This is the worst romance book I'v read in quite some time, and that pains me because I typically really, really like Penny Reid. She's written some of my favorite contemporary romances. This one? No. Not so much.The fifth book in the Knitting in the City series, this focuses on Fiona, the only member of the knitting group who was married before the series began. Her husband, an ex-Marine, is a consultant of some type in the oil business, working to try to make oil drilling more environmentally friendly and ethical (or something--it's kind of vague). Fiona is an ex-CIA agent (you can kind of intuit this from former books in the series) turned stay-at-home mom and part-time consultant. Their relationship is under some strain because of Greg's long absences from home for work, but they're trucking along, as they have been doing for fourteen years...until Greg gets kidnapped, and Fiona goes to save him.
First let's talk about this hare-brained plot. This is nothing like the other books. Reid mentions that, other than Neanderthal Seeks Human, this was the book she was most looking forward to in the series. It's basically a spy novel, though, and it does't fit in with the rest of the books at all. There is no character or emotional depth here. There is a novella about Fiona and Greg's origin story floating about somewhere, but that does not excuse shoddy plotting and characterization in the main book. We know that Greg was a Marine and something happened to his parents; but what? We know that Fiona was apparently a child gymnast and spent six to eight hours a day training, but beyond Greg throwing that out in an argument, there's nothing else about it or how it might have formed her as a character and influenced her decisions. And, by the way, you can want your kids to have a normal childhood even if you weren't a child gymnast, so it wasn't even a good point for the argument. Fiona's rescue mission was the most half-thought-out thing I've ever seen, and Greg's improvisations on it were even worse.
But the real problem with this book is Greg. Greg is the worst romantic hero ever. You know who I didn't say that about? Gray Eagle, the "hero" of Savage Ecstasy, which was terrible. Greg is worse. Why? Because Gray Eagle isn't supposed to be a good guy, and Greg is. Let me discuss some of why Greg is terrible with you. Ultimately, what much of it boils down to is that while he purports to love Fiona, he does not trust or respect her, which are, you know, kind of important factors of love. The examples of this are numerous and infuriating, such as...
-Greg's job takes him away from home for long periods of time; okay, that happens. However, while he's gone, he expects Fiona to live and parent by ridiculous decrees that he leaves behind, such as their five-year-old daughter is not allowed to have a princess costume, or their son can't play soccer unless their daughter does too, and their daughter doesn't want to play soccer. Greg pushes this as not molding their children to gender norms, but it doesn't work, because the daughter has lots of other interests that are not typically keyed to women, she just doesn't want to play soccer and she happens to like princesses. When it comes out that Fiona is letting her children have a bit of freedom--the daughter gets her costume, the son gets to play soccer--Greg pretty much flips and blames Fiona for making decisions without him.
-On the note of making decisions without him: Greg and Fiona do talk while he's gone, via Skype. However, Greg doesn't seem to want to be involved with making decisions, he just wants Fiona to follow his rules while he's gone and have phone sex with him. The book opens with Fiona trying to talk to Greg about their retirement, which he argues about why they basically shouldn't have a retirement investment because all corporations are evil, and then says he'll sign the papers if she has Skype sex with him, shows him her boobs, sends him dirty pictures, etc. He never does sign the papers, and his demands for sexual favors in return for acting like a Goddamn adult are ridiculous in the extreme.
-Even when Fiona basically single-handedly saves him from Nigerian kidnappers using her elite CIA training, he does not trust her planning or skills enough to get them out of Nigeria. Instead, he chooses to drug her against her will and haul her off into an even bigger mess of his own creation, which involves him getting re-kidnapped and almost killed in a gunfight and Fiona almost being arrested for treason.
-He has no respect for the work Fiona does or the hard decisions she has to make as a functionally single parent; he comes home, trashes the apartment, gets upset at Fiona for having a male neighbor/friend, and then mocks her when she expresses her anger and frustration at his behavior, before saying he loves her and leaving, as if saying that you love someone fixes everything you've done to hurt them.
-He was furious at her for keeping her CIA status from him earlier in their relationship and made her promise not to do anything dangerous beyond her abilities, but he doesn't have the respect for courtesy to act the same in his own career. Per a promise he made, he never brings up the CIA thing in arguments, at least vocally--however, he makes his resentment known, even a decade and a half later, through his actions towards her.
-He makes rape jokes that he actually thinks are funny.
Fiona eventually addresses Greg's behavior, demanding that he value and respect her. And poof! He suddenly does! But I don't for one secton believe that, if he clearly has not valued or respected her for the first fourteen years of their marriage (and eighteen or nineteen years of their total relationship; I forget the exact number), that he is about to start now, harrowing near-death experiences or no. Yes, marriages have problems; but this is beyond reasonable. Greg seems to have really loved Fiona when they were younger, and I don't blame her for marrying him. However, I do blame her for not divorcing him in a hot second by the end of this book, and I have to wonder where her spine has been for the past fourteen years if she's supposedly such a kick-ass person.
There are other problems with this book, too; Marie is apparently suddenly a lawyer though she never went to law school because she decided to take the bar exam one day, when this isn't actually possible--you can take the bar without going to law school, but you have to spend an extended period studying under an attorney or judge to do so. This might be addressed in the next book, Dating-ish, which focuses on Marie as the main character, but is an illustrated point that while Reid seems to have done some research on Nigeria for this book, she skimped in other areas. It's also not as well-edited, with misspelled, misused, misplaced, or just plain missing words in several places. It kind of feels like Reid was so eager to write Fiona's book that she just did it and never looked back to see if it was actually any good.
Let me wrap it up this way: if Happily Ever Ninja was the first Penny Reid book I read, I would never read another. That is not the case, however. I've read many of Reid's other books and like them quite a bit, so I will read more...but knowing that this is what Reid sees as one of her favorite stories and implied favorite heroes has made me lose quite a bit of respect for her as an author.
1 star out of 5.
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