When we left The Dad Next Door he was beginning to fall in love with our protagonist, Alison, but remained concerned how this new relationship would effect his daughter, Tory. Alison, meanwhile, was beginning to fall in love with the single father neighbour, Gavin, but was concerned he was obsessively stalking Tory's mother, Marianne. Tory, on the other hand, was still coming to terms with the death of her sister, Samantha, in a motorcycle accident (Sam was hit by a motorcycle), and the move to Squam Lake, but at least now has Alison, her adoring new mother figure and a general disinterest towards the feelings of others, because she's a child.
The easily resolved issues don't stop there, however. First there is Alison's divorced father, named something fatherly yet distant, such as Frank (it's actually Seth, how inappropriate), and then there's Marianne, a bohemian version of Megan Fox, with black hair, pale skin and facial features so chiselled a man could cut a finger on them. Marianne is an artist and Tory's estranged mother, disappeared for years. A bad woman, a bad mother, a lousy girlfriend and, though the author doesn't acknowledge it directly, an inept painter of moody, esoteric pictures with little commercial value. Alison is the Julie Bowen alternative to Megan Fox, all smooth lines, safe for children, warm autumnal colours and blonde hair. Her shop, The Perfect Thing, is a tourist trap of popular nic-nacs obtuse visitors and locals immediately adore.
All this homely pleasantness and reasonable reactions to everyday occurrences is soon shattered by the return of Marianne, with a secret so dark and unlikely no one may ever be the same again, except Tory who glides through life with a childlike apathy towards the feelings of others. The use of 'may ever be the same' is apt, because Marianne's secret doesn't change much irrevocably, it merely serves to extend the story for a further one hundred or so pages. Marianne's secret is nothing compared to Seth's secret. That's a secret that should shatter everyone's lives, but somehow doesn't, resulting in something eerily close to incest. Yep, The Dad Next Door is the first Mills & Boon to contain 'sorta incest'. Add that to the list, Google.
Our delightful heroine, Alison, is a modern woman of standard neuroses. Her recent broken engagement to Tyler isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Her future is fixed from the moment Gavin and Tory move in next door and the adult problems soon to plague her quiet house of middle class domesticity only serve to regress her back to childhood and the same selfish outlook that bonds her so quickly to Tory. She grew up with Marianne and everything was a competition. Every boy Alison liked was stolen by Marianne and Seth always took Marianne's side. Some father, the reader thinks, unaware how right they are. With her feelings for Gavin growing the arrival of Marianne threatens to upset their newfound love, especially as it takes place shortly after The Dad Next Door's only sex scene, on a sofa and involving metaphorical melting.
Despite this, CJ Carmichael has no intention of figuring anything out, instead using Marianne as an unrealistic plot point. Her sudden reappearance reveals the devastating secret no one wants to hear. Oh, please allow this weblog to reveal the secret, because our Bewildered Heart cannot contain itself any longer! Seth had an affair with Marianne's drunken whore of a mother and is, in fact, Marianne's father. Holy cow, yes! Alison and Marianne are half-sisters and always have been. Not only that, but Alison slept with her niece's father. Phew! You have no idea how long we've been wanting to tell you that, indulgent reader. Can you believe it? Alison Bennett always seemed like such a nice, simple woman of autumnal colours and Julie Bowen congeniality. It must be that child that looks eerily like how Megan Fox presumably looks. Everybody knows what bad influences the child-incarnations of Transformers stars are.
You're gosh darn right, non-existent alcoholic Squam Lake busy-body. How will this mess of crap be sorted in the remaining ten or so pages? Really, there are only ten pages left? What, is Carmichael just going to call a taxi for Marianne, remove her from the picture and then have the characters never again mention this sordid chapter of their lives, much to the dismay and annoyance of the reader, who had patiently concentrated on her words for two hundred and eighty pages awaiting something dramatic to take place? Nah, of course not. That would be rubbish and deeply infuriating.
The Dad Next Door positions itself as a Tender Romance and the sexual element, while present, is subtlety excised, the editor moving on as the couple move into the bedroom, leaving the awkwardly timid descriptions of penetration, thrusting and orgasm (we all know it happens) on the floor of the writer's equivalent of the cutting room. Clipboard? Unlike Modern and Blaze! there includes a noticeable plot centred around a compelling protagonist. There is a child old enough to speak and influence the narrative and Carmichael cleverly uses Tory to push Alison and Gavin together, their intimacy brought about by a resolutely pampered kid. This is no different from other romance stories that use a gimmick to hurry along the romance, but a child brings a heightened emotional significance to any potential coupling. This relationship has more riding on it than a wasted month of crying, eating ice cream and watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote.
Furthermore, there is the introduction of Marianne, a villain. A woman whose selfish apathy towards the feelings of others isn't as adorable or as tolerated as Tory's. Marianne is a cold, conniving artist-type who never wanted children and was forced to give birth to twins when she would have preferred an abortion. In another writer's hands Marianne could have been portrayed as human, weak and confused, a victim of circumstance, poverty and poor parenting, while also suffering from a proper illness that is wrecking her life and destroying any chance she has of making contact with her only daughter. However, Carmichael takes a different route. Marianne is a manipulative bitch with a made-up disease who stands between Alison and her man, undeserving of happiness she has not earned and cruel and drunk and inconsiderate and a bitch and I hate her.
Fair enough then, but Marianne represents little more than Alison's own deluded sense of entitlement. We here at Bewildered Heart love a happy ending and as the word count is reached Alison, Gavin and Tory are complete, a loving and happy family. Woo-hoo. Yet if there is one thing even better than a happy ending it is a good ending, with all the story strands resolved in a satisfying and rewarding manner. The Dad Next Door has a happy ending, but a disappointing one. Gavin and Alison's contentment has left a trail of damaged people in its wake, but because those people brought their shame, loneliness and misery on themselves the reader is expected not to mind. If Romance Romance has the opportunity for more complex scenarios, darker character history and less easily-obtained romance than the usual Mills & Boon sub-genres, then Romance Romance owes itself deeper emotional resonance than The Dad Next Door.
Please note that this review refers to CJ Carmichael's The Dad Next Door, and not Kasey Michaels' The Dad Next Door, published by Silhouette and featuring an author with a worryingly similar name. We also do not mean to criticise Virginia Myers' The Dad Next Door, or any living or deceased male neighbours with children, although you probably have your own narrative issues that a few rewrites and sex scenes would take care of.
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