There is a big smile on my face as I write this review. Cecy Robson’s Save Me is the 5th book in the O’Brien’s series and her best. I re-read the first 4 to familiarize me with this loud, obnoxious and lovable family. But… Seamus, I have to say, is my favorite of the family.
Seamus-who is obviously a good looking guy as he never seems to forget to point that out-is a player. A player with tendencies to find women with parole officers. Allie is your good girl, nursing a broken heart after finding out her old boyfriend is engaged to her sister, whom he cheated on her with. Oh, and just happens to be a super model. Thrown together by chance, or Seamus’s big mouth, they are now each others “dates” for family weddings. What ensues is hilarious banter and eye opening realizations for each of them as they deal with past memories and events that shaped who they have become. Both realizing that they have the power to change and become what they want and who.
“Me little Finnie is right,” Ma says from the door, her Irish accent as thick as the day Grammie popped her out on a potato field.
“He’s the baby and already getting married. Promising me grandbabies like a good boy.”
He points at her and making a clicking sound. “You know I’ve got you, Ma.”
That did it. The moment Ma leaves, we’re throwing down.
Ma shakes her head like people do when all is lost and there’s nothing that can be done. “Look at you, Seamus. All strapping male with the strength and charm of an Irish prince.” She walks in, her steps slow and steady. It’s the same way she walked in when we were kids and we knew we were fucked.
“I just have one question,” she says, her voice light as it often is before she strikes. “Are you trying to kill your mother?”
Jesus. Here we go.
She holds her hand. “Oh, me handsome son. It’s a simple question really. Do you want me to die?”
“You want Ma to die?” Wren yells from the other room. She shuffles in with enough white fabric trailing behind her to sail across the Atlantic. Brenda’s other daughters, the not so slutty ones, charge after Wren, lifting the eighty feet of material high in the air.
Wren points an irate finger at me. “If you give Ma the big one, you’re going to really piss me off. You and me both know we never thought this shit was going to happen,” she adds, motioning to layers of dress.
Brenda’s daughters, Finnie, and Ma nod their heads in unison. My sister is beautiful. I can say that because it’s true, even though right now she looks like a Barbie doll shoved into a giant cupcake. Like me she has black hair, blue eyes, and light skin. If you cut us, we’d bleed Leprechauns that would dance a jig the moment their little feet hit the floor. We’re that Irish.
Wren’s problem is she has a mouth most sailors would run screaming from, and an attitude that’s even less polite. Let’s face it, none of us ever thought Wren would meet a man strong enough to tame her.
I’m happy for her and everything, but right now it sucks balls.
Wren was my safety-net because of her mouth. Finnie was too, because he was the youngest and always in trouble. As far as I was concerned, I had years, no, decades before I had to worry about settling down. But life can be a real bitch and here she is waving two giant middle fingers at me now that Finn and Wren are getting hitched.
“So what if I’m not married? So what if I haven’t popped out a few kids?” I hold out my arms. “Plenty of women have had the absolute pleasure of sampling the merchandise—”
I wince when Ma slaps me upside the head. She might be five feet nothing, but she has the agility of a cobra, and possibly the ability to fly. I’m almost 6’2. How the hell can she can reach me?
“And what happened to all these ‘ladies’ who sampled the merchandise?” Ma demands.
“I think the one is back in prison,” Finnie offers. He frowns, giving it a lot of thought. “Larceny and Fraud. Right, Seamus?”
“It’s where most of the skanks he dated belong,” Wren agrees. “Remember Kenna O’Sullivan?” We all collectively cross ourselves, including Miss Brenda’s daughters. “They never did find the body.”
“Yeah. She was a nutcase.” My voice trails. I’m not doing myself any favors. Thank God Finn has my back.
“Hey, Shoshana Greenstone was nice. Oh, and her husband was pretty damn understanding when he found out you were banging her.”
“I didn’t know she was married!” I yell for the hundredth time. “I just, you know, thought she worked odd hours.”
Wren grins. “No, she just had trouble finding a babysitter for her kids.”
“What about the others?” Ma asks. “The girls have liked you since you were a wee boy.”
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully, my annoyance making my voice sound gruff. “No one’s really ever done it for me.” I look at them. “You want them to do it for me, don’t ya?”
Wren places her hands on her hips. She may look like a lady, all soft and dainty in all that lace, but she’ll never exactly think or talk like one. “You mean besides in the backseat of your truck?” She nods. “Yeah, that would be nice.”
Ma leans in. I know what she’s going to say, even before she says it. “I was younger than you when I pushed out your baby brother onto the cold kitchen floor.”
Finn holds out his hand, looking a little green. “Ma, please don’t. Miss Brenda won’t like it if I puke on her stuff before I pay for it.”
“Then you better pay for it,” Wren says, knowing once more it’s time to tell the divine tale of Finn’s birth.
Shoot me.
The birth of a child is supposed to be a good thing, a beautiful thing, filled with miracles, stuffed animals, and balloons. Maybe for most families it is, under the right conditions. But my family doesn’t tend to do things the right way. I suppose it’s one of the many things that makes us “us.” Our hearts are usually in the right place. But the right way for birthing babies means a hospital and under sanitary conditions—not in a kitchen barely big enough for a refrigerator and stove.
I remember that day clearly. Ma was making shepherd’s pie, until she wasn’t. Her water broke like an extra-large water balloon thrown on the floor by a very pissed off toddler. She started screaming, then Angus started screaming, and Curran almost fainted. Five contractions later, Finnie was coming out and there wasn’t anything we could do to stop him.
Bastard. I missed my baseball game because of him.
ABOUT CECY ROBSON
Cecy Robson is an author of contemporary and new adult romance, young adult adventure, and award-winning urban fantasy. A double-nominated RITA® Finalist, Winner of the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, and published author of more than twenty titles, you can typically find Cecy on her laptop or stumbling blindly in search of caffeine.
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