Wife in Name Only by Hayson Manning
Contemporary Romance
April 1, 2013
Entangled
Reviewed by Mandi
I’m drawn to romances where the hero and heroine are already established and have hit a bump in the road. For Rory and Zoe, it’s quite a big bump. Once happily married, they have been separated for a year with no contact. Rory went from fun, loving husband to a workaholic who texted his wife more than he saw her. Zoe finally had enough, and ended up moving from L.A to a small island. She now owns an exclusive honeymoon resort and has finally found peace. Zoe has used the pretense that she is happily married to build the promotion items for her resort. She even photo-shopped her husband into the pictures to make them look like the perfect couple. Now a magazine wants to interview them and do a feature. Great publicity for the resort, but not so great for Zoe, who hasn’t seen Rory for a year.
When Rory gets a phone call from Zoe asking him to come down for a few days to help her out, he knows this is his chance to win her back. Once he is down there, an impending storm lengthens his stay, which he needs because Zoe is set on not having him.
When I finished this book, the first thing I thought of was that I wished it had been a more angsty, emotional read. When we first meet Rory, he is so serious and brash. You can tell work is all he thinks about. Zoe is quiet, and more serene. I wanted these two to take a really deep look into their issues. Yes, Rory became a workaholic, equating success and happiness with money. We hear snippets that they both had rough childhoods, I assume driving Rory to succeed as an adult. But we never get a great grasp of their history together. What made them fall in love initially? What truly drove them apart years later? I think we get a better understanding of Zoe but we needed more time to get to know the real Rory, not just the Rory that Zoe wants us to know. Rory is a hard character to root for in this one.
There is also a side suspense story that really did nothing for me. I felt like it was there to make Rory the man that runs in to save the day, which would then put him in a positive light in Zoe’s eyes. He even says if he wasn’t there, something horrible could have happened to Zoe. Which is true – but this solves nothing between them and their big issues.
I liked the setting, I liked that this author took on an already married couple. I kind of wish more authors would do that. This one didn’t quite do it for me though.
Rating: C
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