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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Right Kind of Girl – Betty Neels English Romance

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The Right Kind of Girl

The Right Kind of Girl is a classic Betty Neels English romance, relying on a marriage of convenience, a dastardly Other Woman, well-written minor characters, a kind and upstanding hero/love interest, and a sweet-tempered, kind, generous, uncomplaining heroine, Emma. I read this about a year ago and wrote a short review then, this review is longer and I’ll spend more time on why this is both a very good and a frustrating read.

Emma lives with her mom in a small English country town and works as a companion for Mrs. Smith-Darcy, a thoroughly nasty woman. Emma and her mom rely on mom’s small pension and Emma’s small wages; life is difficult but Emma has the gift of happiness. She isn’t exactly content with her unpleasant job but she loves her mom and loves living in the English moor town.

When her employer feels ill after overeating, Dr. Paul Wyatt, subbing for the local GP, makes a house call and meets Emma as she grovels on the carpet picking up the bills Mrs. S-D tossed around.  Paul (aka Dr. Wyatt, our hero) is intrigued by Emma’s calm, matter-of-fact approach to her employer. (Paul claims later that he fell in love with her then.)

Emma’s mother collapses from a perforated ulcer while she and Emma are out driving narrow back roads on the moor; luckily Paul is driving by and takes mom to the hospital, operates and saves her life. He gives Emma rides back and forth for a week while mom recovers. Nasty Mrs. S-D fires Emma, but that’s OK, Emma finds work with Doreen Hervey caring for her newborn, her home, cooking and Doreen herself. Doreen is cheerful and pleasant but completely incapable of looking after herself, not to mention her baby. Paul is good friends with the Herveys and stops by to say hello; of course he knows Emma will be there.

Paul brings Emma fish ‘n chips one night, drives her to and from the hospital, spends a few moments having tea or talking with her. But remember, they have probably spent no more than 12 hours together, not a lot of time. Emma has demonstrated her kindness, charitable nature, generosity of spirit, even temper, warmth and empathy. Paul has shown himself to be somewhat remote, not at all chatty, kind in an impersonal way in the car, then personal, friendly and kind when he brings Emma fish ‘n chips and washes the dishes.

Emma’s mom dies, leaving Emma alone. Paul comes to the rescue, proposing a marriage of convenience. As in all Neels’ marriages of convenience (MOCs), the two agree to be friends, companions, not lovers. Emma has no idea Paul loves her and she is numb after her mom’s death.   Paul and Emma marry after a couple minor contretemps, leaving Emma to realize she loves Paul only when walking up the aisle.

Sadly Emma runs afoul of Diana, a lovely woman who runs a nursery for abandoned kids where Emma volunteers. Diana claims to have Paul’s love and Emma has no hold on him. It isn’t clear whether Diana wants to marry Paul or just likes to make trouble. 

Emma figures Diana is exaggerating – after all Paul chose Emma, not Diana – but she’s modest and not confident that Paul has much feeling for her. Diana purposely endangers Emma by sending her to a tinker camp in the moor during a storm, then lies to Paul, claiming Emma wanted to be a glory hound. Of course Paul should have known better; the last thing Emma wants is the spotlight. But he’s known Diana for a couple of years and respects her.

The worst happens when Paul confronts Emma about the tinker camp: “Diana is worth a dozen of you.” Yes. He actually says this. Bloggers on The Uncrushable Jersey Dress call this the equivalent of the unforgivable curse in Harry Potter, and they are right.

How is Emma now supposed to believe that Paul cares about her? Diana tells Emma constantly that Paul doesn’t and never will love her, and now Paul has corroborated that. “Diana is worth a dozen of you.” Emma still is reluctant to believe Paul would have married her while in love with Diana, but then Paul says he’s going on a 4-month lecture tour. Alone. Now Emma has reason to believe that Paul wants her gone, that regardless how he feels about Diana, he certainly doesn’t love or want Emma.

