Debbie Macomber writes novels that are sold in airports and drugstores everywhere, but I had never read one until now, and it was a twofer -- A Friend or Two and The Trouble with Caasi, both collected in Time for Love.
When I started the first novel, A Friend or Two, I was confused. It seemed like it was a 1950's pulp romance, with both the major and minor main character couples getting engaged after a few weeks of dating, within minutes of saying I love you for the first time, with the clear but unspoken assumption that the life goal of every woman in her early 20s is to get married. (One of the couples, after they got engaged, realized that they both wanted to have children, so that was lucky.) And there was this line:
"Peter loves you," Breed inserted, matching Gilly's clipped tones. "And if it means kidnapping you so that he has the chance to explain himself, then I don't consider that much of a crime."
The characters constantly have internal monologues about what is going on with the person they are dating and are supposedly in love with -- speculation that is never addressed by questions such as, "Hey, why is your apartment as bare as a hotel room? Why don't you have any personal touches here?" or "You have a lot of free time suddenly. Did you lose your job?"
Even the two women characters, who are supposed to be best friends, demonstrate a remarkable lack of curiosity about each other. When they get an apartment together, minor main character Gilly never asks major main character Beth where she is moving from or why she wants to give up her old apartment. (Also never addressed is who furnishes the new apartment, and where they get their pots and pans.)
The woman are so, so helpless. Beth manages to get lost on a beach. She literally can't follow the shoreline back to her car. She also gets lost in the woods. She slowly follows a deer for an hour, and then spends an hour trying to find her way back, and then she is exhausted. She thinks she might die of exhaustion.
My confusion was partially cleared up when I saw that the collection, published in 2019, is actually a reprint of two 1985 novels. But I was a young woman in 1985 and would have been just as confused then by the weird regressive vibe of this book, especially a book set in San Fransisco, which, at the time, was a ridiculously fun city with a lot more going on than picnics on a beach. And, let's not forget, 1985 was the heyday of Judith Krantz novels -- romances with fully developed characters and woman who have jobs and ambition (as well as stunning good looks and virginity they are anxious to lose).
I plowed ahead to the second novel in the collection, The Trouble with Caasi. This book felt like it was written by an AI Bot whose only input was hotel brochures. Heroine Caasi was raised by her father to run his hotel empire, and now she does. She lives in the flagship hotel. She never learned to cook. (In one unintentionally hilarious scene, she tries to make pie crust for a quiche. It's too hard to mix the butter into the flour with a fork, so she ends up kneading them. The book never mentions that this would make for absolutely vile, almost inedible crust.) She also has apparently never been in a house. When she is invited over to a family meal, she is astonished by -- kitchens, families, babies, all of it. It's like A Gentleman in Moscow taken to the nth degree.
Of course, we are told that Caasi is a talented businesswoman devoted to her job. And we see her: reading phone messages! Saying she has to check her schedule! As the action of the book opens, Caasi has a rare dinner with her only two friends, who are pregnant. This devastates her, because she is not married and is not pregnant. She returns to her hotel room, literally hangs her head in defeat, and whispers to herself, twice, "I am a woman," and falls across the bed.
SPOILERS (if you care):
Luckily, Caasi is rescued from her wealth and despair by her second in command, a hot guy who has been running her company for her. She never noticed him until he quit. She instantly falls madly in love with him. He makes vicious fun of her for not knowing how to cook, storms out on her several times, and then they get engaged -- but only on the condition that they not touch any of her money during their life together. In the ending scene, Caasi has given the business over to him in anticipation of getting pregnant, and is living a happy suburban life. Yay, Caasi. Follow those dreams.
