The dreaded “can’t read it” plot device (or, me too!)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010Posted in: Azteclady Speaks
I have seen, here and there throughout the blogosphere, posts about this or that particular plot device or trope that hit on the reader’s hot button and translate into a ‘did not finish.’
While intellectually I could understand the concept, it hadn’t really happened to me (aside from skipping a few passages from Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth), most of the time I just shrug and keep going.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday I reached for an old (copyright says 1996) Harlequin Superromance by Kathryn Shay, titled Suitable Bodyguard. Though I know quite well just how unreliable back cover blurbs usually are, this one sounded good enough (neither same old, same old, nor outrageous beyond belief), so I sat down to enjoy myself for a couple of hours:
Cord McKay has quite the New York police force and come home to raise his little girl in the small town where he was born. He needs a job, but the last thing he wants to do is act as bodyguard to Stacey Webb. Stacey’s father is the reason Cord fled town as a teenager.
The problem is that Stacey’s in real danger. And even though she doesn’t remember what happened eighteen years ago, Cord does–and he owes her big time.
Not too terrible, yes?
And the writing is not bad–I found myself reading the first twenty pages at a good clip, in fact.
But it got all derailed when I realized that Cord owed Stacey (who’s thirteen years his junior) because when he was eighteen he had an affair with her mother–who was still married to Stacey’s father at the time.
By page fifty I couldn’t take it any longer–any other issues I’m having (Stacey is an idiot, for example) are overwhelmed by this feeling of… well, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! I get every single time I think that she’s going to have sex with the guy who had sex with her mother.
Even typing that gave me the creeps.
Mind you, I don’t believe that anyone else must feel about this the way I do–there’s a pretty good chance that there are as many people who agree with me as there are who are wondering what’s the big deal.
But it does mean that I finally found the one plot device that will make me stop cold, never to return to a particular book again.
Shiloh Walker
October 5
11:27 am
er…yes. that would do it. Big time.
sallah
October 5
12:06 pm
yeah, that plot device only really work for the Jerry Springer show…
CJ England
October 5
12:57 pm
Okay, so I’ll see your eeewwwwwwww and raise you an ick, ick, ick.
Ugh. Since most readers at some level put themselves in their hero or heroine’s shoes, this plot device is beyond gross. I mean, think of it… Your own mom and…
Well…you see what I mean.
Just bleah!
Jane A
October 5
3:18 pm
Not really a problem for me tbh.
But the 13-year old age difference is starting to approach ick-levels.
Wendy
October 5
3:24 pm
I have this book buried somewhere in the TBR. Shay is an autobuy for me in the HSR line, and I glommed her backlist several years ago.
I find myself sort of falling in line with Jane A here. The affair is definitely squirky, but I would probably keep reading. But that 13 year age difference? That could be an issue for me. I mean, I know it shouldn’t make a difference because they’re “adults” now – but all I can think about is that when he was 18 and bangin’ her mama, the heroine was 5. Uh, 5. Ick.
willaful
October 5
4:23 pm
I hear you – a book just made it onto my “icky” shelf just because he had sex with her *stepmother*. Her actual mother would have had me hurling. Though I would have checked to make sure it wasn’t one of those phoney situations you often get in category romances.
Christine
October 5
7:24 pm
That would be a no-go plot device for me, too.
A 13 year age difference doesn’t bother me as long as the youngest one in the pair is at least 21. Anything younger than that and the maturity gap between the two is just too wide and in my opinion, the relationship would simply lose credibility.
AztecLady
October 5
9:42 pm
On the age difference issue, I agree with you ladies–it’s hard to buy such a gap when the heroine is 23 and acting childish (which Stacey does).
However 😀 since my own beloved is fifteen years older than me, that in itself would not make me look or think twice.
What had me gagging (literally) was doing the math–the heroine was five when the affair occurred. The hero was eighteen–and the mom was in her early to mid-twenties… Stacey’s age in the present story.
gah!
LVLMLeah
October 5
11:31 pm
So the issue is mostly that dude has had both mom and daughter sexually.
Because if there were no relation, or if they hadn’t had any connection in the past, then they would just be an older man with younger woman, which is so common it’s a Zzzzzz on the squick factor.
I think having him having sex with her mom in the past is the main thing that would bug me since I wouldn’t be doing the math in my head about him being 18 and her 5 otherwise.
I was friends with a woman who had a several years affair with a man and was the nanny to his kids as well as being a student of his in university. He was divorced for quite a while before that so that wasn’t too bad.
But years later, long after she split up with the father, and the son was 18, she and the son had a few nights together.
