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| 0263098346
| 9780263098341
| 0263098346
| 2.74
| 61
| Mar 1981
| Mar 1981
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Cruel hero alert! On a scale of 1 to Robyn Donald, this guy's a solid 8.5--at least! Heroine would have been better off to just keep avoiding him, as
Cruel hero alert! On a scale of 1 to Robyn Donald, this guy's a solid 8.5--at least! Heroine would have been better off to just keep avoiding him, as she does, sequestered in his manor in the "granny apartment," for most of the book. He even comes between her and her puppy! Some nicely angsty moments but if you have little tolerance for vintage dbags, your head may explode upon reading this one. ;-)
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Oct 08, 2021
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| 148808470X
| 9781488084706
| B072QW74B4
| 4.18
| 380
| Aug 22, 2000
| Aug 14, 2017
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From 2000, near the end of her career (and life), we have a quick one (novella) from The Great Betty that's sweet, although completely lacking in any
From 2000, near the end of her career (and life), we have a quick one (novella) from The Great Betty that's sweet, although completely lacking in any real conflict or angst, and hits the usual notes with a light touch. Our Rich Dutch Doctor, Aderick van der Leurs, falls in love at first sight with big, beautiful heroine Eulalia (Lally) Langtree, who is the "canteen lady" (i.e., runs the snack commissary) at the hospital that Aderick is visiting as a consultant. His father was in WWII with Lally's granddad, so Aderick makes a point of visiting the old man, where he leaves Lally intrigued and dismayed when he (briefly) returns to Holland. Her interest is caught, and before you know it, Betty has sacrificed Granddad on the altar of Love's Expediency and Lally is agreeing to an MoC. Aderick resolves to be patient and let Lally come to her own conclusions about any feelings for him. Typical of Neels' later heroes, Aderick is placid and kind, showering our heroine with a new wardrobe, jewelry, and even a rescue-kitty. It doesn't take Lally long to realize that she's in love with Aderick. And Betty doesn't waste any time in wrapping up the HEA either-there are no OW or OM to muddy the waters, and once our heroine realizes her feelings, it just takes an explosion at the hospital to send her running down in an ancient raincoat and sodden slippers to make sure Aderick is safe and confess her love. I swear, I think only Betty could have pulled off such an uneventful tale and made it palatably sweet--the shortened length helps! Probably the most memorable thing about this one is that we get not one but two cross-overs from earlier books: Daisy and Jules from Discovering Daisy (published the previous year) make a few appearances, as do Christina and Duert from Not Once but Twice (1981). Betty must have loved the latter two MCs, because Christina and Duert appear in more of her books than any other cross-over characters. Fun to see these two, 20 years on, still devoted and with a handful of kids--the cross-over was Betty's version of the epilogue, I guess! Nothing particularly memorable about this one, but sweet, warm, and placid, like many of her characters. ...more |
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Sep 27, 2021
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| 1516102681
| 9781516102686
| B01JWDZSL6
| 3.87
| 119
| Apr 01, 1992
| Aug 09, 2016
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Not entirely awful but I cannot get behind a hero who refers to his penis as "Old Son." Just no. No.
Not entirely awful but I cannot get behind a hero who refers to his penis as "Old Son." Just no. No.
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Aug 25, 2021
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| 0373108710
| 9780373108718
| 0373108710
| 2.83
| 135
| Oct 1985
| Apr 1986
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really liked it
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2 "nemotode" stars from Boogenhausen? "If you are an angst junkie and love a cruel hero, you will probably like this one" says St Margarets? Oooh, yes
2 "nemotode" stars from Boogenhausen? "If you are an angst junkie and love a cruel hero, you will probably like this one" says St Margarets? Oooh, yes please! It's been so long since I ran across a new-to-me punishing-hero story! Scratched all my dark "screw the roses, send me the thorns" itches for sure, in that way that only older HPs can. As usual, we spend a lot of time in LA's heroine's head, privy to her deepest thoughts (and bad poetry)--if with far...fewer...ellipses than I usually associate with her (thanks editor!). The hero is far more inscrutable in that classic HP no-hero-POV way, which, for me, makes for even more angst since we don't understand his underlying drivers/traumas until the very end. Much of the hero's worst behavior is in the past as the story begins (and LA does not go into the detail that Diana Palmer would have so deliciously to make explicit his likely neglect, slut shaming, and contempt of our poor misunderstood ex-model), but even as he moves to understanding that he's misjudged our poor heroine, there's plenty of cruel hero to go around still. Not for everyone, but for fans of the darker, older HPs, this one might be worth seeking out.
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Aug 22, 2021
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| 1460310365
| 9781460310366
| B00B0A5X6A
| 4.02
| 383
| Jan 1994
| May 01, 2013
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liked it
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From 1994, Betty airs a few twists in one of her MoC tales. For one, our big, beautiful heroine is from a monied background with loving parents, is no
From 1994, Betty airs a few twists in one of her MoC tales. For one, our big, beautiful heroine is from a monied background with loving parents, is not a nurse (she's a hospital lab administrator), and isn't a doormat for the caddish OM. Our RDD hero falls for the heroine from the start, and Betty gives a few clues as to his mindset here and there, but he definitely likes to needle Beatrice into skipping the polite small talk and getting to the point. The OM is an outright stalker, and the potential OW is no such thing. Overall, it's a cute one from TGB that hits the usual high notes but is just sufficiently different to make it kind of interesting. 3.5* from me, with MCs I enjoyed, a plot moppet who's pretty cute and doesn't get in the way of the romance, some fun secondary characters, a few laugh-out-loud moments, and an HEA ending that's startlingly abrupt but gets the job done. ...more |
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Jul 09, 2021
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| 0373022751
| 9780373022755
| 0373022751
| 4.14
| 540
| 1979
| Aug 1979
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really liked it
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Are you a doormat? Take our Kosmo Kwiz and find out! (view spoiler)[ 1. Your boyfriend invites you for a weekend to Brighton—and we all know what that Are you a doormat? Take our Kosmo Kwiz and find out! (view spoiler)[ 1. Your boyfriend invites you for a weekend to Brighton—and we all know what that means! But you were expecting a marriage proposal. You even bought a new dress for the occasion! Do you: - Agree to go to Brighton—maybe if you weren’t so uptight, he’d want to marry you! - Make up an excuse about why you can’t go to Brighton now, and put off the issue. Why fight? ✓Tell him “It’s no good you looking like that…I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t, and if that’s all you think of me then I can see no point in going on as we are, can you?” 2. Angrily, he walks out on you, leaving you sitting alone in a fancy restaurant without enough cash to pay for the meal! You: - Chase after him and try to placate him and get him to return. - Explain to the waiter that your doctor boyfriend was called away and forgot to pay the bill and make an arrangement to return with the money. They’ll understand! ✓Allow the good-looking stranger who comes to your aid, pretending to know you, to pay the bill and drive you back to the nurses home. 3. Back at the hospital, you see your (ex?)boyfriend “strolling along, a cigarette in his mouth, [looking] as though he hadn’t a care in the world”; and later dating another girl. He’s a jerk to you on the ward, too, and keeps bothering you about the guy he saw you with when you got back to the hospital. Do you: - Tell him to mind his own business—he’s a jerk and you want nothing to do with him ever again! - Hope that he’ll apologize so that you can move past this episode—you love him and will do anything to make things right between you again! ✓Let pride be your guide and hide your heartbreak and wish to make up as best you can, even though you moon over your lost love, Nick the cad, for far too long. He’s a jerk and if he won’t make things right, then you’re done! 4. Your knight in shining armor, Dutch surgeon Sarre van Diederijk,* takes you out on some “face-saving” dates and seems to want to get to know you better while he’s in England consulting on some cases. He seems to pop up whenever Nick besets you, and you like him and are grateful. Still, you’re shocked when he offers a marriage of convenience—a way out, without it looking like you’re running away, he says convincingly. He needs a mistress for his home and a mother for his 11-year-old twins (he is divorced; his wife ran off with a South American millionaire soon after their birth). Someone to grace his table but not, he implies, his bed—he doesn’t want a wife, he’s done with loving, he just wants a companion and helpmate. You: - Refuse out of hand—the idea is crazy and you’re still in love with Nick! ✓Talk it over with Granny and decide to tell him no—it’s not fair to him even if he knows what he’s getting into. ✓Decide to say no but to your shock find yourself saying yes! You’re not sure why but it feels right! 5. You’re married! But you feel out of your depths—the kids seem to hate you, your new in-name-only husband turns out to be filthy rich to a scary degree, you don’t speak the language, and he’s pretty much AWOL because of his work. Do you: - Get annoyed, but brush it aside; after all, “it wasn’t as if he were in love with her. Now if it had been Nick…” - Shop, take over small responsibilities (flower arranging, minor grocery shopping, walking the dogs) from the faithful family retainers, learn Dutch, try to befriend your unfriendly stepkids, decide to learn embroidery. - Accept his apology gracefully when he notes he’s neglected you shamefully because of work and spends more time with you once he clears his backlog. You were a nurse and understand that a doctor’s time is not his own! ✓All of the above. 6. The kids seem to hate you. They’re polite in front of their father, but in private they pull very mean pranks—a pet rat in your bed, water deliberately thrown all over your new silk dress, a secretly cherished gift from Sarre deliberately smashed. Their elderly nanny is hostile toward you and does nothing to reprimand them. You: ✓Try to be patient and do nothing—you won’t tell because you’re not a tattle tale, and you hope with time the kids will come around. - Tell Sarre and let him deal with it. -Warn nanny that you’re not going to put up with her behavior and it’s her job to set a good example for the kids. You’re not going to put up with this! 7. Sarre invites you along on a business trip to Hamburg! You have recently had a Dawning Realization that you are not only in love with Sarre, but that you have been for a while—and what you felt for Nick was just fleeting infatuation in comparison. Hamburg could be a game changer! You: - Plan to seduce your husband—he may not be in love with you but this could be an opportunity to become closer and have a real marriage. - Sulk when you realize you won’t see much of him—he’s busy all day. Why did you bother to come? ✓Hide your disappointment when you realize that he’ll be really busy and only see you in the evenings. Do some solo sightseeing and shopping—you’re an independent young woman and resourceful!--and make the best of things in a friendly way. The evenings are great fun, anyway, and he’s generous and attentive when he’s with you, and it ends up being great even though you haven't made much progress on the romance front! 8. Being in love is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sarre is his usual friendly but aloof self, the kids continue to cold-shoulder you, and there’s not much to do in any real, useful way. To make matters worse, Sarre’s female colleague is constantly hanging all over him. You: - Sob yourself to sleep. - Decide that you “would have to be careful never to let him find out that she loved him and that would mean not minding about Anna because of course if she hadn’t been in love with him Anna wouldn’t have mattered at all. - Pick a fight with him; tell him it’s clear you’re the third wheel, not Anna; flounce off to bed rather than discuss anything; allow him to derail any later attempts at discussion; and accuse him, without any justification, of bringing Anna along on an overnight work trip, which makes him really angry. ✓All of the above. 9. The kids refuse to obey you when you tell them they can't go Nanny’s old house, which is being demolished, and leave you a note telling you that’s where they went. Sarre’s away, so you go to find them. You all get trapped and your stepson, Sarel, tells you they had planned to lock you in alone to scare you—and when you try to say you played pranks as a kid, tells you it wasn’t a prank—they were in deadly earnest. Do you: ✓Accept their overtures of friendship and acceptance now that you’ve proven what a sport you are and that they don’t need to hate you—you have no intention of sending Nanny away or of stealing their father’s attention and affection away from them. There’s no need for any kind of punishment. - Make it clear that you forgive them but that you’re done with their nonsense. - Run for the hills—they’re clearly murderous little monsters and who knows when they’ll turn on you again? 10. Sarre asks if you still think of Nick and you blunder your reply—you say that you did think of him and begin to say that he doesn’t seem real to you anymore, but Sarre cuts you off and says he thinks it might be a good idea if you go spend some time with Granny in England. He even says whether or not you come back is entirely up to you. You: - Refuse flatly to go and finish what you were saying about Nick—he doesn’t mean anything to you anymore. - Meekly decide to leave: you must bore him silly, he clearly wants you gone, and maybe it really is Anna he has decided he’s in love with. If it is Anna, maybe you can tell him you won’t “interfere” (whatever that means!). But really, the only option is to slink away… ✓Don’t do anything until your departure day arrives and then do a shot of brandy, insist on stopping by his clinic, ignore his secretary when she says he absolutely can’t be disturbed, bust in on a board meeting, and tell him that you’re not planning to come back EVER because you’ve been silly enough to fall in love with him. Rejoice when he tells you he’s in love with you too and quotes Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candlelight….” Enjoy your HEA! Congratulations—you may be a little too forgiving and patient and softhearted at times, but you are NOT a doormat, Alethea! You may bide your time and may not raise some dust when maybe you should, but overall your responses show that you have pride and the resolve to walk away when push comes to shove. Your awesome, dryly amused Granny would be proud of you. (hide spoiler)] A good MoC tale from Betty with likable MCs, wonderfully horrible children, understandable misunderstandings, and a believable happy ending. From 1979, a good one from TGB that I enjoyed even more on a second read (even if it didn't have a Nanny vs. Granny smackdown, which would have made it 10 stars). *Fun fact: The hero in An Apple from Eve is Tane van Diederijk. I wonder if Tane and Sarre are related? Wonderful car porn in this one! Hero drives a gun-metal gray Jaguar XJ-S: [image] He also buys a Bristol 603E as a backup car (lucky guy!): [image] He tells the heroine that she can of course drive both his cars but he buys her a car as well—and it’s not a Mini or a Fiat for once, it’s a pretty badass Colt Sapporo (made by Mitsubishi—and not a British car as the hero says at one point): [image] ...more |
