Customer Reviews

Emergency: A Marriage Worth Keeping (Medical Romance)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

OKAY LADIES, GET YOUR HANKIES READY!

Let me start by just saying that a few months ago I bought a large lot of Harlequin books from eBay and went on a reading binge,but after about the 70th book or so, I was just sick and tired of all the perfect billionaire and gorgeous Mediterranean men and the down on your luck impoverished heroines. Sick too of the awareness that sizzled, jolted, and shocked the H and h with every look or touch. I never want to see the word awareness in a book ever again. Frankly, after 30 or so books, all those obvious, trite and unvaried plots/stories start blurring together. There seemed to be very little effort on Harlequin authors' parts to actually write something original.

Which is why this book is such a standout.

Yes, the hero is Mediterranean, and as an ER consultant, he makes good money. But that's where commonalities end.

Sav was involved in a car accident which injured him and took the life of his young son. His grief over that loss caused him to pretty much shut himself off from his wife and to some extent, his surviving children (twin sons). Isla is his wife of nine years who we first meet when she visits an attorney while contemplating divorcing Sav because she simply could not take the disconnect any more, when she herself was also grieving.

I had this book sitting in a box for 6 months, not wanting to read it because I wanted fun, light, romantic reads. Well fun and light this book is not, but a more romantic book Harlequin would be hard pressed to come up with.

How Isla and Sav find their way back to each other through grief and blame and misunderstandings is real and heartfelt and tearjerking.

Unlike most Harlequin's, we have here a hero who isn't a complete and utter a$$hole and a heroine who isn't downtrodden and/or impoverished. A woman with intelligence, education, and the ability to stand on her own two feet if need be. A man who is scarred and flawed but who isn't weak or unappealing.

Just when Isla and Sav finally seem to be finding their way back to each other, Sav finds out that Isla had been seeing a lawyer behind his back and had been planning on leaving him. He's so livid that he moves out of their home and into a hotel.

I can't say much more without a spoiler alert, so let me just say this:

Before reading the very first page I had already figured out what the author was probably going to do to bring these two back together, and in that I was right. Now, the predictability of that should have turned me off, but oh no, the journey to get to the end was nothing short of exquisitely painful and beautiful.

I wholeheartedly recommend. 5 stars for superb writing. 5 stars for an H and h who were likable, believable, and humanly imperfect. 5 stars for emotions that practically leapt from the page and held you captive with realistic intensity. 5 stars for having a Hero who, even though was prototypically tall, dark, handsome and brilliant, still managed to come across as someone real and flawed.

Hooray for Ms. Marinelli on a job well done.