and being surprised by the outcome in a romance novel is pretty rare, I’ll give it that. I don’t like that Nick, though, is less of a character then and more of a tool for fixing the initial relationship. (And I use "fixing" here only in the sense that the couple stayed together, not that I think it is a healthy, stable, or enviable relationship that has had any of its major flaws attended to.)

I found the book incredibly repetitive, full of unnecessary and monotonous recitation of characters’ thoughts. I despised the perspective jumping. It was irritating, unnecessary, and frankly I thought it was a symptom of an inexperienced writer as opposed to a carefully thought through choice. I can only hope that that’s something the author chose not to employ in future novels, because it was whiplashingly awful. I didn’t like any of the characters, frankly, so it’s hard to say much of anything else about the book because for me, personally, characters are pretty much the most important thing.

Come back Monday for FHL's third book, another Harlequin Blaze. The pace is far superior and it's a book full wild improbabilities! Fun!

Play the Man: Post 29

Chapter Twenty-One: The Aftermath Part 2

Ryan demands entrance into Nick’s apartment, pounding on the door, “his voice raw from yelling” (141). Maybe I’m a coward. Maybe I’ve never been in love. But I would not answer that door. Not with a giant angry man on the other side. Especially one where Jenna has already had thoughts about fearing what Ryan would do if he found out about her infidelity.

But Jenna does, and Ryan slams into the room and states only “Nicholas Martin.” Remember that Jenna didn’t get Nick’s message, so she’s surprised that Ryan knows.

Apparently this infidelity is even worse than were it someone else because Nick was “the man who Ryan had always trusted Jenna with” (142). It seems to me that relationships are built on trust. And that Ryan should be trusting Jenna, not trusting his friends/teammates to police Jenna’s sexuality. Granted, Jenna broke that trust. But that’s the point, Jenna broke it. The only person who gets to police sexuality is the owner of that sexuality. This goes in, with Ryan pondering “If he hadn’t let them hang out together, would this have been prevented?” (142). Uh, and Brian’s the Chicago Blackhawk they call “Caveman”? I’m sorry, Ryan, you don’t get to “let” or not let your fiancée hang out with anyone. (Also, she’d still have been incredibly unhappy and probably would have had something similar happen if not with Nick then with someone else.)

Still, even though there’s no textual reason for it, when Jenna tries to give the engagement ring back to Ryan, he declares that he’s not sure what he wants and that while he hates Jenna he also still loves her. So he puts the ring on her right hand until he figures out what to do. When Jenna tells him she’s going back to New Hampshire, he tells her not to bother, at least not yet, and that he’s moved out of the house so she can stay there until he’s decided what he wants. (So even thought they're not together at the moment, she can continue relying on him for shelter, food, clothes...)

On one hand, that all of this is up to Ryan bothers me in its unilateralness. On the other hand, Jenna did cheat on him so it is up to Ryan to decide if he can get past that. (On the third hand—and yes, apparently I’m describing something with many hands—while it’s not Ryan’s fault that Jenna cheated on him, he did have many faults that made it a more likely possibility. So if they decide to work things out- and now the novel is pretty clear that they will- it seems like it ought to be more than just Jenna doing the apologizing.)

So Ryan leaves and Jenna packs her things (not that she has many, since she was left at the Art Institute two days before-- not exactly packed for a mini-vay) and Nick returns home and offers her a ride back to her place.

It was one last kind gesture to the woman he had thought he loved, to take her back to the place she called home (145).

Now the text is rewriting Nick’s history as well. Suddenly Jenna has gone from being the woman he loved more than any other in this world less than twenty pages ago to someone he had thought he loved.

…he had really fallen in love with the idea of having a girl, like Jenna, the same way that Ryan had Jenna (145).

No, novel, no. Bad novel! No cookie! You don’t get to have it both ways! This cannot be the love of Nick’s life and just a case of mistaking the idea of love for the actual thing. This is just bad writing. I cannot justify this in any other way.

Jenna called a cab, though, so Nick’s kind gesture is unnecessary.

Jenna had relied on Nick too much during this entire ordeal when she should have been relying on Ryan, and that’s what had set the ball rolling (146).

Oh really? I thought the part where Ryan was unreliable was what set the ball rolling. You don’t get to blame Jenna for this, Nick. Also, know what else got the ball rolling? When you kissed your teammate’s fiancée.

A few days later, Jenna is home, alone, and has been moping for days, much like the rest of this book. She takes a shower, still wearing the wedding ring, and partway through she’s interrupted by Ryan showing up. It’s awfully convenient that he showed up while she was in the shower, since the first thing he has to do is look her up and down for “any tainted markings on her body” (147). Evidently he feared that Nick’s fingers secrete indelible ink?