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May 27, 2021
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| 0373036264
| 9780373036264
| 0373036264
| 4.04
| 418
| Jan 01, 1998
| Oct 01, 2000
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liked it
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AWLS (1998) is pleasant enough, but a little slow going even for Betty. It's a typical MoC story. (view spoiler)[Heroine Claudia Ramsay first meets Ri
AWLS (1998) is pleasant enough, but a little slow going even for Betty. It's a typical MoC story. (view spoiler)[Heroine Claudia Ramsay first meets Rich British Doctor hero Thomas Tait-Bullen when he's called in as a consultant to try to persuade her great-uncle to have heart surgery. She's not entirely sure she like Thomas at first, but finds him very handsome and kind and intriguing. Uncle refuses surgery, dies, and since his estate is left to a distant male relative (pffftttt), she and her mother are left homeless. Mom conveniently marries the local doctor, and Claudia takes a crappy job as an assistant at a nursing home. She finds herself thinking of Thomas frequently but doubts she'll see him again. Thomas can't seem to get her out of his mind either, and when he finds out they've lost their home, he makes a point of getting in touch with the local doctor. He meets Claudia again at her mother's wedding, drives her back to the nursing home afterward, and finds that he's very attracted to her--she's the most beautiful woman he's ever met, he thinks to himself. After a date or two, he proposes the standard BN MOC--a marriage based on mutual liking and friendship, with time to get to know one another and allow for feelings to deepen (he tells her to think of it like an engagement--only since he's always so busy, they'll have more time to spend together if they just marry and get to know one another afterward). Of course, he's already finding it hard to keep his hands off her--a very direct admission for an Neels hero, and she does convey more directly than usual throughout the course of the book just how difficult it becomes for our RBD to keep things platonic! It always amuses me in BN's MoC stories that the heroes are so sure they are getting married for sensible, practical reasons (and in part they are)--looking at it from the standpoint of anyone else--the FFRs, the hero's family and friends, etc.--it must seem SO impulsive and hasty and clearly an emotional decision very much out of character for the controlled and deliberate doctors! Claudia settles into life as a rich doctor's wife happily enough until Thomas's reserve starts to bother her. It doesn't take long for her to discover that she's in love with him, and they both do a good job of hiding their feelings. An OW, who has been trying to land our eligible RBD for a long time, makes a brief appearance or two and plants seeds of doubt in Claudia's ear regarding Thomas's relationship with his pretty secretary. He's angry at Claudia's lack of trust and we have the typical failure to communicate, followed by the heroine flight to get away and think. The hero chases her down to the weekend cottage they bought and both think will be a place of happiness for them and resolve their differences. And so we have our HEA with talk of babies to come! (hide spoiler)] Such a standard Betty outing, and while it has the usual charms of excellent writing and descriptions of lavish comforts, it doesn't really stand out in the field of similar stories. ...more |
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May 19, 2021
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| 0373031971
| 9780373031979
| 0373031971
| 4.21
| 505
| 1991
| Jan 01, 1992
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really liked it
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The Final Touch (1991) was a reread for me, and while I prefer Betty’s more irascible heroes to her more placid and good humored types, like Tyco , I
The Final Touch (1991) was a reread for me, and while I prefer Betty’s more irascible heroes to her more placid and good humored types, like Tyco , I did enjoy it even more on this second go. Pretty standard fare (see Pamela Shropshire’s review for a nice plot summary), but a few nice differences from other BN books. (view spoiler)[First, while there is OM drama to begin with, it doesn’t linger! Our caddish OM may show up occasionally like a bad smell but he’s pretty much burned his bridges with the heroine from the get-go (and for once she’s not ridiculously forgiving), and the hero quickly warns him off and gets the heroine out of his orbit. So there’s no waiting around for half the book for the heroine to get over someone else (although she is quite understandably gunshy about romance for a while). The heroine isn’t a doormat for her family either! When her wannabe OW step-sister shows up and starts making moves on the hero, her new step-brother-in-law (is that a thing?), heroine Charity fibs and says stepsister Eunice needs to leave because they won’t have room for a longer stay. And the hero and his little daughters and faithful family retainers have fun backing up the heroine’s white lie to jettison Eunice. After a slew of BN heroines who let their shitty families walk all over them, it’s refreshing that one finally does not! And Charity pretty good at holding her own with our Rich Dutch Doctor as well (although he’s a lot easier to manage than many of them). The hero, Tyco, is sweet! No sneers, no icy remoteness--he’s not exactly an open book (what RDD is?), but even before he has his Dawning Realization, he is genuinely admiring and appreciative of the heroine and works to ease her path, through the cad-dump and as part of his medical team. He tells her about his crappy first marriage early on, and he doesn’t play the usual “misunderstanding” games that RDDs love to play (e.g, “I plan to marry soon—but I won’t mention it’s you I plan to marry). And while his primary reason for the marriage of convenience he proposes is, at first, to provide his twin 10-year-old daughters with a happy home life complete with a mother, the bargain between them seems more balanced than in some other BN books—our lonely heroine gets a ready-made family, and our lonely hero gets a confidant who understands the importance of his work (as a burns-ward surgeon) and a helpmate. Not to mention that it’s pretty clear from the start that his feelings are engaged---it just takes him a while to admit it. Ditto for our heroine! (hide spoiler)] I like Betty’s angstier reads for the most part, but if I had to pick one of her sweeter romances with a more likable and mellow hero and a heroine who isn’t quite as self-effacing and self-sacrificing as some BN heroines, it would probably be TFT. ...more |
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May 12, 2021
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| 0373103573
| 9780373103577
| B01FJ0V4ZK
| 3.19
| 59
| Dec 14, 1979
| May 1980
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liked it
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The Snow Bride, aka The Bluest Balls. The story is just okay, but dontcha love that Will Davies cover? This hero suffers epic amounts of sexual frustra The Snow Bride, aka The Bluest Balls. The story is just okay, but dontcha love that Will Davies cover? This hero suffers epic amounts of sexual frustration in this one! Well, that’s what you get, 30-something hero, for coercing an 18-year-old girl into an MoC for nefarious reasons ((view spoiler)[to punish his double-dealing in-laws, particularly his brother-in-law who slept with his now-dead wife (hide spoiler)]). Our teenage (18-going-on-19 if I recall correctly) heroine agrees reluctantly when her mother pimps her out in marriage in exchange for a loan to tide over the family business while Daddy recovers from a stroke. Ah yes, a classic. The ridiculous “contract” calls for our nubile heroine to be step-mother to a young girl in a platonic MoC for five years (5!), until Plot Moppet is old enough to be shunted off to boarding school. Ummm, okay. The hero isn’t rapey at least, but it’s clear on the travelogue honeymoon to Egypt that the hero would love to change the terms of the contract to include some boudoir bouncing with his nubile bride. The heroine is having none of it, though! The heroine is a weepy little thing, and very attracted to/falling in love with our enigmatic hero, who starts off as such an late-70s/early 80s alpha but is actually pretty beta at heart, particularly for the last few chapters. He and the heroine start to draw closer after months of an unsatisfying MoC (with our youthful heroine deliberately freezing him out), and after a romantic date at which they both drink a little too much, they finally consummate their marriage (after almost a year of their MoC). Bad sex! I love bad sex in romance novels, I don’t know why exactly except that it’s such a change from the raptures of heaven we usually get. The heroine is brought sharply down to earth when her first experience of sex HURTS and it doesn’t help that the hero gets overexcited and doesn’t last more than a minute (although given how little she was enjoying it at that point, maybe not such a bad thing). “These things happen sometimes,” he tells her, but she’s a total brat about it, hee, refuses his offer to remedy matters to her satisfaction, and sends him off shamed and angry. Any closeness is gone after that, and it’s clear even to the plot moppet that things have gone sadly awry. The heroine is also troubled by the fact that she and the plot moppet have grown very close and the plan is for the heroine to skedaddle after the 5 years are up, and what will that do to little Emma? And she’s also troubled by the hero’s refusal to let his daughter have anything to do with his former in-laws (somewhat for good reason, but he’s implacable about it and the heroine thinks he could handle matters in a gentler way—although she doesn’t find out how nefarious the in-laws are until the end). And even MORE troubled when she begins to suspect that one of our wham-bam hero's little swimmers may have hit the mark. Weird family dynamics, past traumas and drama, and an embittered hero who is abruptly shocked out of his schemes when the heroine finally lets him have it and gets him to see the wrongness of his ways (and it’s one of the few moments when she stopped being annoying, by the way—but she IS a teenager (19 at this point), so we’ll cut her some slack). Hero and heroine finally declare their mutual love, yadda yadda, the sex is great this time, and we have HEAs that wrap our MCs and plot moppet in squashy vintage love 4Evermore. Well! This one was tropey and soapy and very vintage feeling in terms of May-December MCs, with an autocratic alpha and a very young heroine who is nonetheless supposed to come off as wise for her age (but doesn’t really). I can’t say I loved this—I skimmed a lot and both MCs annoyed me most of the time—but Hilton, whom I don’t think I’ve read before, has some nice descriptive but not too flowery scenes, and she had multiple points of conflict to keep the MCs apart until the end, so I can’t say I was bored. Very vintage in plot, tone, and characters and amusing in parts, but a lukewarm 3 stars at best. ...more |
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| 0373036892
| 9780373036899
| 0373036892
| 4.11
| 144
| 2001
| Feb 01, 2002
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A two-fer that I bought for the Betty Neels novella, but I ended up enjoying Liz Fielding's slow-burn MoC story as well. The cover by Will Davies (I a
