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| 1854961926
| 9781854961921
| 1854961926
| 3.13
| 23
| 1953
| Nov 01, 1988
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liked it
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Entertaining vintage (1953) tale chock full of drama, intrigue, and glamour (which one character notes as being almost "pre-war and pre-austerity") in
Entertaining vintage (1953) tale chock full of drama, intrigue, and glamour (which one character notes as being almost "pre-war and pre-austerity") in the bottled world of a luxury cruise ship. If one could contract ailments from reading, I would have been, by the end of this story, a raging alcoholic (the drinking!) with lung cancer from all the second hand smoke (this should have been called The Captain's Ashtray; the number of cigs lit during the course of the story is truly mind-boggling). The primary romance is between our "strong, silent type" war-hero Captain and our poor misjudged heroine (a ski champion, with a gold medal from the 1952 Oslo Olympics), with a Great, Big Misunderstanding--and the Captain's distrust and judgmental refusal to believe the heroine--keeping them apart despite the almost-instalove they both succumb to. A secondary romance between the the ship's head surgeon and the heroine's cabin-mate, a chain-smoking, couture-wearing doctor of pathology, develops somewhat out of nowhere (and how I love that this 1950s romance has an Olympian and a doctor as the female leads!). Never a dull moments: There are plenty of love triangles, melodramatic deaths (suicidal mountain climbing! TB! crushed by cargo! oil tanker explosion casualties, because why not up the body count!), a few amputations, aforementioned oil tanker explosion/daring rescue at sea, accidental overdose, and nefarious gossip mongering to keep the action moving. Not to mention ring tennis, fancy dress balls, exotic ports where our cruisegoers can air their casual racism, ship's doctors who dispense sleeping pills and phenobarbital with nonchalance, and cocktails, S0. Many. Cocktails! This "slow boat to China" (well, Hong Kong, which in 1953 was still under British sovereignty, I believe) tale was a fun blast from the past if you can get past certain anachronisms. Naksed has the details in her review. ...more |
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Mar 10, 2024
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Audio Cassette
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| 0373811152
| 9780373811151
| 0373811152
| 4.25
| 483
| Jan 1972
| Aug 2005
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really liked it
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Published in 1972, WwtC shows Betty truly hitting her stride, with almost a dozen books under her belt and only a few years since her retirement from
Published in 1972, WwtC shows Betty truly hitting her stride, with almost a dozen books under her belt and only a few years since her retirement from a 30-year nursing career. Wish is full of hospital details, portrayed with confidence and humor, from the interesting details of a surgical nurse’s day (our heroine is a surgical ward sister) to the amusing camaraderie that exists in such a setting, with nicknames and team member foibles. (The book's original cover plays up the "medical romance" aspect for sure: [image] Thanks, Iris, for identifying Emile La Liberté as the cover artist!) This book is lighter than many of Betty’s books, with a hero who seems younger (despite his 40 years) than some of Betty’s more placid heroes and clearly smitten from almost the start; a heroine who is typical of Betty’s hardworking, self-effacing young ladies (with her peevish moments—not unusual and quite understandable in the face of hero inscrutability); and minimal angst that largely stems from the heroine’s lack of self confidence in her own attractions. Wish is Betty at her most charming and confident, I think, with a nice mix of idealized English village life and the grit and reality of hospital work, delivered with charm and providing nice quick personality sketches of the people with whom the heroine works—including well-drawn characters like Senior Ward Sister Mad Minnie, notorious for her ill temper and dislike of new-fangled changes to hospital work and decorum, and the ironically named “Little Willy,” who is the love interest in the secondary romance involving the heroine’s younger sister. We have not one but two trips/travelogues to The Netherlands as well—at the beginning, where the heroine runs her clunker into the hero’s fabulous Rolls (incensed when he detangles their bumpers by kicking hers off) and at the end, when he invites her and her sister to stay at his Family Manse (with plans to pop the question to the heroine...alas, plans go awry, briefly). While the elements are familiar, Betty keeps this one fairly low angst (and makes up for it in her next book, the very angsty Saturday’s Child, one of my favorites). Both the Big Mis (brought about by a secondary character’s deliberate muddying of waters) and the primary impediment to our MCs love—the heroine’s lack of self-confidence on a personal level—are pretty believable and handled deftly. For once, our heroine has a nice family—a lovely mum who hits it off with the hero immediately and a loving younger sister who is a little exasperated by her big sister’s denseness about the hero’s interest in her (readers, no doubt, can sympathize). Overall, it’s familiar, ever-popular territory from TGB, with a kind and capable heroine who may be a less-vivid version (in her own mind, anyway) of her pretty, vivacious younger sister but whose inner goodness and rather old-fashioned charm make her the perfect match for our RDD, Justin, himself committed to serving others, meeting the obligations of a historic home and family, and waiting for his one true love to show up (which, thanks to fate, she does). Our hero has a pretty tragic backstory for a BN hero, having lost both parents only 10 or so years prior to the story’s start and his siblings when he was a child (to the resistance movement against the Germans). He has an aunt and cousin (not quite an OW although the aunt succeeds in setting her up as such) living with him, but the pleasure he gains in spending time with the heroine’s family and his clear resolve to marry our heroine and start a family of his own shine clearly. Similar to many other BN heroines, Emma Hastings, is herself no stranger to sacrifice. After her physician father’s death, she and her mother and siblings (including a brother who is mentioned once but whom we never see) moved to a smaller, but still quaint, cottage in their village. The heroine put aside her wish to go to medical school and instead trained for nursing, so that she could help support her family. At 27, she is a capable and well-respected surgical nurse at a big London hospital, helping to put her younger sister through medical school. She and her mother are on a budget trip to Holland in the heroine’s old car when they literally run into our big, handsome, red-haired hero, Justin Teylingen, because Emma was driving on the wrong side of the road. She’s attracted from the start, and so is he, but it seems unlikely they’ll meet again after they see him again at a musical performance he enables them (secretly) to attend. But this is Betty’s world, where Fate so often takes a hand, and seasoned BN voyagers will not be surprised to find the hero turning up at the heroine’s London hospital shortly after Emma’s return home. Justin is there to teach some new methods in surgery, and what follows is a warm and adept portrayal of the camaraderie that a skilled and dedicated team achieves together and a slow-burn love story that unfolds in leisurely but enjoyable fashion. Outside of working hours, Justin is clearly in pursuit of Emma and pretty transparent about it for a BN hero too—although Emma is singularly dense in believing Justin can’t possibly be interested in HER, so muted in comparison to her pretty, vibrant, doctor-in-training sister. But sister Kitty clearly sees Justin as perfect for big sister Emma—and anyway, she has her sights set on Emma’s colleague Will, so there’s never any doubt on our part that she’s not interested in the hero. A nice change from awful sisters like the one in The Hasty Marriage, for sure! Justin’s pursuit is leisurely but determined, and although it takes a while for Emma to catch up, and with a black moment to derail progress briefly, for the most part this is one of Betty’s sweeter tales, with a swoon-worthy hero who is free with his smiles and compliments and clear interest, a heroine who gets a little pettish now and then but overall is likable and a good person to have in your quarter (and quite a contender with a billiards cue), and the everyday, grounded "working together" details of hospital life to balance the romance. The story unfolds with a slow (maybe too slow for some modern readers) but steady pace and was, for me, a real pleasure. For those who don’t like Betty’s more high-handed, often icy heroes, this is a good one in which to indulge yourself with her old-fashioned charm and romance. Although it’s not a Christmas romance (and doesn’t even feature a Christmas scene, unlike many of Betty’s books), it’s a lovely, warm story to read during the holidays, with all the comfort of idealized nostalgia and a certainty that good people get what’s due to them -- the elements that keep readers coming back to TGB time and again. Betty car porn: Hero drives a Rolls Royce Corniche Convertible, which the heroine has crashed into as the story begins: [image] Emma’s elderly Ford Popular comes off much worse in the collision. These were produced from 1959 to 1962, so Emma’s would be at least 10 year’s old (which makes sense in light of the details in the story): [image] For all her fierce loyalty to her beat-up car, she dreams of having something “low and sporting—a Sprite perhaps.” This low-cost roadster was last produced in 1971 by Austin Healey; just shy of 23,000 were produced. A “cousin” to the ever-popular MG Midget, “The Sprite was a popular vehicle because it was small, sporty, and very economical, with the original versions costing about $2000. They were easy to maintain and had superb handling. Though zero-to-sixty took about 21 seconds and top speed was just under 80 mph, this was respectable for a 1960's vehicle.” [Conceptcarz.com] Perhaps she gets one after her marriage to Justin! [image] Little Willy drives an Austin Cooper (possibly the Mark III Mini, produced from 1969-1976): [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Dec 14, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0373020953