He thought he’d be able to tell that she was defiled or tarnished. Like there would be fingerprints on her skin in all the places Nick had touched her (148).

I really hope that this is a metaphor and not that Ryan actually thinks that he’d be able to visually tell that she had been with another man. Also, I don’t condone what Jenna did—within the confines of the relationship she had with Ryan, what she did with Nick was wrong. However, this imagery strikes me as the logical continuation of a deeply problematic purity culture and the double standard.

I do not mean to suggest that the author or the character subscribe to Purity Culture (capital letters) with all its attendant balls and courtship and rings (although the gender lines displayed in this novel do fall in line with the kind of teachings usually present along with purity culture). But I do think that the double standard is alive and well and that purity culture has rubbed off on mainstream, abstinence-only, middle America. Obviously, Jenna was not a virgin when she slept with Nick because she’s been sleeping with Ryan, although the book does seem to suggest that he’s the only other man she’d been with. But this idea that Ryan might be able to somehow visually tell that she’s been with another man makes me think of the chewing-gum/dirty tape metaphor that girls get told—and not just in religiously-affiliated home schooling, but in mainstream public school, abstinence-only sex education. (If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the idea that a woman ought to save herself for marriage because no one wants used goods, and it’s taught using various metaphors [chewing gum, wrapping paper, packing tape, cups of spit] that simultaneously objectifies women, reduces them to their bodily selves, and yet places on them the responsibility of keeping not only themselves ‘pure’ but the men around them from thinking lustful thoughts about them.)

To be fair, that’s a digression and I doubt that’s what the author was thinking about when she wrote this, nor, in fact, what Ryan’s thinking about. But his disgust about Jenna’s infidelity isn’t framed in terms of being unable to trust her, it’s completely put in terms of someone else touching her. And that’s a problem.

Ryan hops into the shower with Jenna and proceeds to wash her.

It was a cleansing ritual; Ryan was removing any traces that Nick may have left behind. He was washing her clean so they could start all over. So her skin would be fresh and new and only remember his touch and no one else’s (148 emphasis original).

I guess I should be glad that, unlike chewing gum, Jenna’s body can become clean and new.

So this leads to foreplay and Ryan carries her to the bed and sex ensues.

The only thing Ryan could think about was if this was how Jenna had looked at… He couldn’t even think his name. It made Ryan’s blood boil, and he took it out on Jenna by making sure she would never, ever remember one minute she spent with him (149 emphasis original).

Is this supposed to be sexy? It reads like violence. Given that we’re still in the (damp from the shower) foreplay section of the sex, I guess it’s not, but the narrative is not clear on what precisely Ryan is doing when he “took it out on Jenna,” so I find it problematic.

The rest is just sex. Afterwards, Ryan takes the ring off of her right hand and studies it. Jenna begs him to let her spend the rest of her life making sure he knows how much she loves him. I know she was the one at fault (in actually cheating), but given the inequality of their relationship before the infidelity, I can’t say I approve of this reconciliation scene (he puts the ring back on her left hand) because of how much power Ryan has in the relationship already and how much more this gives him. It just seems so awkward.

But I will also admit that every couple is different and differing dynamics appeal to different people. Maybe this just isn’t my preferred dynamic.Or a healthy-seeming one.

Play the Man: Post 28

Chapter Twenty-One: A Digression by the Commissioner AND The Aftermath Part 1

At the end of this post, please see a digression by me on the nature of snarking here.

So, when we left our little dysfunctional love triangle, Ryan had just found out that Nick was the man with whom Jenna had had the affair. He left the rink angry. The other players had seen Ryan’s attack on Mike and seen Ryan and Nick storm off. They did not hear the actual conversation between Ryan and Nick, but were clearly aware that Ryan did not return to practice.

“We’re still having practice?” Shawn asked… (137).

Uh, yes? The freakin’ coach is there. The captain, such as he is, rarely shows to optional practices, as the text made clear, so what does it matter that he stormed off. (Also, it really ought to be multiple coaches. I’ve never been to a Coyotes practice and not seen multiple coaches on the ice, even during optional skates.) You guys are PROFESSIONAL NHL PLAYERS, the coaching staff doesn’t give a fig if someone’s upset for whatever reason—there’s still going to be practice.

Nick tries to call Jenna to tell her that he’d spilled the beans to Ryan. (Jenna has been staying with Nick ever since Ryan left her at the Art Institute) but he only gets her voicemail. He debates going to her in person versus staying at the rink for the skate.

He felt a little jaded; if she didn’t want to be a part of his life, then he shouldn’t feel the need to want to protect her from Ryan’s wrath (139).