A two-fer that I bought for the Betty Neels novella, but I ended up enjoying Liz Fielding's slow-burn MoC story as well. The cover by Will Davies (I am pretty sure) doesn't really reflect any scenes in either book, since in both cases the heroes and heroines don't come together until the very end. BN's An Ordinary Girl (2001) was one of Betty's very last books (it appears second to last on the list I have). She was 92 the year of its publication! Her prose was still as sharp and engaging as ever, characterized by the brisk pace and multi-POV of her later books. If you've ever thought you were too old to begin something new, just think of Betty, becoming a writer at age 60 or so and writing into her 90s, capturing readers' imaginations and hearts for decades afterward simply by writing the kind of stories she liked to write, without regard to publishing trends and societal changes. AOG is a "hero engaged to OW" story, and a charming one it is, simple and straightforward and perfect for the shortened format of a novella. (view spoiler)[Heroine Philomena (Philly) Selby is a vicar's daughter, the oldest of 5 girls and the only one who didn't inherit her father's blond/blue-eyed good looks (to her father's delight, since Philly's the only one who takes after the wife he considers beautiful). She's an old fashioned country girl, happy with her peaceful but busy life in the wonderfully named village of Nether Ditchling in the Sussex Downs (see Ditchling for the real place). The hero, Professor James Forsyth, is an Rich British Doctor--a pediatrician--engaged to the beautiful but typically shallow and selfish OW, Sybil. Having landing her rich fiance, Sybil is in no hurry to interrupt her partying lifestyle by getting married any time soon, but she is quite determined to hang onto her eminent, handsome, and very wealthy fiance, even if she's bored by him. James is a typical BN hero who has allowed himself to become entangled with a trophy-wife-to-be, to the dismay of his faithful family retainers. But when he and the heroine meet by chance when he and Sybil become lost and ask for directions, something profound seems to happen when their eyes meet--an instant and deep connection that each feels, as if they've known one another their entire lives and are happy in each other's company. Fate continues to throw Philly and James together, first when he and Sybil are forced to shelter at the vicarage during a blizzard (where Sybil acts like a spoilt brat) and later when Philly accompanies a local mom with a sick child to the London hospital where James works. Neither of them can get the other out of their minds, to their mutual dismay, and while James at first tries to rekindle whatever feelings he had for his fiancee by taking precious time off work to take her out, he soon acknowledges that he and Sybil are ill matched and that her feelings were never engaged outside of landing her Big Fish, whereas he had made a mistake in "falling in love with a lovely face. [A mistake] which he would have to rectify if he could." In contrast, Philly is perfect for him, loving the same quiet country pursuits that he does and showing a kindness and care for other people--especially children--that he shares. He soon finds himself making excuses to see her, taking his old Nanny (who is now the housekeeper for his country cottage retreat) to the village fete in Nether Ditchling, where they spend an old-fashioned and fun day with Philly and her family. Soon afterwards, Philly spends a few days in London, at the insistence of her family who have realized that she has been upset by the advent of the engaged hero in her life and that she needs opportunities to spend time with people her own age. She runs into Sybil at an art opening she attends with her friend, and James shows up just in time to hear Sybil making fun of her. He gives Philly a ride back to the house where she's staying, and before she goes in, she asks when he's getting married and impulsively tells him "You mustn't marry her--she'll make you very unhappy." She scampers off, appalled at what she said, but for once an RDD doesn't turn icy and remote at a heroine's "interference," because our good RBD has already come to that same realization. Sybil's no fool, and after a few broken dates and attempts by the hero to have a "serious talk" with her, she knows that he's slipping away and resolves to do something about it. She's extra sweet and accommodating all of a sudden, while managing to avoid any opportunities for him to talk to her about breaking things off--but she knows drastic action is called for. She arranges for her cousin, as idle and selfish and amoral as she is, to arrange a meeting with Philly and her family by pretending interest in a house the vicar is showing on behalf of a local seller. Cousin Gregory, recovering from a skiing accident, is bored enough to do it, and begins to hang around Nether Ditchling. Philly doesn't like him and has little to do with him, but between them, Gregory and Sybil contrive to let James think that Gregory and Philly have fallen in love and plan to marry. James doesn't quite buy it, but when he asks Philly directly if she's planning to marry Gregory, she refuses to say anything and tells him to go away. He asks her mother instead, hee, and is told that Philly doesn't like Gregory at all, let alone plan to marry him. Our RBD knows now that he needs to move things along! (But first he goes back to the hospital: "Philly might be the love of his life, but his work was his life too." A true BN hero! Hee.) But he chases down Sybil and her cousin in short order and leaves them in no doubt that he's aware of their scheming. "If you so much set foot in Nether Ditchling again, I'll break every bone in your body," says our big, not-to-be-trifled-with RBD to the faux OM. And Sybil doesn't get off lightly either: "What a despicable pair you are" he says, and let's Sybil know that their engagement is at an end. When she protests that she'll marry him whenever he wants, he tells her coldly that "I don't want" and walks away. In typical RBD fashion, work demands prevent him from seeing Philly right away (nothing less than the direst of emergencies--like a runaway heroine--will ever keep our RBD/RDDs from their work! It is a fact of life in BN's universe that the heroines have to accept and live with--and they do, uncomplainingly.) But eventually he gets there, where he finds Philly arranging flowers in her father's church. "Philly, will you leave your flowers for a moment and come with me?" he asks, and she turns to him, alight with happiness, and leaves with him hand in hand. "We will talk later," said the professor, and took her in his arms and kissed her in a masterful fashion." Philly's more than happy to leave the talking until later and we have an abrupt but satisfying HEA. (hide spoiler)] I really liked this one--the shorter format kept the story tightly focused, and The Great Betty's usual skilled mix of dialogue, description, exposition, and action kept things moving briskly along. We still have the wonderful descriptions that are such a hallmark of her stories and the skillfully sketched and distinctive secondary characters that add so much color to her stories. Even at 92, Betty could hang with the best of 'em. All hail Betty! Liz Fielding's A Perfect Proposal is the second novella in this two-fer and it's a nice companion piece to the BN novella. We have a classic MoC story from LF, with a smitten heroine, who is the hero's secretary, becoming his platonic wife and caretaker for his little daughter. (view spoiler)[Hero Mark is more beta than alpha, and he's been unable to move on from his wife's death and in a bind when his daughter keeps giving her nannies such a hard time that they invariably leave after a short time. The heroine--"good old Jane, who could always be relied on, no matter the crisis...the perfect secretary, hiding her love for her heartbreakingly handsome boss"--sees an opportunity to become an even more essential part of his life and perhaps allow proximity to do what time has not: get the hero interested in her. She goes about it in a roundabout way: drafting a personal ad for him, with the advice that he needs to meet women and find his daughter the mother she's clearly longing for. When he is completely unenthusiastic about the process, although he agrees with her, she proposes that perhaps SHE might be the perfect candidate for the position. And he very quickly agrees. It's a sweet slow burn as these two find the attraction between them growing and Mark begins to open up to her about his so-called "perfect" first marriage and wife, which were not so perfect after all, and is able to let go the grief and trauma of his past. It doesn't take too long for him to realize he's in love with the heroine, and the arrival of her family and their help with his plans to make it clear to the heroine how he feels lead to a really sweet romantic reveal and HEA. (hide spoiler)]This made for a nice duo with the BN story. ...more |
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| 2.73
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| 1990
| Feb 01, 1990
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Lots of great reviews on this, and I always love when books are all over the place with regard to reviews/ratings--it suggests there's something inter
Lots of great reviews on this, and I always love when books are all over the place with regard to reviews/ratings--it suggests there's something interesting going on. I'm strictly middle of the road on this one. Familiar plot elements: MoCs; a plot moppet being raised by the heroine, who is NOT his mother (JM often has some element of this); an awful, possible OW whom the heroine doesn't really stand up to; an autocratic and difficult hero who, in this case, has long misjudged the heroine. I found this one really uneven but there were aspects that I liked. Murrey's rendering of her native Wales was pretty evocative, and I really miss heroes who were NOT all gazillionaires; who might be "comfortable and able to afford a few luxuries now," like this hero, but not tycoons (although JM has a few of those in her books as well). The hero in this one is a Welsh farmer, who has inherited his grandfather's estate, which includes a rambling, era-spanning and expensive-to-maintain house that is such a money drain that he's considering pulling it down (except for the oldest listed building) or turning it over to be used as extra housing for a children's home. The heroine, in this one, is the one with the money--when her foster sister dumped her baby on her (claiming the hero is the unknowing father), the heroine's wealthy and infertile boss convinced her to marry him and raise the kid together. She inherited her husband's wealth after he died in an accident. JM makes it clear that it was a happy, if unexciting, marriage, and as others have noted, probably would have made a good MoC story on its own! (view spoiler)[The hero and heroine have a combative past--she was adopted by his aunt and raised with his beautiful, tempestuous cousin, but the hero, 11 years older or so, was never very kind to her, having been led to believe by her foster sister that the heroine was secretive, sly, and a thief, who put on an act for her loving adoptive mother (the hero's aunt) and his grandfather. She was indeed pretty quiet and ultra-reserved, mainly because as a girl she feared for a long time that if she did anything wrong, she'd be cast out. She has intense loyalty to her adoptive mother and her foster sister (even after she finds out that the other girl made sure she was blamed by the hero for her own petty pilfering and misbehavior). Despite the conflict between them, the heroine secretly worshipped the hero and confessed her adolescent "love" for him when she was 16, only to be firmly and harshly (if correctly) rejected by him. After finishing school, she moved to London and worked as a secretary for the man she eventually married--an ex-racecar driver turned mystery writer (like Dick Francis, but with racecars, the heroine explains). After the death of the grandfather, the heroine inherits the lodge on the estate, which the hero was planning on making his home. She's the one that proposes a marriage between him, so that her "son," Davey, can take his rightful place in the family (although she doesn't bring up that she thinks the hero is his father or that her foster sister is his mother). The hero figures out pretty quickly that the kid is his cousin's (although he has no idea the heroine thinks he's his father, and when he does learn that's what she thinks, uncategorically says that it's not possible and the cousin was lying--whether you believe him is up to you, but I usually give Harley heroes the benefit of the doubt since this is, after all, fantasy (unless you're reading Kay Thorpe or certain other authors, in which case it's anyone's guess). The heroine admits to herself secretly that she's always been in love with the hero and that the marriage is not just for the kid's sake; she wants a life with him and to return to her home, which she loves and is the place where she won a hard-held sense of belonging as a kid. Despite that, she gives the hero a pretty tough time throughout (which he mostly deserves) from a sense of self-preservation, although over time they become closer and more open and he loses some of his misconceptions about her, and she about him. The cousin, a successful model who is aware that her time as such is limited, returns from American and blackmails the heroine, saying that she'll take back her son if the heroine doesn't pay up. Since the heroine's former husband made a previous arrangement with her that resulted in the heroine and him legally adopting the kid, her threats are pretty empty, but our formerly steel-spined heroine is a pushover for her awful cousin, as she always had been, and gives her some money, and makes arrangements with her disapproving financial advisor to pony up more. The hero gets wind that the cousin is back and retrieves the check she gave the cousin (although he does say that what she does with her money is up to her after that), and the hero and heroine clear up a few things, including the fact that they're in love with one another. But the book does end with the distasteful suggestion that the wild and beautiful cousin will be indulged, as she always has been, and there will be zero comeuppance for her (it's just Gwenny being Gwenny, pffttt), which leaves a bad taste to the HEA. (hide spoiler)] As another reviewer notes, the level of tension in this one never lets up--which I liked. I think JM writes conflict really well; it makes for a good and fairly angsty read even though not much happens plotwise. I do wish her usually fiesty heroines, who can generally hold their own with the hard-ass heroes, never really stand up to the awful OW (I guess JM wanted to show that the often-combative heroines are really softies inside who are bewildered by that level of crazy or vile OWness). At least no one got fork stabbed in this one! :-D JM isn't for everyone--her heroes are of the vintage "my way or no way" variety and if that's not your cuppa, you probably won't much like her books. I do like vintage asshat heroes, myself, so for me, she always seems to deliver. She's good at creating atmosphere and tension, too, and in giving a good sense of place in her settings without overdoing the travelogue. Overall, I mostly liked this one (although I would have liked more comeuppance for those who deserved it!). ...more |