| 9780373020959
| 0373020953
| 4.05
| 378
| 1977
| Aug 1977
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really liked it
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If I’d read A Matter of Chance a few years back, I likely would have paid little attention to the central event that drives much of the story: a flu e
If I’d read A Matter of Chance a few years back, I likely would have paid little attention to the central event that drives much of the story: a flu epidemic. Given the current pandemic, it was interesting to see how Betty’s nursing experience allowed her to frame much of the disruption and tragedy we’re now seeing for ourselves: the heroine’s parents have recently died from the flu, driving her to make a drastic change in her life that leads her to The Netherlands and our hero, where we see through her eyes the stresses upon the health care system, with doctor and nurse shortages, overworked and exhausted health care professionals, and the increasing urgency of the situation. No wonder she and the hero are at such odds throughout the story, as tired and beset as they are by outside forces! This is one of Betty’s snappy, spatty stories, with our MCs bickering and misunderstanding each other throughout the story, despite their immediate attraction and the realization, on the hero’s part anyway, that Fate has stepped in and brought two soulmates, however unwilling, together. Once again, Betty gives a fangirl nod to Jane Austen, not just in the heroine’s name (Cressida Bingley, although she bears no resemblance to the snooty, unpleasant Miss Bingley of Pride and Prejudice), but in the title, derived from a P&P quote: “Happiness in marriage is a matter of chance….” Our Rich Dutch Doctor, Giles van der Teile, disagrees most heartily with that assessment; for him, sure that he has found the woman he is meant to marry, all that remains is for them to get to know one another better and for Cressida to catch up with his certainty that they are meant to be together. Full spoilage ahead:(view spoiler)[After their first meeting in Amsterdam, where he comes to Cressida’s aid when she’s lost (and don't believe that David Craig cover, where they're all smiles about it), and she fires up at him, sick of being hit on by strangers, and he reacts in typically high-handed and mocking RDD fashion, he’s completely unsurprised to encounter her again when she begins working for his medical partner. “You look surprised,” he says, when she’s surprised by the coincidence. “But my dear girl, it was inevitable.” We know that Betty’s third wheel, Fate, is on hand, as she so often is. Giles knows he’s found the girl he intends to marry, but Cressida, uncertain she likes the good looking, arrogant doctor, has no idea. They strike sparks off one another. He calls her a touchy young woman, but he gives her a lot of cause. But he’s also perceptive and attuned to the fact that she is sad: “why is that?” She doesn’t want to tell him about her parents’ death quite yet, despite an “unexpected urge to tell him [that] took her by surprise…He didn’t even like her, and she was almost sure that she didn’t like him, with his easy self-assurance. She shook her head and said nothing at all, and after a moment he said quietly, “Ah well, you shall tell me some time—it’s good to talk about one’s sorrow. It eases it….” But he promises not to try to find out about her—he’ll wait for her to tell him herself. Betty’s reserved doctors are, as we know, private to the point of repression, and he allows her the same courtesy. Giles is an interesting example of a “peak” (at 1977, 8 years into her writing career and her 35th novel) Neels’ hero: he’s typically hot and cold (unlike her later more paternal, placid, and all-in heroes), got a fiery temper that he mostly keeps under icy control, and is mostly unrevealing about his feelings for the heroine. Cressy is more transparent, although with a temper to match his, and recovering from a great grief. Neels does a wonderful and understated job of letting us glimpse her evolution from a kind of frozen sorrow to a more accepting and open state. The warmth and friendship she received from the elderly doctors she works for and their kindly, motherly housekeeper (“Naaldtje,” as Giles affectionately calls her) help her to overcome her initial, closely held sorrow, but it’s probably our RDDs needling and insistence on getting her out and about that do the most good. He’s typically high handed about it: “I’ll be here at nine o’clock,” her informs her of their first outing together (to see his friends Harriet and Friso of Tempestuous April, who have long since concluded their own love-battles and are now blissfully happy together, raising three sons). “Where would you like to go?” “Go?” repeated Crissida…“Are you asking me out?” Hee. Annoyed at his arrogance, she stiffly declines, but he coaxes her into agreeing: “They have a baby and two toddlers and three dogs.” Cressida had to laugh. “Are those an inducement?” “Yes. I think you like babies and children and dogs. Am I right?” Despite their tendency to butt heads, they spend a delightful day together, visiting our friends from that earlier book (and Friso has mellowed, let me tell you)—and even the furry friends from that book make an appearance! Although she doesn’t find out much about Giles, as she had hoped to from Harry, Cressida finds that “just for a little while she felt happy and blissfully content; somehow her companion had, in a few hours, lightened her grief.” (Can I say again how wonderful Betty is at understated emotion and drama? God, I miss that!) Ah, but our amity doesn’t last long—before the day is over, our current tempestuous twosome are bickering, when she asks “artlessly” if he has far to go after dropping her off, and he reacts with typical RDD infuriating secrecy at her mild probing: “No great distance.” And that was all he said, and that in a cool voice which didn’t invite any more questions…he need not have sounded so snubbing. She fires up at him: “How convenient for you that I accepted your invitation, although now I come to think of it, you didn’t invite me—you took it for granted that I’d come.” She added sweetly, “Pray don’t expect that a second time.” “Who said anything about a second time?” he wanted to know silkily, and put his foot down hard, so that the Bentley shot forward at a pace to make her catch her breath….If it had been physically possible, she would have liked to box his ears for him.” Hee… it’s just the start. The day ends with them NOT dining together (“my fault,” he tells her without explanation), and while Cressy feels that “she had been dropped from a great height and had the breath knocked out of her,” her last thought before sleep is of the doctor’s “lonely back as he had walked away from her on the doorstep.” Ahhh, Betty. He’s her first thought the next morning too, and her muddled feelings make her throw herself into work on the book with her lovely, overworked boss, Dr. van Blom. She comes to wonder why he and his equally hard-pressed partner, Dr. Herrima, are not helped by their senior partner, Giles, and assumes that he, the eminent consultant, is “leading the well-ordered life of a top consultant, with only urgent cases disturbing his nights; junior doctors to do the spadework for him and almost certainly a nurse and secretary to help him in his consulting rooms.” We know this isn’t the case at ALL, for one of Betty’s dedicated and work-obsessed RDDs (and indeed it’s not: Giles is a silent partner who sought out the elderly doctors who helped his father during the German occupation and helped them to set up/expand their practice in gratitude). She makes the mistake of letting him know she thinks this, and it doesn’t improve the relations between them (and of course, he doesn’t set her straight because that’s not in the RDD code of reticence). Enter the added complication of the apparent OW, Monique de Vries. She’s not one of Betty’s skinny horrors—she’s actually quite nice to our heroine and, although Cressy makes assumptions, just a friend to Giles, who had been asked by his best friend, her late husband, to look out for her (and her fortune). Giles and Cressy part, once again, on less-than-friendly terms. Flu rears its ugly head, once again, and Drs. Van Blom and Herrima are stretched thin. Cressy helps them with nursing the sick and driving them to appointments. When Dr. van Blom comes down with flu, Cressy finally calls Giles behind their backs and asks him to help (quite upset that he hasn’t shown up earlier, unaware that he is dealing with his own crisis and impossible workload). She’s shocked to realize that he, too, is quite exhausted—but “he flicked her a mocking glance. ‘You see what a life of ease and idleness does to a man,’ he observed blandly.” The situation worsens when Dr. Herrima goes down with flu, too. But Cressy and Giles work together to handle the crisis, more and more exhausted and overtaxed, but drawing closer as a result. The epidemic at its height, they do their best to work out schedules and sneak in brief periods of sleep. Cressy is a trooper: “’I’m used to long hours,’ she tells him, ‘or at least I was until I left hospital.’” “Why,” he asks, and she finally opens up to him: “’My father was ill. He died, and my mother died a few days after him.’