Book Review: The Newcomer by Robyn Carr

To describe The Newcomer as a disappointment is possibly the biggest understatement of the year. The first book in Carr’s Thunder Point series, The Wanderer, was easily my favorite contemporary romance in quite some time. I was pumped for this sequel, ready for more small-town antics and a down-to-earth homey vibe and some fun, yet understated, romance. That is not at all what happened in this book. Not even close.

Phew, there’s just so much to unpack. I suppose the biggest problem with The Newcomer is that it’s a direct sequel to the first book in the series. And you might be all “well, duh, Renae, of course it’s a sequel—it’s a series!” and yeah, sure. But see, romance series don’t really operate like that. “Sequels” in romance-land are usually self-contained books that share a slight commonality: a small town setting, or maybe all the protagonists are brothers, etc. But the important point is: once a romance author writes a book, she moves on, finds new characters, and does new things. Robyn Carr doesn’t do that with The Newcomer; she sticks with the same characters and just continues their stories, when they really didn’t need any more story. I mean, the “newcomer” of this book’s title is literally the same guy as the “wanderer” from the first book’s title, if that tells you anything.

And it’s not that I don’t like these characters. It’s just that their story was told, and now it’s done. In order to make The Newcomer interesting, Carr had to add a bunch of inane drama to the mix. The entire book is all soap opera and tragedy, with actually zero romance, since all of the romantic couples had already been established and worked through their issues in the previous book and were just in a point of stagnancy.

Let’s just look at the chain of events in The Newcomer, shall we?

1. Sarah finds out she might get transferred, and this puts stress on her relationship with Cooper. She finds this out in the first chapter, but doesn’t tell him until the last. Because reasons.

2. Gina’s daughter, Ashley, is dumped by her boyfriend. Then his new lady-love photoshops Ashley’s face onto a naked picture and sends it to everyone. Ashley has a crisis, makes suicidal statements, and winds up in the hospital.

3. Gina is dating Mac. Mac’s ex-wife shows up and wants to see their kids. But it turns out she’s a gambler and actually just wants money.

4. While still dealing with Sarah’s evasiveness (see point 1), Cooper gets a call from his ex-fiancée. She’s dying of cancer. Oh, and she had a kid and it’s Cooper’s. Oh boy.

5. The “father” of Cooper’s son decides to move to Thunder Point and become the football coach.

6. Ashley’s long-lost dad comes out of the woodwork and wants to reconnect (see point 2 if you don’t remember who Ashley is).

7. Mac’s daughter, Eve, thinks she’s pregnant. She makes her boyfriend drive far away to buy a pregnancy test. As she goes to take the test…she gets her period.

8. Ashley’s ex-boyfriend gets kicked off the baseball team because of steroids.

9. Gina and Mac elope.

10. Sarah and Cooper get engaged.

HOLY COW, are you looking at this mess of a book??? There is so much going on, all at once. I’m pretty sure Robyn Carr stuck some cliché, melodramatic plot elements into a food processor and then put whatever she got into a nice Tupperware container and called it The Newcomer. And the “romance” advertised on the back of the book? Hah, no. Gina and Mac are mostly peripheral figures in this entire mess. If you want to know who’s the real “star” of this book? It’s the teenagers, most notably Ashley, Gina’s daughter.

And I have a huge problem with that.

The biggest reason for this problem is that Carr is absolute crap at writing teenagers. I read a lot of young adult fiction. I know what’s up. And maybe this author should go read YA before she starts writing about breakups and suicide and birth control. Because this? This reads like what people assume YA is when they’ve never read it. It’s overwrought, sentimental, and sloppy. Every chance for some adult to come out of the woodwork and drum some “lesson” into a teenager’s head is taken and milked for all its worth. Ashley even lectures her ex-boyfriend on his steroid use and sounds exactly like the people that came into for school assemblies, i.e. didactic and boring.

Teenagers aren’t like this. They don’t talk like that, they don’t interact like that. Just no. I realize The Newcomer isn’t for a teenage audience—it’s for adult readers. But as an adult reader, I can bullshit on this book. Either this is what Carr wants teenagers to be like, or she’s just really bad at expressing reality.

But then let’s get into other issues. Namely, this is supposedly adult romance! So where are all the adults? Hello? This was not even close to being about falling in love or making relationships work. In fact, this was all stuff and nonsense. Carr introduced these characters in The Wanderer, and that’s where they fell in love. Here, in The Newcomer, it was like she was scrambling for something to write about, and wound up with teenage bullying, gambling ex-wives, and surprise love children. Give. Me. A. Break

And sure, maybe Thunder Point isn’t going to be the sort of romance series that does the “traditional” thing and has one new central romance per book, where characters from previous novels show up but don’t play pivotal roles. Fine. That’s fine. But for the love of Pete, why is Harlequin marketing these books as if that’s what this series is? Because that jacket copy? It’s 100% about Mac and Gina, when Mac and Gina’s relationship was barely present except in the end when they eloped. I’m serious. The publicity team needs to get their act together, because I’m all about cute small-town romances, and I really want to be on board with this series. But I am not about inane teenage telenovelas written by an author whose understanding of realistic teenagers appears to be about nil. So I don’t know what’s up with The Newcomer, but if I read the next book and find more of the same, you can bet that I’m kissing Thunder Point goodbye and never looking back.