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| 2.80
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| 1986
| Feb 01, 1987
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Boy, did category romance novelists love to reference the Dowson poem, Cynara. It's the "sick and desolate of an old passion" and "faithful to thee i
Boy, did category romance novelists love to reference the Dowson poem, Cynara. It's the "sick and desolate of an old passion" and "faithful to thee in my fashion" bits they focus on, but as another reviewer notes, they kind of gloss over the part that he's remembering his lost love while in the arms of "bought" women. Anyway, JM trots out a reference in this tale featuring another of her yummy alpha heroes who had loved the heroine when she was very young but had been put off by her autocratic grandfather (who took in the hero after the death of his own parents). The titular waiting man is Brett Allard, a barrister who had lived with the heroine and her larger-than-life Borderlands grandfather and knew the heroine since she was a little girl. 15 years older than she, he'd been a remote if familiar figure while she was growing up, and while he had fallen in love with her when she grew to be a young woman, she never really gave him a thought as a romantic interest. Headstrong and arrogant like her grandfather, she married a neighboring young man with tragic results when she was 18. Her young husband died on their wedding night, crashing his car with her in it in the middle of the night, (view spoiler)[ but not before abusing her terribly physically and sexually, and leaving her emotionally scarred to the point where she is terrified by the thought of sex (hide spoiler)]. Three years later, as the book begins, the heroine is living quietly with her 3-year old son, running an antiques business and hiding from her grandfather, who has long wanted a male heir and who, she fears, would bully her into returning and handing over the boy. She's tracked down by the hero, who ruthlessly pressures her into an MoC, offering his protection from her grandfather and promising it will be a marriage in name only--until she decides that she wants him and only him. He's aware of her fear and dislike of physical contact but thinks she's still in love with her dead spouse. Over the course of the novel, the hero is patient with the heroine and calmly and coolly deals with her bellowing, intimidating grandfather, helping her to establish boundaries but also get over her anger and resentment at her grandfather's past treatment of her. JM likes autocratic heroes, and Brett fits the mold to some extent, but his patience and his calm practicality in dealing with all the drama makes him a really likable hero. Heroine Eden was a harder proposition to really like--I get that JM was going for PTSD here but the Big Secret dragged on too long, and I would have liked her better if she was a little better at standing up for herself, with her grandfather and with the psycho OW (view spoiler)[ who fork stabbed her! (hide spoiler)]. As usual, JM wrote a pretty good and funny plot moppet and distinctive secondary characters, which are a pleasure to read. She's an engaging writer, too--there are moments of humor even in her most fraught tales. It was nice, too, that for once it was the hero, and not the heroine, that had been long besotted--the fact that the heroine never even thought of her older foster "brother" as a romantic interest made it all the more realistic and moving when she comes to realize, as an adult, that she's attracted and then in love. His acknowledgment, too, that it would have been a disaster if they'd gotten together when she was 18 (and he was early 30s), was refreshing. In a way, this is a second chance at love story but manages to avoid a few cliches (Dowson quotes aside!). Not an out and out JM fave for me, but pretty good, particularly because of the hero. ...more |
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| 0373513003
| 4.08
| 454
| Dec 1995
| May 25, 2004
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The Right Kind of Girl (1995) is the one with the Unforgiveable Curse you won’t find in Harry Potter: Invectivus Comparito. The hero utters something
The Right Kind of Girl (1995) is the one with the Unforgiveable Curse you won’t find in Harry Potter: Invectivus Comparito. The hero utters something so unforgiveable to the heroine that most reviewers do not get past it. I thought he was an ass for saying what he says, but I did like that our usually obliging heroine turned pretty cold and unforgiving about it for a long time, so our hero doesn’t really get off unscathed. Most BN heroines are far too quick to let the heroes off the hook. TRKoG is pretty standard later Neels, with a heroine who is not a nurse, a Rich British Doctor hero, a snake-in-the-grass wannabe OW (“latet anguis in herba” our classics-trained RBD tells us), and some fine secondary characters to give some local flavor. The right kind of girl for our RBD is Emma: old fashioned, restful, ladylike, unselfpitying, and mostly sweet (the best thing about Neels’ heroines is that there’s always a little vinegar and a lot of seething mixed in with their ordinarily kind and good selves). RBD Sir Paul Wyatt doesn’t stand a chance against her homely charms. Betty had been out of the nursing profession more than 25 years by the time this book was written, and I find that her later books—often Cinderella tales with heroines in need of saving--often suffer for the lack of her independent and capable nurse-heroines. The relationships become too lopsided when her wealthy, exceptional heroes are paired with destitute heroines with bleak futures as opposed to her self-sufficient earlier heroines, who always had work to fall back on if nothing else. After all, among all the elements of romantic fantasy in BN books, perhaps most compelling is that her heroes, who could have anyone they want, really, given their good looks, wealth, social standing, and professional renown, fall in love with heroines who are entirely DESERVING of the love of such exceptional men not because they are beautiful or wealthy or accomplished, but because they are good and kind and utterly decent. Her heroines are not the prettiest or most suitable of the hero’s matrimonial prospects, but they are nonetheless equally as EXCEPTIONAL as the heroes in terms of their worthiness and, really, the pureness of their hearts. Much as her heroes would often prefer otherwise, they literally have no choice—they fall in love despite themselves in most cases, happy with their work and their autonomy and the occasional social outing. All of their self-possession and well-mapped lives are thrown into disarray, internally if not otherwise, by the incursion of the heroines into their lives. But it’s a lot easier to believe that the heroines are THAT special when we see the proof of it in their independent existence and their interactions with others, and it really works better with the nurses as opposed to the waifs. Anyway, all musing aside, there’s nothing wrong with The Right Kind of Girl, really. It has Betty’s usual nostalgic magic of pseudo-Edwardian/Victorian country life (with mod cons), with beautiful old homes and possessions, lavish meals, tea around the fire, pets and faithful family retainers, and admirable MCs. But in this one, the hero’s love for the heroine happens without much development and comes too soon; it seems too pat and snap—Betty doesn’t really make the case for it. We have a little hero PoV in this one, and I find that when Betty explicitly reveals the hero’s instalove, it makes it less believable than in her early books, when we knew through the hero’s often hot-and-cold words and actions that he is reluctantly succumbing to the heroine’s charms but it usually takes some time for him to realize and acknowledge it. It’s more effective when there’s no explicit hero PoV, IMO. The emotional connections are more gradual, more painful, and more compelling when Betty takes time to let them develop and makes the heroes more enigmatic. TRKOG follows a standard BN MoC plot(view spoiler)[: Our RBD meets the waifish heroine, fate keeps throwing them together, and he finds his interest is roused by the quiet old fashioned girl for reasons he’s not quite sure he understands. She’s similarly attracted but considers him out of her league, so resolves to put him out of her mind. She carries on working tirelessly to care of her family (her mother in this case), sacrificing her own independence and future for the sake of those she loves. Betty ruthlessly disposes of mother soon enough (how many BN parents have been sacrificed on the altar of true love, I wonder?), leaving the heroine at loose end but resolved to make her own way by getting on with things as practically as possible. The hero offers an MoC, stating sensible reasons like companionship and a need for a hostess, and any closer relationship, it is hinted, may develop in time but is not on the books just yet. There’s OW drama in the form of an “old friend” of the hero’s, who very much wanted to marry him herself and who sets out to cause trouble between our hero and the heroine. And she succeeds to the extent that the hero says something to the heroine that many readers find completely unforgiveable. I got over it—people say stupid things in a temper that they later regret—but he doesn’t apologize for it, so Betty kind of falls down there. In the end, villains are revealed as such, love between the MCs is confessed, and we have a fade-to-black promise of connubial commingling in the near future—as close to sex as we ever get with Betty, and usually in the context of procreation. (It's pretty funny that this book was marketed at one point as one of HR's "Baby Boom" series since the only babies that get made during the course of the story are the orphans the heroine works with.) (hide spoiler)] A just-okay one from Betty; there’s just nothing particularly special about this one, and the characters are just a little too bland. Perhaps as Betty got into her 80s, ideal love became more of an elderly person’s version, with calm warmth and comfort taking the place of her earlier (admittedly always muted) heat and angst. I prefer her sparkier heroes and heroines and her angstier tales, but even her tame tales, like TRKOG, feature her clean and engaging, if a touch old fashioned, writing and a warmth of character and place that’s hard to match. ...more |
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| Apr 01, 2002
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One of Betty’s very last books (2001) and pretty forgettable (forBettible? Meh-tty? Groan…sorry!), following familiar patterns with rather bland chara
One of Betty’s very last books (2001) and pretty forgettable (forBettible? Meh-tty? Groan…sorry!), following familiar patterns with rather bland characters. With only the few plots she drew from (MoC/Cinderella/OW or OM drama, combos thereof), it was always Betty’s characterizations and attention to detail with regard to food, setting, clothing, and households that made (and continue to make) her so readable. In her later books, all of those elements remain to some degree, but in certain books they seem to fall flat—mainly when the characters aren’t all that compelling. Her seething heroines and arrogant heroes carried the tales best—in some of her later books, they are too watered down and placid (for my tastes anyway). That may be my problem with this one—don’t get me wrong: it’s still well written and enjoyable enough, but I found my interest waning at points. It’s a typical BN MoC tale, with some hero PoV that actually made me like the book less because the hero’s instalove seemed LESS believable than when there’s no hero PoV and they make the “love at first sight” claim during the Mutual Avowals at the end. Fate IS remarkable in Betty’s world but easier to swallow if there’s some mystery about it. (view spoiler)[Emma Dawson is 27, apparently living in an Edwardian-or-earlier alternate universe where unmarried daughters stay home and don’t have any job skills even though it’s 2001 and the world has whirled on with computers and working women as the norm. Her financially foolish father lost their fortune before inconveniently going toes up, so Emma is left with her selfish, idle, useless mother (and an absent never-again-referenced brother who, having achieved a “disappointing” degree in something or other, is off trekking the world). Emma’s kinda-sorta boyfriend, whom she figured she’d probably marry at some point, cries off because he’s an ambitious young man and the heroine isn’t looking like such a great catch anymore. She’s more affronted than upset. Emma is a classic Neels enabler, shielding Mother from all worry by taking on the business of fending off bankruptcy and moving them into their sole remaining asset: a holiday cottage in Salcombe, which I totally want to visit someday. Mother sighs, and gently complains, and woe-is-me’s about their reduced circumstances and generally is a lazy whiny manipulative horror, while Emma takes on not one but two part-time jobs: library aide (yay) and holiday cottage skivvy (boo). She also cleans and cooks and shops and hands over most of her pay so Mother can have her little luxuries, while mama contributes none of her pension or efforts and indeed cuts into the meagre family funds for shopping, social outings, and bridge. Emma really needs some counseling on managing toxic parents. She runs into the hero at the bakery one morning—he is tall, good looking, bristly-chinned, and tousled, and eyeballs her unabashedly. Apparently our RDD has a thing for tall drinks of water with carroty hair. Emma is a little annoyed at his casual but obvious interest, but mostly intrigued. He shows up again at the library with a need for Rupert Bear to calm a savage neighboring toddler and no library card, and she finds out he is Dr. Roele Van Dyke (and now he just looks like Dick Van Dyke in my head, which is unfortunate because much as I like DVD, he’s way too smiley and lanky to be a model for an RDD). Also: is it pronounced Rowell or Rolley? Because if it’s Rolley, then just no. (The internet tells me it’s somewhere