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

Dark Remembrance by Daphne Clair

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Daphne Clair always writes novels with plenty of emotion, connecting readers to her story as she develops connections among the characters. From reviews on Goodreads, readers either love Dark Remembrance or hate it, some citing the thread of violence that underlies Logan’s pursuit of Raina as a reason to hate the story and others citing Raina’s deliberate denial of any feelings for Logan as a reason to dislike her and the book. I liked it quite a bit despite both.

Logan’s best friend, Perry, had left Raina a widow with small child when he took one too many chances when flying. Perry always expected Logan to take care of Raina in his absence, despite knowing that Logan was fiercely attracted to Raina. Now with Perry gone Logan is taking steps to make Raina his wife, and finally Raina accepts after sitting up all night with son Danny who’s sick with whooping cough. (??? We’ve had vaccinations for whooping cough for years! But this is Harlequin where medical facts don’t always drive the story.) Anyway the little boy is sick all night, Riana is exhausted and she knows Logan is right when he insists that both Raina and Danny need him.

The rest of the story is how Raina deals with her own, long-suppressed desire for Logan, how she comes to love him and how she eventually forces them both to admit to love.

There is some light violence in Dark Remembrance. Logan is forceful and pushes Raina into marriage and on their wedding night he goes ahead even when she does turns off after he says something stupid. Later he admits he thought about forcing her, but decided that he couldn’t live with himself if he raped her. He’s a man who’s been in love with someone unattainable – his best friend’s wife – for four years and he’s nearly desperate with longing and wanting, and her constant rejection is tearing him apart.

Raina is attracted to Logan, but she’s scared to admit that she was attracted even when her husband was alive, and cloaked it behind animosity. Logan said it best, that he hated that she was so loyal to her dead husband but he honored her for it too. She decides to marry Logan for her son’s benefit, reluctant to admit she wants to marry him for herself too. Raina is torn between loyalty to her dead husband, love for her son, attraction and caring for Logan.

Over the course of a couple months of marriage Logan courts Raina, softly and steadily convincing her to give him and their feelings for each other a chance. She decides to go see him at work and have it out in the open, but when she arrives Raina can see Logan and his secretary Angela embrace through the frosted glass door. Of course she runs back to the car and tears away, earning a speeding ticket. After that Raina is colder and less caring, less open, and when she hears Logan and Angela at a party she assumes they are having an affair. She is hurt and angry and that helps her realize that yes, she loves Logan. But now she thinks he stopped loving her.

Raina’s young son Danny is part of the glue that tugs them together since they have to be friends in front of him, and of course, both adults love the boy. The two are committed to staying together, keep stumbling towards some sort of emotional rendezvous, and eventually reach their loving happiness.

Daphne Clair writes with so much love for her New Zealand countryside and cities that it makes me want to go there. Dark Remembrance is less of a travelogue than some of her novels; this time she shows us a few places, quiet lakes, lovely beaches, busy cities, mountains, although without the loving detail she provides in other novels.

4 Stars

I read this in on Archive.org and Amazon and Thriftbooks both have paperback copies available as of mid-November 2020.

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The Shifting Sands – Kay Thorpe Romance in Algeria

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The Shifting Sands is set in Algiers, written in 1975, after the Algerian war for independence; hero Andre and other characters are French, and heroine Ruth and the other man Paul Brent are English. I continue to enjoy this book, even on a third read, partly for the great setting and partly for Kay Thorpe’s writing, but mostly for the convincing emotional development.

New to Algiers, young Ruth convinces Andre to take her along on his flight to a distant, tiny desert village where her father lives, but they crash in the Sahara miles off course and with insufficient supplies to allow them to walk the 60 miles to the village. This part of the novel is riveting as they must head to a tiny, almost dried up oasis to replenish their water before hiking further. Andre knows how to keep them alive through sandstorms, desiccating heat and bitter nighttime cold. Eventually they reach the village mission, but Ruth’s father is dead and she is very ill with a fever. Andre tells her Ruth father is dead and they will marry; she’s too ill and desolate to refuse.

