salythereader

The Real Father is a good book and not a great one. Beau and Jackson are twins, rich and spoiled. Jackson was the wild-one, always getting into trouble and not seeming to care but Beau he was more smarter, he presented a perfect "saintly" image to everyone but it was only Jackson who knew his true side(spoiled, mean, playboy). Things went south when Jackson tried to stop an enraged Beau and they both ended up in an accident, with Beau dead and Jackson in the hospital.
Molly's father was abusive and home life terrible and a secret so like all little girls she created a hero for herself, someone around whom her life revolved and that person was Beau. She returns to town 10 years later with her daughter in tow with a landscaping project commissioned by Beau's aunt for Beau. Many people including me will find Molly's constant harping about Beau irritating, I mean come on its been 10 years but as I saw deeper it is easy to understand why. Molly though she was an independent business-woman, was in many ways still that teenager who marveled at that fact that Beau was interested in her, he provided her an out from her home life and people do tend to over-blow people's memories once they are dead and in my opinion Molly was too young, in-experienced and infatuated to see through Beau, however I believe if they had more time together, her blinkers would have been removed. As the synopsis mentions, Beau is not the father of her child Jackson is. Molly was younger than Beau and despite Beau's physical demands was determined not to give in(her mother had to marry her father because of being pregnant), but once Beau threatens to leave her she conducts a drunken seduction of who she assumes to be Beau(Jackson, really who is drunk). Jackson had a lot of baggage related to his brother, there was guilt that he survived while he didn't and there was also anger over how foolish people could be and their image about Beau. He had loved and kind of wanted Molly all his life and what he did is something he still feels guilty about. He isn't the aggressor in the relationship.
Yes as I said before, I found Molly's attempts to link everything to Beau tedious but he had been the only guy in her life(and she thought her daughter's father), and she does slowly come to realize on her own that Beau wasn't all that she had made him out to be and she comes to the realization that it was Jackson who made her relationship work(Jackson kept the promises). The book focused more upon Lisa(her daughter), Molly's work than Jackson and Molly. There was also a sub-plot involving Beau's former coach, Annie(Beau's kind of girlfriend) and her son Tommy. The kid interactions were good to see. I liked how Jackson flat out said that he was not Beau and not willing to be second-best and also how it was Molly who actually did the chasing, they talked like mature adults. The thing that kind of bothered me was that Jackson never voiced the fact that he was Lisa's father till the very end.
It was a nice read.
Rating 3.5