I think it might make both objectively worse.īut a lot of this is just personal romance reader prejudice stuff: I like my internal conflict to be addressed through internal action. I don't believe either a bomb or a hurricane happening to my face would contribute positively to my mental health or my romantic life. but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. But, uh, I can only speak for me and my mental health.

you can be knocked out of a mental health rut by a truly shocking event. (Again, I really like how unglamorously messed up, RRM lets her characters be).Īnd then there's a literal hurricane that blows down the house.Īnd I know the deal with both the bomb and the hurricane is this idea that. Basically, Lily is clinically anxious, paranoid, and agoraphobic: she stockpiles supplies in case of emergency like a survivalist. THIS IS JUST A MOMENT quality that I really appreciated in those two, but just like The Bridge has what I personally felt was an unnecessary bomb, this one has what I feel is an unnecessary hurricane. I didn't, however, ultimately warm to this one as much as The Bridge or Tanya. As the book unfurls they begin to see themselves and each other more clearly, and it's, you know, super hot and raw as you'd expect from a RRM book. Their early relationship is highly antagonistic - since they each represent a class stereotype the other simultaneously desires and despises. He hates the world with the same intensity that Lily fears it. And I continually enjoy how flawed and damaged and sharp-edged RRM allows her heroines to be.Ĭliff is the equally angry carpenter who is helping Lily renovate the house.

She's very much a poor little rich girl in the mould of Henry from The Bridge, equally lost and riddled with mental health issues, although the deep anger in her is nothing like Henry's gentle hopelessness. She's hoping if she gets it renovated she can live there, her rich, emotionally distant father will let her live there, away from everything in New York that makes her miserable.

I'm having seriously difficulty keeping up with this family, and whose siblings are banging other people's signals.Īnyway, Lily is a hyper-privileged Manhattanite who moves to the summer house she used to visit with her (now deceased) mother for one month a year - pretty much the only place she used to be happy. Not my favourite RRM book - apparently Cliff (the hero) is the half-brother of Henry and Jack from The Bridge/Tanya.

Hurricane Lily by Rebecca Rogers Maher