“When Love Isn’t Enough” by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

When Love Isn’t Enough by Kath­leen Gilles Sei­del (1984) is a cat­e­gory romance apart of the Har­le­quin Amer­i­can Romance line, #80, paper­back pub­lished by Har­le­quin, 254 pgs. Theme is “mar­riage in trouble.”

Who doesn’t love see­ing two peo­ple find their way back to each other again? Explor­ing and reex­am­in­ing the path or conflict(s) that led them to where they are now? Hope­fully, mak­ing changes for the bet­ter and reaf­firm­ing their love for one another? That’s a good romance to me.

Seidel’s 1984 cat­e­gory is one of the best “mar­riage in trou­ble” sto­ries I’ve read in awhile. Also, Sei­del is a solid writer to begin with as she con­sis­tently uses real life con­flicts and issues that are inher­ently divi­sive or chal­leng­ing. Sim­ply put: Sei­del delivers.

The premise, which I’ll flesh out in a bit for When Love Isn’t Enough, is about a mar­ried cou­ple who are worka­holics. The author does a real good job on show­ing us what an empty mar­riage looks like and sounds like. Dis­ap­point­ment and anger. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and set­backs. Sounds like trou­ble to me, too.

Janet and Wiley Hunt have been mar­ried for 8 years. Both are young and ded­i­cated to their careers. Wiley D. Hunt is an asso­ciate cor­po­rate attor­ney for a major law firm and Janet is a senior writer for an adver­tis­ing agency. When they first mar­ried, Janet wanted to start a fam­ily right away but Wiley made her wait because he’s too busy try­ing to make part­ner at Hasting’s & Clark, a law firm that rep­re­sents large com­pa­nies before the fed­eral government.

Nat­u­rally, Janet started spend­ing more of her time & energy towards work and she’s regarded as a pro at what she does, too. After enough time passes, she’s grown closer to her work col­leagues than to her hus­band, who she rarely sees any­more due to his long hours at work and con­stant trav­el­ing. She’s used to it. After all, the life they have now wasn’t what she wanted. She doesn’t like where she lives (in a high rise– con­do­minium) or that her hus­band chooses to spend more time at work than with her.

When the story opens, Wiley and two of his asso­ciates have just wrapped up a major case for U.S. Oil. For the past ten months they’ve been trav­el­ing back and forth from Wash­ing­ton to Hous­ton to defend their client against the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment, who claims that U.S. Oil had been “fix­ing bids on oil leases on fed­eral land.” Cel­e­bra­tions are cut short when Wiley’s friends return home to find that their wives have left them. Wiley comes back to an empty house, too but, lucky for him, he still has a wife.

See­ing that his two friends mar­riages has fallen apart, Wiley starts wor­ry­ing about his own. Since he’s been away so much this past year, he feels that Janet should want to spend more time with him but Janet isn’t hav­ing any of that. She feels that why should she play the “good wife” when he’s been the bad hus­band? Wiley is irri­tated and Janet is defen­sive. To top it all off, they can’t even com­mu­ni­cate with each other.

Both real­ize that their mar­riage is in seri­ous trou­ble and that despite the “I love you’s” it’s not enough to sus­tain a mar­riage. Over the years, they’ve real­ized that the sub­stance of their mar­riage has eroded away. How do you fix that? Janet decides that if Wiley makes the first step then she’ll take the next five or six.

The author does back track a bit to give read­ers some back­ground that has shaped her char­ac­ters. Start­ing with Wiley, he grew up in a fam­ily of lawyers and politi­cians and he’s an only child of a con­ser­v­a­tive, tra­di­tional fam­ily. Wiley’s ambi­tion for his career was born out of his need for his father’s approval and Janet, well, she grew up with­out the money but with plenty of love.

Janet’s a Mid­west­ern girl and Wiley’s a pin-striped suit wear­ing lawyer. Wiley’s fam­ily rarely if ever showed any emo­tion towards each other whereas Janet’s fam­ily is more touchy-feely and loud. Wiley’s father, who is known only in lawyer cir­cles, fol­lows the “blue-chip, law-firm style” of patience and calm and he taught that to his son as well. They don’t react much to any­thing with­out patience and con­trol. The men always seem to avoid open dis­plays of affec­tion and choose to ignore any­thing that’s painful.