in between: Hroll-eh. Did I mention I had trouble staying focused while reading this? Let alone recapping it.) Soon after, her ex-boyfriend shows up with the news that he’s reconsidered and is willing to take her on after all, and she tells him to “stuff it” (yes! That was probably my favorite part of the book, and how unexpected from a BN heroine, hee). She runs into Roele, literally, who lets her cry all over him about the “rat” (“a well dressed rat” he notes when he catches sight of him, hee) and takes her home. Emma toils away and we don’t see much of our hero for a good third of the book, although we and Emma briefly meet and hang out with his sister and her kids. Roele arranges a job for Emma at his medical center so she can leave the cleaning job, we don’t see much of him and he is standoffish, although he’s had his Dawning Realization already; just biding his time and playing the long game. Meanwhile, Emma’s mother, off visiting friends in their former hometown of Richmond, writes Emma to tell her that she’s invited an old chum from her schoolgirl days to come live at the cottage and Emma will surely be glad to have her freedom, so pack up and GTFO. (Nevermind that Emma has almost no money and no place to live.) Mother of the Year! (Betty will take care of HER shortly…dunh dunh dunh!). Emma-the-enabler doesn’t protest about this for some inexplicable reason—she doesn’t want to make dear old Mum feel badly, after all. At this point, smacks are needed all around. She tries to plan her next move and ends up running into Roele and spilling all her worries. Oh, and she rescues a dog because this is Betty Neels and there’s usually some critter in need of a forever home (like the heroines). No worries though—our rescue-ready Dr. Van Dyke draws a magical landscape in chalk and leaps with Emma into it, where he serenades her with “It’s a Jolly Holiday with Emma….” Haha, just kidding. Dr. Van Dyke offers her a job at his practice in Holland, helping his office manager with the most basic of jobs, similar to her work at the medical center—answering phones, sorting mail, nothing too brain-taxing. The rescue pup is welcome too (and I love that for BN heroines, giving up the critters is NEVER an option—they will sooner set off in the dead of night through the rain with a holdall and no money than leave the critters to an uncertain fate, particularly when a Basil is involved. So we are off to Holland by ferry, with the usual bits: heroine puking on crossing so that hero can show his unflappable caretaking doctorly worth; drive through along the dark motorways once they get to Holland; heroine intimidated by what she sees of the hero’s ancestral manse and old-money background. Roele has arranged for Emma to work under and rent a room from his office manager, Jeffrow Smit. Emma settles in with the stern but kindly Smitty, gets an exhausting tour of Amsterdam from Roele, and learns the ropes of office assistant. Roele mostly ignores her at work until he mildly tells her off for having personal mail delivered to the office. Ah, but The Letter is no ordinary missive: it’s a notification that Emma’s mother has died in a fiery car crash, the number 1 method that Betty (likely gleefully) uses for killing off parents and cheating first wives! Given how awful Emma’s mother was, it’s hard to feel particularly sorrowful about her mother’s demise, and even Emma seems to get over it pretty quickly but given the BN heroine “push it all down inside” approach to emotions, who knows. Roele takes charge, dealing with the myriad actions that need to be taken and offering Emma an MoC for their mutual advantage (he needs a hostess and companion, blah blah blah; she needs a forever home and she likes him after all). She agrees, and we get the Home Tour of Love, shopping expedition, meeting with the parents (Dad’s impressed with her non-show-offy knowledge of Latin plant names). We also get the heroine’s long delayed Dawning Realization that she’s in love with the hero and despair that he doesn’t feel the same way (we know he does b/c hero PoV but he’s playing it cool—and, again, this works a lot better for angst in BN books with no, or very little, hero PoV). We get scenes of Emma finding her place in the household and village and in Roele’s social life. Things are slower on the “getting to know you” front (very few kisses in this book), but Betty’s changed her hero’s stance on heroines waiting up for heroes—usually they angrily ask what the heroine is doing up so late and order them off to bed, but our hero is delighted to find “his Emma” in the kitchen eating his sandwiches and waiting for him when he comes home late one night from the hospital. Roele is off to Rome, and Emma’s worrying because Rome is where orgies happened a couple of millennia ago. There’s also some mild drama about a woman he was in love with 10 years prior, who went off to America and who he reconnected with (casually) about a year ago (we only hear about her from a gossipy old woman; OW doesn’t make an in-person appearance, alas, so all opportunities for bony snideness are missed). Emma decides that Roele must still be in love with her, and now that he’s married Emma, he’s lost any chance to reconcile with his true love (which makes no sense, but hey, Betty needed some conflict to move this along and wrap it up). So Emma does the usual BN heroine flit back to England by ferry, train, and automobile. The hero, arriving home, finds out from his FFR that she has gone on some “emergency” pretext, and knowing that she is in love with him and running away, sets off by chartered plane to head her off. She gets to the Salcombe cottage, and he’s waiting for her. Mutual avowals, yadda yadda, they’ve been in love since day one, and Betty wraps up a fairly typical and somewhat middling MoC story in typical HEA fashion. (hide spoiler)] This falls lower third of Betty books for me, but props for the usual clean and descriptive writing and a story that is warm and pleasant if not stellar. I only hope to be as sharp and lucid in my 90s as Betty undoubtedly was—still delighting readers into a new millennium when so many of her fellow authors from the early days had long since wrapped it up. She had a formula, yes, but one that worked for 30 years, to the enduring delight of her many fans. All hail Betty! ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 09, 2021
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0373512899
| 9780373512898
| 0373512899
| 4.10
| 722
| 1994
| Feb 23, 2004
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really liked it
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From 1995, DL shows that Betty still had it in her later years. (3.5*, rounded up) It’s a Cinderella tale, with a plucky heroine making a modest go of
From 1995, DL shows that Betty still had it in her later years. (3.5*, rounded up) It’s a Cinderella tale, with a plucky heroine making a modest go of it on her own, with a mean mix of janitorial skills and industriousness. From a basement bedsitter to a Georgian townhouse and country manor we go, via an MoC to an RBD! (view spoiler)[I have a working knowledge of minor electrical and plumbing faults Who but Betty could make cleaning sound interesting? Not joking. Heroine Arabella Lorimer is hired as the caretaker for RBD hero Titus Taverner’s medical partnership, and she cleans, polishes, changes lightbulbs and fuses, and stockpiles plungers like a pro despite a posh past! In her spare time she cooks gourmet meals and transforms her basement apartment with a Frances Hodgson Burnett Little Princess style makeover, using the few treasures salvaged from her lost family home. Yep, Betty has killed off her parents in a Tragic Event car crash, with, as usual, no estate planning or financial solvency, so our orphaned heroine is happy to land job and a home for herself and her portly kitty Percy. Hero Titus, a classist who didn’t spare a thought for Arabella’s Cockney predecessor, thinks the new ladylike “caretaker” is out of her element but tries to stay aloof. But as delicious smells waft up from her apartment and her shapely bottom protrudes from fuse closets, he finds himself getting interested. You see that I wish to marry for the wrong reasons, although they are no worse than many others Before long, we’re in classic BN marriage-of-convenience territory, solving the problems of financial insecurity and loneliness on her side and conniving matchmakers and a wish for undemanding companionship on his. “We are agreed that there will be no false sentiment between us?” asks Titus most unromantically. “Friend, companions, willing to allow each other to enjoy privacy without rancour, enjoying each other’s company, spending our leisure together if we so wish.” (Shall we ponder “privacy without rancour”? No?) So they marry (a small church wedding; better than some of Betty’s hole-and-corner “rector’s wife and rando witnesses” nuptials). Titus gives her the best wedding gift ever: the pony and donkey she had to send to an animal sanctuary after The Tragic Event. Awwww. Arabella also gets the standard wardrobe makeover: a shopping extravaganza at Harrods, and it’s quite the detailed haul! We even get a date (!) so that our heroine can show off the BN standard rose-pink dress and “like a moonbeam!” dance skills. …Lay our plans for the trip to Leiden The obligatory trip to Holland (and Titus isn’t even an RDD!). He brings Arabella along, and they stay with Aldrik and Cressida of A Happy Meeting, who are reveling in connubial bliss. Cressy, herself a BN rescue-waif, understandably hits it off with Arabella. The enemy, she thought silently, and wondered why she had thought that. Titus and Aldrik return from their seminar with the news that the brilliant and busty Doctor Geraldine Tulsma has invited herself to dinner. “Frightfully clever,” says Cressy. Geraldine has corn-colored curls, big blue eyes and and “opulent bosom” and doesn’t “look in the least like a doctor but vaguely romantic and mysterious.” Arabella’s hair-trigger seethe response is activated. (No one seethes quite like a BN heroine.) Betty is so catty in this one! Arabella attacks, pointing out the oh-so-many interests that she and Titus share, such that he has never once mentioned Geraldine. Cressy wades in gamely: “I’m sorry we haven’t got a man for you, Geraldine, but it was such short notice.” Ha. Geraldine is intent on a “quiet talk” with Titus about “medicine” though, and Arabella concedes with “a smile as bright as a dagger’s edge.” Aldrik offers up his study for their “medical talk” to avoid taxing the brain boxes of the lady wives. Arabella shoots herself in the foot, suggesting snidely that Geraldine should come visit them in London sometime, as Titus politely agrees to drive Geraldine home. “The enemy,” Arabella thinks again, as they leave, and has her seething Dawning Realization: she’s in love with Titus. She resolves to gird for war: new clothes, hairstyling, sparkling conversation, and a friendly—but not too friendly—manner. Arabella enjoys the rest of their stay with Cressy and Aldrik, save for a few seethe-worthy moments. Clueless Titus, noticing her anger-flushed face, just thinks how pretty she’s become since their marriage and kisses her cheek. Cressy observes to Aldrik, in the privacy of their bedroom, that their guests sure don’t act like newlyweds, and he assures her: “probably they—er—let themselves go when they are alone, just as we do,” fueling my fantasies of BN heroes and heroines getting their freak on after the ILYs. (Oh, those Dommy RDDs! Hey, you do you. :-D) I know Titus will be delighted to see me. We're back in England, and it wouldn’t be a Betty book without Christmas! Titus and Arabella go shopping together—so much shopping in this one!--and Betty lists the gifts they purchase down to football boots for the boy who helps in the garden. Now, that’s detail! Titus is more and more smitten but clueless still: really, he was getting quite fond of her. His work forgotten, he allowed his thoughts to wander. Heee, I have a dirty mind. What kind of casual acquaintance shows up with a suitcase and a plan to stay for the holidays unannounced? Pushy, bosomy Dr. Enemy, that’s who! Arabella seethes and Titus is surprised and, annoyingly, a little amused. Geraldine invites herself to a neighbor’s Christmas gala, which she sees as the perfect opportunity to have another “quiet discussion” with Titus. Umm, okay. In a neat reversal of a similar scene in certain BN’s books, Titus gives Arabella an heirloom bridal diamond necklace before the party, and she does the “you’re giving it to me b/c it’s only to be expected/keeping up appearances” line that usually jerk heroes like Reilof of The Hasty Marriage trot out upon bestowing the family jewels, and Titus, in the role of THM’s Laura, turns white with hurt and anger. Arabella seethes with jealousy—for like the next 4 chapters. Catty Betty makes another appearance, and it’s kind of funny for a BN heroine to go all Mean Girl: She went upstairs to give Geraldine [Titus’s] message, noting with satisfaction that while her guest when fully clothed gave the appearance of a magnificent figure, in bed she was plain fat. She probably wore strongly built foundation with bones. Geraldine deserves it though—she tells Arabella that Titus asked her on multiple occasions to marry him and she said no because her career came first. “I cannot blame him for marrying you—there is nothing about you which could come between us. You are of no account; you are not clever, nor are you pretty…he has no love for you, that is obvious….” “How very interesting,” says Arabella, but after she sees the enemy off to meet Titus, she has a good cry. Then she goes shopping and buys ridiculous things: Santa socks for our RBD; tacky earrings; a neon scarf. Home again, she’s surprised to find Geraldine on the point of leaving—the enemy claims that she has to get back to work. Arabella decides that the day’s events have “sounded the death knell over any hopes she might have had about Titus’s feelings for her,” and can’t believe (why?) that Geraldine would have lied to her. OK. If you persist in sitting there filled with sweetness and forgiveness, I shall wring your little neck Titus comes home and is coldly furious when Arabella says it’s plain that he and Geraldine are star-crossed lovers and she won’t stand in their way. He fails to tell her she’s lost her mind. Arabella flounces off to bed, and the FFR housekeeper scolds the doctor, saying “that ladyfriend of yours fair upset