Title: Rescue My Heart Series: Animal Magnetism #3
Author: Jill Shalvis
Published: November 6, 2012
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 304
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:After a tragic stint in the National Guards, Adam Connelly returns to Idaho and to Belle Haven, the animal shelter he owns with his brothers. All Adam wants is to be alone. Then he opens the door to the past—the woman whose heart he once broke. Still gorgeous, still tough-as-nails, but this time, unusually vulnerable.
Holly learned the hard way to never depend on a man for anything. Now, of all men, Adam is the last one she wants to see, and the only one she needs. Her father has gone missing in the Bitterroot Mountains and she could use someone with tracking skills to help find him.
For Holly and Adam, each with their ghosts, a trek this desperate, this unpredictable, and this intimate, will have its share of risks—including opening their hearts one more time.
I’m honestly more than a little confused by this. Reading Rescue My Heart gave me the reader’s equivalent to whiplash. I’m not even sure what to make of this book, to be honest. Even so, I’m quite sure that this is my least favorite Jill Shalvis book to date, due to her unlikable and unfathomable characters and also because of her degrading attitude towards women.
The first chapter of Rescue My Heart was really cute, but things quickly slid downhill from there. Actually, the book can be easily divided into two phases, neither of which I liked, but for different reasons.
The first phase was the rescue section. Holly’s dad frequently disappears into the mountains for days at a time, but this time she’s convinced it’s different and that he might be hurt (hint: he’s not). Holly convinces Adam to go out a look for her dad, and then insists that she come along too. And while Adam has years of experience with search and rescue, Holly does not. So basically the first half of the book is Holly being stubborn, clueless idiot and seriously ruining Adam’s rescue, which she guilt-tripped him into doing in the first place, since chances are her dad is a-okay. Which he is. The whole freak-out and search is then rendered pointless.
The only actual point the rescue had was to throw Adam and Holly into proximity. Because of course, even though they’re undertaking a very serious rescue in the middle of a snowstorm, there is ample time for lusty thoughts and sexy times. Lovely.
After all that was done, the second half of Rescue My Heart was like reading a whole other book with an entirely different set of idiotic characters and issues. Shalvis basically wrote a hundred and fifty pages worth of two people having sex, acting like babies, and telling each other and themselves that they’re no good for each other. The entire second half of this book was such a waste of my time. I don’t even know what the conflict was, it was that strange and sloppily set up. Everything fizzled out after the rescue attempt, because the characters had nowhere to go. It felt like the author was just putzing around in order to get the page count her publisher required.
As much as I couldn’t understand Holly and Adam and their strange relationship, the thing that bothered me most about this book was Shalvis’ sexism. She’s made passing slut shaming comments before in her books, but not at the level I witnessed in Rescue My Heart.
First, we had a scene where Holly was having sex with Adam, and she was enjoying herself. Yeah, okay, that’s fine. But Holly describes the act of enjoying sex as “letting her inner ho out.” Excuse me? Only whores enjoy sex? Or, enjoying sex makes you a whore? Lovely, Ms. Shalvis.
Second, we had multiple offenses by the men in the book. Holly was repeatedly referred to as “your woman” or “my woman”, which is completely disgusting and not cute. I polled other woman and found out that they don’t like their significant other calling “woman” either. It’s dismissive, subjugative, and belittling.
Also, the men in the book would demean each other by referring to their behavior as “girlish” or “feminine”, thereby demeaning women in the process. I recorded the following examples: ”You’ve been gossiping like a pair of little girls.” and “You’re an attention whore, you know that. Just like a woman.” and “His brothers left him bitchy texts, like a couple of women.”
That is downright offensive.
Also, can we just talk about this line, because I absolutely lost it on Twitter because of it? “She wanted him to change for her.”
Okay. Number one, don’t go into a relationship expecting someone to change. It’s not going to happen and both of you will end up frustrated. If you don’t like what you see, move on. I’m not saying people don’t grow over time, but if you spend all your time imagining what the person could be instead of appreciating who they are right now, there is something wrong with your relationship. Number two: don’t change for another person; change for yourself. In that line, Holly reveals that she wants Adam to change to please her own wants. She doesn’t want him to change because it might be good for him or because he needs it. Just because she doesn’t like what he is currently, and wants him to fit her ideal. That is so screwed up.
Obviously, I wasn’t a huge fan of Rescue My Heart. It really did have its moments—mostly ones related to Adam’s dog—but by and large, a close look at the text does not inspire many warm, fuzzy feelings. I was just so confused by what was happening, and I don’t think Jill Shalvis wanted to write things the way she did, but that’s how everything turned out. Kind of a small-scale mess.
