A case study in co-parenting

by Charlotte Brandman

Readers, we need to have a serious conversation. I swore when I started this blog I would only talk about a series in order. But, I’m breaking that oath because we need to talk about Reckless and it needs to happen now.

I pinky promise to talk about Heartless soon, but people, I am losing my damn mind over this book! And, if I don’t rant about here then my roommate might kick me out for the amount of screaming that’s coming from my side of the room.

Reckless follows the story of Winter Hamilton, Summer Hamilton's (from Flawless) traumatized and recently divorced sister, and the totally delicious, completely masculine, and epically adorable Theo Silva, bull rider extraordinaire.

The reason this book has me in a chokehold? It had me gasping at the plot twists. Left and right, crazy plot points were popping up like weeds and I was losing my mind flipping through these damn pages. Winter and Theo share one magical night together at the Rosewood Inn after a blow-up fight at the Eaton family’s annual Christmas party. I was initially confused as to why Elsie Silver didn’t include the sex scene from this night because, in all of her past books, intimacy has been heavily detailed and never fades to black.

*Note – Fade to black simply references when two characters are implied to be having sex but it’s not detailed in the writing.

First plot twist: Winter is pregnant and it’s Theo’s baby. Uh oh. My heart was racing. How was he going to react? He was going to be good about it… right? Wrong. Winter calls him over and over again until she’s driven to text him news of her pregnancy. His response? Thanks for letting me know. Readers, let me be honest with you… I was about ready to beat this guy up. Am I five-foot three and he’s a fictional bull rider with enough muscle to squish me with his index finger and thumb? Yeah, but a girl can hyperbolize.

Next plot twist: Time jump. Suddenly, bolded at the top of my Kindle are the words

Eighteen months later.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS? I was gagged. What happened? Did he ever help raise his daughter? Is Winter okay? Will they ever get together? Elsie Silver knew what she was doing when she left me sprinting through the pages for answers. Well, spoiler alert: they haven’t spoken in eighteen months and Winter’s daughter, Vivienne, is nine months old. Winter is having to deal with her stalker ex-husband Rob (aka biggest dick of the century) and raise her daughter all on her own. She ends up watching her brother-in-law at a rodeo event where she spots the father of her child, blissfully unaware that the baby she’s holding is his.

That’s right– Theo never got the text Winter sent. After their one-night stand, he called his mother and told her he was determined to marry Winter. So, he cleaned up his fuck-boy act, got a new number, and left his old phone with his agent’s assistant, Geoff. Goddammit Geoff! Well, at this rodeo event, Theo goes on for his bull-riding event, falls, and gets crushed by the bull. Winter runs down to help him because of the badass doctor that she is. She rushes him to the hospital and takes over the majority of his care, all while thinking he is actively ignoring that her baby is his.

Theo moves in next door to Winter, which only angers her more because she’s under the impression that he’s willfully ignoring that she’s raising their baby on her own. After a heated argument, Winter drops the bomb that Vivienne is his daughter… Instant. Breakdown. And, people, you know I love it when the male protagonist suddenly becomes a softie when he’s around kids. And for the next half of the book, that’s exactly what happens.

So, you might be wondering: Where’s the romance, Charlotte? Where’s the drama? If we didn’t get a sex scene earlier, when do we get one? Hold your horses (see what I did there?) because Winter needs to heal from the intense body dysmorphia she feels after her pregnancy.

When Theo and Winter finally kiss, Theo stops the kiss prematurely because he’s worried she’ll think he’s using her. Instead, she thinks that he saw a glimpse of her vagina post-pregnancy and decided he didn’t want her. The way Silver explores Winter’s relationship with her body almost made me cry — as a woman, this experience is integral to our lives, this myth that our partners won’t want us if our body changes in any way.

As a side note, I’ve had to heal my own dysmorphia and I can promise you, as someone who’s had a girlfriend along for my healing journey, if your partner truly loves you, they will not care about the new set of stretch marks on your thighs or the extra weight you gained from delicious meals traveling abroad. So, with that, eat that delicious bowl of pasta, slurp up that sundae, and eat that donut. You fucking deserve it.

Anyway, off my soap box—back to the smut.

This book shook my world. The intimacy scenes were filled with enough tension and love to power an engine. I promise that getting to the fourth book in Silver’s Cowboy series is worth your time. And while I do think you should read Heartless and Powerless before you read Reckless, you now have a powerhouse of a novel to look forward to.

See you next read,

Charlotte

Photograph: Pinterest

A Case Study in Co-parenting