madam,” hee. FFRs got your back. Titus tells her Geraldine won’t be back and sends up a light supper for Arabella (guidelines for every RDD/RBD who has ever let his heroine shoot off in a rage without supper and have to subsist on stale cookies and tap water hours later). Arabella is still convinced she’s right the next day. It’s not super flattering that she thinks Titus is a potential cheat and liar. I mean, he’s been a pretty nice guy throughout. He is a little irritating and patronizing, though, when he says they’ll have a quiet talk in a couple of days when she calms down. Pfffttt. Matters worsen when Titus mentions he’s going over to Leiden; she assumes to see Geraldine. Despite his frustration with her, Titus has a long-delayed Dawning Realization that he’s probably been in love with Arabella since he asked her to marry him. Nothing like a duster and a nylon pinny to spark Love at First Sight, I guess. Jeez, there are 30 pages left. Enough with the Big Misunderstanding! Arabella decides Christmas sucks: Last Christmas had been a terrible one, with her parents recently dead and her future bleak, but this one was even worse; the future was just as bleak. Wow, that’s some drama-queening right there; I would think having your parents die in a fiery crash might be just a smidge worse, but that’s just me. The lack of communication goes on too goddamn long and Betty’s losing me here... She would rather have a bag of apples that he had bought for her without any hint on her part Christmas, FINALLY! Titus, a rare book collector, loves his gift of a rare edition of Canterbury Tales (he probably likes “The Wife of Bath” and some of the other dirtier bits). He gives Arabella a pair of earrings especially designed (by him) to go with her “appearances” diamond necklace. Titus plants a passionate kiss on her, to the delight of the gathered family, and tells her it’s a pity they’re not alone. Ooh la la! Titus is going back to London to work for a few days. Arabella’s confused about the kiss and still upset, but he’s feeling smug, and thinks they’ve buried the hatchet. Ha, typical guy. Before he leaves, he gets a message from Leiden, and nitwit Arabella jumps straight to “Geraldine!” Titus is back to giving her cold blue stares. Titus is quite the seether himself. He leaves in a huff, and she calls after him begging him to “Take care, Titus! Oh do take care!” More fiery crashes? Naaah, Betty reserves those for cheating first wives and inconvenient parents. "It just needs a rat or two,” she thought gloomily. Arabella finds out that he’s gone to Holland and tries to walk off her despair and falls into a gully and can’t get out. You’d think given her handyman skills she could MacGyver her way out, and that would be such a better ending, but Betty likes a rescuing sort of hero, so we wait. Titus is back and determined “they were going to have that talk—but first of all he would wring her darling neck and kiss her silent.” Yes! Finally, some action. He rescues her, kisses her breathless, and calls her his dearest darling girl. A tot of brandy, a hot bath, and thou—Arabella joins Titus in the dining room and before she can say “Geraldine,” he tells her he loves her. He’s never cared for Geraldine, he FINALLY tells her, and he only went to Holland because Aldrik’s mother had a stroke, so--all’s well that ends well? Arabella says she loves him too and that she must have a jealous nature (really?). He says “there are ways of curing you of that,” and does it involve erotic spankings, Titus? Does it? Butter the Butler comes in, sees them snogging, and slips out against silently. Dearest love... Ooooh, a rare Betty epilogue! We usually only get those when the happy couple appear in other Betty books! 18 months later, Arabella is waiting at the window with “an open letter in one hand, a very small baby tucked under the other arm.” The letter is from Titus, away doctoring some VIP, writing to say how much he loves and misses her. It’s a nice little framing device: the book opened with a letter and now ends with a letter, wrapping up a cute latter-day Neels that drags a little in the last quarter but is still a solid entry in the canon. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Feb 03, 2021
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Feb 03, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0373037643
| 9780373037643
| 0373037643
| 3.57
| 159
| Jan 01, 2003
| Sep 2003
|
really liked it
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Sweet and slow from Susan Fox, with a lovelorn heroine who has entered into an MoC with the man she's secretly been in love with since she was 17 afte
Sweet and slow from Susan Fox, with a lovelorn heroine who has entered into an MoC with the man she's secretly been in love with since she was 17 after his wife, her best friend, dies. She's the loving mother to her adopted son and an ideal wife for a hard-working rancher, but after 11 months of a sexless and emotionless marriage, she decides she'll offer him a divorce--mainly because she's guilt stricken that she took advantage of him at a weak moment in marrying him and has come to believe that he will never feel anything for her. She has had the typical SF shitty past (abandonment, foster homes) and as much as her love for the hero, she is driven by an abiding wish for a home and family of her own. It's very angsty in a quiet way. He's the typical Susan Fox dominating, strong/silent type hero (but her heroes do a pretty good job of reining in their more chauvinistic bossy impulses and respecting the opinions and viewpoints of the heroines--they are pretty dommy in the sack though, which is all fade-to-black but still pretty hot). At that point, the hero decides he will try to make his marriage work, and sets about putting the past behind him and getting to know his overlooked bride. SF does a good job of waking up both these Sleeping Beauties, and the heat and feelings grow between them slowly but surely. In many ways, it reminded me of Linda Howard's love-it-or-hate-it Sarah's Child, with a similar plot (secretly loving heroine marries grieving widower who was married to her best friend and has to continue to hide her love--second chance/second best story). St Margarets has all the details. I like Susan Fox's angsty westerns, and this one was good --the mean-spirited townspeople and punishing hero so typical of SF's books are nowhere in sight but it has her signature character types (long-suffering deliciously angsty Mary Sue-ish heroine and tough-but-tender ranchers), angst, strong focus on the MCs, and good ramping up of the tension and the romance. ...more |
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Jan 21, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0373511620
| 9780373511624
| 0373511620
| 4.09
| 394
| Jul 1984
| Oct 01, 2001
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liked it
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Heroine Deborah Farley is an old-fashioned trained nanny whose job surprisingly has not yet “been swallowed whole by the au pair girls,” as our RBE (R
Heroine Deborah Farley is an old-fashioned trained nanny whose job surprisingly has not yet “been swallowed whole by the au pair girls,” as our RBE (Rich British Economist—not a doctor!) notes upon meeting her. Our sandy-haired, green-eyed heroine doesn’t much like big, handsome, mocking Professor Gideon Beaufort when she meets him while working for his sister as a temporary nanny. But he does improve marginally on acquaintance—he’s a sophisticated widower with quite a lot of charm when he cares to display it, and he has his nicer side, particularly with kids. This one’s a BN “sensible marriage of convenience” story. (view spoiler)[Gideon has a 10 year old daughter, Eleanor, and the typical BN hero crappy relationship in his past (a young marriage to a cheating wife who left him after a year—his mother blatantly tells the heroine that she was glad when the ex-wife died in an accident a year later; don't piss off your MiL, Debby). Gideon’s sister is nice enough but laaazy and spoilt, pretty much foisting her responsibilities on anyone near enough to be foisted upon, so while Debby’s tenure includes a family vacation to Portugal, she’s pretty much stuck tending the kids all the time. Gideon makes sure that she gets time off and even spends the day with her, showing her the sights. He initially seems quite taken with our “plain Jane” Debby, who apparently can rock a bikini, and they become friendly. His daughter falls in love with Debby as the perfect young potential stepmom, so before long, Gideon proposes the patented Betty Neels marriage of convenience (largely his convenience). Our 23 year old heroine wisely refuses this most depressing and unromantic proposal ever (even for BN) but he doesn’t give up easily. He asks again once they’re back in England, and she again is hardly overwhelmed by the offer: “I cannot think,” said Deborah in a carefully matter-of-fact voice, “why you wish to marry me?” “I didn’t make myself clear? Eleanor needs a mother and you fit the bill, and the only way to bring that about is to marry you, isn’t it? We shall get on very well together—you’re hardly the sentimental type, are you? And I’m not in the least in love with you, although I like you well enough to want to marry you. But it will be a marriage without the romance—I hope I make myself clear?” “Oh very,” said Deborah in a smouldering voice. “I wonder if there’s a girl in this world who has received a proposal—” “A second proposal,” he reminded her. “A proposal,” she continued taking no notice, “so very candid and business like. I doubt it. “She started to walk on again." And the answer is no. And again our Johnny Bravo of a heroine, sufficiently young and quiet and sensible to “fit the suit” so to speak, turns him down despite his good looks, wealth, and gorgeous old red bricked country home with everything so dear to a country-girl BN heroine. Not to mention pots of money and even, perhaps, a hint about the possibility of future babies.... But Debby rightly says hell no to as unromantic and self-serving a marriage proposal as any BN heroine has ever received. But Gideon is charming and determined, and before long, our unworldly heroine’s defenses are stormed: She stood at the porch watching him get into the car and fought a fierce desire to nip into the seat beside him. She wanted to go with him, more—she wanted to stay with him. She never wanted to let him out of her sight again, and if this was love, it was simply terrible. . . . One thing she knew: she would marry him. It would be difficult but not impossible to be the kind of wife he wanted, and surely she could be happy even if she did have to hide her love? So she decides to let him know, as she’d promised she would, that she has changed her mind. Her parents’ reactions (they have met him twice): Father wants to know why she has to tell him in person and can’t just call. Mother says he’s a good deal older, but since he’s so VERY good looking and has nice manners, it should be okay. Well, alrighty! (To be fair, mom points out they haven’t known each other long but is a believer in love at first sight; Dad does ask, showing concern, if she’ll be happy—and silly Debby reassures him that she will be.) Debby heads off to let Gideon know she’s changed her mind. He asks why she’s come around and she reminds him that he’d said he wouldn’t ask her that, and he backs off on requiring an explanation. She does tell him that it’s not because he’s rich—she’d marry him if he were poor too, which seems to me a dead giveaway but he lets it pass. And so begins one of the saddest engagements ever, even for Betty—Debby is a little excited but trying hard to hide it, agreeing that there’s no need for white satin (but she wants a church wedding); Gideon is bored by it all, really: having got things all his own way, he didn’t notice [that Debby was distracted throughout lunch], not because he was excited but because he wasn’t all that interested. He had obtained his objective; Deborah would make an excellent surrogate mother for Eleanor, run his house with no fuss, be capable of dealing with any small crisis which might arise during his absence from home, and be a pleasant companion without being tiresomely starry eyed. He made a mental note to get her a ring and studied her across the table. A nice little thing, no beauty but a good hairdresser could do things to that sandy hair and she had lovely eyes….He went back to his study after lunch and became immersed in his work and didn’t think of her once. Ah, romance! He does seem to like to kiss her though—there are quite a few kisses in this one, so maybe Betty was aware she hadn't really sold the romance (and even the coldest and most gunshy BN heroes usually show love through their actions if not words—not so much with Gideon). But Debby has hope, believing in miracles and proximity and the power of fashion. Familiar ground for Betty, and what comes next is as well: a very quiet wedding to start (wearing a dress the color of “clotted cream,” a BN heroine fave), and at least her new stepdaughter tells her she’s beautiful. The hero is satisfied with his convenient and supposedly sensible bride, and has progressed to thinking that although she has “no looks…there was something about her that caught the eye.” After the wedding, we’re off for Holland, where the bride mostly hangs out with her stepdaughter while the hero busies himself with a conference. No confusion of priorities here! Most of the planned activities (a puppet show! Ice skating!) are for his daughter’s benefit. They have a nice suite in a luxury hotel in The Hague, with daughter Eleanor’s room separating their very separate bedrooms. Gideon’s opinion seem to be improving though: he tells Debby she looks pretty. They dine and dance, and Debby’s bustin’ a move, and Gideon asks if she has danced “for one of those TV dance groups” on her days off nannying, heee. But despite their mutual pleasure in dancing, it’s not exactly the kind of honeymoon a girl dreams about, and Debby sheds a couple of tears. We get a nice travelogue of Den Haag, eat some pannekoeken, and shop until we drop. (Soon we will discover that Debby’s TRUEST love and secret weapon is shopping.) Debby does her best to match Gideon’s cool and friendly manner, which of course piques his interest, so he’s soon kissing her again. For a BN hero, this guy swoops in with the hard kisses pretty often, but he’s hot and (mostly) cold like most of BN’s heroes. But a little more progress