'If I Never Met You'
By Mhairi Mcfarlane.
~
A Contemporary Romance
4.2 out of 5 Stars.
***WARNING: HUGE MASSIVE SPOILER ALERTS***
Dominant Tropes: MC Cheated On ~ Fake Dating Revenge ~ Strong Independent Women Theme.
Sub-dominant Tropes: Emotional Trauma ~ One Bed ~ Friends To Lovers ~ Absent Father ~ DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion).
Worth of Note: Closed door romance ~ POV: 3rd person.
Media: Audible
I remember an older woman once giving me some advice that I wasn't ready to take on board. She said. "Remember, when it comes to relationships with men, always keep 15% of yourself for yourself." This woman was a multi-millionaire, largely due to the business she and her relatively famous husband had built 'together'. I use quotation marks because no matter how I looked at their highly successful business. Her husband was the face and literally the name of their business, and she, she was the silent oil that made it all work, hidden in the background, largely unknown to the world, that their business had conquered.
I may not have been ready for that advice when it was provided - unsolicited I might add, but it did stick with me. Always keep 15% for yourself. I have, on more than one occasion ruminated that the giver of said advice had potentially lived a lifetime of not securing her own 15% and was in fact offering me a slice of 'don't do what I did' advice-cake.
Laurie Watkinson takes up the role of main character in Mhairi's sixth novel. In her mid-thirties, Laurie is smart, funny and strong. A successful Manchester lawyer working for Salter & Rowson - "an old fashioned law firm". Cue the patriarchal trials and tribulations we then embark on.
The novel was published in 2020 by Avon Books. "An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers" - yes I did just go and google what that means - all in the interest of trying to get my head around this unfamiliar industry.
"An imprint of a publisher is a trade name under which it publishes work. A single publishing company may have many imprints, often using the different names as brands to market works to various demographic consumer segments."
I totally understand this and can relate it back to my days working in the wine industry. Wineries will often create second and third wine labels (or brands) to appeal to a broader set of consumers. It's a strategy to capture a larger slice of the total market. Ah, the old market share game - it's an age-old goodie and seems to be an overarching focus in all industries - not a surprise really, the old capitalist chestnut I guess, but I digress.
Before I get myself back on track my googling also uncovered another parallel to my old wine days: barcodes! I didn't realise ISBN's (International Standard Book Number's) are barcodes, with the same code format as the barcodes used on bottles of wine or any food product you might scan at a retail checkout. EAN (European Article Number) 13 digit barcodes offer up all sorts of useful information once you understand the coding format. The first two digits relate to the country where the publisher (or winery) is based. But apparently instead of following the EAN-13 coding system and coding the UCC (Unique Country Code) the book world created a fictious country 'Bookland' (I'd like to go there!). This decision was driven in the interest of attempting to keep things simple and aligning the various differing coding systems that have developed over time. What this means is that all book barcodes start with 978 the code for: Bookland. I just love this! I love that books that can magically whisk you off to far away fantasy places, literally has created a place called Bookland to manage the real life administration of all the books in this world. Ha!
978 enabled the publishing industry to align to the more recent EAN-13 barcode system without the need to manage a parallel numbering system (ISBN). The International Standard Book Number system started out with a ten digit code (before 2007) but this aligned with EAN system during 2007, and Bookland (978) was born!
The ISBN for 'If I Never Met You' is 978-00-08169-48-0 or Bookland 978 + Registration Group 00 which denotes the country or geographical region or language area participating in the ISBN system. I assume 00 = English or America? Then there is the Registrant Element 08169, or publisher or imprint. Then the publication element, or book tile, 48 and finally the check digit - it's a barcode thing. I assume then Avon's code is 08169 then?
Avon's website suggests they are "proud to publish inclusive and emotional stories where love, in all it's forms, always wins." It won't come as a surprise then that the loveable, egoless main character of this novel is a minority - a woman of colour. And Mhairi covers - quite tactfully I think - the awkwardness (not so much, direct racism) that minorities often face when meeting new groups of people who are unaware of their ethnic differences until confronted face to face. It's a light touch which makes me wonder if Laurie's ethnicity was an afterthought or an editing build in order to make the story more relevant for today's reader-audience - not to mention an easier sell for the agent and publisher who no doubt must tick the DEI box for a set KPI'd percentage of books each year.
Characters
I liked Laurie from the start. While she gets right-royally stepped on, multiple times and always by men who constantly let her down (idiots!), she has a backbone and an inner strength that becomes her. If anything she's a little too flawless to be believable. There's an air of pious altruism that doesn't sit completely comfortably with me, mostly because she did ,after all, decide to become a lawyer and we all know the connotations that come with lawyers. Yes, she spends a lot of her time providing legal aid but she seems to have ended up doing this by accident as it just happens to be a large portion of the firms business. And yes, while she declined an offer to move into the firms largest department - criminal law - this decision was not because she didn't want to represent criminals. Instead the omnipresent third POV suggests it's because she'd already made friends with Bharat and Dianne, her office mates also seated in the crappy adjunct office where she was originally seated on commencement of her tenure.
Caveat: I've been cheated on, it's not an uncommon thing I hear you say, but the way I discovered said indiscretion was uncommon and it was traumatic. So I didn't much care for Dan, I didn't much care for him one, single, little, bit! Dan is Laurie's whimp of a wet of a boyfriend, which she has kept on for over 18 years - perhaps that is her flaw? Early on in the piece he cheats and lies about it, stating it was just an emotional affair i.e. not physical/sex. I also got this line, oh it's a goodie, and you believe it, just like Laurie did, but deep down you know something's off, the lies don't add up.