Unforgivable or not, the “worth a dozen of you” isnt’ the worst part of the story. The part that astounds me is that Paul has the colossal nerve to tell Emma that “she doesn’t trust him”! Hello! Earth to Paul! Wake up, buddy. You just told your wife a few days before that she’s not worth the stuff on the bottom of your shoe, and now you are upset that she believes nasty Diana? I have a real problem with this part, especially since Emma thinks she needs to apologize! What about Paul needing to wake up and realize you don’t tell your wife that she’s worthless, and then expect her to trust that you aren’t having an affair?

Here’s where Betty Neels’ genius with minor characters plays its part. Maisie, an older woman, works in the nursery and sees right through Diana. Maisie warns Emma, and reassures her that Diana is sneaky and nasty. Finally Maisie positions herself to eavesdrop when Paul (finally!) confronts Diana, and steps in to explain to Paul exactly how deceitful Diana has been. Paul goes home to find Emma is planning something.

The rest of the novel is a delight. Paul and Emma realize each loves the other and Paul foils Emma’s attempt to slide out of his life and slip anonymously into the workforce. Plenty of kissing and I love yous ensue.

Let’s see what makes The Right Kind of Girl such a good example of Betty Neels, and why I enjoy it so much.

+++ The first third of the novel is Emma’s straightforward story. Poor, yes, spineless, no. Kind, generous, hard working, yes. We like Emma.

++ We don’t get to know Paul very well in the first part. Obviously he’s interested in Emma and yes, he too is kind and generous. We get hints that he’s falling in love.

+++ The middle part, after Emma’s mom dies and before she starts volunteering at the nursery (about a 5 week period) is charming. Emma isn’t too sure about this marriage idea, isn’t too sure Paul will be satisfied with someone like her, worries whether his family and friends will like her. Emma is reluctant to marry a rich man and a little fearful she might not be satisfactory in her social role, but that’s relatively minor worry.

++ Emma has enough common sense that she takes Diana with a big shaker of salt, but just enough modesty and self-awareness to also realize that there could be just a drop of truth in there.

——- (If I put in all the minus signs it needs I wouldn’t have room to write words.) Diana is a piece of work. Paul is mostly taken in by her, and he’s foolish enough to believe her idiotic accusation that Emma wanted to star in the Rescue of the Tinkers. That’s bad. The Unforgivable Curse (Diana is worth a dozen of you) is really bad. Paul at this point is clueless and digging his own hole with a pile driver.

+++ Neels wrote several great characters. Maisie is a delight. She’s shrewd, full of common sense, and not averse to plain speaking. Doreen Hervey, incompetent mom and homemaker, is a great character. She’s written as loving and lovable, just not too bright and not at all capable. Mrs S-D, she of the nasty temper is a stock character, the stuck up rich lady. Mr. Dobbs, who owns the garage that rents cars to Emma, appears mostly as a voice on the phone, someone willing to feed Emma’s cat. Emma’s mom has a small role, enough to show us how close she and Emma are and allow Emma to display her kindness and fortitude.

I hope you can see why The Right Kind of Girl is well worth reading. It’s classic Neels, completely clean, and warm and cozy. Reading it is like sitting by the fire, all wrapped up in a warm afghan with a cat on your lap. On the other hand, Paul’s two or three jarring comments and Diana’s non-stop undermining make it a bit difficult to enjoy completely. I’m sure Emma has forgiven Paul for his ghastly remark, but we readers have a harder time forgetting it.

The Girl with Green Eyes – Betty Neels Romance

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The Girl with Green Eyes is part of The Best of Betty Neels collection from Harlequin Romances. Heroine Lucy Lockitt, is not a nurse, nor is she impoverished nor homely. In fact her family is well off and she is quite pretty, although her parents and two dashing sisters find her somewhat backwards and disappointing.

Lucy works as a child minder at an orphanage (“your little job” per her mother) and has assimilated her family’s view of herself as rather dull, certainly not someone likely to attract handsome, successful Dr. William Thurloe. Nonetheless Lucy falls for him and he finds her delightful, kind, a good listener, not conceited, interested in other people.