is made—our hero isn’t so easily able to instantly dismiss Debby from his thoughts; now he’s thinking she’s a “graceful girl” and will be a “knockout” with a little more confidence and poise (and clothes). Enter Lady Barbara Inge, recently divorced and returned from America. Debby finds out about her from Eleanor when Gideon calls from London to say he won’t be home until late because he’s dining with “old friends.” When he drives Debby into London a day or so later so she can shop (!) for an upcoming weekend house party at their home, she coolly makes him aware that not only does she know about his “old friends,” but that she couldn’t care less. Inside, though, she’s furious and upset, and using her superpower of shopping as a weapon, spends the day at Harrods amassing a wardrobe of mass destruction. She runs into Gideon and his “old friend” later and completely blows them off with smiles and a cheery announcement that she has a train to catch. Up to this point, I was getting a little impatient with Debby for putting up with Gideon’s treatment—keeping her into a convenient box (labelled “au pair,” ironically) and at arms-length, except when he occasionally notices she’s getting prettier by the day and swoops in for a kiss. But Debby is in full battle mode now, and while her weapons may be low cut dresses and new hair styles, they’re working. She’s a huge hit with his friends at his house party—and she does NOTHING to deter Lady Barbara Inge from monopolizing him. Indeed, she forces them together at every opportunity, while his friends flock around her, since she’s an engaging hostess and a delightful listener. Gideon is soon looking bored—and a little jealous at his male friends’ obvious admiration of his new wife. But he’s no fool and remarks on her “low cunning and guile,” hee. Debby continues to dress to kill; Gideon continues to kind of be a jerk; and Debby starts to think that maybe her hope that love will conquer all is overly optimistic. Gideon is away a lot of the time being a world-class economist (so dull, Betty!). Debby plays mistress of the manor and perfect stepmom and dogmom, but gets progressively unhappier and less able to keep up a cool façade. She gets lost walking the dogs one freezing night, and Gideon comes back from London to search for her (although he does make time to see “the minister,” who Betty hints is Margaret Thatcher I think, but still—your wife is missing and you’ll take the extra hour for a meeting, PM notwithstanding? Dude.) He’s angry and not super comforting when he finds her (and she's furious when he tells her "For God's sake, don't start snivelling" and is NOT nice at all ("He had behaved abominably; the hero in a romantic novel would have wrapped her in his sheepskin jacket and carried her all the way home, breathing easily too"--hahahah!). But once he gets her home does load her up with brandy and sherry and wine at dinner, and when she passes out, he shows he does love her by leaving a big glass of water next to the bed for when she wakes up hung over! That's kindness! More misunderstandings and angsty conflict follows, with Gideon purposely trying to break down Debby’s barriers (I guess?) by letting her think there’s more to his friendship with Lady Barbara Inge than there is and goading her and generally being a jerk. So Debby finally breaks down and confesses her love first, which pissed me right off, and then he admits he’s been in love (hmmm) with her for a long time, maybe even before her transformation via salons and designer clothing, and I am not necessarily buying it. But this is Betty, so if she’s says HEA, who am I to argue? (hide spoiler)] The usual elements were all there—nice descriptions of historic homes, fabulous food, questionable fashion choices; travelogues of Holland; etc.—but it never felt fully fledged. Debby, despite a few good moments, was just a little too long-suffering; Gideon was just a little too opaquely cool and mocking and not particularly nice or woo-ey most of the time. Some decent angst and an asshat hero for my collection. Hero drives a vintage Bentley that the heroine thinks is probably worth it’s weight in gold. Since this book is from 1984, we’ll assume a good 20 years before (1964 Bentley S3 6.2L): [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 05, 2021
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Jan 05, 2021
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Jan 05, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0373110979
| 9780373110971
| 0373110979
| unknown
| 3.32
| 209
| 1987
| Aug 1988
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it was ok
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Alas, my honeymoon with Sara Craven is over. After three good ones, this book (pfffttt), featuring a mousey (but incredibly sexy, once she gets a What
Alas, my honeymoon with Sara Craven is over. After three good ones, this book (pfffttt), featuring a mousey (but incredibly sexy, once she gets a What Not to Wear style makeover) poor relation in love with her cousin’s macho Brazilian fiancé, started off promising but then completely failed to deliver, mainly because of the idiotic, childish, selfish heroine. We’ve seen this setup plenty of times—Violet Winspear goes full OTT wrecki-drama in Child of Judas by having the poor-relation cousin pull a bold and insane substitute-bride switcharoo at the altar (with punishing results); Betty Neels has the mousey sister deliver the jilting letter and suggest an MoC (with lovelorn results) in the The Hasty Marriage; The Devil’s Bride by Margaret Pargeter has jilted and blind JERK fiancé force the imposter cousin into an MoC with benefits (with punishing results again)… just to name a few. We are on well-trodden terrain here but it usually delivers, so I was off to a happy start. This is one of my favorite tropes--so how did SC screw it up so badly? In this case, the heroine completely ruined it for me. Most of SC’s heroines, in the books I’ve read, seem to have nitwit tendencies but Abigail is not just a total nitwit , she’s completely self centered and obsessed with the supposed hurt the hero inflicts--because she thinks he doesn't wuv her. The thing is, he is clearly besotted from almost the beginning and despite some alphahole tendencies and vintage behavior, is actually a nice guy most of the time, when he’s not being jealous because of her “friendship” with the douchey American manager of the neighboring Brazilian cocoa farm or being driven crazy by her hot-and-cold behavior towards him. I felt bad for Vasco (although SC shows him in a bad light when he insists on sex, perfunctory and unsatisfying, with his wife a few times, so there’s that). He would have been better off with the heroine’s horrible cousin—who was still a better bet than Abigail ended up being. He even would have been better off with his neighbor, who was known as The Black Widow. And the Big Misunderstanding at the center of their conflict was stupid--literally, one completed sentence on either side would have cleared things up. Weak. Not only is the heroine a complete brat who focuses incessantly on her supposed woes (mainly that the hero doesn’t love her as she “loves” him), she also keeps vital information from him (about a plant fungus that is potentially devastating to his crops and does indeed wreak near-ruin on his property. She's vapid, stupid, horrid, insipid, and probably a whole bunch of other negative words ending in "id" that I can't think of (oh, and completely id-driven, so that works). She ruined the book for me, despite a hot Latin hero, some interesting information about Brazilian cocoa farms and the many dangers that face them, an exotic locale, and some decent occasional heat. After a handful of SC books that I enjoyed, this one was a dud. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 24, 2020
not set
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Dec 26, 2020
not set
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Dec 26, 2020
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0373111436
| 9780373111435
| 0373111436
| unknown
| 3.39
| 132
| 1988
| Feb 1989
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it was amazing
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Sara Craven does Caribbean Gothic (it's a thing!), with pirate ghosts, stalkeriffic crazy ladies with slashing scissors, an innocent heroine coerced i
Sara Craven does Caribbean Gothic (it's a thing!), with pirate ghosts, stalkeriffic crazy ladies with slashing scissors, an innocent heroine coerced into an MoC with a piratical descendent of El Diable with a penchant for spanking (so, typical SC), the most unlikely custody battle ever, a rebellious and resentful stepdaughter, a beautiful housekeeper who may or may not be (1) Mrs. Danversing the heroine and (2) possibly the hero's mistress... shall I go on? Because there is more: punishing kisses, forced almost-seduction, unforced almost-seduction, instalove, a smitten hero behaving badly, drinks thrown in faces, skinny dipping, lots of advance-retreat seduction scenes, more stepchild antics (fake drowning! Ghost messages in mirrors!), hurt feelings, misunderstandings, some angry angst. And throughout all of this, our teenaged heroine somehow mostly keeps her cools and deals, for the most part, practically and sensibly with all the OTT drama! Wow, this was a lot of fun, I have to say--ludicrous, old-skool, no holds barred. Somehow SC managed to make this funny, dramatic, suspenseful, and pretty hot all in one 187 page package. Quite a feat! Boogenhausen thoroughly and amusingly recaps the entire thing, so read her review for more deets--or just plunge on in, like our intrepid heroine does. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Dec 23, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0373511930
| 9780373511938
| 0373511930
| 4.12
| 419
| 1972
| May 2002
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really liked it
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A BN “heroine in love with OM” tale that basically flips the premise of one of my absolute faves, The Hasty Marriage: in Uncertain Summer (from 1972),
A BN “heroine in love with OM” tale that basically flips the premise of one of my absolute faves, The Hasty Marriage: in Uncertain Summer (from 1972), it’s the heroine who’s in love with the hero’s unworthy relative (a cousin) and the hero who proposes an MoC when that ill-advised "relationship" crashes and burns. THM is far more angsty (because we really feel Laura’s unhappiness through the heroine-only PoV) but US provides its own emotional ride with a far nicer hero and a heroine who manages to be likable despite her initial self-delusion and confusion. (view spoiler)[Serena Potts is not the first BN heroine to think herself in love with a cad but she’s possibly the most impetuous and foolish about it: quitting her job and heading off to Holland on the basis of some vague hints that marriage may be in the offing. “Be your age, ducky,” her best friend warns her—clearly, Laurens van Amstel is no romantic hero, just a selfish and spoiled young man out for some lighthearted flirtation and fun, with no moral compass. We certainly know: it’s his bad driving (could a flag be more red in a BN book?) that brings him to Serena’s hospital, where he temporarily enchants her with his smooth talk and his bright blue eyes. Alas, there will be little serenity for Serena in the course of this book. Laurens is quite a different kettle of fish than his massive, placid-seeming, handsome RDD cousin, Gijs van Amstel. Our hero Gijs, instantly smitten by Serena’s dark “gipsy” beauty, can plainly see the heartbreak and disillusion coming for Serena at the hands of his feckless cousin. He does his best to mitigate the hurt where he can but he’s got skin in the game too. So he waits patiently to pick up the pieces. Serena is dazzled and confused—the latter, particularly, since her inner voice keeps whispering all the ways in which Gijs is so much more admirable, likable, and fanciable than his cousin. As we know from many another BN book, there is a huge difference between love and infatuation, and Serena has puffed Laurens up in her romantic imagination to be something he’s not. She’s also, unwillingly and unacknowledged, falling in love—true love—with Gijs, whom she’d barely allowed herself to notice at first but who soon is intruding upon her Laurens-fantasy, making her unsettled and shy. Nonetheless, Serena is knocked for a loop when she discovers that Laurens-the-player has another girl lined up to (eventually) be his bride, and she’s been a fool. By that time, Serena has at least admitted to herself that she really really likes Gijs, more than anyone, even Laurens, so although she’s still shocked and hurt by Laurens’ callousness, she doesn’t dismiss Gijs offer of an MoC outright. In an unusually blunt manner, our RDD tells her he’d like to marry her for companionship and mutual convenience—“someone to share my table, but, not, I hasten to add, my bed” (whew! My imagination makes this hot stuff somehow. :-D). He proposes a marriage that will be “friendly and businesslike, at least until such time as you—we—should have got to know each other really well.” He believes in marriage for life, he says, but in their case, they’ll see how it goes. But we know, through the many “tells” that Betty gives us despite no hero PoV, that Gijs is in love with Serena and hopeful that she’ll fall in love with him once the path is clear. Serena is increasingly drawn to and reliant on Gijs, while her feelings for Laurens are fading quickly, but she doesn’t want to see herself as being so fickle as to discard her “love” for Laurens so quickly, even though Gijs has become so much more important to her. Gijs takes her to stay with his parents, who are wonderfully welcoming (unlike Laurens’ mother) and very understanding. Gijs takes her back to England (where they visit a happily married Hugo and Sarah from Fate Is Remarkable and their one-year-old twins). The next day, Gijs drives Serena home and we discover that he has allies in her parents—her mother, in particular, seems to have been taken into Gijs confidence and knows that he’s in love with her daughter. When Serena realizes that if Gijs leaves without an answer to his proposal, she’ll likely never see him again, she accepts his offer, almost in a panic. He tells her they’ll have a traditional white wedding (with just a month to plan it—these RDDs and their rushed nuptials!). Serena drifts along in a new dream, not