I knew both her, the son, and the father and the son and she were fine with it.
Knowing all the parties involved and that no one was bothered by any of it, it really didn’t bother me or make me take pause. Maybe they’re not as uptight about that stuff in Europe since all were Germans.
But for sure, it’s generally squicky.
And I don’t get why the hero feels he owes the heroine? The most honorable thing he could do was to bow out and not have any contact. I don’t think you should rectify a wrong with another wrong. But that’s me.
AztecLady
October 5
11:39 pm
LVLMLeah, from what I gathered, the hero feels he ‘owes’ the heroine because something bad happens to her/her mother/the family and the affair is either the cause or the trigger–can’t swear to this, though, because I didn’t get that far and there’s no way in hell I’m going back to find out 😛
About Stacey’s age and her mother’s age, my issue is that I couldn’t help but think, “well, how closely do these two women resemble each other? is he projecting the image of the mother on the daughter and is that why he falls for her? is he going to be thinking of the mother while having sex with the daughter?”
That kind of stuff–and lord only knows what this all says about me, heh.
LVLMLeah
October 6
12:32 am
AztecLady– I’m in total agreement about the mother/daughter look alike and other issues you bring up.
In general, I wouldn’t read it either.
Maddie
October 6
2:49 am
That’s just nasty in my opinion, I take it that Stacy’s parents were no longer alive, because for the life of me I would think family get togethers would be a little bit uncomfortable for all involved.
Father sitting there thinking “dude did both my wife and daughter.
Mother sitting there thinking of her son-in-law wild ways in bed or what a complete bore he was in bed.
Poor Stacey thinking I wonder if he did the swirly thing with his tongue with mom and did she go crazy too.
sallah
October 6
3:11 am
having way back in the hazy past dated (and almost married) someone who was more than 10 years my senior I really dont care for stories with young women(before they are 30 or so) dating men 10 years older… I know their are no hard fast rules, but it seems to me that in my case (which colored my view) that he wanted someone he could “mold” and wanted someone who he could control. The problems came when I “grew up”.. He moved on to another younger woman, never really being able to be in a peer relationship…
This is less a factor when you are over the age of 30, but so much growth goes on between 17 to 25, I thought I was so mature at 18, but I look back and realize that I was such a baby… So now those books with the 20 year herione to the 30+ hero are just enjoyable to me…
My prejudice, I admit…
CJ England
October 6
3:43 am
The whole age thing doesn’t bug me all that much. But the mother daughter thingy. Ick!
And Maddie…ROTFL at the swirly tongue comment as well as the others. My thoughts exactly.
AztecLady
October 6
6:44 pm
Maddie, Stacey’s father is alive. As for the mother, I’m not sure (because I stopped at page 50) but I think the mother may have died, or at least left, about the time the hero left town.
Anon76
October 6
10:25 pm
My husband and I hooked up when I was nineteen and he’s eight years older than me, so that stuff doesn’t squick me. However, I had a life background that made me verra mature for my age. I figure we were about even steven when we met.
Thinking the hero might be looking at me like my Moms. Not good at all. Even worse, the possibility of the heroine looking at the hero as a “father” type figure, worse. Cuz honestly, her dad couldn’t be that far off in age from the hero, could he. Moms wasn’t.
Add it all up and it would be a pass for me.
orannia
October 7
7:07 am
Hmmm. This would be a not-for-me trope. Just…no. And, I think I have to add the bodyguard trope in too. Because…just nope.
MikiS
October 7
8:36 am
This is a Harlequin, right? I have to wonder if this would turn out to be a “big misunderstanding”…he left town because the father thought he had sex with his wife, etc.
It’s just hard to picture this scenario in a Harlequin!
(And yeah, because Shay is one of my autobuys, too, and I just don’t remember this story at all!) 🙂
Jill Sorenson
October 7
5:49 pm
I’ve read worse! There’s a Sandra Brown novel (Best Kept Secrets?) that features a heroine who hooks up with her mom’s high school boyfriend. I’m pretty sure the hero was dating the mom a year or months before the heroine was concieved. In fact, I think there was some question of paternity. Although the hero was never suspected of actually being the heroine’s father, it entered my mind as a very disturbing possibility. And yet, I enjoyed the book.
Brown has another story about an undercover cop who poses as the heroine’s long lost brother. I liked that one too. *embarrassed*
Maddie
October 7
10:31 pm
@ Jill
Hey I remember that book and the fact that her mother wanted to get an abortion and he talked her out of it (if I remember correctly)