Review: Ramona’s Man by D.L. Yoder

Flipping the script on the classic tale of Pygmalion, author D.L. Yoder presents a quirky and unpredictable novel with Ramona’s Man. Tackling issues of parental control, societal expectations, and the half-blind nature of love, this book is an intriguing dive into family psychology and has plenty of squirm-worthy moments to which younger readers will relate.

There is always some pressure when you bring a person home to meet your family for the first time – this pressure is much greater when that person is a homeless man named Harley you picked up less than an hour earlier as a stand-in boyfriend. The titular character, in an effort to embarrass her controlling father at an important holiday party, recruits a down-and-out urchin to sit at her father’s table, hoping to sow chaos on that special evening. This My Fair Lady-esque setup seems like the perfect opportunity for her to get even, despite having to use an innocent stranger as a hapless tool.

However, as expected, there is more to Harley than meets the eye, which comes as a surprise not only to Ramona, but to the entire family she had hoped to shock and shame. Although an old heartbreak is freshly opened mere minutes before arriving at home for the party, Ramona is determined to follow through with her plan, even as she begins to see Harley in a new light. After he saves her father’s life, the plot begins to spin wildly, leaving room for genuine affection between the two to grow. Navigating the landscape of a truly bizarre family, Ramona and her man begin to seek a way forward, with or without anyone else’s approval, while Harley may actually be in danger as his past catches up to him.

The idea behind this story is a classic one – a young woman brings home the “wrong” guy to ruffle the feathers at home, only to discover that she may have feelings for her pet project. In a way the premise is comfortably familiar, and in many places it works, as you’re compelled to root for both Romona and Harley, who are both very well-drawn. However, the plot stumbles a number of times, often moving too slowly, or going on tangents that never fully develop with passages of expositional writing that don’t entirely serve the story.

The relationship between the characters is also difficult to believe. Ramona’s family are one-dimensional – foils, rather than fully fleshed-out characters. This is in part because of the dialogue, which is fairly stilted and unnatural, and the narration tells the reader how people are feeling without letting them exhibit their emotions on their own. For a novel like this one, which is built on family dynamics and relationships, it makes these issues all the more glaring. A thorough editing sweep to breathe authenticity into the dialogue and sharpen the details of secondary characters would make this book more successful.

Fortunately, many of the tangents Yoder takes are engrossing, and give the book a boost of suspense, as Yoder takes the novel into genres beyond romance and family dramedy. Even with its weaker moments, Ramona’s Man has a fun classic premise that drives the novel along, and it brings up a number of compelling issues about family and intolerance, for a timely work of contemporary fiction.