willing to examine too closely why she’s disappointed by Gijs’ friendly, unloverlike treatment of her. “The weekend was a dream in which Serena knew herself to be living, and like all dreams, nothing that she or anyone else said or did seemed in the least strange, which was probably why, when Gijs left to return to Holland on Sunday evening, she kissed him goodbye with a fervor which, while entirely to be expected in a loving bride-to-be, was hardly called for in her case.” Hee—listen to your heart, Serena! She writes him regularly, and he calls most evenings, and she’s mopey when he doesn’t. Wedding fever! Within three weeks, Serena pulls off an orange-blossom-and-cream-silk-dress ceremony (which I guess is a little easier when your father is a clergyman). She’s happy, feeling a “faint warm glow in place of the stony misery she’d been carrying around with her…she felt the beginning of happiness.” He gives her pearls as a wedding gift, and when she says he hasn’t thanked him properly for them yet, he pulls the car over and tells her, by all means, thank him properly...between friends of course. Her kiss is carefully demure, but he takes over and shows her how it’s done, but then disconcerts her by treating it casually and lightly. They return to Holland, where she is initially happy but still uncertain as to what she feels for Gijs and what he feels for her. She tells him she’ll be a good wife—including being “loyal in her thoughts”—and he asks if she really knows what kind of wife he wants, but agrees that friendship is a sound basis for marriage. We know that he means for now. He lays on the gifts: a basset hound puppy. A new car! Gijs is the RDD version of The Price Is Right and Serena has won the Showcase! Gijs also invites his bride to come with him on his rounds and to assist him in his medical practice—I love when BN heroes and heroines (rarely) continue to work together in some capacity after their MoC; we see it in Fate Is Remarkable as well. Serena is also busy learning Dutch, managing our RDD’s large historic home, and learning to be a good hostess (a not-always-seamless process, as our RDD finds out when he comes home to temper and tears over a broken Charlotte Russe and puppy piddles, and a stressed-out Serena, whom he soon has laughing). For Serena’s inaugural dinner: the Galloping Gourmet’s Gurkas Norge followed by the Potts’ family recipe for seafood in white wine and brandy (BN’s books would make a good basis for a recipe book!) Gijs gives her yet more gifts : ruby earrings, bracelet and matching brooch—family heirlooms, of course, (but he doesn’t ruin it, as certain RDDs have before him—looking at you, Reilof, and you too, Litrik, and you as well, I believe, Radinck--by saying that he can hardly take credit for giving them to her since it’s just something all RDD wives inherit, pfffttt. Gijs is one of Betty’s nicer RDDs.) The party is a success, and Gijs makes his admiration of her plain, but she realizes that despite her list of things to be grateful for—“a good looking husband who was goodness itself and kind too, and they were great friends…a lovely home and more money than she knew what to do with—and Gus, and the rubies”—despite all that, she is not content. Laurens is expected at the party, and Gijs reminds her that he is there to support her—he knows how painful it will be, requiring courage and pride. But Serena realizes that “Laurens, in some mysterious way, had faded.” Nonetheless, it’s a shock when she sees him arrive at the party; she’d been dreading it, but Gijs presence and casual conversation steady her, and later she can only think about how Gijs called her “darling” for the first time and how she was compelled to whisper to him that “I didn’t really see him, Gijs—it didn’t matter—it wasn’t the same.” She helps him out at his practice a few days later, Laurens returns now that his leg is healed. Laurens is spiteful and makes some crack about “old Gijs” and Serena is contemptuous and angry, telling him that Gijs is worth 100 of him. She’s astonished at her own outburst, and Laurens is surprised to find that his former doormat has a temper and a sharp tongue. When he gets snappy with her later, Gijs steps in with that casually threatening RDD manner and Laurens hastily apologizes. That night, Gijs gets called out in the middle of the night, and Serena falls asleep waiting for him. She makes him tea when he returns, and has her Dawning Realization that she loves him as the morning sun highlights his weary face: “the face of the man she loved.” But she thinks it’s the last thing he wants under the terms of their arrangement, so sadness and secrecy ensue…. Gijs seems to realize that something has changed but he reacts by being more remote and reserved—biding his time and awaiting events. We have the usual “working together/saving people” scene in which they rescue children trapped when a floor collapses, but it doesn’t really draw them closer in the way that Serena is longing for by this point. She even more upset and disconcerted when he mentions that Laurens’ horrible mother, Tante Emilie, would like Serena to go visit her for coffee—Gijs had a note from his “old friend,” Adriana, whom Laurens is supposed to be marrying and who Serena thinks was once Gijs’s girlfriend, and Gijs had gone to see Adriana at Tante Emilie’s the night before, he tells her. She’s thinking quite jealous and “savage” thoughts about Adriana and upcoming social outings where Gijs will be the perfect husband on the surface but treat her with casual friendliness once they’re on their own, and Serena is seesawing back and forth between the heights and depths of her secret (and she thinks unwanted) love. Gijs asks if she wants to know why he went to see Adriana, and she says that she’s pretty sure she has guessed why (she is completely off base, thinking he’s going to tell her he’s in love with Adriana and wants to end their MoC). Emotional math is never a BN heroine strength! She works herself into muddled misery and is contemplating fleeing home to England, leaving the field clear for Gijs and his supposed love. She agrees to go see Tante Emilie (why?), and that awful lady tells her that Laurens is going to America—and, oh, by the way, Gijs is in love with Adriana, always has been, but of course his marriage to Serena now stands in his way. Serena is scared to ask Gijs directly what he feels but finally asks if he was ever in love with Adriana. He responds by asking who wouldn’t be in love with such a pretty creature at some point in his life. Wrong answer, Gijs, even if true! She asks if he’s still in love with her, and he avoids a direct answer, and she asks if he tried to convince Adriana to change her mind about going to America with Laurens. He admits he did. He offers again to tell her why and she again says she knows why, and they’re interrupted by Laurens, who says he stopped by to let Gijs know that Adriana wants him to stop by again. “I’ve had to stand down for Gijs, you know” Laurens tells her, lightly. She resolves to talk to Gijs when he returns—and then he doesn’t. Gijs asks the next day if she’d like to go to England, and she misunderstands but agrees quietly that she would. Gijs is busy with work but seems to understand that something is very wrong—he tries to talk to her to clear things up, but she thinks he is telling her he wants to end their MoC and resolves to go to England and set him free. She gets the number for the van Elvens—she and Sarah hit it off and I think Serena knows that Sarah, having been in a similar situation, will provide shelter and comfort while she gets her life together. Gijs is bright eyed and casual later when he tells her that he got a call at the hospital and will need to leave the next morning for “a meeting” that he knows will be a success. I’m not sure why he doesn’t just clear things up at that point but it wouldn’t be a BN novel without a lovelorn heroine flight back to England (Caroline at least had the sense to just fake her disappearance and hide out at home, hee). Serena arrives in London tired, sad, and uncertain as to what she is going to tell Sarah, but there’s no need to worry about that: Gijs is there waiting for her. Hugo and Sarah leave them alone, and when she asks why Gijs is there, he asks in return where else would he be but where his “dearest heart” is. Sarah had called him, he tells her—and then reminds her of Hugo and Sarah’s backstory and says that Sarah didn’t want it to take as long for Gijs to find her as it took for Hugo to find Sarah when she did her similar flit. Hee. He confesses that Sarah knew that he was in love with Serena—as do her parents. “But you didn’t tell me,” she says, and he says that she didn’t want to know—“You had to empty [your head of Laurens]…and just when I was beginning to think you had discovered that it was I and not Laurens you loved you chose to stuff your head with a great deal of nonsense which, most unfortunately, made sense.” It was like unravelling wool… Serena thinks, but the explanations add up to a better romantic total, and our mutual avowals of love and an HEA are not long in following. “How nice,” he observed slowly, “that we don’t have to get married, and how equally nice that we can go home together.” Hugo’s honeymoon cabin in the Highlands looms large in their near future, and I have fun plotting out fan-fic for what happens once they arrive. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Nov 30, 2020
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 2.74
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liked it
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not set
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Oct 08, 2021
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| 4.18
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liked it
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not set
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Sep 27, 2021
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| 3.87
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liked it
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not set
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Aug 25, 2021
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| 2.83
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really liked it
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not set
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Aug 22, 2021
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| 4.02
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liked it
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not set
not set
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Jul 09, 2021
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| 4.14
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really liked it
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not set
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May 27, 2021
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| 4.04
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liked it
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not set
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May 19, 2021
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| 4.21
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really liked it
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not set
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May 12, 2021
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| 3.19
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liked it
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not set
not set
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May 11, 2021
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| 4.11
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liked it
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not set
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May 08, 2021
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| 2.73
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liked it
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not set
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Mar 21, 2021
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| 2.80
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liked it
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not set
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Mar 19, 2021
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| 4.08
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liked it
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not set
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Feb 21, 2021
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| 4.10
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liked it
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not set
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Feb 09, 2021
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| 4.10
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really liked it
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not set
not set
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Feb 03, 2021
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| 3.57
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really liked it
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not set
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Jan 21, 2021
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| 4.09
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liked it
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Jan 05, 2021
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Jan 05, 2021
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| 3.32
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it was ok
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Dec 26, 2020
not set
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Dec 26, 2020
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| 3.39
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it was amazing
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not set
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Dec 23, 2020
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| 4.12
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really liked it
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not set
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Nov 30, 2020
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