Maria Johnson is basically a spoiled little rich girl, except that she's not at girl anymore at 28. She's living off alimony payments and as she's due to inherit a trust fund from her grandfather in a year she's not exactly trying to do anything meaningful with her life, until her father shocks her by demanding she get a job - with his PR firm if she's got no better prospects - and what's more her former lover is coming back to take over as director of the firm! Maria was in love with David Hunt 4 years ago and was devastated when, instead of him reciprocating, he left her a day early to return to his grad school several states away and didn't stay in touch. She was so depressed she wanted to die, stayed in bed and lost 20lbs in one month, and let herself be talked into marrying this older rich guy she had been seeing before she met David. Only David doesn't know most of this except for the marriage part so he really hates her for getting married just 4 months after he left (prompting one of my quibbles with the book - a super society wedding planned in less than 4 months?!) and is out for revenge. He figures she married George for his money so he's planning to make her lose her financial well being and rub his money (he's now a multi-millionaire) in her face, as long as he can keep his physical reaction to her under control. He's also going to make her life difficult at work, assigning her to make coffee and do filing, manipulating promoting her so that the other staffers would resent her, etc, but she fights back by sucking up to a client so he is forced to let her be on the PR team for Anastasia the obnoxious author (and her astrologer Uri).
So yeah, it comes out pretty quick that Maria's father is ashamed in his role in talking her into marrying and not telling her that David actually showed up to see her wedding rehearsal (not realizing that she was getting married), so he's hoping David and Maria will get back together. That's good cuz you know that was going to be what was up, but what's even better is when Maria finds out that David knew she was getting married and could've stopped the wedding but didn't - as it really makes her grow up and accept the past. Before that point the book was kinda painful as I really couldn't relate to her rediculous, overdramatic decisions, but it was like as soon as she accepted this one truth that David really didn't love her and never had, she became a strong, self-reliant individual with a sense of pride - the irony of course being that David really did love her, and now must convince her of that to win her back.
I was really excited about this book when I first saw the "cover" blurb, but as hinted above, I had trouble with the beginning of the book. It was quite difficult for me to relate to spoiled rich Maria - if she's been so rich all her life, why doesn't she have more than $5k saved in her own name, why would the car her daddy gave her still be titled to her father, why would she throw herself on the car hood like a 5 year old when they started towing it cuz her daddy had sold it out from under her as a punishment for showing up an hour late to her first day of work. I would much rather her have reacted with quiet dignity to that sort of thing to have some pride and self-respect and not show them how badly they were getting to her (which is coincidently why I love Harlequin Presents and why the latter part of the book was soo much better for me). I also wasn't the biggest fan of Anastasia or the way she was possibly "redeemed" at the end. But the book overall was good - I really appreciated that David was forced to be cognizant of his role in causing and perpetuating the heartbreak for both of them earlier on in the book than usual and that he was also immediately aware of how he screwed things up again later in the book when he did. It really gave me hope that he would learn from those mistakes and the two of them could live HEA (although I'm not entirely convinced that Maria belongs in PR work even if she did say she wasn't going to quit).
This was a new to me for the March challenge - and is actually the first Kimani Romance I've read! (I bought about 6 of them when they were on sale last month.) So far so good - and there was a nice plug for Priuses too!
