Update to this review: I have just started watching Breaking Bad. It provides a whole new spin on the "bathtub randomly falling through the ceiling" plotline. Maybe the book had an entire meth subplot that I missed?
***
I started to post this review on Goodreads, but I decided it was mean-spirited. You don't need to know the name of the book or the author to get the gist of it -- it's the same story you see in every Hallmark Christmas movie where the heroine gives up all her dreams and ambition to embrace small-town life.
SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW.
It wasn't until the end that I understood that this was a poltergeist story parading as a romance. Blake's brother committed suicide about five years before the action in this book -- or was he pushed? In revenge for either his murder or the lack of intervention to prevent his suicide, he has come back to make the town where he grew up just . . . a little off. His main target is Autumn Kingsley, his girlfriend's sister. We're not sure why. His interference with her life is at first subtle. She wants to travel, and there's no reason why she shouldn't. She has a job, but she also has a close friend in Paris. For some reason -- presumably the poltergeist -- it is impossible for her to get a passport, buy a plane ticket, and visit her friend. Instead, she wallows in the misery of the impossibility of ever leaving home, bound there by the poltergeist wall.
There are other strange things in the town, too, that can only be the product of some malignant extra-worldly power. At an inn owned by Autumn, a bathtub falls from the second story through the floor to the ballroom below, while a crowded party is being held there. This event is never explained. There is no discussion of water leakage or weakened floorboards. Since this is a Christian book, presumably divine intervention prevented anyone from being killed.
But, just as strange as the event itself, it happens in a complete void. No health inspector comes to . . . you know, condemn the building before someone actually gets killed. No guests check out before they get killed. No permits are required before major renovations take place. General contractors who are unlicensed in the state are allowed to do the work. No occupancy permit is issued. Life continues on. Maybe because if the inn closed, Autumn would be allowed to leave?
The most malevolent and mean-spirited act of the poltergeist is the closing of a sweet, well-run group home for mentally disabled adults, with no notice and for no reason other than "grant funding ran out." Given the complicated public and private funds that keep group homes like this running, the fact that a bunch of residents of the home found themselves literally homeless with a day's notice, with nowhere to go unless virtual strangers with no human services training took them in, this is just cruel. It may be kind that the poltergeist disappeared all these characters halfway through the book.
The ending is a triumph for the poltergeist. He finally allows Autumn to leave -- but only for a little while. She is drawn back to town by the Poltergeist's brother. The brother has been traveling all over the world for five years. When he falls in love with Autumn, it's the kind of mean-spirited love that doesn't say, one more year won't kill me, I'll go to Paris with Autumn, where she has found a job. No, it says, I'm going to make Autumn give up every single dream she ever had so she can be with me. I'm going to buy the inn she used to own, and hated, and after taking away her ownership interest and therefore financial independence, I'm going to make her work at the inn as an hourly employee, presumably so that she can never save up enough money for another trip to Paris.
Well played, Poltergeist.
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