You’re the One that I Want is the sixth book in Susan May Warren’s Christiansen family series set in Deep Haven. Minnesota.
Though each book involves the whole family, each focuses primarily focuses on one of the adult children. This time it’s Owen’s turn, the fifth child and youngest brother.
Owen had figured heavily in the first two books as well, especially the second. He had played hockey since his earliest childhood and excelled through the ranks until he landed a spot on the MN pro team. The fame, acclaim, and money all went to his head, however. He became something of an entitled jerk until a tragic accident took the sight in one eye, derailing his career.
Exploding with anger and grief, Owen roamed about, working different jobs, leaving a trail of one-night stands behind him.
What he doesn’t know is that one of those encounters resulted in a pregnancy. The girl in question later met and fell in love with Owen’s brother, Casper.
If that sounds kind of soap-opera-ish, yes, even one character admitted as much. However, people do get themselves entangled in such messes, though maybe not within their own family.
As this book opens, Owen’s anger has been spent. He’s cleaned up his act, more or less, no longer involved in reckless behavior. He’s on a crab-fishing boat in the Bering Sea with a reputation for kindness and hard work. He just takes life a day at a time, too ashamed to go home.
Scotty is the captain’s daughter and first mate. Her mother had died in childbirth. Her father makes her call him Red rather than Dad and suppresses emotion. Scotty has been on the boat most of her life. She’s had to be tough to command the men in her father’s stead and ward off any unwanted attention.
When Scotty is swept overboard in a storm, Owen jumps in to save her. They spend a night in a life raft until they’re rescued, nursing injuries and telling each other their lives.
Casper and Raina had worked out their issues in the fourth book. Casper wants to marry Raina and raise her daughter as his own. But he feels the right thing to do would be to track down Owen, tell him the situation, and bring him home. He wants to get Owen’s blessing and ask him to sign over his rights to his daughter.
Meanwhile, Casper is unaware that he’s wanted for questioning in the murder of Raina’s old boyfriend, Monty. He and Casper had an altercation the night Monty was killed, and Casper seems to be the last one who saw him alive.
When Owen and Casper try to fly home, Casper is taken into custody. Scotty, who has taken a job in the police force in Alaska since her dad is selling their boat, agrees to accompany them back to Deep Haven in an official capacity. Owen is thrilled to have more time with her.
There, Scotty encounters the love and loyalty of a family like she has never known. Though she’s drawn to them, she’s also not sure she would ever fit in. She’s had a very different upbringing and has no use for faith—even though she did break down and pray through Owen’s injuries.
If that sounds like a lot of drama for one book—it is! I’ve mentioned before that though these books fall into the romance genre, they’re something of a family drama as well.
Reading, or listening to, six of these books in a row, one catches some of the writer’s repeated quirks. Here are a few:
- Several of the female characters are said to catch their lip in their teeth.
- All the males are “sculpted” and “chiseled.”
- Most of the kissing scenes involve saying what one or the other “tastes” like, usually involving whatever they last ate or drank (yuck) and and then adding that they taste of “freedom” or “summer days” or some such.
I roll my eyes at some of that, but that seems to go with this genre—one reason I don’t read it much.
I did like how the series wrapped up, though. Amid some of the silly moments were embedded some deep truths about faith, grace, and forgiveness.
Some of my favorite quotes:
In order to live without the haunting voice of regret, you must learn to forgive yourself, to embrace mercy, to open your eyes and see God in your past and His grace in your future. Your mistakes don’t define you. Your past doesn’t define you. You are not the sum of your bad decisions. You are the decision you make right now.
Fresh-baked cookies do not make a successful marriage . . . It’s knowing each other, valuing the same things, being what the other person can’t be, making each other better people.
So you made some bad choices. Some of God’s best players were His imperfect, broken prodigals. In fact, iffy players are God’s best picks. He specializes in short-tempered, reckless, flawed people to accomplish his plans.
God is constantly using broken, messy people to restore the world and bring glory to Himself, to touch other people.
Once you became a Christiansen, you had to get used to being loved large, to belonging to a family that didn’t have it all figured out, but weathered life by holding on to faith.
Unfortunately, the audiobooks didn’t include author’s notes, and Susan didn’t have any notes or background information on her website for the last two books in the series as she did for the previous ones.
Besides these major books in the series, there’s a prequel novella focused on the relationship of the parents, John and Ingrid, as well as two Christmas novellas. There’s also another collection of novels set in Deep Haven written after the Christiansen family series with other authors. However, though I enjoyed the series, I want to get away from romances for a while. I’ll probably read John and Ingrid’s story just to finish out the series and save the Christmas ones for December.
Stray Thoughts 