The reason I like The Shifting Sands is that Ruth’s feelings follow a trajectory that make perfect sense. When Ruth first meets Andre she is overwhelmed and and she feels inadequate and gauche. After the crash she’s still overwhelmed – he saved their lives – and ready to fall in love, but he’s a bit aloof and she’s still terribly unsure of herself, especially compared to beautiful Simone.

Ruth hears some obvious gossip that exacerbates her lack of confidence to believe that Andre is really not interested in her. Andre gets bossy and possessive and forbids her to talk with a young Englishman Simone brings to a party, annoying Ruth who gets her back up and pushes Andre away. Simone makes a lot of trouble between Andre and Ruth, but goes so far that Ruth must confront her own growing feeling for Andre.

Kay Thorpe writes The Shifting Sands from Ruth’s point of view, making it hard to see exactly what Andre thinks. He’s extraordinarily possessive and jealous, angry at Ruth for talking to Paul or dancing with him – despite his own dances with Simone – yet he talks down to her, calls her child, tells her he wants a wife and not a ward but he doesn’t share much about his business or personal life with her. When he proposed he told her he would wait for her, they could live as brother and sister for a while. However he gets impatient quickly.

Andre takes her for a drive along the coast one day, which Ruth enjoys and begins to feel loving towards him, but then ruins it by taking her to the casino, then to dinner where Simone poisons first Ruth and then Andre with her lies. Andre tops the evening off by telling her to go ahead and despise him, before coming “purposely towards her” in her bedroom so that they have no grounds for annulment.

Nonetheless we can infer something about his feelings. Either he’s uncommonly possessive and untrusting or he’s hurt by Ruth continually backing off from him. One evening just a couple days after they returned to Algiers from the desert he comes to her room and puts his hands on her shoulders, tells her how lovely she is, little gestures like that that could mean he feels something for Ruth beyond duty. Yet it’s so easy for Simone to twist how Ruth sees Andre’s behavior; she tells Ruth Andre married her only for duty, that Ruth should do the right thing, leave Andre to set him free since his sense of honor will not allow him to initiate a separation.

Had Ruth been less unsure of herself or Simone less believable Ruth could have dispelled the nastiness. Simone started her little taunt by claiming that Ruth obviously had set out to entrap Andre, which Ruth most certainly had not done, and had Ruth talked to Andre about this, or been able to consider it dispassionately she could have realized that if Simone was so wrong about Ruth she may have been wrong about Andre as well. Andre too is caught in Simone’s net of cruel lies and doesn’t take time to talk to Ruth before deciding he needs to consummate their marriage to make an annulment impossible.

Eventually Ruth and Andre manage to realize how Simone has twisted and manipulated events, that they truly do care about each other, and they have the requisite happy ending.

Kay Thorpe writes well – as you can imagine when you realize she took a basic romance plot, a short 154 page novel, and made it into a compelling, enjoyable story about two people who find each other. The desert of the Sahara is a metaphor for the arid waste both Ruth and Andre have in their hearts before they come together. They escape the Sahara by dint of Andre’s leadership and Ruth’s determined slog and they conquer their heartaches by trusting each other enough to tell the truth in a moment.

It’s also a tribute to her skill that the short scene where Andre comes “purposely towards her” has more emotional punch than a lot of authors manage to get with paragraphs of lurid encounter. That simple phrase makes us think about what must come next.

4 Stars

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Amazon has several copies of the paperback edition in stock but unfortunately this is not available on Kindle or via Harlequin on Glose. I got my copy of The Shifting Sands from Thriftbooks and you can read a pdf version from Archive.org or check eBay for paperbacks.

