Here To Stay Book Review *Catherine Anderson*

Here to Stay (Kendrick/Coulter #10) by Catherine Anderson reached #3 last week on the NY Times bestselling paperback mass-market list. I used to love Catherine’s books, and to be honest, I don’t know how this made the NYT because this book is the reason I’m officially breaking up with Catherine Anderson.

The premise to Here to Stay was what made me want to read this book. Using mini guide horses, instead of seeing eye dogs for the blind is something I never heard of. Zach Harrigan lives on a ranch, much like most of Anderson’s heroes do, as well as part of a large, loving family. From the very first chapter where we meet Zach at a bar and drinking beers, I couldn’t stand him. We are told right from the start how Zach has slept with many of the woman there over the past six months who have fake chests and paid thousands of dollars for their package o’ massive boobage. Zach is now disgusted by these women because he’s sick of “nibbling on an overfilled water balloon”. He grouses internally for five pages of, oh woes me, I’m horny, but can’t get laid but I have no other choice but to pick women with breast implants. He’s become turned off because one woman’s breasts ruptured during a night of rough sex with him. Zach then gets into a bar fight with a drunk patron taunting a woman and her date who is blind. Afterward, while Zach’s cooling off in jail, he remembers a magazine article about using tiny horse to help the blind get around. This epiphany gives him a new outlook on life.

Mandy Pajeck is yet another trademark Anderson heroine. She’s been so badly abused by her father, is the soul caretaker of her younger brother Luke, who was blinded because of her. Luke treats Mandy like dirt because of what she did to him. He expects her to wait on him hand and foot while she slaves away at some boring job, still guilty years after the accident that took her bratty brother’s sight. She allows this treatment and makes excuses for him because he’ll never have the life he deserves because of her actions. She watches a news broadcast of Zach with his mini horse and decides she’ll do whatever she can to make Zach donate the horse to her so Luke can get off his lazy ass and actually get a life.

Zach meets Mandy and is struck by how wholesome and innocent she is. He thinks Luke is a jerk, the one redeeming quality Zach has, and in a blink of an eye finds himself attracted to Mandy. Mandy thinks Zach is amazing, but they can’t have anything together because of her horrible past. She’s never going to get married because of what happened to her parents and how her mother up and left them to their abusive father. Plus, because her father was an alcoholic and Zack likes to drink wine, Mandy can’t rightly be with him because he enjoys a vintage at dinner. Zach tells her to take it or leave it, and she leaves him.

But as long as Mandy has God and faith on her side, she’ll be able to make it through another day without a man to love and support her.

I got up to the point with the drama with the wine and the mystery regarding Mandy and Luke’s mother and had to give up. I really hated how Catherine wrote Mandy. She comes across as too naïve and has a major lack of personality and self-esteem. I really wanted to shake her at one point and tell her to grow a pair. Her reasoning doesn’t make a lick of sense. Zach has almost the same type of personality as Luke. But it’s perfectly okay because Zach and Luke have a man to man talk, and like the sun coming out from the clouds during a bad rainstorm, with a rainbow appearing with a pot of gold at the end, everything is now wonderful and beautiful. Mandy gets over her issues with wine abuse and Zach and her not only hold hands and date in that sweet, innocent way, but end up in the bedroom where Zach doesn’t have to worry about bursting Mandy’s breast because hers are the real deal.

Here to Stay has no depth and reminds me of a bad Lifetime movie. Also the sudden references to God and spirituality made no sense at all in the scheme of the plot. Catherine Anderson can write better than this. Here to Stay will not be staying anywhere near me. (Signet)

Finale Grade: DNF