On the surface there should be no conflict. Dr. Thurloe proposes to Lucy and she wants so badly to accept, but instead asks for thinking time because he doesn’t say he loves her. Fiona Seymour is widowed, well-off, beautiful, well-dressed and completely selfish. She has also decided that she will marry William Thurloe (or his money), and makes mischief between William and Lucy, telling both lies, stealing William’s love letter to Lucy.

Of course Lucy and William end up together, kissing and planning to marry within a week or two.

I liked that Lucy is not a nurse nor poor or unattractive. She has little self-confidence and knows she isn’t terribly bright or witty. She believes in herself enough to care for children at the orphanage despite her family gently deprecating her work, and radiates gentleness and kindness and character strength.

William could have avoided a few weeks of heartache if he had simply told Lucy he loved her. We wouldn’t have had much of a story then!

Overall The Girl with Green Eyes is written well, easy to follow plot, reasonably interesting and developed characters. Keep in mind this is a romance novel so we aren’t talking great literature, but also realize that Betty Neels’ novels remain popular even 19 years after her death. I along with many others enjoy her clean romances with likable characters, warmth of characterization and good descriptions of setting.

4 Stars

The Warehouse by Rob Hart – Totalitarian Retail Juggernaut

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What happens when the quest for ever-cheaper products, delivered ever faster, completes the takeover of American business?  The Warehouse.  The Cloud company.

Cloud is to Amazon what the Black Death is to a cold.  Cloud takes everything down to the cheapest possible solution, whether it is products, delivery, employees, vendors, customers or government.

Amazon today hosts “camperforces”, RV parks to house their seasonal workforce, who migrate around the country seeking work.  Cloud builds huge dormitories housing tens of thousands who must wear ID trackers to access their rooms, the trams, the work space, the bathrooms.  Employees work 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, with nominal breaks.  Warehouses cover hundreds of acres, too large to see from one end to the other; with few bathrooms and break rooms scattered inadequately.  Cloud pays in script and charges hefty fees to convert between script and dollars.  It’s the company town and company store on steroids.

Cloud’s founder Gibson Wells believes the market should dictate everything, that customers only value low prices and convenience, and he has Cloud work aggressively to swipe ideas and push vendors into bankruptcy in order to cut prices ever lower.

He tells us about his triumph with Cloud Pickles.  He liked a brand of $5 pickles and wanted the company to sell them for $2, but the company could not.  So Cloud came up with their own almost-as-good product and drove the original pickle company out of business.

Cloud privatized the FAA in order to deliver via millions of drones and expects to privatize the rest of the government.  Wells never considers the long term end state because the ends – cheap products and services – justify the means.  

This is not libertarian economics run amok, it is totalitarian rule with a bit of bread and circuses thrown in.

Morality Play

One way to read The Warehouse is as dystopian economics.  What happens when one company dominates everything, from transport to food to retail to government services?  What happens when that company is just about the only employer left?

How do the people running this behemoth justify their predatory behavior?  How do their employees, their vendors respond to the never-ending push push push for more for less? 

When people forget the basic rules of decency and morality, stop following the Golden Rule, they become monsters.  That’s what is happening in Cloud.  Gibson Wells sees employees and vendors, even the country, as giant sponges to be wrung dry, turnips to suck to dust.  He justifies everything by his goal for cheap products and services, ignoring the cost to everyone else.

Paxton and Zinnia, two new employees at a Cloud warehouse, also have decisions to make.  Paxton had invented a gadget to cook the perfect boiled egg and his company did quite well, for a while.  Then Cloud demanded to purchase at below Paxton’s costs and put him out of business.  Now Paxton is a reluctant security guard at the warehouse.  Zinnia is a corporate spy hired to find out how Cloud is powering this enormous facility.

Paxton is more reactive while Zinnia takes action on her own.  Zinnia discovers a creepy pervert supervisor and tries to protect others from him; Paxton later discovers the man was never fired, just reassigned.  (The security lead says it’s quieter and easier to move someone than to fire one, although Cloud routinely axes their lowest performing decile every quarter.)   

Characters

Gibson Wells is the most interesting character.  He narrates his story now as he is dying, and manages to justify the destruction Cloud has done by remembering the good he has done.  Or thinks he has done.  It’s very difficult to justify putting millions out of work and treating employees like dirt just to cut a buck off the price of some gadget.  