…Strangely, she felt better now she had told him, but it wouldn’t do to bore him with details….his voice was gentle and kind [as he said]: ‘it’s not right to lock one’s grief away as though it were something to be ashamed of. Sorrow is for sharing, and so is love…’” And we have our first kiss, bristly chin and all! Ah, but we’re still a long way from our ILYs and HEA; Cressy comes down with flu too, and when she recovers enough to regain her appetite and shakily sneak downstairs looking for food, she finds Monique wrapped in Giles arms with her head on his shoulder. She assumes the obvious, and has her Dawning Realization: “she wanted him to stay forever…It was, she told herself gloomily, the silliest time in which to discover that she loved him.” Recovered, she throws herself back into work, determined to finish the job as soon as possible. Giles shows up a few days later and invites her to dinner and to meet someone who would like to meet her. It’s his mother, who is in the hospital—a formidable lady who takes to our heroine immediately. “Of course Giles would not have told you that he was bringing you to see me,” she tells Cressida. “His mind is almost wholly occupied with other people’s chest [being a professor of respiratory ailments], you know, and he has no time for the niceties.” As we have seen! She spills a lot of beans to Cressy—including the fact that our busy and successful RDD, with a large private practice and consultancies and lectures at multiple hospitals, still has managed to open a clinic to serve the poor and underserved. RDDs HATE having their good works broadcast, and when Giles finds out what his mother’s been telling Cressy, he is clearly “in a cold rage” about it. When his mother bullies him into taking Cressy to see the clinic, Cressida naughtily “gave way to a desire to stoke his rage a little. How tiresome he was, and how she loved him. ‘I’ll not tell anyone,’ she assured him in kindly tones, and was rewarded by a glacial look.” Outmanned, he reluctantly takes her to the clinic, although he has a few things to say about it: “You are a scheming minx, Cressida…I don’t know how you managed to worm so much out of my mother, but you succeeded very well. It was—unworthy of you.” After all, he didn’t pry before she was ready to tell him about her parents’ deaths, and he’s doubtlessly feeling betrayed that she didn’t afford him the same courtesy. RDDs are private to the point of repression, until they choose to be otherwise! Cressy is not pushover though—she’s so mad that she tries to slide out of the Bentley at a stop and he hauls her back in. “I will not have dinner with you!” she rages, and not for the first time, a heroine bites off her nose to spite her face and goes to bed hungry (or would have, except that she later sneaks down for a snack once she’s back home and finds him still there—and we have our second kiss!). Giles once again shows up (“what have I done? Or haven’t done? Or said? Or haven’t said?” Hee.), taking her to visit his mama for a second time, where we learn that Giles has a fierce temper, like his father, “although he seldom allows it to show, but he can be—difficult at times… I expect he has annoyed you?” :-p She had her own RDD to deal with in Giles’ father: “…a doctor too, and a brilliant one; he was also a man of iron will, with a fierce temper…We were ideally happy, which is strange, because I am strong-willed too.” A blueprint for the future! We have a dramatic rescue scene, a la Betty, not long after: a car goes into a canal and Giles and Cressy (who can’t swim) work to rescue them. He takes her home to clean up and warm up afterward, where we meet his FRR, Beeker (I can only see the Muppet now, MEEP!) and faithful furry companion, Barker (and I can almost see Betty’s amusement at her own name choices). The next day, Giles shows up at Cressida’s work and asks her to marry him. He hasn’t said he loves her, and she thought he was planning to marry Monique, she tells him. He isn’t, he tells her “blandly,” and anyway, Monique is in Paris getting married that day—something he didn’t know until that morning, Cressy discovers. It’s a misunderstanding that will make up the remaining page count. Cressida reacts with rage and the assumption that he is asking her to marry him on the rebound. He’s equally angry at her assumption that he’d do something so low—but she has some valid points to make: “What else am I to think? I can hardly suppose that you love me—I may be a fool, but not such a fool as all that! Why, you don’t even like me, you get furious with me for no reason at all…the other night, in that beastly canal—you—you shouted at me because I fell in and you didn’t mind at all when I didn’t get any supper, and when you were here it was: Cressida, get up, Cressida, go to bed, Cressida, help in the surgery, Cressida, drive the Bentley… and now you are…” her voice rose with the strength of her feeling “asking me to marry you!” Hahaha—as BN heroine blow-ups go, that’s first rate! Giles backs off fast. “Now when he spoke, his voice was quite different; kind and gentle and understanding. ‘I’ve taken you by surprise, and you are quite right, I have never given you any reason to believe that I loved you, and now I have been clumsy…’” He won’t say what he intended to say for the time being—she should go back to England and think about it and make up her mind, but he wants to see her as much as possible until she goes—he thinks they might be very happy together. And we get our third kiss. And a fourth one, not so long after, “with fierce urgency”—pretty hot for Betty! There’s the familiar heroine flit back home, and the comfort of her wonderful Aunt Emily—that rarity: a kind heroine relative in Neelsland—but Cressida finds that, despite the tea and sympathy, she is haunted by Giles’ memory. Giles shows up a week later, but they fight again, and he takes goes back home. “Have you had a tiff with that nice-looking man who just plunged out the front door” asks Aunt Emily. Haha. In a turnaround, Cressida follows Giles back to Holland to clear things up. This might be a first! She goes to his house, Beeker (Meep!) tells her he’s giving a lecture at the hospital. She sneaks into the lecture hall, but uncertain afterward, tries to sidle out, only to have him pop out of a side door and gently haul her off into the Bentley. Back at the house, she’s ill at ease and uncertain of his feelings still, but he soon clears that up: “do you really suppose that I could stop loving you just because you flew into a rage?... I had to leave you, my darling, to make up your own mind once you discovered you trusted me as well as loved me. And that I loved you.” We get a long, lingering kiss, and there’s our HEA, folks. (hide spoiler)] A sweet and funny story, as only Betty can deliver, with old-fashioned warmth and sincerity and a belief in a kinder, gentler world that gets me every time. Betty car porn: The hero drives that RDD fave, a Bentley. Let's go with the T2 Continental, introduced in 1977 (and discontinued 4 years later). It featured "featured rack and pinion steering, improved air conditioning, rubber-faced bumpers, a new fascia and for Non USA Spec. cars a front air dam" (Wikipedia). [image] Our elderly doctors that the heroine works for drive (and so does she in the course of the book): Dr. van Blom's "splendidly kept dark blue Chevrolet": "They drove very slowly through the city...and she wondered if there was something aobut Dutch motoring laws that she didn't know--a twenty-mile speed limit in towns for instance, and yet everyone else was traveling twice as fast...he achieved a steady thirty, while cars flashed past at thrice that speed, and Cressida, who in happier times had driven her father's car rather well, longed to stretch out a neatly booted foot and slam in down on the accelerator, for it seemed to her a crying shame to own such a powerful car and not make use of it." Hahahah! Let's go with a '77 Chevy Caprice: [image] "Dr. Herrima runs a BMW. I do not know if you would feel competent to drive either of them?" Cressida thought of the snail like pace at which they had driven from Leeuwarden and replied soberly that she thought she would be capable of driving either of the cars." How about a '77 first-gen 3 series E21 model--"in 1977, a carburetted inline 6-cylinder engine replaced both the 320 and 320i models": [image] ...more |
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1
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Nov 29, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0373024576
| 9780373024575
| 0373024576
| 2.72
| 32
| 1981
| Feb 28, 1982
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liked it
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Nothing groundbreaking here, but still a nicely done vintage (1981) Harlequin Romance with a well rendered Nova Scotia setting, mostly likable MCs who
Nothing groundbreaking here, but still a nicely done vintage (1981) Harlequin Romance with a well rendered Nova Scotia setting, mostly likable MCs whose past bad marriages serve as the main source of conflict/mistrust, and an ending that shows they have both grown. Good heat, an alpha hero who’s is clearly smitten and a touch vulnerable, and a heroine who has her stupid moments but who moves past them pretty quickly. A good, if familiar, walk through some classic tropes.
...more
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1
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Oct 15, 2021
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Paperback
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| 148808470X
| 9781488084706
| B072QW74B4
| 4.18
| 380
| Aug 22, 2000
| Aug 14, 2017
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liked it
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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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Kindle Edition
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| 0373017057
| 9780373017058
| 0373017057
| 4.15
| 434
| Apr 1973
| Aug 1973
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really liked it
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From 1973, coming right after the sublime Cassandra by Chance, TfaW is a nicely paced story with lots of great "working together" hospital detail; a w
