Favorite Romances Series: Simply Irresistible by Rachel Gibson

Simply Irresistible Rachel Gibson Book  1-1-1998   $6.99 Rating: A

According to my database, I first read Simply Irresistible in 2000 and last read it in 2002.  I can't believe it's been 5 years since I re-read it, considering how high it ranks on my Romance Re-reads list.  That has to be wrong.  Simply Irresistible is one of my top comfort reads, and I know I've needing some comfort reading in the last five years.  

So - the book.  Basically, this is one of those dreaded Secret Baby stories, the kind that make most readers cringe or run away in horror.  Trés cliché.  But here it works.  John "The Wall" Kowalsky, hockey player for the Seattle Chinooks and overall stud, first meets Georgeanne Howard at a wedding - her wedding.  Having made an appearance at his team owner's fifth marriage ceremony, he decides to leave and sees a woman in a very short dress coming at him.  She wants a ride, and he figures why not?  Only after she's been in his car awhile does he realize that she's the bride, and she's just jilted and publicly humiliated his boss.  The man who signs his fat contracts and has the power to trade him into oblivion.  But by then the damage is done, and, hearing that she has nowhere to go, John allows her to stay with him until she can contact her family and get on a bus to somewhere.  He knows getting involved with her would be career suicide, so he vows to keep his hands off her, even though Georgeanne is totally his type with her soft curves and overblown feminine sensuality.  

Georgeanne, for her part, is reeling from the decision she's just made and grappling in space for something or someone to hang on to.  John looks ideal.  She's got nowhere to live, no job, and no one who wants to take her in.  But John's got lots of space, and she figures she can broker a place to stay using her feminine wiles and her body as collateral.  Not that she really intends to sleep with John.  He's hot, but sex hasn't really worked out for her in the past.  But when the two of them, with their opposing agendas, find themselves alone in his big beach house, hormones take over and all their hands-off intentions go out the window.  The bedroom window.  Georgeanne wakes up the next day positive something special has happened and determined to keep John - and is heartbroken when he buys her an airline ticket back to Texas, drives her to the airport, and walks away. 

Seven years later the two of them run into each other again.  By this time Georgeanne has made something of herself.  She's the co-owner of a successful catering business.  John is still the star player of the Chinooks.  He spies her working at a charity event and searches her out.  But her reaction puzzles him - she seems almost afraid of him.  The next day he seeks her out at her house, but Georgeanne isn't the one who answers the door.  It's her six-year-old daughter, Lexie...a girl who looks surprisingly like John.

Rachel Gibson's name is one that often crops up on lists for Susan Elizabeth Phillips read-alikes , and as a reader and a librarian, I think the two can be compared.  They both write contemporary romances with humor, alpha males (frequently sports stars), and sizzling sexual tension.   But of all her books, this is the one in which Gibson seems to be strongly channeling Phillips's muse.  No one does romantic banter/verbal sparring with sexual overtones like SEP, but here Gibson comes soooo close. 

Phillips's novels have an element of fantasy, however, that Gibson's don't.  It's extreeeeeemely unlikely that a star football player would pick up a stranded and rather plain woman dressed as a beaver, drive her cross country and let her stay in his house just for kicks.  But it's not outside the realm of reality that a star hockey player would have a one-nighter with a gorgeous woman, dump her, and discover later that he left a baby behind.  Also, here this is a greater sense of equality between John and Georgeanne than there usually is between SEP's protags.  Both of them are from working class backgrounds, both were raised largely by their grandparents, and both of them have developed and honed their talents in order to make them more saleable, even if John's talents are far more financially remunerative.  And both of them  are extremely physically attractive.  He's 6'5" and built like a wall, she's 5'10" and shaped like Marilyn Monroe.  Throughout I kept picturing them as poster children for the Nazi's planned race of uber men, except brunette. 

Even when Georgeanne is at her lowest with few resources at hand, it's not really pity driving John's actions; it's his overwhelming attraction to her.  Ironically, this attraction actually gets in the way of their developing a relationship.  Because of his history with women and rink bunnies, John attributes Georgette's draw to the fact that she is his type and takes a long time to notice how well matched they really are.  

What's interesting, to me, about both John and Georgeanne is how flawed they are.  Yes, they are talented and gorgeous, and he's a manly man, and she's a southern belle, but especially when we first see them, they're also pretty messed up.  Georgeanne is insecure about her body and brain, sure she is fat and unintelligent.  She feels unlovable because her mother abandoned her.  Yet she knows her assets and has no compunction about using her looks and her body to manipulate people, especially men, for personal gain.  There's a pretty fine line between how she intends to use Virgil, her fiancé, and John and prostitution.  

For his part, John is equally flawed.  Many readers have weighed in on what an ass he is, and he's  definitely an alpha jerk.   But his alpha jerk-ness comes from his position - and partly from his addiction-  it's not innate.  He's a big deal, a celebrity.  The rules don't apply to him, and he can have just about any woman he wants.  It's understandable then that he has a very utilitarian code of sexual conduct, and with the assumptions he makes about Georgeanne, his actions seem pretty natural, actually.   She knows the score: sex doesn't not equal love.  He assumes that she won't make it into a romance.  But she does.  And he doesn't stick around to see how hurt she is.

It's nice that they both pull it together on their own, particularly that Georgeanne who in the beginning is waiting for a white knight to rescue her, gives up waiting and just does it herself.  So many stories in Romance are about mutual healing.  Two lost souls helping each other out of the abyss.  John and Georgeanne mature on their own and so it can be assumed that they will be ready for the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood.  

Simply Irresistible has a few weak spots.  There's a weak secondary romance that adds little (except perhaps some plotting help).  And Lexie's reaction to learning that John is her father should have been shown in detail and real time.  Lexie is a pretty strong secondary character, very enjoyable, and her existence gives the book a conflict.  That conflict should have had more closure than it does.  

These little problems do little to detract from the overall.  This is a funny, hot, entertaining story set convincingly in the professional hockey world.  This was Gibson's first book and, with Truly, Madly Yours, put her on my auto-buy list from which she has subsequently fallen.  In recent years I've wondered if maybe she was just writing the same book that I loved the first time and then got bored with (a la Joan Wolf).  But that's not the case.  Simply Irresistible, on re-read, is still a great book, far better than her more recent stuff.   I'd recommend this to anyone, and especially readers who can stomach (or enjoy!) a good alpha jerk hero and a prim and proper heroine.

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