Book Review: Last Call

Last Call is Book #2 in the Heat Wave series by Alannah Lynne. Book #1, Savin' Me, was highly recommended by reviewers on amazon.com who also read this second book. Thinking about it now, I might have been a bit more forgiving in my review if I picked up Savin' Me first, based on what people said in their comments. But honestly, each book must be able to stand alone based on its own merit, and I didn't miss a fundamental plot point by not reading the other one.

Summary
Last Call follows Aimee Lee "Sunny" Black, owner of the Blackout, a local beach bar in the town of Anticue, North Carolina as she meets and falls for the representative of resort mogul Holden Enterprises, Gavin McLeod. Blackout is a bar that is under siege, as Holden Enterprises CEO Max Holden is determined to buy Sunny out of her business and build a new luxury resort in the sleepy beach town. The story opens with Gavin, Max's protégé, kicking up gravel in his expensive SUV, in a hurry to get out of the car and into the rundown local haunt so that he can ditch the 3 young ladies he drove up from Myrtle Beach, one of whom who has it bad for him. Ironically, the lady in question happens to be Callie Holden, the boss's sophisticated and spoiled daughter.

Sunny, instantly taken with the handsome stranger who saddles up to her bar with an interesting drink order, catches Gavin's eye with her open nature and her interesting choice of ...jewelry. And once hooked, apparently it's instant hook-line-sinker for both of them, as things get pretty intense very quickly.

Sunny is aware of Holden Enterprise's interest in her little piece of beach, but she adamantly refuses to sell and tells Gavin that repeatedly in the 2 days that they discuss the purpose of his visit. Gavin gives up trying to convince her almost immediately, instead seeing her "side" of the argument and deciding that he's going to try and find a way around it. CEO Max Holden, a renowned hot head and control freak, is obviously not happy with Gavin's decision not to pursue the interests of Holden Enterprises. We find out later that it's because Max invested the company's money to buy the surrounding properties under his family's names and bribe city officials to coast through an ordinance to restrict major resorts from building in the town. Millions of dollars are at stake, in addition to Max's title as CEO, and possible jail time for embezzlement/theft and, later during what is considered the climax of the book, attempted murder.

My Take
So, there are some things that left me puzzled/annoyed about this book, and I'm a little irritated that, after reading a lot of reviews about this book, I'm the first one to point these issues out. But it HAS to be said; this is far from a 5-star book and, as a readership, we need to raise our standards. For the kids, people! Do you want them growing up in a world where mediocrity is celebrated at the same level as a true talent? To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, "Heaven and earth! —of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?" Well, maybe not that bad. So, here are my issues:

1. NO CONFLICT

First and most importantly, there was no conflict between the hero and the heroine... at least not the meaningful kind that sustains a romance novel. He didn't lie to her, she didn't keep any secrets, they were 100% honest and completely on the same page for the majority of the book. CONFLICT is what makes us care about characters and want to know what's going to happen next... not what kind of body jewelry the heroine is wearing or if the guy's hot-headed boss is going to fire him.

Both had instant attraction right off the bat, and there was nothing stopping them from entering into a romantic relationship. Usually in any novel, the hero and heroine must both overcome conflicts to reach the ultimate reward of a loving and fulfilling relationship with their significant other. Neither Sunny or Gavin faced an obstacle to their imminent relationship, so when they inevitably got together it was very... just... ho-hum. Saw that comin' a mile away. Let's be honest here: we're reading romance, we all know what the ending will be. What makes it something worth reading is the conflict within each character about his or her reaction to the oh-shit-I-think-I'm-falling-in-love feeling.

 

There's a REASON that you're in your 30s and you're single, and it's not because you were "too busy" to fall in love. As Hitch says, "No woman wakes up saying, 'God, I hope I don't get swept off my feet today.'" Every single man and woman is looking for someone to accept and love them. Though we all have those barriers in our lives, our "amour" against feeling vulnerable, deep down, we all need the same thing. And there is a reason that some people make it later in life without finding it: they don't want it.

 

Gavin and Sunny are both in their 30s and single, and neither have a concrete reason for being that way. It's not like either are too emotionally scarred to let the other in. Sunny had a nice opening for that with all of her childhood issues but it didn't come up ONCE as a barrier. You have to add the personal conflict to the plot conflict in order to show us that this is not your average relationship and introduce the sexual tension/love element that we're looking for in romance. There just wasn't enough of what Michael Hague calls the "tug of war" between the characters' fronts, or personas, versus the person that they are deep down inside. And not having that really ruined it for me.