One lesson I learned very early in purchasing for my small business was that deals need to be good for everyone.  You have to be willing to leave money, not on the table, but in the pockets of your supplier.  Otherwise you won’t have a supplier.  Apparently Gibson Wells never learned this.  He thinks it’s great if he’s the only supplier.

Zinnia is fascinating too.  She has zero intention of falling in love, or even caring about anyone at Cloud.  She’s there to do her job, get the information she came for, and get out successfully.  Instead she gets pulled into an affair with Paxton that may cost her life.

Paxton is there mainly as a foil, to move the story along and to show us a bit more about Cloud and the misery it causes.

There are a few minor characters, also well drawn and believable.  The other security people are willing to ignore cruelty in order to keep Cloud running smoothly, while dealing harshly with small infractions.  They see their job as keeping the place running the best it can for everyone, making mediocre omelettes while breaking more than a few eggs.

Overall

5 Stars

I received The Warehouse via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Course of True Love – A Most Enjoyable Betty Neels Romance Novel

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Anyone who writes 134 novels over 30 years is going to author many enjoyable books with a few clunkers, and most Betty Neels’ romances are good to very good, a few are mediocre and she wrote a number that stand out as highly enjoyable, peopled with interesting characters who feel real, a heartfelt love story, warmth and her excellent sense of setting and mood.  The Course of True Love is one of those standouts, a novel I will purchase and read again.

Claribel is a physical therapist and Marc van Borsele is an orthopedic surgeon based in The Netherlands who travels frequently to England and is good friends with the senior consultant at Claribel’s hospital.  They meet when she is shoved in a puddle and he offers her a ride.  So far we have the classic Neels’ backstory:  rich Dutch doctor, young(ish) English nurse/therapist, an accidental meeting where he helps her and a growing attraction.

The unusual part of The Course of True Love is that Marc realizes early on that he is falling for Claribel and sets out to court her in a more-or-less straightforward fashion.  Claribel doesn’t like him very much – or so she tells herself – but increasingly enjoys his company.  Somehow she doesn’t realize he takes her out for walks, for dinner and dancing, for trips to the countryside, to his home for lunch, drives her home to her parents for a weekend, because he likes her.  She thinks he views her in a sisterly fashion, as somewhere to drop in for coffee.  Indeed he is casual and a bit pushy, dropping in without an invitation.

Marc comes over from Holland solely to take her out for the weekend, bangs on her door, asks for breakfast then takes her out.  Since he doesn’t tell her that he came over just to see her, she somehow doesn’t realize that he isn’t doing anything but spending time with her.

Marc does nothing to clear her confusion.  He tells her early on that he’s intending to get married and implies he knows whom he wishes to marry.  The story proceeds more or less as we’d expect from there.  We get to know both Marc and Claribel; often romance novel men are hazy characters, foils for the love interest.  Neels does a good job with both of the main characters and I enjoyed Marc more than most of her rich Dutch doctors.

Neels handles settings particularly well.  I’m not at all familiar with English villages or London or the Dutch cities Claribel visits, but I felt like I could walk down the street and recognize the slightly untidy garden and gray urban hospitals.  Neels describes clothes with gusto, she obviously enjoyed wearing pretty things herself and understands how we all have to balance durability with fashion and comfort and we readers easily put ourselves in Claribel’s shoes.

This is one of my favorite Betty Neels romances.  The characters and their attraction and growing love make this one of the most enjoyable romances I’ve read.

Three Betty Neels Romances That Disappoint – The Fifth Day of Christmas, Saturday’s Child, Heaven Around the Corner

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I enjoy most Betty Neels’ romance novels; she builds in warmth and happiness and of course all the stories have happy endings.  Here are three that disappointed me, all with implausible romances and nasty men.

