The Paradise Problem

The Paradise problem starts very weirdly, within the first two pages, Resident Evil Village specifically is name dropped, and “lol” is used as a full word in a sentence. It immediately set off some alarm bells in my head that this was not going to be high level writing, and that’s fine by me for a romcom but it also felt weirdly immature and a bit too grounded in reality. Add to that quite a few other brand names and references thrown in (including a side comment of “if you know, you know”…I didn’t know) and I really started to get the same feeling of brand overload that I got with “It’s only Sainsbury’s but it’s Taste the Difference”. Especially so with many references also feeling random like “the first time I visited House Lannister” or specifically highlighting the /r/emu subreddit and maybe worst of all the specific call out of “Twitter, I refuse to call it X”. The pop culture references simply weren’t necessary, if instead of Resident Evil Village the author simply said “the latest zombie video game” or even just Resident Evil without specifying the exact title it would feel a lot more timeless but instead the story starts firmly grounded in the United States of America near the 101 and 80 (if you know, you know) in the year 2021, the year Resident Evil Village released and that it is that specific is a bit weird given how it has virtually no importance to the story.

Nevertheless the book starts off funny, it’s got some good banter between our two love interests Anna and Liam and it pretty much peaks at a perfect depiction of a conversation between a very serious Liam and a very high Anna. It unfortunately however peaks very early, the book is at its funniest in the first 25% and then is essentially never funny again. The story it tells is a lot more serious than a lot of romcoms dare to be which kind of justifies this but it also distinctly feels like there is a stylistic change between the first fourth and the rest of the book as both the humour and the pop culture/real world references simply disappear as the book goes on.

As serious as the story is though, it is also a bit cliché, at least its premise is on Anna’s side. Her dad has cancer and she is in the USA so her medical bills are very expensive because they have no national health insurance (something the book will plainly point out as well in case this dead horse hasn’t been beaten enough) and that’s a bit boring at this point. On Liam’s side however the story is a lot more interesting, his family owns a multi billion dollar grocery store empire and whilst he is mostly estranged from them, he had the fake a wedding with Anna for the past 5 years to qualify for a large inheritance, something Anna didn’t know about until he showed up on her front door asking to go to his sister’s wedding with him to finally sell the lie and collect his money. There is a very interesting set up here of someone who can barely make rent having to enter and pretend to belong in the financial elite of this world and the authors hold no punches against the elite through Anna’s constant commentary on how disgustingly grotesque their lifestyle is.

Holding some punches though might have been necessary though because what we end up with is a barely veiled critique of capitalism which is all fine and good except the ending has capitalism win. The “villain” in the form of Liam’s dad who exemplifies everything wrong with the bourgeoisie elite is an interesting constant to have throughout the story but his eventual fall means nothing if capitalism ends up engulfing Anna and Liam which it does. Anna is deeply rooted in the camp of “nobody needs to be a billionaire” and “people make do with far less” which is fair but it is also poorly argued making comparisons that resemble the flawed argument of “you shouldn’t feel bad about this because there are children in Africa who have it worse” but as poorly worded as it was if she stood by that point it would have been fine. Unfortunately, her happy ending partially hinges on Liam having the funds available to kickstart her art career by anonymously buying her paintings to put her on people’s radars because the art scene just works like that and whilst Anna has a big tantrum about that she eventually happily settles into the opportunities this gave her, add to that she happily buys not one but two houses as soon as the inheritance money comes through and it really just brings back to memory the ever valid quote of “capital subsumes all critiques of itself”. There is a vague cop out around the repeated argument of “intent matters” to justify the way Anna got into the art scene but the final result is the same: the system is broken and the only way to win is to have money to begin with.

Nevertheless aside from the resolution being a bit wishy-washy the exploration of the world of the uber-rich remains interesting with plenty of characters each handling this state of being differently (from the condescending mother, to the broken pretentious brother, to the child struggling with it all). The problem lies in how all these interact however, particularly Blaire and Alex. Alex is one of Liam’s brother and he is one of the most unbearable characters, exhibiting a pretentious corporate behaviour (woe is me always so busy, let me check my calendar, I sleep 4 hours a night, business is my life blood yada yada yada), he is vindictive, treacherous and absolutely never pleasant to be around. He is of course a trauma victim from his father’s emotional abuse but whilst Liam and Jake have flawed personalities, Alex is simply abject. All that being said, he is married with Blaire who at first seems like a much more laid back and funny personality but simultaneously she is shown as being extremely materialistic and it is fairly clearly said that she is only with Alex for his money which makes her a lot more despicable than the authors probably intended given that her and Alex are part of Anna and Liam’s happy ending, yet they have done little to nothing to redeem themselves. It ultimately really felt like the authors wanted their cake and eat it too, they wanted this deep critique of capitalism and the bourgeoisie and it is core to both Anna and Liam’s personalities but they also needed that happy ending so end up tossing it all out the window as soon as Liam’s father is out of the picture and magically capitalism isn’t so bad anymore. It’s disappointing but it’s a romcom so I can’t have too high expectations here.

What I can have high expectations for however is the romance and The Paradise Problem manages to have a half decent one and in this case half is really the word. Liam’s attraction for Anna makes sense; she’s empathetic, shown to be good with children through her interactions with Reagan, she’s a passionate artist, she’s pretty (which always helps) and she is grounded in the real world unlike his rich family. That last point is a bit awkward, Liam is explicitly said to be a trauma victim and his attachment to Anna whilst at the wedding surrounded by the people he hates the most could be seen as a trauma response rather than genuine infatuation, but it is a romcom, they always cheat with perfect love arising quickly and unrealistically but that’s part of the fairy tale they sell so it’s fine. Anna on the other hand has very few reasons to love Liam, he’s hot and that’s kinda it, he is nice enough but outside of his problems with his family he has little personality that would justify Anna’s attraction for him and that’s always disappointing. Purely physical romances just aren’t that interesting to me and there’s only so many times I can read about his perfect chest, or chiselled jaw or his…”goddamn” and how “yummy” he is because for some reason half of the time Anna describes him she has to resort to childish euphemisms for his intimate parts which really make her look a lot less mature and intelligent than she otherwise is…but then again she believes in astrology and I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be a flaw here. It is all not helped than in the chapters depicting Liam’s perspective, he makes some comments that are of dubious taste like when he tracks what she does with a credit card or when he refers to her as “legally mine” (strictly speaking that might be a way of describing being married but the idea of ownership isn’t hot, it’s creepy). Sex is also generally the main way of expressing love these characters have, the author goes as far as describing a long list of very fun activities to close out on “most importantly though we had sex in every possible way” which is the least interesting and unique element of that list.

Overall this might all sounds as overly negative, but I did enjoy my time with The Paradise Problem, it’s a bit funny, it’s a bit silly, it manages to tell a serious story even if it cops out of it a bit at the end and it even manages the traditional 75% “oh my god are they gonna break up” argument that every romance needs admirably without feeling forced or stretched out (a negative point I held against the author’s previous book The Unhoneymooners) and even if the romance wears a bit thin on Anna’s side, her and Liam still make a cute and hot couple who have a good time together and I’m honestly not asking for much more out of a romcom and it leaves me happy and satisfied.