WOULD'VE BEEN/ COULD'VE BEEN/ IF ONLY.....

• It would have been a better or more believable romantic conflict if Sunny DID NOT act interested in him or attracted to him at the onset of the book. Even if she did feel that way, hiding her feelings from the hero would have added an interesting layer of conflict from which the sexual tension between the characters could have grown.
• It would have been better if there was a real obstacle from them getting together, for example:
• Let's say Sunny's brother was really young and impressionable; no one wants to be slutting around when they are trying to raise a child.
• Let's say that Gavin was actually the REAL corporate executive, wore the suit, talked the talk, and basically really used her to get the "in" he had been looking or in Anticue to get her to sell. We do learn from his own thoughts that doing such a thing is exactly within his character (or what we're led to believe about his character). If he totally used and abused her trust from the get-go, they would have had a serious obstacle to overcome.
• Let's say we had a surprise visit from Sunny's mother who abandoned them when she was young, or her father who worked at the coal mines. In my opinion, Sunny doesn't seem emotionally damaged enough by her past; she's not holding on to any lingering hurt or issues from such a sordid upbringing. She's not even the fiercely independent character you're hoping for in someone who raised her sibling; she's much too easy-going with the idea of Gavin coming into her life and just making himself comfortable, cooking in her kitchen, and basically taking over. I think there is only one incidence where she mentions that it bothers her, and only in passing. We don't get the kind of emotional reaction that would create tension in the relationship.
• It would have been better if Callie was more than just some "sister-type" who was mooning over the hero. It would have been INFINITELY better if Callie was Gavin's dream girl and she hadn't paid attention to him at all, even after all of his attempts to win her. Enter Sunny, and now Callie sees an attraction building, and she doesn't like the idea of losing the attention/affection of anyone, even if it's someone she never intended on being with. Imagine the drama and sparks that could fly if Callie took a more active role in the story and really made life hell for a budding relationship.

Simply stated, their whole relationship-- from initial meeting to proclamation of I love you, let's be an item--was just too damn easy to be interesting.

2. TOO MUCH TOO QUICK

• No female bartender (by nature, a very skeptical breed of woman) with a 3-year dry spell takes off her shirt and lets a well-dressed stranger get to 2nd (might-as-well-almost-call-it-3rd) base after a 3-hour acquaintance, most of which he spent elsewhere. [[They met a little before 8pm, he drove an hour back to Myrtle Beach to drop off Callie & Co, an hour back to Anticue, and was back on the highway leading into the town by 10:15pm.]]
• I've estimated that they knew of each other for a period of approximately 15 hours before they had sex, and the only reason they didn't have sex immediately on the night they met was because they were interrupted. Again, her reasons behind the 3-year dry spell are very weak (she is her younger brother's guardian so she claims that there hasn't been the time/energy/inclination with working and raising him). 

WOULD'VE BEEN/ COULD'VE BEEN/ IF ONLY.....
Now, this would've been believable IF:

1. We knew that Sunny was ON A MISSION to get laid and saw an opportunity in the form of tall, rich, and handsome at the right place right time.
2. If she was slutty and made it a habit to sleep with patrons, which we KNOW is not her style.
3. They knew each other previously and they were rekindling an acquaintance.
4. There was some kind of a bet/dare that was set down and seducing Gavin would be a means to an end.
5. She was drunk and uninhibited.

Any of those reasons would have made COMPLETE sense to me, but the only motivation for this behavior we were given was that he was cute and he showed up. It's just not good enough for a romance novel. The WHOLE NOVEL is about these two characters; you've got to make it a little more interesting than, "I decided I deserved a one-night fling."

3. VILLAIN? WHAT VILLAIN?

The first rule of writing a novel is knowing (and taking advantage of the fact) that not every character is going to be Captain America with his unfailing integrity and shiny shield. It's essential to have a bad guy and make him or her as bad as he or she can possibly, conceivably, and legitimately (for the purposes of your story/motivation) be. It's not enough to have the conflict as "big 'ole corporate America is coming".... especially not in a romance novel.