The Fifth Day of Christmas

Neels wrote The Fifth Day of Christmas in 1971, making it one of her earliest novels, and it shows.  The plot is implausible (as are most but we can slide right over that when the stories are good) but the part that disturbed me is when heroine Julia makes a nasty comment about hero Ivo’s supposed semi-fiance Marcia.  He grabs Julia and shakes her until her teeth rattle – and then Julia thinks she is at fault but doesn’t want to apologize!  Even back 50 years ago this was wrong.

2 Stars

Saturday’s Child

Neels usually provides us with likable characters.  The man may fight against loving the lady, but he is always polite and usually kind.  Not so with Saturday’s Child.  Here our hero, Professor Dominic van Wijkelen, doesn’t trust women and doesn’t want to believe Abigail can truly love him and doesn’t want to love her either.  The problem is that Dominic is mean, even cruel.

While Abigail is in Holland, Dominic hires her to nurse a friend, then another friend, then to work in the hospital, but never actually pays her.  When she finally says something to him, only after making her own way back to England and only after he asks her to come back for yet another round of nursing, Dominic arranges her to get her money.  All well and good, but we expect people to learn from mistakes.  Dominic re-engages Abigail and once again does not pay her.  And once again she doesn’t say anything despite being penniless.

Maybe he could forget once. But twice?  And she could be wary of asking for her wages once.  But twice?  To me this makes Dominic untrustworthy and unkind and even a little abusive.  And it makes Abigail a patsy.

The rest of the plot and story are fine.  The conflict is Dominic’s distrust and unwillingness to believe in Abigail; he overhears something, jumps to conclusions and once more shoves Abigail (still unpaid) out of his life and out of Holland.  She doesn’t have any money and goes to live with a friend of a friend and takes a poorly paying job in a store before Dominic once more shows up and wafts her away with rapturous kisses.

If I had been she I’d have demanded he pay me, then leave and inform him that he needed to get control of his distrust and get over himself, get off his high horse before he bothers to come see me yet again.  Even in 1973 I think most self-reliant ladies would have been a little less trusting.

2 Stars

Heaven Around the Corner

Heaven Around the Corner has two romances, both unsatisfying.  Our primary romance is Louisa Evans, newly qualified nurse, falling in love with the unpleasant Simon Savage.  Simon is well-named.  The second involves Louisa’s patient, Simon’s sister, the alcoholic Claudia Savage and Lars, a banker.

Both romances lack credibility.  Claudia and Lars barely know each other and Lars surely should be wary of hitching his life to an alcoholic wife.  Louisa and Simon also don’t spend much time together and Simon spends most of it being obnoxious and Louisa is self-righteous.  Ugh.

Neels describes Norway with loving detail and as usual for her novels makes one want to visit and enjoy the breathtaking scenery and friendly people.

This is one of the few Betty Neels novels I had a hard time finishing; it is boring with unlikable characters and unsatisfying plot and story.

2 Stars  (It would be 1 star without the excellent setting.)

The Final Touch – A Romance by Betty Neels – Marriage of Convenience

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Betty Neels wrote 134 romance novels, all perfectly clean, most featuring English nurses and rich Dutch doctors.  The Final Touch fits Neels’ classic mold:  Dutch resident doctor Cor entices Charity with sweet nothings when he is in England on a course, convincing her that he loves her so that she follows him to Holland where she takes a hospital  job and eventually realizes Cor is a nasty flirt, and has never been serious about her.  Rich Dutch consulting physician Tyco finds Charity crying in the hall and takes her out to supper.   He eventually proposes a marriage of convenience because his two young daughters need a mother.

I enjoyed The Final Touch because Charity is a fairly strong character, marrying Tyco because she likes him and his daughters, not quite realizing that she is beginning to love him.  Tyco also is more developed than some of Neels’ rich Dutch doctors, feeling vulnerable because he is older than Charity and fears she may still be attached to Cor.

Much as with any romance we readers can’t be too fussy about the plot.  Sometimes the conflicts in Neels’ stories are silly; lying old girl friends (or wanna-be girl friends), or foolish misunderstandings and often he or she jumps to conclusions and makes everyone miserable.

The Final Touch has two conflicts.  Neither Tyco nor Charity realizes they are falling in love and thus step ever so carefully around each other, worrying about the other’s feelings.  Also, Charity’s very beautiful model step sister decides to make a play for Tyco and Charity believes her lies.