From 1973, coming right after the sublime Cassandra by Chance, TfaW is a nicely paced story with lots of great "working together" hospital detail; a well-matched pair of very likable MCs; an utterly vile OW who does not, alas, get the comeuppance she deserves (an area where Betty usually falls short); and the usual assemblage of travelogue details, secondary characters, lavish food and surroundings, and fabulous cars that we've come to expect from our Betty. It's a fun ride overall, though some plot developments don't bear too much close scrutiny (something true of most Harleys, after all!). The title stems from a variation of an old folk rhyme about the number of magpies spotted: One’s sorrow, Two’s mirth, Three’s a wedding, Four’s a birth, Five’s a christening, Six a dearth, Seven’s heaven, Eight is hell, And nine’s the devil his old self. Or HER old self--Betty pulls no punches in crafting a vile (view spoiler)[puppy abusing! (hide spoiler)] OW who's one of her most evil. Our MCs--the charmingly absent-minded (sometimes, anyway!) Rich Dutch doctor Lucius and pretty, likable Poor British Nurse Phoebe--are terrific together. Lucius is a little dim when it comes to noticing that his adopted son's governess, the awful Maureen, is a day-drinking psychopath who keeps her charge in line with emotional blackmail and routine threats, but his heart's in the right place. He's one of Betty's sweeter heroes who actually courts our heroine (for once!). Too bad he doesn't notice that latet anguis in herba (as our learned Sir Paul, the hero of The Right Kind of Girl might say--the things I learn from Harleys!) who has infiltrated his household in the form of governess (and Phoebe's romantic rival) Maureen. Phoebe is lovely--one of Betty's Beauties, with golden hair, sapphire eyes, a good sense of humor, a touch of shyness, and lots of smarts (she impresses the hero with her knowledge of botany and Latin, gleaned from her scientist father). A gold medalist of her year, like quite a few BN heroines before her, Phoebe reluctantly falls in with her (nice, for a change, if prone to dramatics) sister's scheme to have Phoebe pretend to be her and participate in a nursing exchange program in Holland for a few weeks. The scheme goes by the wayside pretty quickly, as our not-so-absent-minded professor sees through it immediately, but it does the trick to get our MCs together. TGB seemed to have great fun with this one, cheerfully advancing the identity-switcheroo that the heroine admits is ludicrous and likely to fail (as it does, charmingly), an eeeevil OW, some credulity-stretching required with regard to the heroine's (and other characters') unwillingness to unmask our villainess to the hero, and an amusing declaration/HEA involving kitchen goods. Silly good fun for the most part, although the OW adds some pretty dark moments to the action. The hero and heroine are both pretty dense at points but they suit. Car porn: hero drives an Jaguar XJ12, which the heroine drools over (as do I): "I love it. Only she's so splendid, she took my breath--" [image] ...more |
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| 4.02
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| 1989
| May 1990
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First of all, let's pause to admire that gorgeous cover by Frank Kalan. One of my absolute faves—the warmth of the light and the wood; the perfectly r
First of all, let's pause to admire that gorgeous cover by Frank Kalan. One of my absolute faves—the warmth of the light and the wood; the perfectly rendered attic scene capturing the personalities of the almost-pretty, shy but forthright heroine and the unwillingly amused and somewhat skeptical hero. I love this cover, which just FITs the characters (never mind that the hero was actually leaning against the wall during this scene; Kalan actually improved on the description I think!). From 1989, Betty offered up another rescue-the-waif plot in CoD, with an extremely likable heroine who is given a raw deal but who shows she’d probably manage nicely enough without our interfering, reluctantly attracted hero and a very bitchy Fate (the third wheel in so many Betty books) who is going to pile it on to achieve her end (an HEA, fortunately for us and the heroine). (view spoiler)[Suzannah Lightfoot is our heroine—not a nurse; not an anything really—she’s one of Betty’s untrained young ladies who takes care of an terminally ill elderly family member upon leaving school and is left homeless and destitute after Auntie’s death (through the heartless actions of one of the hero’s lady friends, which makes the hero somewhat cool towards the OW but he doesn’t cut her off completely, which is cause for the Big Misunderstanding/OW dramarama later in the book). The hero helps the heroine land softly for a little while, first by secretly arranging for her to help his aunts catalog family artifacts and ephemera and then by arranging for her be a short-term companion to a spoilt and unpleasant young lady he operated on recently (he is a professor of brain surgery). Suzannah tries really hard to make it without the hero’s help/interference, but Fate deals her blow after blow. Not that you’d know it from her attitude—she soldiers on, trying hard to be cheerful in the circumstances, and determined to stand on her own two feet, mortified that the hero keeps coming to her rescue. She’s working hard and saving money and planning for her future. I liked Suzannah a lot. She is the epitome of a plucky Betty Neels heroine, determined to look on the bright side; doing the right, brave thing whatever the cost; and refusing to succumb to self-pity no matter how dire her circumstances. RBD Guy-Bowers-Bentinck is one of Betty’s English ogres (with a Dutch connection of course) and sometimes she goes too far even for me (alphahole collector that I am) with their irascibility. Guy’s not quite as bad as Betty’s worst offenders, but he’s impatient and generally annoyed at his continual need to interfere and help the heroine overcome the hurdles in her life. But he can’t help the compulsion, although he doesn’t quite understand it outside of thinking she’s had a raw deal from life. Betty’s heroes, however cranky or cold, are among the helpers of the world, and the heroines aren’t the only ones they extend a hand to (many a faithful family retainer was a down-on-his/her luck sort whom the hero helps out). Guy doesn’t pity her exactly—he’s confounded by his attraction to her and irritated by her refusals to let him help her and perplexed that he can’t seem to let her go even though he knows she’s capable of making her own way. Guy and Suzannah clash a lot, and she really really doesn’t want him to have to keep helping her and goes out of her way to take herself out of his way and make her own way. She frequently tells herself and her AWESOME OW-attacking cat Horace that she dislikes Guy but admits to herself that sometimes she likes him very much indeed and can’t seem to stop thinking about him, however hard she tries.. Suzannah’s Dawning Realization is pretty poignant—she has once again refused the hero’s offer to help her and although he’s confounded by his need to help her, he is angry that she refuses. “So I’ll say goodbye, Suzannah….” It took her completely by surprise when he came over to her chair and bent and kissed her quite savagely before he went. “Well,” said Suzannah, and since she was bereft of words, “Well, whatever next?” The answer to the question came out of the blue to shock her. There would be nothing next; he didn’t like her, he found her a nuisance, and It was his misfortune that she invariably ended up on his doorstep. And, far worse, she had fallen in love with him. “And I can’t think why,” she told Horace and Henry [the hero’s dog], for she had to tell someone and there was no one else there. “He tiresome and ill-tempered and impatient, and he must hate the sight of me.” Betty had two main types of heroine: the Junoesque beauties and the small, slightly plump, ordinary girls whose plain faces are redeemed by beautiful eyes and soft mouths. Suzannah is the latter, and Betty goes a little overboard in reminding us, via the hero’s thoughts, of how plain the heroine apparently is (although with deeply red hair, a pretty figure, beautiful gray eye, and a gentle mouth, I’m not really sure how “plain” she could really be!). “…there was nothing about her ordinary face to attract a man’s attention” he thinks time and again. Don’t belabor it Betty! How are we to believe he’s attracted to her, despite a “savage” kiss or two, if he’s continually dwelling on how “plain” she is? But outside of that, I really liked CoD, and if Guy was not always likable, he was dependable and driven to help the heroine without making her feel bad about it and not too much of a jerk. And though he doesn’t realize it for quite some time, he’s as smitten as they come, although typical of BN heroes, his innate reserve and impatience don’t exactly make that clear to the heroine until the very end, when she does the usual flit to get out of his orbit and try to move on with her life without him, and he chases her down for mutual avowals and a satisfying HEA. (hide spoiler)] I liked CoD a lot, although I’m hit or miss with Betty’s waif tales. CoD has just the right amount of angst, a heroine who I believe would eventually have made a good go of it without help, and one of Betty’s cranky, managing heroes who nonetheless manage to redeem himself in the end. A keeper for me. ...more |
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| 1460310365
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| B00B0A5X6A
| 4.02
| 383
| Jan 1994
| May 01, 2013
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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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| 0373017774
| 4.15
| 409
| Dec 1973
| May 1974
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For whatever reason, it took me forever to get through ES, and little more than a week later, I had to read other reviews to remember any details. I'm
For whatever reason, it took me forever to get through ES, and little more than a week later, I had to read other reviews to remember any details. I'm not sure why--it has the usual elements that make Betty work so well from book to book, but it just somehow missed the mark for me (and for quite a few other Betty fans as well). And that despite a hero who's willing to pitch in during an orderly (hospital worker) strike, washing dishes and so on, not to mention making breakfast for our exhausted nurse-heroine and even ironing her uniform (I would totally fall in love with someone who ironed for me). A rather forgettable one from Betty and unless you're on a mission, as I am, to read all 135 BN stories, this isn't one I'd recommend enthusiastically, although it's by no means bad. Anyone (meaning Iris :-D) want to hazard a guess at the cover artist? There's a signature but damned if I could figure it out, even after a lot of time looking at covers from the same year (1973) and scrolling through many of the first 100 or so Harlequins wondering if it could be Don Sinclair (although it's more Bern Smith-ish--but not quite and the sig's all wrong). Here's the M&B hard cover, which is kind of fun too (no clue about that artist either); it looks so much angstier: [image] Cross-over characters: Sappha and Rolf from Tangled Autumn make a few appearances; the OW (she's not really--just in our jumping-to-conclusions heroine's mind) is Rolf's little sister, whom heroine Samantha is hired to nurse following a bout of hepititis. Miss Bates has a wonderful review that really nails so much of BN's appeal. Betty car porn (gearhead alert!): Hero drives a Rolls Royce "Merlin" (supposedly--more to that story below): ...she did her best not to look surprised, but her ingenuous face wore such an eloquent look of enquiry that her companion said carelessly, "I travel a good deal," and as though he considered that sufficient, he opened the door and bade her get in and make herself comfortable. Samantha allowed [herself] to relax against the soft leather...how could one but help be comfortable? And not JUST a Rolls Royce--not a Rolls Royce at all, in fact. Gearhead Betty must have been inspired reading about a custom car that used the "Rolls Royce Merlin," which is NOT a model; "Merlin" was an V12 27 liter aero engine created by Rolls Royce that was adapted by English transmission specialist/gearhead John Dodd in the 70s to create "The Beast"--a Frankencar with monstrous power. Betty likely read/heard about it and was fascinated and decided to endow her hero with this one-of-a-kind car--or give it a wink and a nod, at least. It's pretty badass! It actually wasn't a Rolls Royce at all: the chassis was a combo of two Daimler chasses; the body was a custom-built fiberglass shell. The only thing Rolls about it was the Rolls emblems, Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, and grille, added by Dodd, which got him sued by Rolls Royce and which he ended up having to remove. This page the Wikipedia link above has the full story. Beast is the perfect name for this monster: [image] ...more |
