We all know the stereotypes of the differences between men and women. Women hold a grudge after an argument. Men will get in a fight and then go have a beer together. Women show their emotions more. Men aren’t “allowed” to cry. Women are more likely to embrace therapy for mental health issues.

According to a recent conversation with a male relative about mental health, men don’t express their emotions because it’s seen as “too feminine.” When I asked him why, he said because expressing emotions is a feminine trait. There really wasn’t an explanation. His explanation was that it’s feminine. So men can’t show their emotions because it’s feminine but what makes it feminine is that it’s feminine? 😖 Last time I checked, men were built with tear ducts too. 😉

My husband Dennis didn’t embrace the idea of therapy until he was forced to. He was a lifelong asthmatic and used to tell me stories about how much time he spent in hospitals growing up. It was no surprise that his asthma worsened as he got older. By the time he was in his mid-50s, he started showing signs of COPD, and he regularly got sidelined by upper respiratory infections.

When he arrived at work one day struggling to catch his breath after walking in from the car, they sent him to the hospital by ambulance. Our doctor put him on short-term disability so that he could go to pulmonary rehab, but he was struggling a lot emotionally with the idea of not being able to work. He was raised believing that a man was the head of the household and provided for his family, so he felt like he wasn’t doing that if he couldn’t work.

Even though the pulmonary rehab helped a little, he wasn’t mentally prepared to go back to work. He tried. He made it back for a handful of days, but he had a lot of anxiety about that trip to the hospital and what it meant in the grand scheme of things.

His asthma/allergy doctor recommended that he talk with a therapist, which he absolutely didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to talk to anyone about what was going on in his head, let alone a stranger. The doctor told him that she wouldn’t be able to excuse him from work anymore if he was going to ignore her recommendation. He found a therapist…begrudgingly.

He never did go back to work, but he stayed in therapy until he passed away.

Recently, one of our friends had a huge argument with her boyfriend. He took out something on her that was really his own fault, and I told her that’s kind of what happens in a relationship. You need to get your anger and frustration out somewhere, and you end up taking it out on the person closest to you, and it may not have anything to do with them.

She told me that she thinks about times that I vented to her about something Dennis did or said that annoyed me so that she can use my experience in her own relationship. What I told her is that men all have their own crap, and for a lot of them, it’s exactly the same crap. (They don’t put the toilet seat down, they don’t put their underwear in the hamper, they leave the bread bag open, they get mad at us because they can’t find the screwdriver they used last.) If it weren’t the same crap, there wouldn’t be any stereotypes about men and women. At the end of the day, in order to find the person you want to spend your life with, you have to find the one whose crap you’re willing to deal with because the good stuff makes up for it.

I read a book recently that had a lot of crap on both sides. I also think it was written by a man who used a feminine pseudonym. I don’t know for certain, but if the author is a woman, I don’t think she knows other women very well.

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Book Review

⭐
1 Star for Corinne by Rebecca Morrow

432 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: July 12, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press.

Publisher’s Description

You want to walk away from the things that are bad for you and never look back.

That’s what Corinne Callahan wants.

Cast out of the fundamentalist church she was raised in and cut off from her family, Corinne builds a new life for herself. A good one. But she never stops missing the life—and the love—she’s left behind.

It’s Enoch Miller who ruins everything for her. It was always Enoch Miller. She’ll never get him out from under her skin.

Set over 15 years and told with astonishing intimacy, Rebecca Morrow’s Corinne is the story of a woman who risks everything she’s built for the one man she can never have.

************

Main Characters:

• Corinne Callahan – 18 at the beginning of the book, 32 when we return to her story, had to create a life for herself as a “wordly” person once she was cast out of the church
• Enoch Miller – also 18 and 32 throughout the story, he was never cast out of the church and has plans to be an elder in the church like his father was

  

Let me start with a few “housekeeping” type comments before I get to the actual review.

This book grabbed my attention first with the title and the cover. To be honest, there are so few times I see my daughter’s name spelled the way we spell it, that Corinne immediately caught my eye. I requested it based on the description and the rave review from a bestselling author calling this a modern day Romeo & Juliet, and I’m a sucker for Shakespeare (“All the World’s a Stage” 🎭). This didn’t feel like Romeo & Juliet at all to me.