Read The Final Touch – indeed, any of Betty Neels’ novels – for pleasure, to see two people fall in love and wade through a few challenges to have a happy life together.

Under Darkness by Jasper Scott – Alien Invasion and Mind Control in Tropical Paradise

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Under Darkness is short, easy reading, fast-paced, and offers fun twists on the ever-popular alien invasion theme.  Our novel stars Bill Steele, new owner of a not-quite profitable hotel in Hawaii, who sees the sun covered, the stars come out and meteors fall in the middle of the day.  Pretty soon the screams start.

Jasper Scott writes a plot that combines all our favorite thriller/horror/science fiction themes:  Under Darkness has aliens with mind control, aliens who kill and eat almost everyone, international intrigue and nuclear attack, plus a giant tsunami.  The characters are decent, with enough heroism offset with normal fear and deception, to make the story feel real.

Scott has written several series (20 books altogether) that are popular and successful.  He promotes Under Darkness as a stand-alone, meaning no sequels, a refreshing change from some of the endless narratives out there in alien invasion series.  He writes well, with a beginning, a middle and an end and the end neatly wraps the story up, leaving a few interpersonal loose strings but no plot heartburn.

3 Stars

The Flaw in All Magic by Ben Dobson, Magebreakers Book 1 Even Mages are Human

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Even mages are human.  And humans make mistakes.  That was the thesis for Tane Carver’s senior dissertation at the mage school (which got him expelled in disgrace) and it is the underpinning for his livelihood.  The flaw in all magic is the mage who casts it.

Lead character Tane Carver is very, very good at analyzing magic and spotting flaws but has no magical ability.  Tane scratches a modest (very modest) living examining spell diagrams for flaws and advising how to correct problems and gaps in wards.

The Flaw in All Magic opens with the dean of divination at the mage school asking Tane to consult on a murder that could not have happened.  One of Tane’s old friends is murdered in a locked lab, secured behind wards that prevent anyone unauthorized to enter.  So how did someone gain access and who is the murderer?

The Flaw in All Magic combines a bit of whodunit with interesting fantasy elements and fun characters.  Tane is a bit much sometimes, way too smart and not always truthful.  Of course, as the hero, he bends the truth to save the day.  Tane is irksome when he gets on his soapbox and author Dobson is good enough writer to keep these soliloquies to a minimum.

Author Dobson did not stint on creating even minor characters with personality.  Indree, Tane’s old girlfriend and now a leading light in the local police, is fairly predictable yet believable, as are the nasty villain and the university leaders.

The best character is Kadka, half orc and half human, an extremely rare type of individual.  She left her orc homeland because they saw her as human, and wandered the human countries for a while, finding they saw her as Orc.  Now she is in Audland Protectorate, the one country left from the breakup of the Mage Empire centuries before that encourages magic and welcomes folks of all species, from goblins and orcs to elves and sprites.  Kadka is in love with magic, seeing the wonder in what the mages do and the beauty in the magical workings.

Kadka has a fairly simple philosophy; if threaten anyone I care about then I will smash your throat in.  That is extremely useful when she teams up with Tane to solve the murder and along the way finds a threat to her adopted country and indeed to everyone.  Kudos to Dobson for writing such a novel blend of innocence, wonder and badassery.

The Flaw in All Magic is an enjoyable read, well written with complex backstory, good pacing and solid characters. The writing is good, with a few clumsy moments, as when Tane explains to Kadka how things work to bring us readers into the backstory.

I’ll most likely look for the sequels.

3+ to 4 Stars

Dial G for Gravity (The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1) by Michael Campling

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Dial G for Gravity by Michael Campling, subtitled The Brent Bolster Mysteries Book 1, has great sounding plot and back story, but the writing and characterization don’t live up to the promise.  Let’s go to the good part first.

The plot idea is terrific:  Aliens are here peacefully.  The  Gloabons are die-hard bureaucrats (apparently the national mania) as well as die-hard anal probers.  It’s a little suspect whether they really are peaceful because their technology has pretty well wiped out ours and now we’re pretty dependent on them.  Plus there is yet another alien group with a taste for live humans – for supper.  There is plenty of serious stuff going on in the background.