Dan offers up this excuse when he eventually needs to let Laurie in on the secret so he can exit stage left. "I'm not happy" he says, yip, I got that line too! "I haven't been happy for a long time" insinuating somehow his happiness is predicated on his long term partner. Why are men so unaware that happiness is something generated from within oneself, another soul cannot magically make you happy, that's your job.
Sorry, I've calmed down, back to the story, and Dan. He wants out of the relationship, but really he needs out so he can follow his pecker who wants to regularly pork Megan the mistress. Soon to be, the pregnant other woman. God how I loathe 'The Other Women'! I mean knowingly partaking in lewd activities with married or partnered men is next level desperate and so low. Oh, and don't get me started on the cowardly unfaithful men who haven't figured out who they are and consciously or subconsciously take down the very people (their wives &/or long term partners) who could help them figure themselves out. If only they were brave enough to be vulnerable and tell the truth.
Emily Clarke is Laurie's best friend, another successful independent woman, amen! CEO of her own PR firm, Emily gasps in shock and morbid horror like someone has just been murdered when Laurie states "Em, I have something to tell you." Emily has assumed Laurie is pregnant - hilariously the worst possible fate - I found this hilarious and completely agree! I think a lot of career women, or women that just want to spend their time in other ways, ways that don't involve shitty nappies and young adults that fail to launch. Laurie knowing Emily is fraught with concern that her drinking buddy is no more, replies "Oh god! Not that - Nope I'm safe to drink." As much as I enjoy Jordan Peterson's witty repartee he would be outraged and problem get a little teary. I know that last statement is hypocritical of me, especially after all the patriarchal stuff I've bled on to the screen earlier - what can I say I don't pretend to be virtuous, but I do believe in karma.
Men
Men don't get a great wrap in this book, it's very much a pro-women piece of prose and at the time of reading this (Jan 2023) I welcomed this after a series of smacks to the head the universe delivered to me to let me know the 15% of me I had been subconsciously protecting had been whittled down to 10%. Warning! Will Robinson Warning! One of the biggest whacks was listening to one of Glennon Doyle's (Author of Untamed) podcast episodes where she makes the connection that "anorexia is the discipline of white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy; Stay quiet, stay good, stay perfect, stay hustling, stay grinding." She then quotes Naomi Wolf (Author of another book I need to read The Beauty Myth) who apparently said "A women's thinness is not about beauty, it's about obedience." I luckily do not suffer from anorexia, even so, this thought whacked me over the head pretty hard. I was slightly less profound with my out take - I vowed never again to where uncomfortable heals - it's the second time I've made that promise to myself, I was 25ish the first time - you see! Even then I knew! I knew I didn't want to be a disciple of patriarchy. I wanted to commit to being disciplined in something, just not that. I just didn't want to really admit it to myself back then, I was too busy being quiet, being good, staying perfect and working my arse off to be validated by men. Let me amend the sage advice...
"Keep at least 15% for yourself, at all times."
"‘Dad is an abuser,’ Laurie said, quietly but clearly. ‘Of drugs of various kinds, which don’t help his judgement, but also an emotional abuser. One of the reasons I never face Dad down is I know it wouldn’t go well if I did. I’d have to see a different side to him. You live within the lines he draws or you don’t have a relationship with him at all. So I chose to live inside the lines. I wanted to have a dad.’"
Those be some cutting words right there, and I suspect there are millions of women out there living within lines that the men in their lives have drawn. Oh what a sad thought that is.
TL;DR ~ To Long Didn't Read
I loathe acronyms,
they are the harbingers of
secret elitist societies and misunderstanding, nay confusion.
What I love about romance, is this genre is about relationships, what's more human than that? This genre is the nuts and bolts of humanity - yes it's fantasy, yes it offers escapism for women living within lines drawn by others. But it also enables women to scream out loud, scream their frustrations, scream their discomfort, scream down the patriarchal world they reside in, with its pencil lined borders. Romance is the genre that can offer up the eraser, it can offer up 'the how to' fix it manual. Romance provides the step by step instructions on how men and women can thrive, and this novel offers up a view of that. And I enjoyed that.
As a reader of romance, my initial gut was to give this 4 stars. I think that's mostly down to the fact I listened to this book via Audible, and didn't read it. I much prefer the intimacy of reading the words, this allows my imagination to build the view of the world and the people in it. I find it harder to focus with audiobooks, and I am pretty sure I miss bits. Also narration hinders my ability to really connect with the characters - not that the narrator was bad, she was excellent - I just think I prefer reading versus audible. But! I am short on time and I need to get through seven novels that are all potential comparative titles for my own manuscript, so I'm doubling up and attacking two at a time. Reading one and listening to the other - which I do at different times of the day.
As an aspiring author I think this book or any romance novel I enjoy and get lost in is worth well over 5 stars, because I am in awe of the author and the fact that this is her sixth successfully published romance. What I would do to be in her position! I also think Audible limits my ability to consciously study the writing too, and that annoys me, but has nothing to do with the quality of the book.
So let's meet somewhere in the middle and give this a 4.2 stars.
Theme: 5/5
Tone: 4.5/5
Plot: 4/5
Setting: 3/5
Characters: 4/5
Conflict: 5/5
Tension: 4.5/5
Climax: 4/5
Resolution: 4.5/5
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