I feel like at this point, romance books are just setting out to make me feel angry. The premise and title of this book set this story up as a fluffy, lighthearted romance. Instead, the reader gets pummelled by a drama fest of epic proportions. Fifty Shades of Grey has nothing on the shade these two supposed love birds throw at each other during the course of this ‘love story’, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Perfect Date follows Angel Gomez, a young single mother who is about to finish her nursing degree in the hopes of offering her son Jose a better life than she had. Enter Caleb “The Duke” Lewis, a professional and prominent baseball player for the Yankees, who is dealing with a difficult injury after getting shot in the ankle. Off to a rocky start after a chance meeting, sparks fly between the two.
Well, the premise promised sparks, but if there were any, they sure weren’t romantic but rather what happens when you clank together two stubborn, inanimate stones to make a disastrous fire in the dry forest – which then burns everything down and leaves no survivors.
The amount of sexism portrayed in this book was staggering – and it’s not just from the male character Duke! Though he certainly has his moments to shine. Truly, it seems Duke can’t go a single chapter without pointing out the “bitches” he has known in his past, how deprived and animalistic and altogether unholy every single woman on the planet is – except for Angel (and what else are we supposed to expect with that name).. “She’s not like other women”, Duke points out, and yes, this is a cliché that apparently is still used in romance novels.
Not that Duke treats Angel much better in the beginning. In a truly cringy first meet at a hospital where he leers at her in her nurse outfit (with Angel pointing out in her previous chapter how much she hates being seen as a sex object by her smarmy boss when she’s wearing her unflattering scrubs but of course it’s totally fine when Duke does it), he talks to her kid (stranger danger, anyone?) and then gets affronted when she takes him away for his examination, claiming she should better wait for the kid’s mother. Basically, he mansplains to the mother of an ailing child how little she matters as a nurse. Not his brightest moment and, despite the case of mistaken identity, truly horrifying. What kind of man would try to talk a nurse out of taking a child who is hardly able to breathe back into the doctor’s office? Rude, inconsiderate and arrogant, Duke is every cliché permeating the early 2000s all rolled into one.
To further illustrate this point, Duke and Angel meet a second time in the bar she’s working at. Duke there asks her if she’s a stripper and whether he can see her…well, you know where I’m going with this. Angel reacts very appropriately by shouting at him (while being attracted to him) and throwing a drink at him and succinctly getting fired, fearing how she will provide for her son, making Duke feel guilty for approximately five seconds. If you need any more indication of what this supposedly great romance is going to be like and you decide to read this, know at least that I warned you off.
Angel is not that much better, truth to be told. For all her talk of being a young single mother and working hard to support herself and her son Jose, she sure has a hard time being nice to any other human being in this story or trying to empathise with their struggles. Instead, she is unbearably rude and perceives herself to be superior to everyone around her. What is supposed to make us like Angel – her independent streak and her perseverance – here only makes her a mean character I wish I never encountered. Bossy attitude is one thing, a complete lack of sympathy quite another.
Sprinkle in a dose of arrogant baseball players that slap waitresses’ asses and discuss their huge dicks while drinking at the bar, and a boss that bends his employees over the desk and encourages Angel to join in instead of – you know – actually working, this was just an extremely difficult book to get through. Not to mention that all of this above happens in the first ten percent of the book. The second-hand embarrassment was high with this one.
Speaking of the characters, this story was told in alternating perspectives, from Duke and Angel. The POV would change without any indication, which kept throwing me off. If you insist on choppily switching the POV with no marker like the person’s name on the top of the chapter, the voices should at least be distinct enough so the reader doesn’t spend valuable minutes trying to figure out who is doing the talking. If there was supposed to be chemistry or tension building up to the alternating perspectives, it got lost on me.
This book also suffered heavily from the “show, don’t tell” conundrum. Info about the characters’ pasts is just dumped onto the reader with little to no emotional impact. Duke’s friend and fellow baseball player was killed in a bar shoot out in which he himself got shot in the ankle. Tragic, no? Unfortunately, whenever Duke thinks back to this, the same five sentences are uttered. How his friend was shot, how he himself was injured and how it was a traumatic experience. Yet we are never shown how this has impacted his playing, or his day-to-day life beyond a few grunts to his friends or lacklustre attempts at talking about it with Angel. The same goes for Angel – the reader is constantly told what she is struggling with, but there is no attempt at showing her emotions or helping the reader connect to her life. Even when she is talking about her son, feelings are never shown, instead, the ‘adoration’ between them is pointed out. Okay, then.
Without spoiling anything, the plot meandered a lot in this story, leading to a very abrupt, unsatisfying ending. So much drama was sprinkled throughout, I was wondering whether I was watching a telenovela – there might not be evil twins (surely, Duke telling Angel that her life is boring and condescending to her in every conversation is evil enough) but there are spiteful exes (because of course there needs to be a woman in Duke’s past who is making his life a living hell), disgusting bosses (that storyline alone made me want to chuck the book away) and parents that do everything to derail you from your goals (who needs supportive parents when you can kill them off or have them crumple your career, right?).
All in all, there was just too much drama and sexism in this for me to enjoy it even a little bit. I feel like the author tried to make this a diverse Cinderella retelling but the outcome instead featured misogynistic and harmful representations of women and men. This review may be harsh and it might just be me, but I believe that in the year 2019, we deserve romantic stories that do not perpetuate the notion that men being mean and condescending means they are swoonworthy. Romance has come a long way from telling women that they need to change a man or simply accept being treated badly in the name of love and this story defies that development tenfold.
The Perfect Date releases on June 11th 2019.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Angel Gomez only wants to get through nursing school and earn enough to support her mother and her son, Jose. Her bartending job helps bring in some extra cash, and the last thing she’s interested in is flirting or men in general.
Caleb “The Duke” Lewis is an up and coming star for the Yankees, known for getting around. However, his last breakup left him distracted and made him turn to drink. When he’s caught by the Yankees manager at a party instead of training, he’s suspended and sent back to the Bronx to get his head straight.
Angel and Duke’s worlds collide one night at the club and sparks fly. Though Angel wants nothing to do with Duke, he has no intention of letting her slip through his fingers. She isn’t star-struck by his fame, and this might be just what he needs to get things in order. He’ll do anything to convince her…even make her an offer she can’t refuse.
