In My Bedroom : Not A Romance (Book Review)

I’ve read one book this year. I’ve started many books and I’ve read many other literary materials but In My Bedroom by Donna Hill is my one book for 2016. I checked this book out from the library. I was hoping for a lusty romance but instead I got a book about a woman, Rayne Mercer-Holland who as a young child was sexually abused by her father, William Mercer. While this wasn’t the romance novel I’d thought it would be, I was captured by the story. However, I feel the main character’s development was shallow compared to the complexity of her story.

She had been repeatedly raped by her father; the abuse began when she was six years old after the death of her mother. He father an already emotionally unstable man, had completely cracked after his wife’s death. When her father remarried (Edith) she was sent to live with her father’s sister (un-named) for several years. There was no insight to what her life was like living with her aunt. The author skips ahead to her return to her father’s home with only a brief mention that her aunt had died.

Gayle, Raynes best friend is supposed to be central to the story. She has her own set of issues to work through; insecurity, pride, and emptiness. Like Rayne, she lives a sad and undesirable existence. Rayne was never completely open with her; always holding something back. Their relationship had always been clothed in obscurity. I feel like the story would have ended the same whether Gayle had a place in the book or not. She didn’t add to the story.

Edith her stepmother didn’t add any significance to the story either. The reader isn’t given any insight to their relationship and it was never made clear what home life was like when William, Rayne and Edith all lived together. She had suspicions about what was happening and sent Rayne to her aunt to protect her but the hows and why are completely left out.

Pauline is Rayne’s psychotherapist. She spends a large portion of the book at a rehabilitation center after Paul (Rayne’s husband) and Desiree (Rayne’s daughter) die in a car accident. Everyone believes Rayne has suffered a mental breakdown after the tragic loss of her family, but the accident was just a catalyst for what had already been brewing under the surface. Pauling can relate and in turn accurately diagnose Rayne because she too have been sexually abused by her uncle. Rayne and Pauline were the only 2 character that contributed to the central story line.  

I feel the author could have spent more time on character development. Robert, a groundskeeper at the facility, who in the end, didn’t even matter got a back story worth reading about but Edith a woman important to the main character got diddly.

At the end, I felt all the build up was anticlimactic. Rayne confronted her father and “rescued” Edith who we never really know if she was physically abused by William but seemingly clear she she was emotionally stunted by having married a volatile man. She constantly walked on eggshells.