Blue Valentine is a 2019 novel by Thomas Cummings.
After a night of bar-hopping, Nicki Valentine attends a select after-hours party where she is confronted by a threatening figure from her past. Learning old adversaries have taken a sudden new interest in her, she lays low and assesses her troubled past to unravel what they could want with her after so many years. Ultimately, she must enlist the help of her half-brother, Quinn Halliday, to stay ahead of the powerful forces that run her small town.
Not to be confused with the 2010 film Blue Valentine.
Blue Valentine contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Bette Valentine, Nicki’s mother, insults, degrades, and manhandles her all her life, and, on at least one, occasion savagely beats her.
- Adults Are Useless:
- Owen Valentine, Nicki’s father, is an alcoholic who, while often kind and loving, never offers a helping hand to Nicki.
- Unexpectedly averted once with Nicki's mother when she takes care of Nicki after Nicki is gang-raped at fourteen, though she re-affirms this trope by declining to report the assault to the police, and then quickly regresses to her state of animosity toward her daughter quickly afterward.
- Affectionate Nickname:
- Quinn calls Nicki "Sparks," and Nicki, in turn, calls Quinn "Sparky."
- Nicki’s father calls her "Pixie."
- Alcoholic Parent: Nicki’s father after a back injury put him out of work.Nicki: Good thing he fucked up his back when he did; it let him dedicate himself full-time to drinking.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Just about all of Nicki’s peers throughout high school begin to taunt and insult her after rumors spread about her.
- Bathroom Break-Out: Once trapped inside Jonathan Garver’s house, Nicki initially uses the toilet ploy merely as a ruse to put a door between herself and her captors; however, she decides she can’t fight her way out and makes a drop from a bathroom’s second-story window to escape.
- Betrayal by Inaction:
- Nicki’s father never intervenes on her behalf in the face of her mother’s abuse. Also, while it is never clear when he finds out about Nicki’s rape, he remains silent about it after he does.
- Despite their genuine friendship at the time, Jonathan stood by while Bobby James and Ted Wells took turns raping Nicki when she was fourteen.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Bobby James Sounder, Jonathan Garver, and Ted Wells.
- Big Brother Bully: Two of them: Lewis and Terry Valentine. Doubtlessly taking a cue from their mother, the brothers, at best, dismiss their little sister’s efforts to be a part of the family and, at worst, tease and taunt her.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nicki and Quinn, together at last, leave their toxic hometown behind, but also leave everything they’ve ever know to head toward an uncertain future and a potentially dangerous world that may seek to condemn or destroy the couple. Also, [[while the antagonists come off scathed, none are defeated. Nicki steals Bobby James’ beloved Chevy Nova, but whether or not she costs him the election is up in the air. And her final confrontation with Jonathan is therapeutic for her, but Jonathan makes no apologies for what he’s done to her.]]
- Blackmail: Nicki’s told that Bobby James is concerned about this possibility, which might affect his run for the mayor’s seat.
- Broken Bird: Nicki has internalized years of familial neglect and abuse and social rejection.
- Chase Scene: Averted. Nicki flees down neighborhood streets after escaping Ellis Rey’s house, but her potential pursuers have more pressing issues at hand.
- Chandler's Law: Jonathan Garver emerges from a dark hallway, breaking the stalemate between Nicki and [[spoiler:Todd and Ellis] when the two reveal their hand at the after-hours party.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Nicki deploys these at will.
- Combat Pragmatist: Finding herself outnumbered and facing-off against men, Nicki has no scruples against using any and every tactic at her disposal in a fight, especially her straight razor.
- Coming of Age Story: Something of a late bloomer example. While Nicki’s past home life, among other things, goaded her to mature too fast in many ways, it takes the events of the book, when she’s in her early twenties, to reject society’s condemnation of her and to recognize and begin to break free of her internalized self-hatred.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Nicki and Quinn are related through their father.
- Convicted by Public Opinion: In high school, rumors spread about Nicki’s alleged "gangbang" with three adult men the previous summer. No one bothers to corroborate the story.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Nicki Valentine, in spades.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Once safe in Quinn’s car, Nicki is horrified with herself when she contemplates how she took time to mutilate Ellis Rey despite having successfully secured an escape from his house.
- Dysfunctional Family
- Epunymous Title: The title pairs Nicki’s last name, often associated with love and the color red, with blue, a color which stands for various things such as sadness and melancholy, profane language, loyalty, and a step toward the unknown. Blue also refers to laws against socially prohibited sexuality.
- Evil Matriarch: Bette Valentine. Her cruelty toward her daughter goes unchecked by her husband and serves as injunction and justification for Lewis and Terry’s behavior toward their sister.