Accompanied by His Wife by Mary Burchell – Gentle Love Story with Complicated Plot

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Mary Burchell’s romances are a lovely step back to the days when Harlequin published novels full of real people with real lives and heartfelt feelings. She reminds me somewhat of Betty Neels who also wrote emotional novels that are clean and fulfilling. Both authors chose words and syntax that are more complex than some contemporary authors, resulting in interesting books.

Accompanied by His Wife dates from 1982 and features main characters Patricia and Michael, plus 6 side characters including Michael’s mother, his wife Pat and Patricia’s former almost-fiancé Phil. Somehow Mary Burchell uses those 8 characters to show us two kind, gentle, highly moral people who hold themselves to fierce standards of right and wrong.

Patricia agrees to pretend to be Michael’s wife because real wife Pat left Michael on their honeymoon before before he came to see his mother who is very ill. Patricia and Michael like and respect each other from the get go but there is no hint of romance initially. In fact the two share a room and bed with zero impropriety; in fact Patricia is shocked that anyone would suspect Michael of taking advantage or of herself to respond to it.

Burchell uses Patricia’s interaction with Michael’s young cousin Deborah to show us Patricia’s character: calm, insightful, truthful. Patricia sees past Deborah’s acting up and doesn’t try to hide anything when Phil meets them at the zoo. Similarly, when Phil shows himself to be anything but a good guy Patricia has no problem choosing the straight and narrow, throwing his proposition back in his face, determined to be self-reliant, especially in preference to a sordid affair.

The plot is fun, a little different from most Harlequins but what makes the book work is the complete consistency in Michael and Patricia. Patricia is willing to be the accused Other Woman if wife Pat sues Michael for divorce, despite the hit to her reputation, if it means that Pat cannot bleed Michael for money. Michael is perfectly happy to give Pat a large sum if she will allow him to divorce her, thus leaving Patricia free from scandal. It’s pretty clear that both are falling in love but Patricia is rather slow to see it.

I enjoyed this very much. It was a relief to find a romance that packs so much emotion and character in with quality writing and a clean plot free of sex scenes. So many of the contemporary Harlequins are written for a mid-high school reading level and have more sex than plot or character. We can’t beat some of these older romances!

4 Stars

I got my copy from Thriftbooks and you may find copies on eBay. As of mid-November 2020 Amazon does not have this in any format.

Taken by the Pirate Tycoon – Romance Daphne Clair

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Taken by the Pirate Tycoon uses some of the same characters and back story as The Timber Baron’s Virgin Bride but isn’t as enjoyable. Samantha owns a construction business that deals with Bryn Donovan’s lumber company and she and he are good business friends. Samantha would have liked a closer relationship but the two never dated nor had there been any indication that Bryn felt anything more than friendship.

Bryn’s new brother-in-law, Jase, sees Samantha give Bryn a kiss in the receiving line at his wedding and the momentary look of regret on her face, and jumps immediately to suspect that Sam is out to destroy his sister’s marriage and that Sam and Bryn had a past affair. Neither is true but that doesn’t stop our dashing pirate hero!

Frankly the book left me cold about this time. Jase takes Sam out a couple of times, to the beach, to his family’s home, and they develop a business relationship, all the while he believes she hankers after Bryn. Jase himself is intrigued with Sam’s icy exterior that he suspects covers a warm and vulnerable personality, but it doesn’t stop him from continuing to suspect an affair.

Sister Rachel tells Jase that she saw Bryn kiss Sam – when he kissed her on the cheek – and Jase blows this up to Bryn making love to Sam in his office and goes on a tirade with Sam. This is where I’d tell the guy to take a hike and it is hard to see how Sam could continue falling in love with him.

Eventually things resolve themselves but Jase never apologizes for his nasty suspicions. The story is OK but not particularly satisfying. Unlike some of her earlier novels Ms. Clair does not develop the characters very well or with any depth. I didn’t feel as though Sam or Jase were real people or that I was right there with them as we do with the best romances.

