Her Favorite Temptation is confused right off the bat due to the title. When you see the title, without knowing anything else about this book, what do you think? Maybe you're like me and think it's about a woman who knows that she can't have something, but it's something she wants desperately so she takes it anyway even when she shouldn't. Right?
Wrong.
Leah Mathews, an unhappy cardiothoracic surgeon who is making the transition into immunology against her parents' wishes, is in the midst of an emotional upheaval when the story opens. Her 30th birthday is looming and she doesn't want to spend her life living someone else's (namely her mother's) dream, so she decides to start making some changes in her life, starting with her career, and then herself. Not only does she leave her career, she decides to take a 8-week "holiday" to do some of the things she's been missing out on: namely running, since that is the only activity we actually see her perform that she hadn't done before.
During this period of emotional turmoil Leah meets Will Jones, half of the popular Australian rock band Galahad Jones. Will is in the city preparing for a major surgery, and he's not sure if he's going to make it out alive... and if he does, he doesn't know to what capacity he will be enjoying the life he has left. One night, frustrated with herself and needing an outlet, Leah walks on to her balcony and starts venting to the sky. She hears a noise and turns toward the adjacent balcony, and we see Will clutching a guitar as he attempts to make his exit and give her some privacy.
Flash forward to the next night: Leah can hear someone playing so she opens her door and allows the sounds from her neighbor's guitar to come in. She doesn't recognize any of the music, but she loves it and decides to introduce herself... properly.
Throughout the remainder of the first and second "act," we see Leah and Will skirt around the issues and obstacles that their attraction creates. Will knows that it wouldn't be fair to become involved with Leah in case his operation does not succeed and he dies on the operating table. Leah is convinced that someone as cool and as gorgeous as Will could never be interested in a "Brainstein" like her and so, in an effort to save herself some humiliation, she doesn't put herself out there and just go for it.
Neither make the move, though they both want to.
Until, on the night before Will's surgery, Leah comes to Will's door and changes everything. After their night is over, Leah finally finds out that the "appointment" Will left her for is to remove a brain tumor, and thus the climax is reached. We find out in the following chapters that Will made it through the surgery but extensive rehabilitation is needed to regain the use of his right side, namely his hand and his leg. Brainstein offers to help, and after a quickly documented few days, Will tells Leah he loves her and the story ends. Right there. Oh, there's an epilogue alright, but it has nothing to do with anything that anyone cares about.
Issues.....
Her Favorite Temptation has a fundamental flaw: it can't decide who the hero is, therefore, it can't define the story "problem" that the characters are attempting to resolve. Furthermore, I'm having a hard time trying to decide WHOSE temptation is the problem here, since it seems like Will is the one making all of the moves and all of the decisions, and Leah is just going along for the ride.Here are the specific problems I'm having with Her Favorite Temptation:
- Will's story is SO much more interesting than Leah's, and I wish that instead of having a weak hero like Leah and a strong secondary character like Will, we had just let the story progress as it wanted to and made Will the star. There was SO much potential there, since he had the better motivation for staying away from her and, later, he is the one who makes the decision to move into a relationship. Leah's personal issues in her own head and her paltry career/family drama is not enough to carry the story. Will's drama is enough, which is of course why the author leaned on it so heavily toward the end of the book.
- I really like Audrey, but she didn't get nearly enough book time to make the "main problem" about how she and Leah are treated differently by their parents. A conflict like that just wasn't good enough. I started to read the first few chapters of the next book in the series, Her Favorite Rival, in which I can really see a conflict: Audrey and her counterpoint both really want this promotion at work, and they are going to battle it out and do whatever they can to win it. See? That's an obstacle. Something concrete, something that someone would be desperate to achieve (ie, their livelihoods are at stake). Unfortunately, Her Favorite Temptation--well, Leah's story, anyway--just didn't have it.
- Another issue I had was that neither Leah or Will actually HAD an issue-- a rock solid obstacle-- keeping them apart, and the entire book consisted of them skirting around their own opinions, self-doubt, and guilt. I hate books like that, and it was very misleading that the book was called "temptation" when they both did such a good job of avoiding it. It would have been better titled My Favorite Crush. Temptation insinuates that someone is taking something or indulging in something they are not supposed to and that they try to avoid; it was obvious that these characters were nothing like that.
- There were a few unresolved story threads that I would have liked to see: I would have liked to know where the "bad girl" laugh came back in again, since we saw it once, it wasn't mentioned during their night together, and it was just forgotten about. I would have liked to see her parents--at least one of them--respond to the comment about the differences in the way they treat Audrey and Leah; maybe it would have helped to have a "reflection" character to help them see that first-hand. I also would have liked to see the jelly beans make a reappearance or have some kind of closure.... I mean, she kept them like a talisman, but they ARE candy; what happened to that?
To be totally honest, I loved the book/writing until Will had his 2-page turnaround about his embarrassment while Leah was watching him put the marbles into the cup. I actually made a mental note to myself, because I wanted to call it the quickest turnaround in history. On the first day of his CIMT treatment, Will is so nervous and ashamed of his "claw," he almost backs out from going through the treatment. Leah's determined to get him to succeed, and of course Will doesn't want to look like he's afraid so he sits down and proceeds to put 7 marbles into the cup. The entire time he's doing it all he can think about is how disgusted she must be with him, how humiliating this is, how this is proving to her that he can be nothing to her, etc, etc, etc. Then, as soon as the 30-second time is up and Leah congratulates Will on putting the marbles in, he has this instant EPIPHANY about how she's great and wonderful and he is completely in love with her and he's going to do whatever he can to win her over and regain the use of his hand.
The story falls even deeper from there, mostly because Leah never takes the lead and fights for what she wants. If this was Leah's story, it's her obstacle to overcome and therefore her ultimate reward when she succeeds. Having Will make the final move and resolve the limbo that the relationship had been in was completely anticlimactic. It just didn't have the satisfying ending that it could have. If Will was our main character, it would have been a great ending. Because Leah was our "hero" and she didn't pull through in the end, it was a complete disappointment.
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