In Last Call, the villain was Holden Enterprises with Max Holden, CEO at the helm. However, Max did not fulfill the role of Evil Villain to the extent, depth, and breadth that he could have. For example, Max never left Myrtle Beach and confronted Sunny/Gavin directly. Max never made a direct threat, and when confronted, denied all knowledge and involvement. Finally, and most importantly, Max did not threaten Sunny/Gavin's relationship and did not create a conflict between the characters.

WOULD'VE BEEN/ COULD'VE BEEN/ IF ONLY.....

• It would have been so much better if, from the start, Gavin was Max's right-hand man and did whatever he could to secure the success of Holden Enterprises and his mentor. From the opening pages of the novel we're aware that Gavin is having all of these second thoughts about this life that we never see/experience as "The Closer." It's alluded to that Gavin used to be a bad guy in corporate America, but it's hard to buy it because we don't see the transformation during the course of the story. If you had started him as the selfish, egotistical, business- and career-driven, I'm-going-to-step-on-anyone-who-interferes-with-my-plans, manipulative head honcho type (think Nicholas Cage's character in Family Man), it would have SHOWN US the villain in Max, who turned him into this person, and groomed him to lead an underhanded business just as he did.
• It would have been so much better if Max's daughter hated him, and we (and Gavin) did not know why. When a parent loses the love of a child and doesn't care to do whatever he or she can to get it back, you know there is something fundamentally wrong at the core of that person, aka: evil. Callie's hero worship of her father and the amazing relationship they had makes you wonder about the man himself, and you know that he's not ALL bad if he is loved by his family and still married (even if there is some tension). You'd have to either be really good at hiding it-- like in The Godfather movies-- or you can't be all that bad of a person, which is of course the case here. Unfortunately.
• It could have been really interesting to see the whole conflict come to an alarming and scary climax with Max coming to Anticue and starting the fire in the bar himself. I think we really missed out on something in the resolution of the conflict (or what is passing for conflict in this novel) by not having a confrontation. This is what should have happened:
• Max should have been furious that his own daughter would turn against him and betray him. He is completely crazed, if we're to believe Callie, by the fact that now Gavin owns the pier in Anticue because of her. His entire LIFE, reputation, everything is ruined.... and all because the man that he treated like a son betrayed him. Max should have (possibly) physically harmed Callie, drove to Anticue, burned down what was left of the pier--Gavin's property/memory, so a direct hit-- and started the fire in the bar himself in a very obvious and very flagrant way, not by lighting a cigarette that (whoops) water dripped on it so it's all over. The bar should have been on fire, and Sunny and Gavin should have smelled the smoke from the pier, which woke them, and when they went downstairs to investigate, saw Max setting it. Maybe there was another physical confrontation, this time between Gavin and Max, and maybe Max's high blood pressure finally resulted in that heart attack/stroke they had all feared earlier. While Sunny is rushing to save her property and put the fire out, Gavin drags Max out of the building to save him from the flames and calls 911. There's untold damage to the bar, the pier is decimated, and we leave the scene wondering how these people are going to get through this cataclysmic event and pull their lives back together.

I know that it's not easy to write a novel, (believe me, I have about 12 unfinished manuscripts on my computer reminding me that it takes a very special person to write "the end") and it's easy for me to sit here and nit-pick about how things could have been done differently. It's just so hard to see a novel with such strong potential crash and burn as badly as Last Call, especially when all of the elements were there to make it something really special. And I don't even blame the author for all of this; I blame the editors who read this book and approved it, I blame the "beta readers" who were trying to save feelings by not pointing out its flaws. As a moonlighting writer and, in my day job, an editor, we are considered "The Experts" here; authors look to us for guidance on their projects. We've read enough to know what works and what doesn't work, and how it can be tweaked to really shine to its best advantage. It's a shame that this book wasn't all it could have been...... which is of course the point of this post. Not all novels are winners, but all novels COULD be.

In other news, though, we all know that books don't always sell for their storylines. Apparently a lot of people liked the kinky sexual elements here, including the nipple necklaces (which I've never heard of before this... does that make me totally naïve? I had to google it!) Though I've personally found better stranger-in-a-bar sex (please read the Knight & Play/ Knight & Stay series if you really want to lose your socks!) I thought the peppermint schnapps was interesting. I can't say it did it for me, personally, but then again, we all have the thing that really win our emotions over. I'm happy to see that Last Call did it for so many other readers!!