The execution against this backdrop disappointed me.  The characters are mediocre, with hero Brent, a Galactic Investigator PI, a meld of all the PI tropes you’ve ever read.  The best character is the alien Rawlgeeb, a bureaucrat through and through, but good-hearted once the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed.  He is the first clue that the supposedly benign Gloabons may be anything but; he greatly fears for his life when he makes a mistake abducting Brent for “sampling”, aka Probing.  Apparently Gloabons that make too many mistakes end up dead or exiled to nasty places.

The writing is supposed to be humorous, and had it been the book would have been more enjoyable.  A lot of other readers apparently liked this much more than I as several Amazon reviewers found the book funny and the characters well done.

The book had a great cover and this nifty of a plot background that kept me reading, thinking it would get better.  Unfortunately Dial G for Gravity never lived up to its premise.

2 Stars

Three Betty Neels Romances – The End of the Rainbow, The Bachelor’s Wedding, The Little Dragon

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Betty Neels wrote gentle, clean romances from 1970 to about 2000, many featuring English ladies, often nurses, and Dutch or English rich men, often doctors.  These three novels are good examples of her writing.

The End of the Rainbow

Olympia is a trained nurse who works for her aunt at below-minimum wage in her very profitable London nursing home.  When Olympia was young her nasty aunt convince Olympia to promise that she would work for her aunt forever, unless she married, and Olympia feels bound by this promise.  Olympia encounters Dutch doctor Waldo van der Graaf whose wife is dead, leaving him with a young daughter.

Waldo proposes marriage under the guise of wanting a mother for his daughter.  Elizabeth, a long-time friend of Waldo’s secretly sabotages Olympia, finally convincing his little girl to run away while blaming it on Olympia.  Of course everything ends up happy.

Neels created a sympathetic character in Olympia and built her well.  Often Neels creates female characters who effortlessly adapt to a completely different lifestyle – foreign country, marriage, being rich and living in a home with servants and plenty of money for clothes and flowers – and Olympia actually has to learn how to act in this new environment.  Waldo and the other characters are less well-crafted, acting more as a cipher and respondent.  The End of the Rainbow is one of Neels’ enjoyable stories.

4 Stars

The Bachelor’s Wedding

I liked The Bachelor’s Wedding the best of the three novels reviewed here, in part because our heroine is not a nurse but a an emergency home helper, and neither of the two protagonists is secretly in love with the other.

Araminta lives with her “delicate” (aka lazy and selfish) sister and feckless father who dotes on her sister and views Araminta as unpaid help.  Professor Jason Lister hires Araminta to care for his niece and nephew when his sister must leave the country with no notice for an emergency.  First Araminta cares for them in Jason’s London home, then she goes with the two teens to their country home and stays a couple of weeks.

She doesn’t see much of Jason but finds him intriguing and kind, but intimidating.  When she returns home her sister hasn’t cleaned or done anything except spend all the housekeeping money on herself and her father expects her to user her earnings to pay the bills they both ran up.

(On a side note I’m appalled at the times Araminta mentions having to make other people’s beds.  Why doesn’t everyone make their own?)

Jason hasn’t fallen in love with her, nor she with him, but they like each other and he decides it’s time to marry and get a buffer against all the demanding young ladies he knows.  She likes him well enough and accepts, which causes her father to call her selfish and her sister to not attend her wedding but rather to wish her ill.

Of course everything ends up happy in the end.

4 Stars (Judging only Neels work I’d give this 5 stars)

The Little Dragon

I couldn’t finish this as the entire premise is nauseating.  Constantia worked as a private nurse for many rich people who were nasty and selfish and concluded all rich people were icky.  Dutch doctor Jeroen van der Giessen falls for her and constructs an elaborate charade of being poor and gets her to marry him in order to care for two children.  Constantia is supposedly so gullible and stupid that she believes this and assumes that Jeroen must be living in a rich uncle’s lovely home.

1 Star