Book Review: When Love Happens

Title: When Love Happens

Author: Amy Sparks

Quote: "I went rigid with terror, mesmerized by the headlights of the approaching vehicle."

Olivia is young and pretty and just out of prison. Although she committed vehicular homicide, she was driving irresponsibly because she was upset about a parent's illness, and the man she killed was also driving irresponsibly because his brother wouldn't get off the phone and let him drive, so she spent only a short time behind bars. 

She's taken a desperation job as a slutty-looking barmaid until a relative could arrange for her to start work as a nanny. We see Olivia as a barmaid; that's where someone grabs her purse, so she chases him, smashes his nose, and reclaims her purse, and he runs to his car and aims at her. Olivia stands helplessly on the street, thinking that maybe she deserves it. Someone pulls her out of the way.

That someone is Nicholas, twin brother of the man she killed. Not knowing who he is but reacting to being close to a man after all these years, Olivia starts to feel the hormone reaction that mid-twentieth century pop culture told my generation was love.

Two different things, of course. Yes, it's nice when our hormones react to people we love and respect rather than forming a sort of addiction to people we don't really like, but love is what draws us to people when we're not having hormonal reactions, or at least not to them. 

Anyway Olivia's job involves baby-sitting Nicholas's niece. But we don't meet the niece, or get the insights into the man and the family that makes Jane Eyre interesting. Olivia doesn't seem to think seriously about Nicholas's family life. She only feels carnal passion. Nicholas's sister barges in and says unimginably nasty things to Olivia,. Olivia flounces out. Nicholas persuades her to come back. It must be love, thinks wretched Olivia, because her hormones are so agitate. To bed they go.

This is what passes for a wholesome romance these days? Does "wholesome" mean only that the clinical discussion, albeit in what tries to be "more romantic" language, of how private body parts reacted is not printed on the page? It's clear to adult readers, if not necessarily to children who might peek at this book, that they're doing what makes babies and there's been no talk of marriage. 

As a marital aid this book might work for some readers, but I find nothing about it especially wholesome.