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| 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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| 0373023863
| 9780373023868
| 0373023863
| 3.98
| 406
| Jul 1980
| Feb 1981
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really liked it
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Rich British Nurse heroine Amelia Crosbie has to be one of Betty's more irritating heroines--she's pettish, sometimes petty, a bit spoiled, a little f
Rich British Nurse heroine Amelia Crosbie has to be one of Betty's more irritating heroines--she's pettish, sometimes petty, a bit spoiled, a little full of herself, and a clothes horse. In fact, she's quite like some of Betty's OW! She also has the typical Neels obsession with marriage to the point where she's almost desperate to get her booooring, upright, and not-that-interested fiance, Tom, to the altar--something he's put off for a quite a while and is suspiciously half (if that) hearted about. Despite my irritation with Amelia, I had to rate this one a star higher than I might have otherwise, just because it was pretty unusual for Betty! And had some funny moments that lightened the mood. And therefore ended up being quite a lot of fun. The HR cover is by Len Goldberg, for those keeping track. It's far better than the M&B cover (artist unknown)--Amelia's supposed to be pretty! [image] She looks like Rachel Dratch, doesn't she? And while I love RD, she would definitely be one of Betty's "plain face only redeemed by beautiful eyes" heroines (although RD would probably eat RDDs for supper): [image] (view spoiler)[When Amelia's dad invites her and fiance Tom to come along on his fishing trip to Norway, Amelia sees it as a way to spend uninterrupted time with Tom so that she can press her "get him to the altar" campaign unimpeded by work or excuses. It doesn't quite turn out that way--Tom spends most of his timing fishing with Dad and a chance-met Rich Dutch Doctor, hero Gideon van der Tolck, whom Amelia takes one look at and starts alternately lashing out at and retreating from because he so unsettles her. Tom leaves after a week, and Amelia has a couple of weeks vacation to go with Dad and Gideon, who arranges for a once-in-a-lifetime salmon fishing trips in the far north of Norway. The travelogue is Betty-worthy, and Betty builds some nice tension between our MCs from the start. It's clear Gideon, despite being a typical inscrutable and mocking BN hero, has fallen hard and fast for Amelia and even semi-proposes (she thinks he's amusing himself and not serious--and she's going to marry Tom, dammit!). He invites Amelia and her father to his home in The Netherlands to stay a night or two before returning home, so we get the home tour of love quite early in the story, before the heroine returns to England, deeply shaken but still stupidly/stubbornly intent on marrying dull old Tom, come hell or high water. But she's no match for an opportunity to take a job in Australia. Because that's what Tom does, without even discussing it with her, saying they can get married (maybe) in five years or so, which is too much even for our "marry or die" heroine, who FINALLY returns his ring. So Tom's disposed of neatly, and we can concentrate on our at-odds MCs. Gideon shows up in England, and our heroine leads him quite the merry dance. She fibs, she avoids, she dresses to kill, fortifies her armor against her would-be amour, and generally blows hot and cold--a nice change from the usual hot and cold hero! Gideon, patient and plotting to achieve his own ends like most RDDs, handles the situation--and her--pretty well; her trouble, he tells her, is that she doesn't know when he's being serious and when he's not. But for once a BN hero has to REALLY WORK to land the wary heroine, who, after all, is getting over an ego-crushing end to her engagement, even if her feelings weren't all that involved by the time she and Tom split. So Betty skillfully manages to not only give her a decent amount of time before jumping into another serious relationship, she also manages to make it clear that our heroine is running from her feelings because she's very afraid of getting really truly hurt badly once she realizes she's in love with Gideon and not at all sure what he feels for her or how serious his feelings are. Some nice location changes in this one and a heroine who may be a nitwit at times who runs scared most of the book and jumps to the most ridiculous conclusions when it's clear that the hero has eyes for no one but her. "You are a very silly girl, Amelia," he finally says to her in frustration, "and your head is a jumble of rubbish which you have stored away with no thought as to its accuracy. And you are still frostbound." He's waiting on that "silver thaw" (a clunky metaphor that Betty doesn't handle with her usual finesse), and when it finally comes, there's a nice call-back to a scene earlier in the book when the hero tells her that when one truly loves, it doesn't matter if the lucky two are on a desert island or the top of a mountain--all that matters is that they're together. Phonebooth snogging and an HEA with the enthusiastic encouragement of a Cockney bystander-- (hide spoiler)]while not a keeper for me, TST was sufficiently different from the typical BN book that it made for a nice change! ...more |
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| 0373020090
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| 0373020090
| 4.22
| 534
| Sep 1976
| Oct 1976
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liked it
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I've read Esmeralda a couple of times now and I just can't seem to warm to it. The titular heroine, one of Betty's nurse-heroines, was too hung up on
I've read Esmeralda a couple of times now and I just can't seem to warm to it. The titular heroine, one of Betty's nurse-heroines, was too hung up on the OM (Leslie-the-cad, who's only interested in her because she has money) for too long. Esmeralda's foot was crushed by a pony when she was a wee one and after years of disappointing and unsuccessful treatments, she's half-hearted when the surgeon-hero, Thimo Bamstra tells her he thinks he can reconstruct her foot to give her better mobility and aesthetics. But she is spurred on by the thought that perhaps Leslie will love her if she can only "fix" herself (ugh, pfffttt, all the noises), so with the encouragement of her loving mother and nanny (who loooove Thimo but aren't so crazy about Leslie), she's off to Holland for surgery. We're not told when Thimo falls in love with her, but his interest is pretty plain from the start, although he remains professionally aloof while he is actively her doctor. Esmeralda becomes more and more attracted to Thimo over the course of the book, but she doesn't have her Dawning Realization until near the end. The romance seemed a little flimsy to me, particularly given their doctor-patient relationship. And Esmeralda's continual pining for and excuses on behalf of Leslie were irritating after a while. I appreciate this one because it has some very unusual elements for Betty--the heroine being from an affluent and supportive background; the initial reasons for bringing the hero and heroine together, etc. But for whatever reason, I just failed to connect with the characters in this one, and I didn't really buy the romance either. "And now tell me why you love me" Esmeralda demands in the very last line. Too bad, because I'd like to have heard Thimo's reasons myself! Random observation: I never noticed the tear in the heroine's eye before on that Bern Smith cover! Dunno about Esmeralda, but I usually emit tears from the front of my eye, where the duct is located.... very gangsta, Esmeralda! Betty crossover characters: We visit with Adam and Loveday de Wolff van Ozinga, from Cruise to a Wedding (still on my TBR). Betty car porn: Our skeevy OM, Leslie, drives a Lotus Elan: "a showy, rather elderly model with far too much chromework on it, and painted an aggressive yellow....He was a showy driver, full of impatience and blaming everyone except himself, but she wouldn't admit that, staying quiet until he pulled up with a squeal of brakes outside the restaurant." Bad drivers do not a hero make in BN books! [image] Esmeralda has the usual heroine mini in "a sober blue": [image] Hero Thimo, an excellent driver (of course), has a Bristol 411 (misprinted as 114, which doesn't exist as far as I can tell): "large, elegant [like our RDD!], and a pleasing shade of dark gray; a very expensive car...with a subdued, understated style which made the cars around it look a little vulgar....He eased the Bristol into the traffic and began to overtake everything on the road ahead of him, driving very fast and yet with such an easy manner that he might have been tooling along a country lane. Esmeralda thought of Leslie and his flamboyant driving and dismissed the idea as disloyal...." [image] ...more |
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| 0373031971
| 4.21
| 505
| 1991
| Jan 01, 1992
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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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| 0373103573
| 9780373103577
| B01FJ0V4ZK
| 3.19
| 59
| Dec 14, 1979
| May 1980
