How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

I read Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center last year and it wasn't exactly a memorable experience - it was an absolutely fine, but forgettable read.  So I put How to Walk Away by the same author on my hold list at the library without a ton of expectations.  They have similar Goodreads ratings, so I know people love these books, but I am not always on board with the ratings system at Goodreads (why don't people love Love Lettering the way I do?!).  

In this book, Margaret is in a plane crash with her new fiancé piloting. She ends up in the hospital paralyzed with lots of burns and her fiancé exits the situation with a fair amount of hemming and hawing.  She begins having physical therapy (PT) appointments with a hot, broody, grumpy Scottish guy named Ian.

Interesting characters: No. I really wanted Margaret to be interesting, but instead she was a spoiled white woman before her accident and she didn't really have much of a personality.  She always talked about how different her life was, but there were never specific examples.  Like, was she an avid runner?  Someone who hiked a lot?  Someone who was super independent and never asked for help? I don't know because Center does not know how to write characters with interests.  

And Ian? You'd think he'd be simply swoony to me since I myself am a fan of the laconic dude, but Center threw in some heavy trauma for him about thirty pages from the end and never really developed that story line.  

I wanted to like these two, but they just seemed like generic people. Yes, Margaret was thrown into unusual situations and I liked how the book dealt with some of that, but these are not well-developed people.  So disappointing.

Believable conflict: Yes. I mean, there was conflict between Margaret and her ex-fiancé (absolutely believable and understandable), conflict between Margaret and every member of her family (also, completely believable in the context of such trauma), and conflict between Margaret and Ian.  I actually think it would have been fair for Center to ratchet up the conflict in a moment as charged as it was post-accident. 

Emotional tension: Eh.  I guess. I mean, I knew where the story was going as soon as Ian was assigned as Margaret's PT, but because these characters were so flat, there's no real way to make it a relationship I was ever biting my nails about. There was a time when they were apart (I mean, the ethics of a PT dating his patient were very much glossed over), but I honestly thought that time was super needed for Margaret to discover her independence after she got out of the hospital. 

In general, this post-hospital time is where I wanted Center to do more work. She had done a lot of research on what Margaret's experiences would be like in the hospital and what therapy she would do, but then she just stopped. I wanted to know how Margaret was cooking in a kitchen that was not designed to be wheelchair accessible. I wanted to know how she was navigating daily living with a disability.  How did she get around places that aren't wheelchair accessible? I wanted details and instead I got Margaret blathering about her love life (which to be honest, would not have been a priority for me at that moment).  

Also, don't get me started on things I think would have been important to Margaret if her love life were top of mind.  Does she have sensation that would allow sex to be pleasurable?  How can she satisfy her partner?  Could she have kids?  There's nothing in here about any of it and I would think that if she was so hung up on Ian, she would definitely spend time thinking about these types of things.

(Also, this isn't relevant to emotional tension, but money was never mentioned in any of this book. There was a brief mention about how she only had limited time in the hospital because that's all the insurance would pay for, but how were her parents paying for all the extra PT?  The home remodeling? How were they affording so much takeout?  Let's not even get started on how they would have sued the pants off her ex-fiancé for that plane crash.  I understand intellectually that adding all this in would have added about a dozen plot lines - way too much for a romance novel - but just not addressing it left me feeling like a book that was so realistic about injuries and treatments was just not realistic about anything else.)

Happily ever after: I understand why this book is popular. Margaret undergoes something horrific and comes out of it stronger than ever and with a lovely family. I get it.  But I just think it does a disservice to people with disabilities by not tackling some of the harder issues that would be involved in this happily ever after.

This book was not for me, but it may be for you if you can put aside all the unrealistic elements.