Reviewer: Sharon Brunner
Jordan Bloom’s Never Your Valentine offers a view of a relationship fraught with contempt, confusion, and desire. The main characters in the story are Annabelle, Grant, June (Grant’s sister), Lia (a lawyer), Dove (a bakery owner), other friends, and some of Grant’s family members. The story takes place in Echo Creek, a fictional location near Escanaba, Michigan. Escanaba is a city in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). The book mentions U.P. details like inclement winter weather and pasties, a food linked to the U.P. Pasties are meat pies surrounded by a crust and were invented as a meal for miners in the 1840s. Grant and Annabelle met when she arrived in Echo Creek to move into a building she inherited. Their first meeting is charged with passion until Grant learns that Annabelle will be making Echo Creek her home so he immediately dumps her.
One of the main themes throughout the story is frustration. Annabelle lives a rather quiet existence as a greeting card designer. She spends a lot of time designing her cards and some of her customers are famous people. She has done quite well with her business. Both Annabelle and Grant end up living next to each other. He was living in the building before she moved to Echo Creek. To add to Annabelle’s life in a negative way, Grant runs a rage room in the lower floor of the building they reside at. People break things like appliances, dishes and tech devices while loud music is playing. A means of getting out their frustrations and anger. These rage sessions happen regularly at different times during the day. The rage room activity is so loud it shook the floor of Annabelle’s apartment. Grant gave Annabelle noise-canceling headphones, but they only blocked some of the sound. She went to a café to work on her projects. She ended up running into Grant’s annoying brother and Grant at the cafe to her dismay. Grant often struggled with why he felt so strongly drawn to Annabelle. Annabelle after experiencing rejection from a past relationship, fought tooth and nail to avoid Grant as much as possible until they decided to give a relationship a try.
A movie that came to mind when reading this book is “When Harry Met Sally.” They meet on a long car ride and decide to test if a platonic relationship can work between a man and a woman. He determines that sex can ruin a friendship and she disagrees. They part on bad terms. They experience chance encounters and after 12 years finally agree they loved each other. Many Hallmark movies start out with a man and woman despising each other, many chance encounters and then they finally realize they can’t live without one another. After Grant rejected Annabelle, they keep meeting in various places and lived next door to each other. Many books exist that contain romances between unlikely characters. I really like the book “Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom” by Jennifer S. Holland which reminded me of this book. Some examples of unlikely friendships are a mare and fawn and a leopard and a cow. Annabelle and Grant lived different lives. He had an extremely nerve-racking business, the rage room, and Annabelle’s career involved her quietly preparing greeting cards.
This book relates to me in many ways. I met my second husband during an unlikely circumstance. My friend and I were out playing trivia at a local bar and saw this man who looked really depressed. We called him over and it was like love at first sight. He’s a shy man who kissed me an hour after we first met. Completely unlike him. Passion existed between the two of us. We exchanged phone numbers and my new beau’s ex-wife decided to cause problems between the two of us. We had to deal with those difficulties along with making a blended family situation work. I almost broke up with him due to her interference at the beginning of the relationship. This year marked 32 years of marriage.
I recommend Never Your Valentine for the possible blossoming romance fraught with difficulties, because of how the author had Annabelle and Grant narrate their own chapters to give a variety of perspectives, and Grant’s metamorphosis when he placed himself in the rage room. Grant discovered the love and support of his family and friends which made a huge difference in his relationship with Annabelle. I like the play on words concerning the title of the book. Grant’s last name is Neverly and he was born on Valentines Day. Bloom paves the way to a better understanding of the difficulties that can impede relationships from reaching their highest potential and how to overcome those obstacles.
Title: Never Your Valentine
Author: Jordan Bloom
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