Annotation #2 - Romance

Summary:
Maggie Concannon is a talented glassblower with a temper as hot as her furnaces. Rogan Sweeney is a smooth talking, blue-blooded businessman with a knack for discovering emerging artists and championing them in his world-renowned galleries. The two couldn’t be more different—heart vs. head, Clare vs. Dublin, struggle vs. family wealth, fire vs. water—so when they meet, sparks fly. After enduring her parents’ loveless marriage, which left her father dead and her mother with a bitter contempt for her daughters, Maggie swore she would never let passion get in the way of her dreams. But Rogan’s not used to letting what he wants slip away, and it is Maggie he wants most of all.

Romance Characteristics:

• An emotional tone draws readers into the love story. They can be lighthearted or brooding and tense. Maggie’s father dies suddenly in the first chapter, which I think has the effect of pulling in the reader and making them root for her success in light of her struggles and heartbreak. I never really got the sense that the relationship between Maggie and Rogan was leading to anything other than a happy ending.
• Characters are quickly drawn—Men are powerful confident, and dangerous while women are strong, bright, and independent. This characteristic could not fit any better. Maggie has red hair and shining green eyes, she’s an artist and her glasswork is described as sensually as her body. She does her best to resist the pull of money, wanting to create from the heart instead of the wallet. Rogan is commanding of his staff both at home and his gallery, comically buying Maggie an answering machine so he can boss her around even when he’s not there in person. I think every single character complimented his stylish suits at one point or another. Brianna is a model daughter and homemaker. Maeve is a pitiful viper of a mother with no love for her own children. The women in Rogan’s circle are polite, posh, and probably even smell expensive.
• A misunderstanding forces the lovers apart, making a happy ending all the more satisfying. Social and moral issues may be present, but won’t interfere with the conclusion. First, Rogan resists Maggie’s pull because he doesn’t want to mix business and pleasure unless it’s his idea. Then he can’t take it anymore, and suddenly wants to marry her to boot. Maggie wrestles with a bigger challenge—should she tie her future happiness to another person, and risk ending her creative path the way her mother did?
• Setting is engaging and can have historical, cultural, or social details. Ireland’s sense of place is so strong, Roberts barely has to say anything beyond remarking upon the green hills and the blue sky. But she does also dip into pub culture, and the sense of community in general in Clare is strong and familial. I loved the scene where Maggie falls asleep drunk in a cow pasture under a full moon. If that’s not Ireland. There’s even a letter from Nora Roberts addressed to the reader before we get to the story, in which she calls Ireland “a land of violent cliffs and dim, smoky pubs. Of magic and legend and heartbreak. There is a beauty even in the air.”
• Plot is fast-paced. You could certainly call this romance a whirlwind. I’m not even sure I could tell you how much time passed between Rogan barging into Maggie’s workshop and his proposal. And in that time, two other couples in the story fall in love, as well!
• Language is evocative and descriptive, relying extensively on adjectives. Thankfully I did not read the word “member.” You might turn to a random page and not know if you are reading a sex scene or a glassblowing scene. It was clear that Roberts had a good time researching and describing Maggie’s process.

Read-a-likes:

• Continue Roberts’ “Born in” trilogy with Born in Ice
• Looking for something a little closer to home? Try the first in Roberts’ Chesapeake Bay saga, Sea Swept
• Find love in another small town in True Love by Jude Deveraux
• For a nobler Irish love story, try The Irish Heiress by Kaitlin O’Riley

My Review: ★★☆☆☆
I’ve read romances before, so I knew what I was getting in to, and I tried to approach this book with a completely open mind. I was glad to have chosen a book set in Ireland—at least I could imagine myself in a beautiful setting if the plot didn’t do it for me. Interestingly, I was reading this on the shuttle to work and I found myself a little sheepish to let my colleagues see the cover. Nora taught me that I have some internalized misogyny to work through, even if I’d never judge anyone else I saw reading a romance in public. It would be difficult to “illuminate all the ways a genre largely written and read by women is still undervalued, even as it accounts for over a third of fiction sales” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 215). I will give it this—the book did pass the Bechdel Test. I appreciated that the majority of the major characters are women. I’m an older sister, and I always like seeing sisterhood accurately portrayed in media. It’s a unique relationship that doesn’t get enough screen/page time and can be hard to get right; the way you love each other so much but could also easily strangle each other during the argument du jour. However, the romance between Maggie and Rogan had me rolling my eyes and groaning (and not in the...good way). I just wasn’t able to believe the relationship. Rogan felt one-dimensional compared to Maggie—was I supposed to consider his business sense (even though he was born wealthy) equal to her artistic talent? Does the man enjoy anything other than making money and sleeping with Maggie? Kind of gross to think about him profiting from her art, and then even her cut becomes his when they marry. Final note: plus one star for Grandma getting some action!

Resources:
Wyatt, N. & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction. (3rd. ed.). Chicago: ALA Editions.