That’s… not how emotions work. First, let me highlight the fact that Nick is worried that Jenna needs protection from “Ryan’s wrath” which, given that he’s just seen Ryan go after a teammate who merely said that he likes blondes like Jenna, with no other evidence that he might be the guy who had the affair with her, I can see why fear of Ryan’s violence is logical. HOWEVER, if he genuinely fears that Ryan is going to be violent with Jenna, then I think Nick has a duty to protect her, not only as someone he cares about but as a human being. Hell, he should be calling the police!

Now, if he thinks that “Ryan’s wrath” will be only verbal (which is still potentially very dangerous, of course) and that Jenna can protect herself, fine, he doesn’t have a requirement to protect her. That said, it shouldn’t be tit-for-tat. Just because she doesn’t want to leave her fiancé for him doesn’t mean that he now needs drop all concern, interest, and affection for her. I mean, if he actually cares for her, he should care for her for who she is, not for what he can get from her. 

Jenna was in the shower when Nick called, so didn’t get the message.

It would have been so much easier if she could have accepted Nick’s offer of love and affection and let him whisk her off her feet, like she was certain he was capable of doing, but easier didn’t mean it was possible (140).

I… what? So, Nick is capable of sweeping her off her feet but that’s not possible? I think I get what the narrative is trying to say here—mostly that Nick could sweep Jenna off her feet if not for her feelings for Ryan but that is so not what it says.

She’s been trying to decide if she should go home to New Hampshire, since nothing in Chicago is hers. It’s ALL been provided for by Ryan, to the extent that in order to not spend his money, she’d have to ask her parents for the funds to get her back to NH. But she’s uncomfortable asking for money from her parents because that “would be like admitting defeat” (140). I’m uncomfortable by the idea that marrying Ryan was a prize to be won (or lost.) This motif came up earlier in the text, too, and I didn’t like it then, either. I think I must have a fundamentally different view of relationships than Jenna.

That fact is made even clearer when Jenna thinks, “She didn’t know how to live, how to exist, without him” (140). She continues on.

Or maybe it was because she truly needed him. That they had been together so long that they had molded and melded together into one single entity (141).

First? Ew. Second? Ew. (The first ew is because literally that sounds gross. The second ew is because that’s figuratively gross, too, because people should be whole without their partners. Not that they can’t be better people because of their partners, or a fantastic team with their partners, but if you’re not whole without your partner, that’s called co-dependence.)

I understand that when you’re heartbroken melodramatic things get thought, but still. Yikes.

The giant pink engagement ring, which graces the book’s cover and was a point of such consternation earlier in the text, becomes an Enormous Symbol (I mean, beyond what engagement rings already symbolize) at this point. Jenna decides not to take it off, not even to shower, so long as there’s even a bit of hope that Ryan will decide to take her back. When she gets out of the shower, there’s a knock on the door and Ryan demanding to be let in to talk.

I hate to leave you on a cliffhanger—even the book doesn’t, as the chapter continues here, but this post has gotten long. Until next time… 

Now, a few thoughts.

I made the mistake of reading a little of the author’s blog after I finished reading Play the Man. As most people are, writers included, she seems quite nice and justifiably proud of her achievements of writing/publishing her novels. Play the Man was her first novel and I just wish it were better. Because frankly, it’s really, truly, and painfully bad in many ways. Sure, there aren’t any magic pants (actually, that’d be more fun…) and she seems to understand hockey (yay!), but the continuous, dragged on moping just makes the book boring. (And the oh-so-convenient concussion is awful. And grad school doesn't work that way. And I loathe these characters.)

Happily, I read excerpts from some of the author’s other works, and she seems to have improved. I’m genuinely pleased for her by that fact. Practice does matter when it comes to anything (including writing and hockey!) I’m not going to race out to buy more of her work, necessarily, but I’d go to another book by this author with an open mind.

Also, a reminder that when I nitpick and obsess and critique these books (or any writing), I do not mean to ever equate the book with the person. And if I do? I’m genuinely sorry for that. I figure someday an author is going to find this blog and be pretty horrified by it. I know how important someone’s written work is to them. And I know that my critiques will be hurtful should they be read by the authors. But I’m honestly not doing it to be mean. I’m doing it to either expose bad writing or to follow the writing to its logical end. For example, when I criticize the character of Ryan, and Jenna’s reaction to what might happen if he were to find out about her infidelity, I’m trying to point out cultural norms that maybe shouldn't be norms, gender stereotypes, and potentially abusive relationships. (No, Jenna and Ryan’s relationship is not shown to be abusive. But her fear of his potential for violence threw up red flags for me, and I wanted to point that sort of thing out because I don’t think it’s okay for that to be considered normal because silence breeds more of the same.)

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to say that, even buried here as it is, because I do have qualms about this blog at times and I wanted to clarify what it is I’m attempting—besides enjoying a good dose of snark.

Next post- Ryan confronts Jenna.