Customer Reviews

A Prince of a Guy

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

 

 

Doctor Kate is a radio talk show host who has avoided jocks and sports like the plague after the death of her husband - a certified sports nut. So she is none-too-happy when a fellow talk-show host moves in next door. She is even more unhappy when he makes friends with her young son and encourages his love of baseball. Jeff is handsome, funny, intelligent, and good to her child - what more could Kate want? Unfortunately, she doesn't see these things and instead keeps looking for Mr. Perfect.

Meanwhile, Kate thinks she has found the man of her dreams. Grayson White is handsome, successful, classy - and interested in things other than sports. He takes her to the opera and to expensive restaurants - literally sweeping her off her feet. She's immediately smitten.
I have known women like Kate - heck, she could be me! More than once in my single days what I thought I was looking for wasn't what I really needed. . . And so it is with Kate. She thinks Grayson is the man of her dreams when her real prince is sitting right next door - literally. Unfortunately, Kate very nearly gets herself in over her head with Grayson before the shocking truth about him is revealed. I applaud Sheila Rabe for not sticking with the "rules" of romance and, instead, making this book into something that is REAL. And she does this with her trademark wit and humor. Those who continually find fault with the romance genre should certainly take a look at this book. These things can happen in real life - and do. Thank you Sheila for another wonderful read.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, the story had a few interesting bits and pieces, but on the other, it never became a book that I couldn't put down. It never truly flowed well. The emotions of the characters were too superficial, and the introduction of a secondary love interest for the character Kate broke the flow of the main romance. I think the main problem was the character of Kate. There was nothing unique about her character - she was the stereotypical, self-important psychologist who had an almost pathological hatred of sports, which just never was believable. Her narrow-mindedness and gullibility became annoying after a while. While the character Jeff fell more and more in love with her, the source of the attraction eluded me. He actually seemed too good for her. The secondary characters never had much personality and really added very little to the story.

Romantic tension was stated rather than created, giving the reader no emotional involvement in the story. Time seemed to just flow in the story without much of anything happening. There was a strange interlude where everyone went water skiing, which really made no sense, since it didn't seem as though the "sport experience" changed Kate's attitude at all. If you want a rather tame romance with no explicit scenes, and where the moral of the story is that true love doesn't necessarily have to conform to rigid rules, then this is the book for you.

I have read the first half of this book, and although I usually force myself to complete a book once I've started it, I have no desire to read the rest of this one.

I simply do not like Kate. She is so repressed it's painful. She's mean to Jeff, and she's mean to her kids. There is no way that someone so unable to get along with others or to take an introspective look at herself could be a sucessful psychologist.

Jeff is a great male lead, and should have her head over heels in love. Why is there so little ROMANCE in this romance novel?

I don't know about anyone else, but I *know* women who have tried to be "logical" and pick the "correct" guy when Mr. Right-But-Uncomfortable was staring them in the eye--and this is their story. I thought this book was a great read.

Sheila Rabe strikes again with a funny, touching story about a real woman with all her quirks and blind-spots. True, there's no Cinderella here, but then I like a story with more to it than two perfect people going fight-fight-fall-into-bed. As long as she keeps writing like this--and as long as her heroines finally end up with the right guy at the end--Ms. Rabe stays on my must-buy list.

This is the first time I've been compelled to write a review and, unfortunately, it's for all the wrong reasons. This book is awful. The heroine is judgemental, condescending, annoying, completely full of herself and neurotic to boot. All of this and a psychologist too! I was hoping that she would end up with the secondary love interest(the bad guy)it's exactly what she deserved. The hero deserved better and so do we.

Best selling author of the Frog with the Glass Slipper, Dr. Kate Stonewall makes it quite apparent to her Seattle radio audience what she thinks of sports potatoes. After having been married to one fanatic and thankfully divorced, Kate warns women about men who live, breath and die for sporting events. She particularly detests her radio station's sports guru Jeff Hardin whose higher rated show often bounces part of her advice show off the air.

Resenting Jeff at work is bad enough, but finding that he has moved next door to her on Bainbridge Island is a calamity. Jeff wants more than a neighborly relationship with Kate even as though she treats him like a swamp frog. Still she acknowledges, though not to him, that he is quite good with her son, who adores him. As she compares his habits to her Mr. Perfect, she finds herself dreaming more of slob-frog rather than her flawless prince. However, will she realize that there is room in her life for a man who she thinks betting on the Niners is a tad less enjoyable than kissing Kate?

A PRINCE OF A GUY is an amusing romantic romp centering on opposites attracting to one another, making for an odd couple with Jeff being Oscar and Kate being Felix-ette. Though the story line never takes itself too seriously, the plot digs deep into the emotions of two people and that of their tentative relationship. Fans who derive joy from a humorous contemporary romance will feel Sheila Rabe is a princess of a writer.

