Original Publication Year: 1996
Genre(s): Romance (Contemporary)
Series: None
Awards: None
Format: Audio (downloaded from library)
Narrated by: Anna Fields
I don’t read a lot of
contemporary romance. Heck I don’t read
a lot of contemporary fiction period, preferring historicals, mysteries, SFF
etc…. So this really was a stretch out
of my normal reading rut and is precisely why I am participating in the
Eclectic Reader Challenge. For most of
my life I hated beets and then one day 6 or so years ago a friend served me
beets that were prepared just right and now they are one of my favorite
foods. I don’t want to be so biased in
my reading choices that I miss out on gems or judge a whole genre based on the
literary equivalent of pickled beets…. or something.
I chose Kiss An Angel because it
was near the top on a Goodreads
list of Contemporary romance and had one of the highest average ratings. While, this book has not won me over to the
contemporary romance genre, I do understand why it is beloved.
NOTE: There will be a few mild spoilers below,
nothing huge but I can’t really talk about the book properly without revealing
some of it and it is revealed in the first 20 pages.
The set-up is this: Daisy is a spoiled rich girl who has never
had to work a day in her life and finds herself in deep financial troubles when
her super model mother passes away. Her
disapproving father (parents were never married), an American diplomat to
Russia, insists that in order for him to bail her out of her troubles, she must
marry a man of his choosing and stay married for 6 months. The man of his choosing is surly Alpha male
Alex Markov who is, of all things, a manager of and performer in a second-rate
traveling circus. As you might imagine
things are rough in the beginning but guess what? Alex and Daisy find that they are a match
made in heaven.
As you can probably guess, by the
primary setting being a second-rate traveling circus, the characters and ambiance of the book is decidedly unique.
Both of the protagonists have Baggage with a capital ‘B’ in the form of
crappy parents and the main conflict revolves around them overcoming their
emotional dysfunction. The second main
conflict of the book is secrets – great big honking secrets that beyond just
creating conflict, also provide a lot of forward momentum and drive to read. Phillips takes her time and doesn’t take the
easy way out in getting these two together which I appreciate. She also does a good job of creating an
extremely unlikely pair, even sans baggage, and illustrating why they are
actually perfect for each other. So for
the big things, mission accomplished.
I still didn’t love it though and
it wasn’t all to do with the contemporary setting. I ended up liking Daisy all right but she is
not the type of female character I really connect with and her transformation
from spoiled rich girl to hard working, good-hearted animal whisperer
frequently made me cringe. I also never
really warmed up to Alex not being able to get over his level of cruelty at the
beginning, his lack of humor and the fact that for the first quarter of the
book he calls Daisy "angel face" (NOTE:
Any guy calls me angel face he’ll have angels flying around his head
after I punch him in his face). On a lighter note, this book is definitely a
product of its age (pubbed in 1996) as Daisy has a fantasy about making out
with a guy in a white limousine to the soothing sounds of Michael Bolton:0).
FINAL VERDICT: While Kiss An Angel was not enough to
convince me that I have been missing out all these years not reading
contemporary romance, it was good enough for me to not dismiss the genre in the
future. If you are already a fan of this genre you will probably like this one if you haven't already read it.
Do you have any really fantastic
and perhaps out of the mold contemporary romances to recommend?
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