Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Sunshine Ahead

by April Knight from the July 13, 2015 issue

Tagline: Raine O'Day didn't mind that her name made people smile--especially people as cute as Patrick!

Observations: It never ceases to amaze me how much Woman's World loves their tropes. The car trouble trope is familiar, but the thing that makes it a little bit different is the fact that the cowbell is making the noise. I thought that was a cute little twist.

On the characterization front, I liked the little ways Knight made the Patrick and Raine likable. Raine was a good sport about her name. I have noticed that sometimes, people with names that are easily made fun of sometimes have a chip on their shoulder about it. I liked that Raine wasn't overly sensitive about her unusual name.

I liked how Patrick's sense of humor was a little off-kilter. I thought it made him adorable. I also liked that he turned the name thing around and nicknamed her Sunshine instead.

Then, when Raine found out it was the cowbell in her trunk that was making the noise, again, she was a good sport.

Sometimes I hear that in romance novels, you don't want your heroine to be a Mary Sue--meaning a woman who is just too perfect and who has no flaws. I actually think that for Woman's World stories, you sort of want to err a little on the side of a Mary Sue. The characters in these stories don't have that much of a character arc to make, if any, and so it's okay to paint them with a Father Knows Best type of brush.

Photo credit: "Cowbell-1" by Michael Malak - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cowbell-1.jpg#/media/File:Cowbell-1.jpg

2 comments:

Pat said...

I thought this story was adorable for the reasons you stated here.

How many times have I've taken my car to the garage and they don't hear or feel what I do. LOL For 9 years I drove a car that needed air in one tire about five times a year. I had four mechanics at three different places check the tire and couldn't find a thing. When I finally needed new tires, I still had one tire that was low a few days later. They didn't replace the air valves with new ones. Guess what was leaking all those years. Why it never showed when the put the tire in water, I will never know.

I guess that's why WW likes these auto tropes. They are so real to all of us.

Again, Kate. Nice job on the evaluation. Thanks.

Tamara said...

I thought her name turned into sunshine was a clever play on words, and his "bribe" to have lunch with him was a cute way to get the two of them together. Good for April.