"...a book I’m afraid I cannot recommend to anyone."

The Ideal Man

by James Conrad

Genre: Romance

Book Synopsis

Twenty-nine-year-old Grace Watts is feeling stifled in her marriage to David Watts, a successful real estate agent. He is financially secure, but is insensitive, unimaginative, sexually inept and sometimes cruel. As Grace seeks meaning in her life, David becomes annoyed at what he considers “erratic behavior” and frustrated that his wife refuses to let anybody dominate her. Furthermore, he is tempted by the affections of Lana Dyson, his colleague from the real estate agency who is waiting for his increasingly fragile marriage to disintegrate so that she can have him all to herself. However, Grace remains with him because she has a fear of being alone.

Grace crosses paths with Anthony Parris, an artist who opts for one-night stands because of a fear of intimacy. She becomes disgusted when she sees him in the arms of many different women, but when she unwittingly attends one of his exhibitions, she becomes increasingly drawn to him herself. In turn, Anthony learns that Grace is a dependable confidant. As David begins to let Grace down more and more, Anthony proves – much to her surprise – to be a strong ally. But will he believe her when she expresses her feelings for him?

Bec's Rating

Bec's Review

This book is a classic case of telling and not showing, with the writing being entirely passive and doing little to draw you into the story. There is little need for the reader’s imagination to conjure the scene as every detail and thought of the characters is spelled out for the reader in explicit detail. As the thrill of reading generally lies in the imagination telling us the story is not the best thing for a book to do, you want to be among the action.

If this was the only flaw of the book though I could possibly look past it. However there were other issues. Most of the characters were two dimensional, with little substance beyond being artists, into the paranormal, a musician and smoking a lot of pot (as most of the main characters that you are supposed to support do). Horoscopes are referenced by most of the characters as fact which is not something that happens in the real world as often as it does in this book. Essentially it was like these few personality traits and the smoking and drug use were supposed to make us believe we were reading about fully fleshed out characters when the characters themselves fell long short.

The story left much to be desired as well. While this is supposed to be a romance the characters involved don’t meet for quite some time. Further while David is supposedto be an egotistical jerk there were times when the words he were saying made me mad enough to put the book down and some women could find them really upsetting. Upsetting your audience, even through the character you want them to dislike, is not something you want to do. Another aspect that I didn’t like was the casual attitude to violence in the book. One of the characters beats up on another in front of a third while the third just laughs, and while the victim may have done horrible things I believe violence is never the answer and should in no way be shown in such a casual way, as if it were the right thing to do. This combined with the casual attitude to drugs in the book and the other problems mentioned causes this to be a book I’m afraid I cannot recommend to anyone.

Disclaimer: Not recommended for children due to sex, language, and multiple references to pot and cocaine.