- Face–Heel Turn: Jonathan, whom Nicki considers a true friend, takes advantage of her when she's at her most vulnerable.
- Forbidden Love: Nicki Valentine and Quinn Halliday, half-siblings on their father’s side, first find companionship in each other’s company throughout life, but finally find love in each other’s arms by story’s end.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: Owen Valentine demonstrates no interest in reuniting with or even recognizing the existence of his son, Quinn.
- Hair of the Dog: Nicki prepares herself Amarillo Poppers as a hang-over remedy one morning and cracks open a beer on another.
- Heel–Face Turn: Witnessing Nicki's final confrontation with Jonathan, Todd Keeling has a crisis of conscience and offers his assistance in a minor campaign of vengeance against Bobby James; this even after being roughed up, threatened, and abducted by Nicki and Quinn.
- Hope Spot: Nicki's date with Andy Fosse.
- Hired Guns: Todd Keeling and Ellis Rey.
- I Own This Town: Bobby James’ election bid for mayor will allow him to control and benefit from the development of lakefront property.
- Irrational Hatred: Nicki’s mother is cruel to her for reasons far outside Nicki’s control.
- I Regret Nothing: Jonathan Garver basically says this in the final confrontation after Nicki verbally pummels him within an inch of his life.
- It's All About Me: The way of the world, as far as Bobby James Sounder is concerned.
- Jerkass:
- Ellis Rey. While Ellis is far worse than he seems, even at first blush he’s so intolerable he gets on the nerves of Jonathan, and even Todd Keeling, who recruited him to help find Nicki.
- Andy Fosse, although he really doesn’t mean to be, when he cheapens his and Nicki’s date by turning into an excuse to get her into bed.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: In making her escape from Ellis' house, Nicki gets the best of Ellis and then decides to pay some evil unto evil.
- Long-Lost Relative: Quinn Halliday, to an extent. Nicki only finds out about her half-brother when she’s nine years old.
- Lured into a Trap: Twice. Once when Nicki is lured to Jonathan Garver's house by Todd and Ellis, and again when Ellis promises her an end to Bobby James' schemes.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Nicki and Andy Fosse, a delivery driver, regularly shtup every Monday behind pallets of flour in the supply room of the bakery where she works.
- Misplaced Retribution: The abuse Bette directs at her daughter is a frustrated expression of her feeling of hurt and betrayal.Nicki: Now that I'm older, I know the reason my mom hates me. It's because she can't hate my dad. She loves him. She adores him, and he hurt her. He hurt her so bad she could never forgive him, but she could never hate him, either. She had to hate someone for his betrayal. And here I was, born the same day Quinn was born. I guess that made me her voodoo doll, her way to hate him without having to stop loving him.
- Not Like Other Girls: Nicki Valentine swears, fights, drinks, and plays poker. She’s mechanically inclined and works to repair her parents’ dishwasher. As a child, she fearlessly handles a snake and remains unperturbed when a spider crawls on her. She dresses in jeans and t-shirts, tennis shoes or boots, and wears a leather jacket. In fact, when she goes on her date with Andy Fosse, she has to borrow a nice dress from her co-worker, Sheila, and re-acquaint herself with walking in heels.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Nicki slices off the tip of Ellis Rey’s nose with her straight razor before escaping the trap he’s set for her.
- Rape as Drama
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Nicki delivers Jonathan a few hard truths in the novel’s final confrontation.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: During Bobby James’ drunken joyride through town, fourteen-year-old Nicki worries that they’ll be arrested, but Jonathan assures her that Bobby is above the law.Jonathan: His uncle's the Chief of Police. He's got, like, three cousins on the force [...] As long as he doesn't crash or kill anyone, we'll be fine.
- Sex for Solace: While Nicki is blessed with a naturally healthy libido, she uses sex to cheer herself up and as a brief escape from a crappy life.
- Slut-Shaming:
- Nicki’s mother calls her "the town bicycle. "
- When Nicki encounters former high school peers (all women) in an up-scale tavern and, later, at a swanky dance club, they taunt her with an old chant.
- True Companions: Nicki Valentine and Quinn Halliday. After meeting in fourth grade, the pair’s friendship, despite conflicts, develops into a long-lived a relationship that is protective, nonjudgmental, empathic, and mutually encouraging.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The novel was published in 2018 but the events take place in 2009.
- The Un-Favourite: Doubtlessly, Nicki is her mother’s least favorite child.
- Underestimating Badassery: Ellis and his goons.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Bobby James’ mayoral campaign posters are all over town.
