Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins

Just One of the Guys Kristan Higgins Romance novel    2008 Rating: A

Just One of the Guys is the first book I've read by Kristan Higgins, but it won't be my last.  There seem to be conflicting opinions about this book.  AAR has two reviews posted: an A and a C.  The C came first.  IIRC, I bookmooched this one because of the review at Dear Author (which also posted several grades - an A, a B-, and a C).  It sat on my bedside table for awhile, until the second review at AAR was posted, which re-piqued my curiousity.  This much talk, this much disagreement about one book?  Interesting.

Chastity O'Neill is the youngest child, and the only daughter of the rather famous Eaton Falls, NY O'Neills.  Her father and her four brothers all work in emergency services, the majority of them being firefighters.  She also has one sorta-brother, Trevor Meade who was absorbed into the family late in his teens when his family imploded after his sister's death.  Chastity has a history with Trevor.  He is her first love, her only real love, and the guy who she really can't afford to love because if it goes wrong, it will all go really, really wrong with everyone she loves.   Once, back in college, they had a short, emotionally charged fling, but came to their senses afterward and since then it's been repress, repress, repress.  We're friends.  Just friends.  And Chastity in the midst of her huge (physically and numerically) family is just one of the guys.  

I confess; I love the friends-to-lovers plot.  Partly because it allows a romance to start with already developed feelings between the leads, but also because there is usually more than a touch of unrequited love angst mixed in.  This one has both in excess, although the unrequited emotions are more perceived than real.  They are really, really perceived, though.  

I loved Chastity as a character, and I am not partial mannish heroines.  Chastity isn't precisely masculine, but at nearly six feet tall, she is a big, strapping girl, capable of dwarfing most men she meets.  She is also unrepentantly athletic.  She rows, she runs; she leaves guys in the dust.  She has a geek streak, harboring a significant obsession for Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  But while she's strong and generally unintimidated, she has some chinks in her armor.  She can't stand the sight of blood; it causes her to faint (especially noticable in a family of emergency workers).  She's conscious of her physical uniqueness, and she's a little socially clumsy.  All of this give a faint Chick Lit flavoring to the book.  Chastity is a fish only returning upstream - she has yet to feel comfortable in the waters of her destination.  Her career as a newspaper writer is an anomaly in the family.  She isn't broke, but she's not financially secure yet, either.  And she'd really like to get married.  

Skimming through what I just wrote, I have to admit this description still wouldn't get me to pick up this book.  But, see, it's funny.  Chastity is so drily self-deprecating, so conscious of the irony in her life, and her first-person POV is a joy to read.  Having just finished watching all three of the Lord of the Rings movies, I found her lustful obsession for Aragorn hilarious, not annoying.  Her family has problems, but they are funny too in their interactions with each other.  And with her strange looking mutt, Buttercup.  Dogs, family problems, Lord of the Rings.  Oh, I was highly amused.

And yet, as funny as this book frequently was, it had me on the other spectrum too.  Several times I was close to tears.  There is a lot of really complicated emotion between Trevor and Chastity, and it was so well done.  Trevor is such a good guy and a wonderful friend to her, very supportive of her dreams and abilities.  And he's been through so much and is content with so little.  There are numerous obstacles to their being together, including the presence of two other people in their lives, but the yearning - it comes through loud and clear. 

Another of the book's sub-plots involves Chastity's parents whose marriage has a few problems.   Mainly that they're divorced but their feelings for each other are not over. The resolution to this doesn't play out exactly as you might expect in a romance novel, but I couldn't deny that problems and emotions hadn't been plumbed. 

If I was dissatisfied with anything, it was with the love rectangle which went on far too long, to the point of torture for Chastity, for Trevor, and for me.  While I appreciated the complexity of Trevor's relationship with Chastity's family, I thought his last put off, well intentioned as it was, was just ridiculously.

However, as you can see, I really enjoyed this book, and I strongly recommend at least trying it from the library in case it hits you the way it did me.  As soon as I was done, I went and ordered two other books in Higgins backlist so I will have more funny/angsty goodness of this calibre to enjoy one day when I am in need of that hard-to-find fiction combination.

tags: books  romance novels  kristan higgins