Harriet Klausner

Based on the cover description and the whimsical design, I had serious hopes for A Prince of a Guy. It sounded like a cute story idea and at times, the book does meet expectations. Jeff Hardin is just like my husband, he lives and breathes sports. His interactions with Kate Stonewall and her children are fun and heartwarming. However, right when I started to think that their story was getting interesting, Ms. Rabe introduced another character who Kate starts to fall in love with. Um, excuse me, I was confused. I thought this was Kate and Jeff's story!

While the newly introduced second love interest is eventually done away with, his introduction ruined the book for me and I was never able to recapture the excitement and interest I had for Kate and Jeff's relationship. It was hard to go from Kate and Jeff to Kate and Grayson back to Kate and Jeff again. In short, it was hard to be happy that they ended up together when I wasn't even sure they belonged together after Kate had feelings for someone else.

While I understand Ms. Rabe's motives, I like my romances with a little less romantic confusion. Give me one clear hero and one clear heroine and I am happy.

Overall, worth a few giggles: I'd buy it used.

I adored this book. This author writes with warmhearted humor about REAL people dealing with REAL flaws, just trying to get by. I respect the writer's choice to portray Kate realistically, as a cranky know-it-all career woman, rather than to turn her into a mealy-mouthed "heroine." Kate strikes me is very true-to-life; maybe that's why some readers seem uncomfortable with this character. The appearance of another man in her life was a great plot point and a way for her to find her way back to Jeff. It made their reconciliation much more believable. He, by the way, is a COMPLETE guy--you can tell the author did her research. Read this book. It's completely charming.

Don't be fooled by the cute cover and interesting description. I was so disappointed with this one. The story starts off well with Jeff and Kate not liking one another and barely on speaking terms and then slowly builds their friendship and attraction. Then out of the blue a third character is introduced who is supposed to be Kate's perfect man and she starts dating him and falling in love with him. Meanwhile Jeff has realized that he's in love with Kate and he thinks there's something fishy about this other guy. So here I am wanting to read scenes about Jeff and Kate and all I'm getting is Kate and the increasingly suspect other man. By the end I felt like I was reading the screenplay for a bad movie and even Kate and Jeff's reconciliation felt forced and unbelievable. Such a shame because the first half of the book was terrific.

From the back cover:

Muscling in...

Psychologist Kate Stonewall's cup of happiness is just about full: she has two great kids, a successful career, and her own radio show. The only fly in her soup is her colleague Jeff Hardin--a sports show host who Kate wishes would just buzz off.

Elbow room...

Not only does she have to put up with his sports metaphors at work, Kate must also play nice in her own back yard--Jeff has just moved in next door. If it weren't for his gorgeous physique and his gentle manner with her adoring kids, Jeff would rank high on Kate's hit list.

Breathing space...

But the difference between "doc" and "jock" prove smaller than they seem. And in the wall standing between them, there soon appears a tiny crack--one that could bring the whole thing crumbling delightfully down...

And my review:

I first discovered Sheila Rabe when I read All I Want for Christmas, a book I highly recommend. I then read the equally enjoyable Be My Valentine (also highly recommended). So I put this author on my auto-buy list and expected a good read from A PRINCE OF A GUY.

I wish I'd read the reviews here first. The heroine was awful and totally not worthy of the hero. As others have stated, it does not make sense that a woman so blinded by stereotypes could be a successful psychologist. Okay, I can understand a strong dislike of the male obsession with sports. I don't like it either (I turned cartwheels when I found out my hubby wasn't a sports fan), but I'm not neurotic about it. Kate hated it so much that she turned into a caricature.

It was ridiculous. In her opinion, any man who likes sports is a complete and utter moron, a waste of space on the planet, and a self-centered jerk. Uhhh....no. Yes, there are some sports nuts who are all of these things, but there are also plenty of good, decent, hard-working, intelligent men who just enjoy watching a game once in a while. Enjoying sports does not make you worthless. Honestly, her obsession with how much she hated sports was every bit as unhealthy as a guy who's life revolves around them.

And another big downfall was that the second half of the book involved almost no interaction between Kate and Jeff. Instead, we get to see a budding relationship between Kate and someone she thinks is her dream man, while Jeff runs around trying to win her over. And honestly, though this new man was not Kate's Mr. Right, there was more chemistry between them than between her and Jeff. It was as if after the first half of her book (which was doing pretty well, apart from the heroine's over-the-top hatred of sports), the author had exhausted the antagonism and didn't know what else to do to fill up the pages. I was bored out of my mind. I never had that feeling from a Sheila Rabe novel before.

I wasn't even able to finish A PRINCE OF A GUY. I never knew what Jeff saw in Kate. I actually wanted him to forget about her and find a more balanced woman. In ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS and especially in BE MY VALENTINE, Sheila Rabe raised some real relationship issues and dealt with them wonderfully, with great characters and awesome chemistry. But this book never seemed to reach those same standards. Try the other two books I mentioned to see what this author is really capable of, but pass on A PRINCE OF A GUY.