Fancy Pants

1.5 stars

I had the flu while reading this so my notes/thoughts were mired in me feeling like I was experiencing a slow death. Because of the homophobic comments and misogyny, I just couldn't get into this. If I had read it when it was first published (I gave This Heart of Mine 5 stars and that has a huge problematic scene) maybe I would feel differently but as Sam(AMNReader) says, "when you know better, you do better" in her Review, I read it at age 35 in 2018 and I personally felt there were a lot of Not ok things being done and being said.

This was almost more of a contemporary with some romance as the main couple didn't spend a lot of time together. The heroine goes through one heck of a journey and I would have gave the book 2 stars show more for her alone but she makes a decision doesn't tell hero she had his kid, even when original reason not to, wanted to stand on her own feet, becomes mute; I just couldn't side with her. Romance books have to make me like the hero and heroine and I had no love for them here.

This was supposed to be a buddy read, Quotes/comments here but yeah, the whole flu thing kept me from being too talkative.

Anyway, a spoiled rich girl who travels to America, has one heck of a personal growth journey, and an abused runaway boy who plays golf, never feels good enough, and a handful of secondary characters that make the story better (Skeet and Miss Sybil) and worse (Holly Grace, not because of who she is married to but her comments).

Here are a couple of quotes I first started to highlight before the tone and flu took me over:

"Running musses your hair and makes your face all red. People won't love you if you're not pretty." She clasped Francesca tightly in her arms while she uttered this most terrible threat, using it the way other mothers might offer up the horrors of the boogey man.
The author did an amazing job, you'll get complete backstory on the heroine's mother, of showing why our heroine was the way she was. You'll think it is hard to sympathize with a spoiled rich girl but she never really had a chance to be anything else and she works her way out of it.

He threw the toothbrush at her, hitting her in the arm. "Take it! Take the fucking thing!

She drew back her arm and slapped his face as hard as she could. He slapped her back. Although he was mad enough to hit her, he wasn't mad enough to hurt her, so he struck her with only a small portion of his strength. Still, she was so small that she lost her balance and bumped into the side of a car. She grabbed the sideview mirror with one hand and pressed the other to her cheek. "Jesus, Francie, I hardly touched you." He rushed over and reached out for her arm.
There are some very touchy, cringing moments between the hero and heroine. At the point of these two quotes, the hero and heroine and only spent about a week together. The vibe of a guy throwing anything at the heroine in anger, screaming at her, or even slapping her "with only a small portion of his strength" in any context is take a good hard look at worthy but without personal relationship for knowing personalities, it feels abusive for the heroine. Men screaming at women just isn't the back and forth I look for; I don't know it felt super uncomfortable for me here.

"I want to do it! I know it's wrong. I know I shouldn't let you, but I just can't stand it anymore. I feel like I'm on fire." She tried to make him understand. "All those months, Billy T made me do it. All those months he hurt me. Don't I have the right, just once, to choose for myself?"
The younger issues involving the hero and Holly Grace was deep, dark, and I thought very emotional, it touches on issues no one likes to talk about but can be therapeutic for people to read and see discussed.

There were numerous comments about the heroine raising her son wrong and he might grow up "strange" or queer with the hero also early on making a comment about how he didn't want to be in a f****t calendar. Not my cup of tea views.

This was written well because Phillips is a good writer but well written homophobia is still homophobia. I didn't like a lot of the characters' actions and comments, it was stuff the romance community has seemed to want to clear out, which I definitely think to the betterment. show less

So, SEP can write. Her books are funny and quite readable. Yet, I've only enjoyed one that I've ever read, and it wasn't this one.

This was a 1989 publication, and it's becoming painfully clear to me I don't have that 80s lovin' feeling. There were major and minor issues in this, just as with [b:Perfect|129617|Perfect (Second Opportunities, #2)|Judith McNaught|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403442859s/129617.jpg|1391556]. I haven't read too much in the recent years from Phillips, but I will say that I DNFed [b:It Had to Be You|73070|It Had to Be You (Chicago Stars, #1)|Susan Elizabeth Phillips|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1297088239s/73070.jpg|2268839] because I hated the hero. The hero, Dallie, in this one...I didn't like show more him that much better. i appreciated the characters for what they were (imperfect) and the story for what it was (covering a long timespan from decades ago) and the couple's chemistry was really top-notch.

