It's Friday; I'm in Love

Bear With Me Now by Katie Shepard

Welcome to a new segment on Constructive Criticism (one that has been brewing for a while now; regular readers will understand). Every Friday I possibly can I want to review a romance novel I’ve been reading. There are a lot of reviewers out there on various individual platforms, but I have really struggled to find one place that I can find consistent, thoughtful reviews on genres that still tend to be ignored by mainstream book reviewing platforms. If it ain’t Emily Henry, most places still aren’t interested in the books that rule the bestseller list week after week after week. So I want to add that into the writing I do here in hopes it will inspire you all to grab a “beach read” for the weekend and enjoy yourselves (or wallow in angst, depending on the book). HEA, as always, guaranteed.

Bear With Me Now (Berkley, 2023) is Katie Shepard’s first novel (of two, at this writing but soon to be three, as of September 2024). It follows Teagan Van Zijl, a man who has just been dragged to a Montana wellness retreat by his sister after his first ever panic attack landed him in the hospital. Teagan has been trying to set straight the finances on his deceased alcoholic mother’s charity and the stress of it has built to a crescendo. Although he soon learns the wellness retreat is mostly about eating vegan food and making candles instead of real therapy (and that it is not a wellness retreat but actually a rehab facility) he stays on to see if he can bond with his sister and get her the help she needs. Then he meets Darcy, an aspiring park ranger working as a “wilderness therapist” in name and more of a handyman in actual practice, under less than auspicious circumstances: she saves him from the bear chasing him through the woods by spraying bear spray at both him and the bear. A meet cute, indeed. Although Teagan tries to tell Darcy he isn’t really an alcoholic, she doesn’t believe him, and he eventually decides to keep up the charade indefinitely, as she volunteers herself to be his sober companion when he has to leave the retreat. By this point, Teagan and Darcy are falling for each other and Teagan’s anxiety is sky high at the thought of revealing to her that he isn’t an addict of any kind, but rather a man who has panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. But he also doesn’t want to lose her, so he continues the lie.

For Teagan and Darcy, the barriers to their relationship are almost entirely internal. Although there are some ethical questions around a rehab patient dating an employee at their rehab and then a recovering alcoholic dating their sober companion, those are complicated by the fact that Teagan isn’t an alcoholic at all and by the fact that Teagan is lying to Darcy about his sobriety and his mental health (even though he does make several attempts to tell her, she continues not to believe him and he eventually gives up). Teagan and Darcy are both aware of these ethical barriers (in their own ways) and the story is careful to make it clear to the reader throughout that these lies and misunderstandings will have to be cleared up before they can have a healthy relationship. But the real barrier to their relationship is in their own separate senses of self-worth. Teagan and Darcy both have reasons to distrust themselves. When he meets Darcy, Teagan is only just starting to come to terms with his own mental health issues. He is someone who always does his duty, follows through on his promises, and sacrifices himself for others. He doesn’t value his own needs highly enough because he doesn’t value himself highly enough. Likewise, Darcy is experiencing a crisis of self-confidence when she meets Teagan. Her job has turned out to be far less rewarding than she expected; she thought she would be doing wilderness therapy but is actually just cleaning toilets and mowing lawns most of the time. She keeps trying to apply for the jobs she really wants, but simple things like resumes and hiring portals frustrate her to tears and she’s been trying to finish her online degree for years with no success. All these things have made her lose faith in herself.

When the two meet, they see hope, one in the other. Darcy sees a project at first, someone she can fix. Teagan sees someone who he can devote himself to. But as they spend more and more time together (hitting some sweet forced proximity tropes along the way), it is their mutual kindness to each other that carves a path through all of that. They find that they complement each other in unexpected ways, learning together to shake off their loner tendencies and accept help from another person. He organizes her thoughts and crafts her a great resume; she gets him to see how crushing his job is and how much he loves simple manual labor. When they get their happy ending, it is earned through introspection, kindness, and grace.

The sex in this novel is sweet, raw, and real. It is no less hot for being sweet; indeed it is quite the opposite. One of the best bedroom scenes I’ve read in my extensive survey is Teagan and Darcy’s first time, when the anti-depressants he’s been taking since the panic attack make it difficult for him to rise to the occasion. He’s intensely embarrassed, feeling like a failure of a man and a romantic hero. She responds to it by making him understand the messiness of sex is nothing to be ashamed of, that as a woman she is intimately familiar with sexual experiences that may not end in fireworks, but that are still well work having. She lets Teagan be his vulnerable, sensitive self and still be a sexual and alluring man. Shepard writes such patience, humor, and kindness into that scene. I have rarely seen its like, except perhaps in her other novel, Sweeten the Deal, but that’s a review for another day.

I would recommend this book for fans of Ali Hazlewood, Helen Hoang, Sarah Grunder Ruiz, and Rosie Danan.