The description indicates that the book is set over 15 years. It’s not. It’s set over about two years with a 13-year gap. We don’t see anything that happens between 1992 and 2005. We get snippets of what happened, but we don’t experience it through the book. We’re told about it after the fact…in 2005.

My opinion of this book is in no way a review of the fundamentalist Christian church described in the book. I make no judgments about how others believe or don’t believe, practice or don’t practice.

Rebecca Morrow is a pseudonym for “a New York Times bestselling author.” From what I can gather, she is typically a fan of fantasy and science fiction (at least based on her Twitter profile @WordsofMorrow). My guess is that this is her first attempt at something outside of that genre, so like many authors before her (Who’s That Blonde Chick Really?), she opted for a pseudonym to separate her previous work from this work. Based on how I felt about this book, that might have been a good call. Oh…and I think she might actually be a male author trying to write women’s fiction. I don’t know, obviously, since I can’t find anything to reference who Rebecca Morrow really is, but some of the writing feels like a guy trying to write what he thinks women will like.

Now for the review…I didn’t like this book at all. (I’m guessing you had probably figured that out by now.)

When the book begins, Corinne and Enoch are members of the same fundamentalist Christian church. Everyone has their place, and there are strict expectations of behavior. Enoch’s mother was actually responsible for bringing Corinne’s mother into the church, so they are good friends, and their families had spent some time together when the children were younger. 

When Corinne’s stepfather leaves and they can’t afford to stay in their home, Enoch’s mother offers for the Callahans to stay in their basement until they can get on their feet. The Callahans try not to impose too much, but eventually Mrs. Miller invites them upstairs to join in for family Bible study and dinner. One of Corinne’s sisters typically has dinner at a friend’s and sleeps over. After dinner, Enoch returns from his girlfriend’s home. While their younger brothers play Nintendo, Corinne and Enoch make up extravagant board games using multiple games and their own rules (Monopoly, Parcheesi, Simon, Operation, etc.) while their mothers talk in the kitchen. Over time, Corinne and Enoch develop a secret attraction, which would be frowned upon since Enoch is expected to marry another girl.

The first almost 20% of the book focuses on this relationship. Secret hand-holding under the table, covert touching while their younger brothers aren’t looking. Eventually Enoch begins to kiss Corinne once everyone else has gone to bed. Corinne and Enoch being alone without a chaperone is technically forbidden by the church, and especially since Enoch is going steady with someone else. Finally one evening, Enoch and Corinne have sex. The next day, unbeknownst to Corinne, Enoch talks to the elders of the church and repents, and Corinne is cast out and shunned.

Fast forward to 13 years later, Corinne has been to college, has a job, and has moved back to Kansas because of her mother’s health. She is still cast out of the church, but she is slowly finding her way back to her family. Then she sees Enoch, and the other 80% of the book is a very loooooooooooooong slow look at their lives as adults. Too long…and too slow…and very, very awkward.

***SPOILERS*** SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

1992: acquaintances ➡ friends ➡ secret hand-holding ➡ secret touching ➡ secret kissing ➡ sex ➡ shunned.

2005: acquaintances ➡ secret friends ➡ secret walks ➡ secret meetings ➡ secret touching ➡ secret dinners ➡ sex sex sex sex sex sex sex ➡ wedding ➡ sex.

Yup…that’s about it.

***END SPOILERS***END SPOILERS***END SPOILERS***

Corinne and Enoch seem like very one-dimensional characters to me. Their dialog is awkward. They don’t even really seem comfortable with one another. The author talks so much about Enoch’s knees cracking when he stands up that I half-expected something to happen to him because of it. But no, nothing. Completely irrelevant but had to be mentioned several times. Corinne has such self-loathing that I’m not sure how she allows anyone to love her. (“Corinne had wide hips and fairly giant thighs and an even more giant ass.”)

Corinne constantly thinks of Enoch as “Enoch Miller,” as if she knows so many men named Enoch. And if I had to read “Enoch, Enoch, Enoch,” or “Corinne, Corinne” one more time…. 🙄🤮

Definitely not for me.

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