Wiley’s made some deci­sions that has adversely affected his father’s plans for him. For starters, when Wiley’s mother gets sick, he decides to go to George­town Law instead of Yale, to be closer to her, against his father’s advice. Wiley meets Janet shortly after that, in a group home they share with five other peo­ple. She’s work­ing for a con­gress­man from her home state of Mis­souri when they first meet. Wiley mar­ries Janet, despite think­ing that his father might have dis­ap­proved of that, too.

At work, Wiley’s been given the “sig­nal” that he’s going to made part­ner when he’s assigned the Fal­Con case. Not all asso­ciates are assigned “Fal­Con cases.” Fal­Con is a major chem­i­cal com­pany being sued for ruin­ing farm­land. Wiley is assigned the Fal­Con case. As he digs deeper into the case, he real­izes that Fal­Con sub­sidiary may have been bar­rel dumping.

Wiley mulls over rep­re­sent­ing them when he learns that they won’t do any clean up even after the barel dump­ing has stopped. Morally con­flicted, he decides that it’s uneth­i­cal for him to con­tinue to work for Hast­ings & Clark if he decides to report them to the EPA. Before he decides any­thing, how­ever, he reaches out to his wife first, to help him out in his hour of need.

Then the story really gets down to busi­ness. Wiley does take that first step and Janet even­tu­ally fol­lows. The best parts of the story are when you see things begin to grad­u­ally change for them both. They begin to actu­ally talk and even­tu­ally, their evenings together become a pri­or­ity. Change was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion. Of course, some­thing comes up later to test all of this and yes, I was hold­ing my breath.

I felt for Wiley, know­ing that his self-identity was being ripped apart. I liked Janet a lot because she’s not a quit­ter and along with her hus­band, both thought their mar­riage was worth sav­ing. Janet always did more than her fair share. It’s ingrained in her. I can under­stand where she’s com­ing from, too. In a rela­tion­ship it’s never 50/50 all the time is it? Some­one has to tip the bal­ance occa­sion­ally and usu­ally that was Janet and some­times it was Wiley.

When Love Isn’t Enough, was a joy to read and it is OOP but it shouldn’t be too hard to find. The story was emo­tion­ally sat­is­fy­ing (to me). It’s rare to read about mar­ried love that rings with some truth to it. Con­flicts in a Sei­del novel are never con­trived or con­vo­luted. It’s as clear cut as it gets. Of course the bed­room door was firmly closed but sex is spo­ken about in a mat­ter fact way with a hint of pas­sion or need behind it.

There are other brief themes in here con­cern­ing women who choose career over fam­ily, birth con­trol and abor­tion (but it’s not what you think). Over­all, good read, good story! It’s made me rip through my tbr stacks for other cat­e­gory books from Sei­del. So, that’s my take on When Love Isn’t Enough. It’s a B+. Side Note: Sei­del doesn’t always leave the bed­room door closed so firmly. But then sex is not used as a place holder in her books but more for show­ing the expres­sion of love between two peo­ple at that right moment in the story. IOW, she uti­lizes her love scenes dis­crim­i­nately. Love her for that.

Teaser from front of book:

Wiley was lean­ing against the low head­board of their plat­form bed. He was wear­ing a rugby shirt with stripes of green and tan; the sleeves were pushed up over his forearms.

“Have I seen this shirt before?” Janet asked.

He looked up, sur­prised. “Mabye not. I think I picked it up in Houston.”

He started to read again. She reached over and slipped her hand in the open placket of his shirt, mov­ing her fin­ger­tips against him, feel­ing the warmth of his skin.

“You’re mak­ing it hard for me to con­cen­trate,” he pointed out with­out tak­ing his eyes off the book.

“I’m sorry,” she apol­o­gized, and showed her regret by pulling his shirt out of his jeans.

“Mrs. Hunt! I’m read­ing.” Wiley closed the book and started try­ing to beat her off with it.

He failed utterly.

For Fur­ther Reading

• Ain’t Mis­be­hav­ing, Jeanne Grant
• Man­hunt­ing, Jen­nifer Crusie
• REVIEW: Between The CEO’s Sheets (Sil­hou­ette Desire) by Char­lene Sands
• The Wrong Man For Her, Kathryn Shay [Guest Review]
• Mis­sion Flats, William Lan­day {Guest Review}
• Manga Mon­day: ES (Eter­nal Sab­bath), Fuyumi Soryo
• Ōoku: The Inner Cham­bers, Fumi Yoshinaga
• Christa Faust, “Money Shot”
• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Rain­wa­ter by San­dra Brown

Tagged as: B+ Reviews, category romance, Kathleen Gilles Seidel, Marriage in Trouble, Romance