LynneC’s review of What Lies Beneath by Andrea Laurence
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Desire 3 Apr 12

I am so very sorry I can’t do a more positive review for this book, but it has serious flaws which eventually  prevented me enjoying it as much as I might have done. Huge plot holes and a Mary Sue heroine aren’t my favorite tropes, but if you can ignore the holes and go along with Mary (actually called Adrienne), then you will enjoy this one.

I’ve learned that it’s (almost – let’s not get carried away here) as hard to write an unfavorable review as it is to receive one. but I can’t give this book a pass. Several elements make this a disappointing read for me, starting right at the beginning. Since Ms. Laurence is a new author to the Desire line, I tried, but, in the end, I knew it wasn’t a book for me.

Unusually for a Desire, there is a prologue, but in this case it’s definitely needed. Adrienne has just wound up her New York fashion business and is on the plane going home to Milwaukee. She finds herself sitting next to a society beauty who has been downgraded to economy. She and society beauty Cynthia trade places and the plane crashes leaving only three people alive. They assume Adrienne is Cynthia. We, the reader, know better, because the story is told from Adrienne’s point of view, not Cynthia’s.

Anyone else find that whole thing hard to swallow? First, the first-class passenger downgraded. That’s a tricky premise right there. In all my years travelling, I’ve never come across that. Upgrading, sure, and a passenger downgraded for bad behavior, once. Okay, never mind, let it through. It could happen, after all.
So the whole assuming Adrienne is Cynthia part of the story, necessary if the story is going to work.

The amnesia Adrienne/Cynthia suffers is only one of the injuries which also damaged her face and destroyed her front teeth. She has new teeth implanted (can you have that done?) and plastic surgery has rebuilt her face. That’s some expense there, and Adrienne is doing it, albeit unwittingly, on Cynthia’s insurance. Wouldn’t the hospital or the insurance company sue to cover its own ass, when the truth comes out? I’m assuming here that Adrienne’s insurance is basic and Cynthia’s is much better, plus she can afford private treatment.

Wait a minute. There’s a lot of blood involved in plastic surgery, especially facial surgery. So they must have taken her blood type, right? What if it was different to Cynthia’s?

The fact that Cynthia and Adrienne have swapped places on the plane is no indication of their identity and no insurance company or anyone else in their right mind is going to accept it as such. When Adrienne wakes up with a smashed face and amnesia, they’re going to take her “parents’” word that she’s their daughter? I don’t think so. Especially when DNA testing is fast and painless. And what about dental identification? A significant number of back teeth is acceptable for ID, especially when there’s been work done in the past. Since this happens right at the start of the book, I tried to just accept the situation and read on, but things kept nagging me.

The real story starts some time later when our heroine is due to leave hospital. She’s had extensive plastic surgery, but she only seems concerned that her new teeth don’t fit right and she can’t remember anything. I had to fight to stay with the story here. The accident had rendered her unrecognizable and given her amnesia. She seems okay with that, and later, when she meets her real relative, her aunt, the lady accepts her as if she looks just the same. There’s no mention of her learning her new contours or getting psychiatric treatment, almost a requirement of surgery like she’d had.

Peripheral to my concerns are the lack of any mention of possible PTSD and the way the author kills off a plane full of people. She’s created them in the first place, I suppose, so she could kill them. Nobody seems too bothered about that, Adrienne/Cynthia included.

Oh, and the doctor at one point in the story says that one bang to the head gave her amnesia and another restored it. Really? I thought that idea went out a long time ago. Actually, the restoration of memory doesn’t exactly happen that way, but that a doctor should actually say that…?

The character of Adrienne gets more annoying as the book goes on. She’s beautiful but curvy, not model-thin. She’s very kind, very thoughtful, and people in distress upset her. She’s a sweet girl whom everybody loves, from the nurse in the hospital to Cynthia’s fiancée, who she goes to live with after she comes out of hospital. She can design clothes. It’s obvious that the author knows something about sewing and a bit about the fashion industry, but I can’t remember the last designer who made their own clothes. Oh, yes, I can, Yves Saint-Laurent (my mother worked for him for a short time). But, of course, he didn’t. He just could.

Adrienne not only has the money to buy runway-quality fabric, she can make it all up into what she wants with a domestic sewing machine. Not an overlocker or heavy-duty machine for leather in sight. But, again, development of that side might have made Adrienne more interesting. But at this stage of the story, she is Cynthia, a spoiled society beauty who never took an interest in sewing before. And nobody remarks on that? Oh, yes, and she makes a collection worthy of an important magazine in a few days. Makes it herself, on her handy-dandy sewing machine. Vera Wang wishes (or maybe she has more sense). In short, Adrienne is a Mary Sue of the most egregious. Hearts and flowers and skippety-skip.

Ah, yes, the hero. There is an unavoidable spoiler here, but I’ll mark it and try not to go into specifics. Will owns a newspaper, which is doing a deal with Cynthia’s father to go into e-readership. I like that part, it sounds plausible to me and interesting. Would have liked more of that. But there is no real barrier to the main relationship, although Cynthia’s father wants the marriage between Cynthia and Will to cement the business relationship. In the end, though, like everyone else, he falls in love with Adrienne, so that’s all right then.

Will is a cipher. He never comes alive for me, although there are several scenes in his viewpoint. He does what is needed for the plot. There is another character and a side plot. It seems that Cynthia was in love with a poor, struggling man who, when we finally meet him, comes across as a sleaze and a bully. I have no idea what he was doing in the book at all. He pops up and disappears when the plot needs a bit of a stir.

And here’s the  SPOILER ALERT (although if you read many Harlequins, you’ll see this one coming a mile off. Like a train screaming down the track you are helplessly bound to, you beg “no, no, don’t do it” but it arrives anyway).

About the Black Moment. A more contrived one I have yet to read. When Adrienne realizes who she is, Will assumes she’s been trying to con him and he throws her out. At this stage of the story, it reveals a fundamental weakness in Will – doesn’t he trust his own judgment of the woman he’s come to know? And it screams “plot device.” If Will is the brutal alpha type, it would have been more believable, and while I’m happy to read betas, to see one turn like this is a bad jar out of the story. *END OF SPOILER ALERT*

To sum up – the story has serious issues. The initial premise is unbelievable, the heroine is Mary Sue and then some, and the hero is manipulated by the plot. If this book won lots of awards, it must have been in another incarnation, and having been subject to the sometimes brutal editing Harlequin imposes on its authors, I can see how a first-time author would do her best to work in what they wanted and leave ends dangling. However, the book has some style, although the syntax is rather simplistic, and if Ms. Laurence writes another, I’d be interested in taking a look, to see if the next effort is smoother and more interesting.
Sorry.

Grade: D-

Summary:

They say she’s Cynthia Dempsey, fiancée of media mogul Will Taylor. But try as she might, she can’t recall their high-society life or the man sitting by her hospital bed. Though her body certainly remembers him. Even as she senses the distance between them, the electricity when they touch is undeniable.

Will can hardly believe Cynthia’s transformation. Gone is the ice queen who betrayed him, and in her place is a woman who seems genuine and warm. But can he risk his heart again, not knowing what might happen when her memory returns?

Read an excerpt.