Review: Paying the Piper by Rachel Brimble

While there was nothing in Playing the Piper that I hated, there were several things that I found annoying enough to significantly mar my enjoyment. Brimble’s characters had a lot of potential and were given interesting histories and personalities, but the delivery fell a little short and the story and plot did not do them justice.

Jimmy was an utterly sweet and wonderful hero. He’s a social worker, volunteers at a soup kitchen, and has been approved to become a foster parent. He basically spends all of his time trying to make the world a better place for the children he works with and is somewhat of a “Father Theresa,” as Grace teasingly calls him. That being said, he never comes off as preachy or self-righteous. Instead, he just seems like a good guy trying to do the right thing. He ran away from home when he was a teenager to escape his father’s abuse, so he knows what these kids are going through and feels an incredibly strong bond with them.

I was not sure how I would feel about Grace, because when authors write hard-as-nails type heroines, I can either end up absolutely loving them … or hating them so much they completely ruin the book for me. There’s a fine line between being tough / kick-ass and being a bitch. Oddly enough, in Playing the Piper I don’t think that we got enough of Grace’s tough-girl persona. We’re told at the beginning that that’s how she is – that she’s the thick-skinned Butler daughter who reigns over a club frequented by gangsters and criminals – but I never felt that we were shown this. Her character instead came off as murky and not clearly defined, flip-flopping back and forth between being inaccessible and reserved and being friendly and caring.

As secondary characters go, I liked Jimmy’s “kids” – the four children he’s really attached to and that he wants to buy a home for and foster. We only get to know Billy and Katie, but they were both well-written. I found their reactions to Grace coming in and at one point trying to win them over with flashy things to be realistic. I was glad Brimble didn’t make them easily fall right at her feet and accept her.

Although Karl, Grace’s father, is setup in the summary as being a bad guy, I really liked him. Throughout most of the book, Grace’s feelings towards him are hostile and very harsh. While he is definitely involved in shady dealings, Brimble doesn’t give us a flat one-dimensional character, but really humanizes him, so that he comes off as your friendly neighborhood gangster / crook. This makes Grace seem immature and unfair in her dealings with and rejection of him.

Grace’s gay friend Gerald was over-the-top ridiculous and Jimmy’s reaction to him was surprising (in that in all other ways Jimmy is such a good, open, and understanding character) and at times bordering on the homophobic.

My biggest criticism is that most of the entire plot seemed extremely forced and contrived. The pace moved very slowly at times, while feeling very choppy at others. Also, everything that happened seemed to be for the sole reason that the author needed it in order to insert the dialogue or event that she really did want there. So the only reason Karl wants to hire him is in order for the story to have something that prompts Jimmy and Grace being brought together, and the only reason Jimmy gets mad at one point is because they can then have a relationship-related obstacle, etc. Things that were done, said, or felt by the characters so often did not make any logical sense to me. We’re told he’s mad … but why is that again? We’re told she feels that way … but why would that be? It made it so that I was never able to loose myself in the story, but remained aware the entire time that I was sitting in my room reading a romance book on my Nook.

For most of Playing the Piper, there didn’t seem to be much between Grace and Jimmy other than lust. It’s definitely an instant-attraction romance, which I’m never fond of, and what made it all worse was that the way Brimble crafted these characters there were actually so many ways their personalities could have been the focus instead. Jimmy and Grace are perfectly set-up to clash and play off of one another, and while there is a little of that, it seemed half-hearted – while their constant desire for one another’s hot bodies was anything but.

And this leads me to what is actually a quite minor point, but was so prevalent I absolutely could not ignore it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the incessant descriptions we get of Jimmy and Grace’s body parts and these body parts’ reactions. Examples (mind you, these aren’t all of them): twice she wants to “mash his face between her aching breasts”; he wants to mash her hand against his crotch (what’s with all the mashing?); her clitoris involuntary contracts or throbs I-don’t-know-how-many-times at the sound of Jimmy’s voice or laugh, which is mirrored when her laughing sends “an acute awareness to his groin area”; her winking equals has the same effect as her gripping his penis; he gives her a “look of desire that shot laser beams of longing through her vagina like darts of Viagra” – a vagina that later “twitched in anticipation” and that is “set alight” when he says her name; and of course let’s not forget her “magnificent breasts” with nipples that tingle to attention. A few of these and I would not have even noticed, but one after another they start to blatantly stick out.

What shocked me was that despite the obviously explicit language and erotic overtones of the story, I didn’t feel the chemistry between them and there was no leaping-off-the-screen sexual tension. I found this particularly odd, given the fact their connection is one initially based solely on mutual lust. We don’t even get to read about their first sexual encounter! He works his magic fingers, she works her magic mouth (did I really just write that?!), and then – end of chapter! When they do have sex, it’s without a condom, though they apparently don’t feel the need to have an are-you-on-the-pill? / are-we-both-STI-free? conversation, which I always find irresponsible (not to mention potentially dangerous).

Finally, though perhaps a minor annoyance, I was bothered by the number of typos; had I been really involved in the romance, maybe I wouldn’t have noticed. Jimmy and Grace were interesting characters, with all the right ingredients to be the hero and heroine of a great opposites-attract romance; unfortunately, the love story didn’t deliver that.

Random note: The book is set in England.

“I care about her and she’s not talking. What am I supposed to do?”

“You care about her? You care about her? And that means what? You’d risk having your balls wound so tight in a vice your spunk shoots out through your eyeballs for her?”

Jimmy screwed his face up with disgust, pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it for a moment. Blowing out a breath, he put it back to his ear. “I wouldn’t have articulated it quite as bluntly as that, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

Rating: C-
Paying the Piper by Rachel Brimble
September 19th 2011 by Lyrical Press, Inc.
Contemporary Romance
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