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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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| 037303279X
| 9780373032792
| 037303279X
| 4.04
| 834
| Dec 1992
| Sep 1993
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The Quiet Professor (1992) has a solid first half, a rather too quiet second half, and for me wasn’t particularly memorable outside of a way-too-ready
The Quiet Professor (1992) has a solid first half, a rather too quiet second half, and for me wasn’t particularly memorable outside of a way-too-ready acceptance by everyone of the heroine’s sister and heroine’s fiancé falling in love with one another. A sister written to be sweet and shy and blameless, in fact, with the heroine leaning over backward to avoid distressing her erstwhile fiancé and sister once they meet and our poor heroine is left in the dust (but happily with a much better prospect, our hero, waiting in the wings). Now that’s forgiving! Yep, this is one of Betty’s “heroine engaged to another man” stories(view spoiler)[, and as is usually the case, our Rich Dutch Doctor hero, Professor (of pathology) van Belfeld (Jake, as we learn much later) is secretly in love with our heroine, Megan Rodner—one of Betty’s splendidly built, very pretty heroines (and for those who dislike her “mouse” stories featuring so-called “plain” girls, I think that Betty probably had at least as many pretty heroines as she did “mice” overall, so she doesn't just write "plain Janes."). Jake spends most of his time at Megan’s hospital, where he is a consultant, writing pathology reports and scaring all the nurses with his chilly demeanor and insistence on professional perfection, but Megan quite likes him in a casual kind of way—“as much as one could like a person who made no effort to be more than coldly courteous.” She’s mostly focused on her fiancé Oscar, anyway, a nice-enough up-and-coming young doctor with whom she shares an affectionate, if unexciting, relationship but who takes her rather for granted. They have been engaged for six months, our 28-year-old heroine having decided that her dreams of a grand passion are unrealistic and that a solid marriage based on affection and a liking for the same things is what makes successful marriages. Never mind that “she had endeavored to model herself on Oscar’s ideas of womanhood,” which includes squelching her passion for (i.e., spending on) fashion and dismissing her reluctance to continue to live in London after they are married. And too bad, too, that she and Oscar’s mother don’t hit it off at all, and Oscar thinks it would be a great idea for her to live with his mom and dad after they are married so they can save money until he’s more established in his career—he’ll join her for weekends! That doesn’t sound too great to Megan, but BN’s heroines are sometimes way too passive when it comes to adhering to the wishes of the men in their lives even when they feel strongly otherwise. But no worries about Megan’s future happiness with Ordinary Oscar; when she brings him home to meet her family, he instantly falls for her little sister and thereafter is making excuses to visit her family home—without Megan. Before long, it becomes clear to everyone that Oscar and sweet, shy Melanie are head over heels in love, and everyone just accepts this without any real concern or recrimination. (I can only imagine how this would have played out in my family—not so civilized, shall we say?) Megan’s parents are all “well, it happens”; Oscar and Melanie feel maybe a tiny but guilty, but Megan returns his ring and then does everything she can to not make them feel bad about the fact that they are now planning to marry and she’s out in the cold. Ummm, okay, that takes selflessness to the next level, but since this has sucked up half the book, I’m ready to move on from Oscar (and so is the hero, who quickly jumps into action). And so we do, as the Professor takes charge in his high-handed way to keep Megan busy and distracted, taking her out on several occasions, and generally being a good, if sometimes austere and aloof, friend to her. He seems to know exactly what she needs and with his support, the sting of losing her fiance to her sister soon begins to fade, since her feelings were never that deeply involved. Jake insists on driving her home at weekends (arrogantly overriding her attempts to decline his offer, as RDDs do) and becomes a frequent visitor to her apartment, his commanding knock and careful and rather sweet safety checks of the doors and windows in her basement apartment becoming familiar occurrences. Since her neighborhood is a bit dodgy, our kid-magnet professor befriends a handful of neighborhood kids whom he plants inside his fabulous Rolls to safeguard it, to their delight, and whom he pays for their vigilance in spare change, hee. The Professor and Megan become friends of sorts, but mostly our patient and long-sighted RDD bides his time, giving Megan time to get over her broken engagement. He convinces her, with the help of everyone else around her, that a break from the hospital and a fresh start is just what she needs, and arranges for her to take a temp job at an orphanage in Holland, for which he’s on the board of directors. So Megan is off to Holland, like many a Poor British Nurse before her, and our doctor waits in the wings for her to realize she’s over Ordinary Oscar and in love with himself. He’s quite certain about his feelings for her, but determined not to pursue her actively and thus muddy the waters of her true feelings—she will either come to a realization that she is equally besotted with him or she won’t, and that will be that. All very admirable, but it makes for a slow and rather lackluster second act in this book. All the lovely momentum of the first half grinds to a near-halt, as Megan seldom sees the hero once she’s in Holland, and while the travelogue of parts of Holland is diverting, it’s no substitute for the main event. But our heroine, who began to realize even in England that her feelings for the hero far eclipsed the lukewarm attachment she had to her ex-fiance, soon does acknowledge that she is hopelessly in love with the hero and spends a lot of her time thinking about him and despairing of a future without him, because he’s done such an excellent job of hiding his own feelings. Our RDD shows up once or twice at the orphanage, and there is even a kiss or two, but this is a slow burn even for Betty! Mostly, he keeps his distance, determined not to seduce or influence Megan (why I’m not sure, but heaven forbid that an RDD actually do anything in the way of actual wooing, pfftttt.). We have the requisite “working together to save people” scene (an abandoned baby in a howling gale and our hero to the rescue!). Our heroine is vetted by the hero’s elderly grandmother and finds out that he’s no less than a Baron, vastly wealthy, and master of the ancestral family home, so he seems even more out of her reach. With her orphanage job coming to an end, and her return to England imminent, our heroine decides she has nothing left to lose and confesses her feelings to the hero. I am not a fan of heroine avowals before the hero makes his feelings clear, but given how Betty set up this romance (such as it is), there was really no other feasible resolution. As is usually the case, they are interrupted before the Professor can make his own declarations. He’s waiting for her when she is ready to leave for the night ferry back to England, and sweeps her off home to confess his own feelings, propose to her, and introduce her to his parents. He’s very managing about it all, as RDDs are, and when she asks what he would have done if she had refused to come with him that afternoon, he claims he would have followed her to the station and abducted her (which in RDD terms probably means gently hauling her about by the arm and popping her into the Rolls for the most placid and genteel "abduction" ever). So our happy couple makes it to the HEA finish line at what seemed to be a snail’s pace, even for Betty. (hide spoiler)] Not a top-tier Betty book for me, but there's lots to like in TQP, particularly our well-matched MCs: the pretty heroine who quite understandably needs time to get over her broken engagement, even if her feelings weren’t all that engaged, and an extremely patient, if “crusty” (as one minor character calls him), RDD who is willing to wait her out. Betty car porn: The hero drives a standard-issue Rolls Royce. “Perhaps you would like to take a look at the engine?” he asks the heroine’s father and brother. “There are several things about it…” Such as, you ask? Well, we’ll assume the Silver Spur, rather than the Silver Spirit (because the former has a longer wheel base, and our vast RDDs likely need the extra leg room.) We know it’s not a Corniche because Jake’s car has a full-sized back seat, just right for heroine cat-baskets and suitcases, and with seating for 4 neighborhood boys who guard the car when Jake visits her flat. From Wikipedia: The Silver Spirit II and Silver Spur II were refinements of the original models, introduced at the 1989 Frankfurt Motor Show. Suspension design saw the most change, with "Automatic Ride Control" introduced, a fully automatic system that adjusted dampers at all four wheels in real time. Other updates included the adoption of ABS and fuel injection as standard for all models and markets….The fuel injection system was now Bosch's MK-Motronic. Originally retaining the three-speed Turbo Hydramatic GM400 transmission from earlier Spirits/Spurs, a four-speed unit (the GM 4L80E) was introduced in the winter of 1991. The size of the petrol tank was also increased, up to 107 L (24 imp gal), meaning that the car's range was now up to well over 500 km (311 mi). Plenty of speed, power, and distance-handling for our busy RDD! [image] And let's take a final moment to appreciate the lovely cover, featuring the spring-green jacket our clothes-conscious heroine wears during the course of the book, by prolific and distinctive HQN/M&B artist Will Davies (and I have to thank Iris for making the art of HQN such a fascinating additional facet in the appreciation of vintage category romance!). [image] ...more |
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| 0373511760
| 9780373511761
| 0373511760
| 4.17
| 563
| Nov 01, 1989
| Jan 01, 2002
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The Fateful Bargain is my 100th Betty book! Although I didn’t realize that until after I’d finished it and marked it “read” on my list of Betty books.