But.

When a book is written in 1989 things happen. There is jarring language that wasn't acceptable then, though it was popularly used, and it's not acceptable now. In other words, these books don't age. The number of derogatory remarks toward people of the gay community pulled me out of the story so many times. Things like "if you're soft on him he'll be queer." Things like the f word that I don't say. You all know that's not fuck. What this means is you could write a great story with great characters and it didn't age well at all. My hope is that SEP has grown as an author and no longer has hurtful language like this aimed at a community. In that case, I can forgive the author (as we say around here "when you know better, you do better.") If not, she's going on my no-go list. That said, I don't know if I'll touch a book prior to the 2000s by her again.

And if it were 'just' that, it might be one thing. My other issue is this didn't feel like a romance. I want to like my characters in a romance-and that's about the only place that's necessary, and this golfer and spoiled British immigrant were really unlikeable, awful people. They weren't charismatically horrible people (looking at you, Val of Duke of Sin, or legitimately manipulative but understandably so (Annabelle from Wallflowers)). They were awful. Awful to each other, awful to others, awful as a couple. And there was actually precious little of them as a couple. Some coupling ~1/4 in and some coupling 80% - I don't recall too much between there. Awful in their language. At one point... Dallie kidnapped Francesca's son. That's a hard line for me...so was hitting his prior wife and slapping Francesca, but to pile on kidnapping was incredibly egregious and unreasonable.

This two separate stories (though it may have been like 3-4) may have worked for me before(looking at you, [b:Wild at Whiskey Creek|29436302|Wild at Whiskey Creek (Hellcat Canyon, #2)|Julie Anne Long|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473678817s/29436302.jpg|49704361] but this couple didn't have the requisite shared experiences for that.

Anyway, unless you have a strong stomach for old school homophobia, along side misogyny, I'd give this one a pass.

More comments on our buddy read thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19243495-mar-18th-contemp-sports---fancy-pa... show less

I am not a huge fan of contemporary romances in general but there are two that have a home on my to keep/to reread shelves and one of them is Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Kiss An Angel, so I decided to give this one a chance. I think Susan is going to have to be an exception to my rule of not enjoying contemporary romances because this was a great read! It made me laugh, I could feel the sizzle between Francesca and Dallie and even at one point it even brought tears to my eyes. I posted on Twitter that romances usually do not bring on tears unless it's from laughing so hard. This book is filled with unexpected twists and turns. You may think you know what is coming next but expect the unexpected as they say in Survivor.

Frannie was so show more clueless that it was hard to imagine people who live like her although I suppose to could equate her life style in the beginning as very Paris Hilton like. Frannie is not deliberately cruel but she does not have even a glimmer of what life is for those who are not born with a silver spoon in their mouths and are told being beautiful is the most important thing in life. As can be expected she makes an amazing turnaround in the book but not really for the reasons you would expect like winning Dallie's love. Some of the choices she makes were a total shock for me but they made the story seem more real as things did not immediately turn up roses for Frannie.

Dallie also isn't your typical hero. Yes, he's handsome and charming at times but he can also be a real ass and I mean a REAL big ass. So at first I was totally rooting for him and joined him in looking down at Frannie but seeing Frannie grow and Dallie stagnate quickly had me shifting alliances to sympathize with her.

Holly Grace, Dallie's first love, was a surprising addition to the story and she added a little twist to the story that was also unexpected but I really enjoyed. She and Dallie's best friend, Skeet, were some of the best supporting characters I've read in a long time.

