Author: Anna Brooks
Date: 2023
Quote: "The boy I'd crushed on my entire life but was too afraid to tell because I knew he saw me only as a friend."
When they reach high school, Beau is about to tell Georgia otherwise. He sees her as The Prettiest Cheerleader Ever. But so does Tad, the much less lovable son of someone Georgia's less than lovable father owes money. Georgia's father says that Beau and his family are trash and Georgia is to be seen dating other boys, never Beau.
At this point the story almost goes where the Southern reader begins to expect it to go. Beau's father and Georgia's mother were once very close friends. When a high school boy's father has a legitimate job and the boy keeps up with the work in the same classes the girl does, comes to school on time clean and sober, and stays out of trouble with the law, he's not trash, exactly. The only reason why the girl's father might call him trash would be that the father knows the boy is his daughter's cousin--or even half-brother.
But this story shows a bit of foreign influence. If Tad still wants Georgia when they get through high school, and Tad's father will accept a rich, good-looking daughter-in-law in lieu of some of the money Georgia's father owes him, then as far as these un-American men are concerned, Tad and Georgia are engaged.
I'm sure Brooks got this idea from an item of local news or gossip, but I'm also sure the older men involved weren't born on this continent. In a free country, most parents know that, if fantasies about A's son and B's daughter as a couple ever cross their minds, they have the right to remain silent. Children can't be married while they're subject to parental authority; marriages are legal in most States only after the bride and bridegroom are full-grown and on-their-own and have had time to consider other offers.
However, Tad, being a bully, decides he wants Georgia just because he knows Beau does and for some reason they don't seem to be a couple. Things come to a head when Georgia goes to the prom with Tad, they drink a little too much, and Tad tries to rape Georgia. Beau knocks him flat and takes Georgia home with him, where the three middle sons in the family like her and the youngest one has a real crush on her--their mother has been dead for a few months and they're starving for an older female's attention. When Georgia comes home, still a perfect virgin and now over her head in Teen Romance, her father orders her never to speak to Beau again. If she wants to go to college, she'll have to marry Tad first.
Georgia's mother has some money saved up against this kind of possibility. Georgia goes away to college. A long way away. Beau goes to police academy and joins the police force in their home town. (It's in Texas, we are told, though it does sound sort of Arabian.)
And now, in the present reality of the story, Georgia's father is dead. Georgia is still a perfect virgin, and although Beau is not, he's only ever used other women, never really dated the same one for any length of time. (In romance novels that makes it all right.) Is it safe for Georgia to come home and live with her mother now? Can Beau forgive her for going away? Can she forgive Beau for not coming to Chicago to find her?
Of course they can, because this is a romance novel, though it's one of the steamy kind with liberal mention of who touched what and how it felt and what they did next, on and on for three or four pages at a time. Recommended strictly for use as a marital aid...
I'm underwhelmed. Maybe it's the portrait of Beau on the cover, maybe just Beau's eagerness to avenge every perceived insult to Georgia (at this stage) by decking somebody...Beau seems to me like the sort of boy who'll soon be dumping his anger on Georgia, though then again, as a police officer, he's already demonstrated (onstage) that he's capable of just going to the local jail and beating up an inmate. Even if it's only Tad, who deserves to be beaten up and whom Beau undoubtedly owes a few bruises because Tad was the sort of boy all the other boys owed several bruises by grade five, that does not read like a portrait of a man who has gained complete control of himself. But maybe someone else out there knows a couple like that who've been happy together for even ten years. I hope so.
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