The Fateful Bargain is my 100th Betty book! Although I didn’t realize that until after I’d finished it and marked it “read” on my list of Betty books. If I had to pick one that was a solid, middle-of-the-road example of her work, it might be TFB. It’s not one of her best and not one of her worst—it’s reassuringly comfortable and familiar territory, with a Poor British Nurse, Emily Grenfell, going to work in Holland at the behest of the arrogant (but ultimately kind-hearted) surgeon, Sebastian van Tecqx, with whom she falls in love. I say behest, but it’s really emotional blackmail—the hero will operate on the heroine’s father, replacing both hips free of charge, if the heroine will go to Holland to nurse his sister, who is having a hard time emotionally, recovering from polio. (Polio was an unlikely choice of ailment in Holland by 1989, as Pamela Shropshire notes in her excellent review, but since we know that Betty operates in an alternate universe in which Victorian/Edwardian mores and lifestyles (and hospitals) exist cheek by jowl with modern cars and surgical techniques, we will allow for it.) Sebastian is very high-handed about their bargain, as he is about most things. Even Emily, one of Betty’s quieter, shyer, not-so-seething heroines, complains “Orders, orders,” at one point (to which he replies, “Tiresome, aren’t I?” hee). Their fateful bargain is one of the more memorable aspects of this story, along with the nicely done travelogue of Delft, where the hero lives and to which Emily travels to help nurse his sister. With a hero and heroine who share a liking for “old buildings and quiet canals” (and animals and babies and small children, of course), Betty gives full rein to her descriptions of this small historic city, as our hero takes our heroine on moonlit walks on cold nights to see the sights. But as with most of BN’s heroes, Sebastian never lets on that he’s in love with the heroine, determined that they must each complete their end of the bargain until, once free of obligation, he can confess his love (he seems to be in no doubt of hers). It’s clear to his sisters where his interests and intentions lie, and poor Emily, despite her best efforts, can’t hide her feelings at all (his sister can tell Emily has spotted Sebastian in the garden: “I can tell from the way the back of your head looked”). Being in love doesn’t stop Sebastian from watching Emily wriggling on the pin of her seemingly unrequited love just a little. Sebastian does that BN hero thing where he tells Emily he’s planning to marry soon—he just doesn’t tell her that he’s planning to marry HER. Jerk (although not so much that he makes my list of Top 10 BN jerks, which has now grown to 15 or so and counting—I will have to figure out how many of them are surgeons. At least 2 are non-doctors!). Nope, Sebastian plays his cards close until the very end, after he’s successfully completes her father’s second hip replacement, and then confesses his love and proposes in the spot where they first met and where he first fell in love with her, outside of her former bedsitter in a run-down part of London, light years removed from his pretty Knightsbridge house and glorious Delft mansion. Not to worry—it’s all fur hats and luxuries, babies, and tea around the fire served by Faithful Family Retainers from here out, Emily! No extended Big Misunderstandings in this one (except that the heroine doesn’t realize she’s the prospective bride), and only a blink-and-you’d miss her potential OW who never really earns the title, making this one relatively low-angst. We visit with Jeroen and Constantia van der Giessen of The Little Dragon, still blissful after 10 years of marriage, surrounded by kiddies and their now-venerable rescue dog from that book. The MCs in TFB are likable enough, and there’s a nice sense of family that runs throughout this one, but neither MC is particularly memorable and I’m not sure Betty really makes the case for why our handsome, wealthy, in-demand hero falls for our mousey heroine, who is maybe just a touch TOO quiet and “restful.” But it’s well-trodden territory, and who doesn’t like when the genuinely nice, unassuming girl wins the prize? TFB is enjoyable and, yes, kind of restful, if not particularly memorable, and a solid 3 stars. After 100 books, I still love Betty’s books, despite their idealized anachronisms; MCs so reserved that really they’re repressed; no sex (a thumb stroke down the back of the neck is about as explicit as Betty ever gets—which is freakin HOT in the context of Betty somehow); arrogant, uncommunicative heroes with a penchant for horrible trophy girlfriends/fiancees; and heroines who run the gamut from doormat to overly snappy paragons but still mostly manage to be likable. The attitudes and behavior I overlook/accept in Betty books that I wouldn’t for any other author confound me! But there it is. Betty’s particular magic isn’t for everyone—but it IS magic for me, and what comfort and pleasure I’ve derived from her books during this very weird year of our pandemic. Toasting the Incomparable La Neels on this occasion of my 100th BN read: Cheers! Betty, and I hope that if there is an afterlife, yours is filled with fabulous food, magnums of champagne, sumptuous surroundings filled with historic and well-loved treasures, beautiful designer clothing, Faithful Family Retainers to smooth your path, and, of course, an arrogant, managing, truly GOOD and kind-hearted, vast Rich Dutch Doctor to make your every romantic dream come true. Betty car porn: Sebastian drives a Bentley (we’ll go with the 1988 Turbo R, since our RDDs love speed): [image] ...more |
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| 0373032986
| 9780373032983
| 0373032986
| 3.55
| 76
| Jun 12, 1992
| Dec 01, 1993
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Not bad but not one of PW's best either. One of her wounded waif heroines (past psychological trauma, meet current physical trauma with a side of disi
Not bad but not one of PW's best either. One of her wounded waif heroines (past psychological trauma, meet current physical trauma with a side of disillusion! How d'ya do!) meets one of her uber-possessive heroes with a surly artistic temperament and falls in instalove (and he's not far behind). I love PW's "capture/captivate-the-heroine" tales but this one relies a bit too much on the hero saving the heroine from the inner darkness that has haunted and stunted her. He's not tender about it, but the treatment is pretty effective--until PW decides to add complications in the shape of his pernicious ex-wife, whose OW wiles (for spite?) derail the MCs budding love. Kind of a contrived complication. Didn't have the impact of some of PW's better tales but her domineering artist hero was a slight change from her usual domineering tycoon heroes. The heroine never really resonated with me--she was a little too broken and passive without the usual daffy fey charm that PW's heroines usually have. All-in-all, not bad, but not memorable. ...more |
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Mar 17, 2021
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| 0373527047
| 9780373527045
| 0373527047
| 3.44
| 145
| Jan 01, 2008
| Jan 13, 2009
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Fairly typical LW tale with a (supposedly) smitten and very alpha hero who keeps his motives under wraps until the very end and a mess of a heroine wh
Fairly typical LW tale with a (supposedly) smitten and very alpha hero who keeps his motives under wraps until the very end and a mess of a heroine who seems to let stronger wills push her hither and nigh. It's hard to like a heroine who allows her douchey fiance to emotionally blackmail her into a bit of corporate espionage (however reluctant she is to go along with it). I have liked a couple of LW's books a LOT but she more often misses than directly hits the mark for me, and this one was largely a miss, with oddly timed flashbacks, a rather weak-willed heroine who needed a couple of smacks from annoyed readers, and hero instalove that LW didn't lay enough groundwork for to be remotely believable. In many ways, this follows the template that Wilkinson used so well in Blind Obsession: (view spoiler)[ the heroine knew and loved the hero when she was a teen (17/18) and he was her first and only lover in an encounter that was bittersweet; the hero claims to have been obsessed with her ever since, and she has never truly gotten over him either; she goes to work for him--with ulterior motives--under the impression he doesn't know who she is; she becomes alarmed when he keeps dropping hints that he may know more than she thinks; she's trapped by circumstances and his determination to keep her at hand; they become lovers but a Big Misunderstanding has her trying to flee; recapture and HEA. (hide spoiler)] LW has used this plot to good effect many times (although the hero in MAHW really isn't out for revenge in MAHW as the hero of BO is), but the trademark tension (sexual and otherwise) and sense of menace that made Blind Obsession a standout for me were lacking in this one and the story just wasn't as compelling without it. ...more |
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| 0373021275
| 9780373021277
| 0373021275
| unknown
| 4.03
| 374
| 1977
| Dec 1977
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Which came first, the title or the heroine? I’m tempted to think that Betty started off with the Aaron Hill poem, which our RDD hero quotes in referen
Which came first, the title or the heroine? I’m tempted to think that Betty started off with the Aaron Hill poem, which our RDD hero quotes in reference to our very prickly heroine: Tender handed stroke a nettle And it stings you for your pains Grasp it like a man of mettle And it soft as silk remains This is a love-hate tale from Betty, with a hero and a heroine who are more evenly matched in social background and tempers than is usual in a BN book. (view spoiler)[Janet (Jenny) Wren is one of Betty’s pretty heroines from an upper-class background, with posh, titled relations and a small stately home that she works at (as a tour guide, as it’s open to the public) when she has off days from her nursing job. Jenny’s Aunt Bess, haughty and old fashioned, would much rather see her niece married to the dull young neighboring squire, but our independent heroine has bucked expectations by training as a nurse, to cement her independence. A poor relation, maybe, but one who has carved her own path despite being loyal and supportive of her aunt and her ancestral home. Unfortunately, she’s forced to give up that independent life, temporarily at least, when Aunt Bess develops an blood clot that our visiting RDD operates on. From the start, Jenny and Professor Eduard van Draak te Solendijk clash: she’s affronted by his cool arrogance, and he's alternately amused and angered by her frequent snubs and outright rudeness. They spat their way through many chapters, but somewhere along the way, these two fall for each other (and they do often show their better sides, particularly in how kindly they treat everyone except for one another). Lots of travel in this one: Jenny goes on a cruise with Aunty to the Canary Islands following Aunty’s surgery, and Eduard meets them for a few days of wooing our snippy miss. Yes, wooing! I guess the way to get an RDD to take you out on dates is to be quick to take offense and snarly most of the time. Perhaps some of our more sweet and shy BN heroines should take notice. Spats aside, it becomes clear pretty quickly that our RDD is more than interested in Jenny and she also has a Dawning Realization before too long that as infuriating as he is, he’s the only one for her. But her beautiful selfish cousin shows up and is intent on snagging Eduard for herself, and Jenny is soon not sure where his interests lie. It makes her even more unpleasant towards him, and our RDD is impatient and abrupt when he’s not kissing her breathless (lots of kisses in this one—I do like when Betty’s controlled doctors aren’t so controlled after all). Eduard invites Jenny, Aunt Bess, and little cousin Oliver to Holland, where they stay at his fabulous home (a castle, in fact!) and meet his mother. More misunderstanding occur, and Jenny generally acts like an idiot, shooting herself in the foot time and again and refusing to see Eduard’s interest. Even when he wants to talk, she runs scared, afraid that he is going to tell her he will be marrying her beautiful, selfish cousin, Oliver's indifferent mother (despite no evidence of of our hero having any such intention). Eduard finally chases her down in England, as RDDs will do, and clears things up, and these two will doubtlessly be arguing for the next 50 years, surrounded by their little RDDs-to-be. (hide spoiler)] Although it was nice to have a pretty BN heroine from a background similar to the RDD'S (instead of one of her more uneven matches), Jenny was a little too snappish much of the time and Eduard was a little too overbearing. Not one of my fave BN reads, but with the usual elements that make her an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so. Car porn: Hero mostly drives a “magnificent Panther J72” [image] He let’s the heroine borrow his Mini Cooper: [image] And also offers to let her drive his Bristol 412 (yes please!) [image] Aunt Bess has a vintage Vauxhall—we’ll go with a 15 year old version (so from 1962 or so): [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 18, 2021
