I just finished my latest trashy romance novel and I'm perplexed. The whole story revolves around the hero's big "secret." This is, of course, how almost all of these books work, but this one I found particularly confusing. His name is Jake and he's a rancher. Jake's father died when Jake was 12 and his mother died when he was 17 so he took over the ranch and raised his 3 younger siblings himself. He also turned the ranch around and made it prosperous. Thus far we've hit all the appropriate ingredients for an alchemic romance. When our heroine, the bright, cultured, college professor rolls into town Jake hates how much he likes her and spends the better part of two hundred pages dreading the inevitability of her leaving because she can never know his "secret." Our heroine, Amanda, even starts to suspect somewhere around page 150 or so and then she too worries about his dreadful "secret."

At this point I'm thinking this dude must have killed a baby or something.

All the thoughts he spends thinking he's a fraud--how she'll learn that he isn't the great, honorable, strong man he pretends to be. She worries and worries that he is strong and proud like her uncle who had the same "secret" and won't let her help thereby trapping him on his ranch and dooming him to loneliness and an early death. My mind is racing considering all the possibilities of secrets that would fulfill the seriousness described and still allow for a happy ending. For instance, if Jake was a secretly a serial killer that's going to make a long term relationship with Amanda difficult vs. he is actually a supernatural denizen that feeds off human blood but doesn't kill humans. Maybe, I thought, he did one horrible thing in his past and still feels horribly guilty about it. I could also accept this as a possibility. If he killed a kid while drunk driving at 16 that could cause Amanda to rethink his character; I'm not sure how I would feel about it as a reader, but perhaps it would be a nice commentary on loving someone with a past who has changed blah, blah blah.

Jake's secret was none of these things. Jake was illiterate.

I'm not knocking the seriousness of adult illiteracy, nor the mental baggage it creates in those who are hiding their illiteracy. As plot lines go I think this is a good one. Jake's dad started pulling him out of school at seven years old to help on the ranch. The dad was illiterate, now Jake was illiterate. It all made reasonable sense. But after Amanda "figures it out" we have this huge insurmountable problem--he's ashamed she knows and won't pursue the education even though he desperately wants it. At this point I'm once again reminded why I'm not a romance heroine.

To me, and I can be a cold, heartless, uncaring person, it's just not that big of a deal. Not that it isn't a big deal, but this is a totally fixable situation. Jake can see. Jake is smart. Jake does not have a learning disability that he is aware of. Jake has money. Learning to read would be frustrating, but when it comes to the illiteracy camp he's definitely way up there. And of course he would be ashamed of it, and of course falling in love with the writer/college professor/world traveler will make him feel inadequate, but it's changeable.

I imagine about the third time Jake flips out because I knew he was illiterate and refused to agree to learn I would probably have had enough. As serious as the situation is it isn't permanent and that's just such a big difference to me. Of course, my feelings of annoyance are exacerbated because the climax of the book revolves around our hero racing away in a truck to a small cabin out in the woods. Little does he know the bridge is washed out and there isn't a road sign only a small cardboard handwritten sign on the side of the road that he won't be able to read. Our hero and Jake's sister race after him and his sister stops him from plunging into the creek bed, but his truck spooks her horse and she falls into the creek bed suffering serious injury. As our hero and heroine sit in the emergency room he decides he can't hide anymore and must deal with this problem that has so ruled his life and nearly cost his sister hers.

Yeah, I was moved too.

A cardboard, hand written sign? Really? And in all the years of that bridge washing out he really has no way of telling? He can recognize the shape and color of road signs. And so the little sister must almost die for his great revelation--it seemed a bit over the top. And yes, I recognize the irony in calling anything in a romance novel over the top. Whatever.

So our question then is, does Jake's secret really fuel the plot? I've gotta go with no. Jake is an excellent hero, the romance aspect is great, but I wouldn't be crying if I found out the man I loved was illiterate. I would be crying if he refused to learn, especially if he couldn't learn, but just stubbornly refusing to do what he wants to do because he imagines it's futile? That's more tragically real, not romantically tragic.

Honestly, I was hoping he was going to be agoraphobic. At least that would be a new plotline.