Put all together this was a fun, romping romance that I highly suggest for the romantic at heart. show less

Nel complesso un buon libro che mi è piaciuto ma che, purtroppo, presenta alcune carenze.
La storia è suddivisa in tre parti, le prime due risultano spesso inutilmente prolisse e dispersive ai fini del cuore della vicenda che si svolge interamente nella terza parte, la migliore in assoluto, dove ritroviamo la magica penna della Phillips.
Del resto, i personaggi principali, Francesca e Dallie, suscitano inizialmente più antipatia che altro, a cominciare soprattutto da Francesca che con i suoi atteggiamenti da “principessa sul pisello” risulta immediatamente insopportabile anche se si riscatterà ampiamente nella terza parte dove ritroviamo finalmente la mano solita della Philipps, quella dei suoi libri migliori.
E forse la show more caratteristica di questo libro è proprio nella particolarità dei personaggi che di primo acchito risultano piuttosto antipatici e spocchiosi dato che sarà proprio la loro evoluzione e crescita caratteriale a cambiare totalmente il tenore del libro. show less

I don't think I've ever read a book with this many dislikable characters before. The heroine is the only one I managed to sympathize with, and she's a spoiled airhead most of the time. The hero is an obnoxious, violent jerk, and she has to go through hell to become a better person.

The structure of the book is somewhat problematic (to say the least). I'm kind of confused about what kind of novel it's supposed to be. For a straight up romance there are too many pages dedicated to secondary characters and their backstories. For a multi character story with a tangled mess of relationships it's too focused on one couple. Also, the prologue really didn't need to be there.

Didn't finish and won't be reading more from this author.

I'm surprised I trucked through this one. I absolutely loathed Francesca for the first 250 pages of the book--no joke. I really hate the "but she doesn't know any better" scenario and this is a classic case of that. Once Francie starts working at the radio station, this book is actually worthwhile. Before that point, I would give it two stars, tops. I kept reading because I usually love SEP and she did redeem the story, however I definitely didn't enjoy this one as much as some of the Chicago Stars series, which came later in her writing career.

I also find it rather despicable that Francesca did not tell Dallie about Teddy until he was NINE YEARS OLD. What a jerk! Miss Sybil and Skeet were great side characters but I found Holly Grace show more and Dallie's relationship to be a bit bizarre.

I got this book from the Boston Public Library (b/c it wasn't available on Kindle--as opposed to like 9 other SEPs I devoured in a two or three week period a few months ago) and it had all kinds of weird stains in it. I kept picturing women drinking (and spilling) whatever they were consuming all over it. For other people this might be a negative but to me it is a HUGE positive. I like thinking about who else has held, read, and enjoyed the book I am reading:-) show less

I love Susan Elizabeth Phillips, but this was not my favorite. I realize that part of the point is Francesca's transition from, well, who she was at the beginning to who she is at the end, but, honestly, there was so much in between stuff that I didn't really like that it was hard to keep reading. Part of it was just some things that were dated, which, I realize, there's really nothing that can be done about that. But there were some attitudes that made me think -- 'wow, we've come a long way,' and, 'thank goodness we've come a long way,' and then, 'we've come such a long way that I really don't enjoy reading about this so I'm not going to.'

As I've stated before, part of my rating system is how much I enjoyed reading a book. The show more un-put-down-able factor, so to speak. And this probably would have ranked a little higher since, despite what I said above, I actually did start to get into it. But then I hit chapter 12 and I started to look ahead to see what was coming up. (I have a thing about not stopping right before or after chapter 13 [don't ask] and needed to see if it was worth staying up another hour to get through chapters 12, 13, and 14, and it was then that I stumbled upon the nature of the relationship between Dallie and Holly Grace. And although it actually made my heart warm for Dallie in a way it hadn't up until that point, it was something that I just can't deal with in my HEAs. And then I looked a little further and saw how the relationship progresses between Dallie and Francesca, and although the end was what I wanted, it sure took a long and painful time to get there. Too long and painful for me to want to keep going what with everything in between.

So I lightly skimmed the rest and I'll look forward to seeing them in the later books of the series, but I probably won't come back to it to read it in detail.

With that said, I have to comment that I really enjoyed the Dallie/Skeet scenes. That almost made me keep going just by itself. show less