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| 0816138702
| 9780816138708
| 0816138702
| 4.01
| 353
| Oct 1981
| Jan 01, 1985
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really liked it
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HATC is an outlier in several ways in the Betty canon. Although it seemed less odd on a re-read, it still has some unusual elements that made me wonde
HATC is an outlier in several ways in the Betty canon. Although it seemed less odd on a re-read, it still has some unusual elements that made me wonder what might have been going on in Betty’s life to make her tackle, in a way, such unusual-for-her subject matter. Although it probably falls among my top third of Betty books, I’m still ambivalent about this one after a re-read: pretty good angst, but Simon Savage is one of Betty’s English Ogre non-doctor heroes, who are often hard to like. It also features a young nurse-heroine, Louisa Evans, who is one of Betty’s typically good and kind, not-quite-pretty young ladies who are perhaps a little too accommodating at times, and the hero’s stepsister, who remains as awful at the end of the book as she is at the beginning (which in itself I found interesting--I have to respect an author who doesn’t feel the need to redeem a major character who is not cast as a villain). This is the one with the newly qualified nurse-heroine who travels to Norway as private nurse to the hero's stepsister (view spoiler)[, who, we soon find out, is an alcoholic. (hide spoiler)] Not Betty’s usual stomping ground in several ways—for one thing, no Holland in this one (although she has used Norway as a setting on several occasions—Midnight Sun’s Magic and A Promise of Happiness (a fave!) come to mind). And an unusual ailment to boot! Not your standard nursing challenge in a Neels book, where we’re more likely to encounter measles or accidents (view spoiler)[than addiction (hide spoiler)]. And our hero is one of Betty’s rare non-RBD/RDDs: Simon Savage is a snarly engineer who (ironically?) builds bridges. (view spoiler)[Louisa has just finished her training and passed her tests to become a registered nurse. She immediately begins looking for a private nursing position so that she can quit her job at a London hospital and get away from her horrible manipulative stepmother, who is pushing her to marry the local wealthy bore. For once, a Neels heroine is done with the unreasonable family demands (perhaps because stepmama isn’t a blood relation), and Louisa is planning to fly the coop now that she has her certification in hand. She takes a job with a Claudia Savage, a pretty youngish lady (30s) with a rather vague liver ailment, who needs someone to travel and stay in Norway with her. Twenty-two year old Louisa gets the job, and flies off to Norway with Miss Savage and a handful of her fast, hard-drinking London friends, who stay a few days in Bergen. There’s not a whole lot of actual nursing for Louisa to do, but Claudia is capricious and selfish and prone to mood swings and tantrums, and Louisa doesn’t much like her friends’ influence on her. She does her best to establish a routine and see what she can of Bergen on her time off, and our hero doesn’t enter the book until around the 20% mark. We learn a little about the hero before we meet him—he and Claudia are not related by blood but by marriage; they don’t get along; he gives her a generous allowance that enables her to live an idle and quite luxurious life (so we know they are wealthy and upper class). We get a sense of Simon even before we meet him when he calls for his sister and is very short and unfriendly to Louisa even on the phone, so she instantly dislikes him. He’s no better when he finally turns up in Bergen—she returns from a couple of hours time off one afternoon to find her patient in near-hysterics, faced with a furiously angry and domineering Simon. Betty seemed to have a type for her non-RDD/RBD heroes: long and lean and dark haired, good looking with aquiline features and a disagreeable demeanor. Simon is very much this type, similar to Charles Cresswell of Judith and Charles Trescombe of Magic in Vienna. Simon doesn’t seem to think much of Louisa—she’s clearly inexperienced, too young, and naïve, which is why his sister chose her, he tells her. He questions Louisa about his sister’s ailment but doesn’t enlighten her as to its true nature (which is odd but okay—Betty wanted a more dramatic reveal, I guess?). We find out soon enough when Simon meets Louisa at the bank to set up an account for her salary to be paid into, and they come home to find Claudia passed out with a bottle of vodka at hand. Our heroine is justifiably perturbed that no one bothered to tell her and explains that a lot of Claudia symptoms could have been the result of the ailments she was told Clauda was suffering from. Simon is mostly cold and a bit scornful of Louisa and not very nice to her. To her credit, she stands up for herself pretty well. Louisa doesn’t much like Simon for quite a while, although she does find him good looking and occasionally wishes he were less surly and different. She DOES quite like the friendly bank manager she’s met, Lars, who asks her out on a date. She has a nice time with him, but she brings him back to the apartment for coffee, he immediately falls in love with Claudia, who is languishing prettily on the sofa, as usual. The attraction is mutual. Our lonely Louisa is a little sad seeing the possibility of a nice young man being a little interested in her slip right away—she’s one of Neels’ shy plain Janes whose sense of her own attractions has been squashed for a long time by her stepmother and her own insecurities, for one thing. Simon decides given his step-sister’s backsliding, he’ll remove her to the Arctic reaches of northern Norway, to Tromso, where he’s building a bridge. The young ladies travel by ship up the fjords (and we get a nice little travelogue along the way, although Claudia is interested in nothing but herself and our curious and delighted heroine only has snatches of time in which to enjoy the adventure. They arrive in Tromso, and from there are met by Simon, who takes them by boat to an even smaller island. Claudia, as usual, has no interest in the trip, but our curious Louisa goes up on deck, where Simon surprisingly and impulsively kisses her rosy not-so-plain self as he pulls up her hood. It’s one of only a few times that Simon lets his guard down with Louisa, although it’s clear to us that he’s attracted to her and doing his best not to be. They settle into the hero’s temporary home (“a dump” according to Claudia, who is not given to sharing staterooms or bathrooms if she has a choice—which she doesn’t) in a small settlement boasting a hotel, a general store, and not much else (too small to even have its own doctor). Louisa is really likable. She’s delighted by Norway and the simple pleasures she finds there; she learns to ski and does her best to keep her difficult charge entertained, cheerful (which is not a state that Claudia approximates ever), and sober. Claudia, in love with Lars, is still mostly unpleasant but she believes she can overcome her alcoholism for a future with Lars (love being an all-conquering force in fiction if not IRL I guess). I don’t for a minute believe that Claudia and her intended are going to get a HEA, but at least it will get Claudia off Simon’s back for a while. And this isn’t the story of Claudia and Lars, after all—it’s Simon’s and Louisa’s tale. Simon is still mostly a jerk and Louisa mostly doesn’t suffer it in silence, but there is an increase in sweeter moments between them. There’s a movie/dinner dance night at the hotel that’s a big social occasion for these remote outlying areas, and Simon mostly watches Louisa as she watches The Sound of Music, misty eyed despite seeing it before, and then dances with her exclusively afterwards. Later that night, he rouses Louisa from her bed to help save victims of a boat accident, showing them both at their best—Simon as a trusted and well-respected member of his temporary community and Louisa as a calm force in an emergency and an excellent nurse. We get a second kiss, this one more serious. But afterward, rather than bringing them together, the experience seems to make Simon more remote and distant. Even after Louisa uses her newly acquired ski skills to go after Claudia, who heads out in a pending storm, and Simon and people from the village come to their rescue, our MCs only temporarily draw closer (with a third, even more passionate kiss that Louisa returns, as proof), before Louisa, certain that Simon feels nothing for her, tries to hide her love for him and pass it off as just an impulse of the moment. And her job is at an end. She’s no longer needed as nurse, and her travel has been arranged by Simon back to England. Claudia remains the same selfish bitch she’s always been, basically telling Louisa thanks but she’ll will be glad to see the back of her because though while Louisa is nice enough, she’s mainly just been a necessary evil. Let’s hope that Louisa won’t have much to do with her future step-sister-in-law. Louisa, already upset by her Dawning Realization that she’s in love with the bad-tempered and likely uncaring Simon, isn’t helped much by this piece of ingratitude from someone she’s spent the entire time taking care of and defending. Our poor heroine, just coming to realize that as imperfect as our hero is, he’s perfect for her and probably there will be no one else for her. There’s a really heartbreaking little scene Louisa’s last day when she goes down to breakfast and Simon’s there alone and after trying to put on a brave face, she almost starts crying and whispers his name, to no avail, or so it seems. But we get a nicely all-in avowal from our irascible hero, finally—he can’t live without her, her tells her—in an abrupt HEA when, as she’s departing, he joins her on the launch and then tells her he’ll be traveling with her all the way to England. Where they’ll be married—she’d gotten “under his skin, into his bones, his very heartbeat” from the start, says Simon, but did his best to make her hate him because he was determined to get over it. But he didn’t, and he is in love with her and wants to marry her. Many many kisses later, we get a glimpse of his beautiful English home and their beautiful English future together. So while it’s one of Betty’s hard-won-love stories, as is often the case with her more cranky heroes, we get there in the end. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 13, 2021
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Feb 17, 2021
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Mar 10, 2024
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Nov 29, 2021
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May 30, 2021
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May 27, 2021
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really liked it
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May 25, 2021
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| 4.22
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May 17, 2021
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May 12, 2021
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May 11, 2021
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Feb 18, 2021
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Feb 14, 2021
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Feb 17, 2021
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