There is also nothing particularly enticing about the setting. Bryn visits Jase’s farm family home and it seems nice but not memorable or even interesting. Since I’ve never been to New Zealand I enjoy reading about the scenery, about the beaches and small towns and cities and mountains and it’s simply not there in Taken by the Pirate Tycoon.

Taken by the Pirate Tycoon is OK but nothing special. I bought my copy from Thriftbooks and Amazon offers both the Kindle and paperback editions.

2 Stars

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A Man of Means Romance by Kay Thorpe

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Ugh. The story is reasonably good – Kay Thorpe knows how to engage us with her characters – but this is another novel of a 35 year old man and a 17 year old girl. That’s just icky.

True, Dana truly loves Mark is determined to grow up and be the best wife she can be, but… The story runs about 4 months, a month before marriage and 3 months after, and it’s clear that the two have serious issues together. Their biggest problem is that Mark doesn’t think he should be in love with Dana, that he knows she is too young and he’s a bit ashamed of desiring her.

The problems escalate because Mark’s younger brother Brendon falls for Dana too, and bewildered by Mark’s attitude and lonely, Dana enjoys Brendon’s company. Brendon tries hard to steal Dana from Mark, at which point Mark virtually rapes Dana, then somehow seduces her immediately after. (Double yuck!)

Brendon brings in another complication with Marion, the girl both he and Mark had considered marrying. Marion acts decently – we don’t get any of the scenes with her acting seductive or proprietorial – but Dana now is convinced that Mark doesn’t love her and never will love her. And now she’s pregnant. Pregnant by the man who doesn’t want her for his wife.

Or so she thinks.

Most of the pair’s problems would have gone away if Dana had something to do besides sit around home, she’s even tired of reading. Brendon is no fool and takes solid advantage of her boredom and how useless she feels. And of course if Mark could ever bring himself to tell Dana how he really feels, but this is a Harlequin Presents so no hero ever says what he means.

Kay Thorpe writes well and creates believable characters, even those with a huge age discrepancy, and we can feel desolate and lonely and rejected along with Dana. A Man of Means is not one of Thorpe’s best but it is pretty good, quite enjoyable.

3 Stars

I got my copy from Thriftbooks, and at the moment Amazon has a copy of the paperback and the pdf version is here on Archive.org. I don’t see a Kindle version except of the comic book version.

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An Arranged Marriage – Romance in Texas – Susan Fox

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Susan Fox writes romances set in Texas ranch country, with rich rancher and a woman with some Cinderella characteristics. Her novels are empathetic and make us feel like we’re right with the characters, that they are real people with real emotion. I enjoy almost all her novels and An Arranged Marriage is quite good. It simply is not one of her best.

Allison is the orphaned daughter of a well-off, upper crust banker and lives with her smarmy uncle and kind aunt. Allison is almost too good to be true, kind and generous with her time, volunteering at church and hospital, plus lovely to look at and a gentle, sweet person. At least that’s her exterior. Inside she’s a rod of steel although that’s been mostly hidden before our story opens.

Blue pulled himself up from nothing by hard work and is now rich. Years ago Allison’s uncle tried to cheat him out of his ranch; fortunately Blue had help from his former boss and was able to keep his ranch, in time for a massive oil find. Now Blue wants a respectable, beautiful wife and kids. He wants Allison.

Allison’s uncle wants her to marry Blue to keep the family bank solvent and Allison is somewhat attracted to Blue by himself but reluctant to marry for such reasons, finally convinced to do so for her aunt’s sake. But she is quite determined not to have sexual relations with Blue until there is some emotional commitment on both sides.

The story proceeds with Allison doing her best to learn to love Blue and to get him to love her. She is determined for a happy marriage cemented with love, then kids while Blue is terrified to acknowledge – either to her or to himself – that he loves her back and his goal is to have kids – and her – now. Blue has to confront his belief in his own inadequacy which he does by shoving his past in Allison’s face, pushing her into sexual intimacy and demanding she get pregnant.

Blue and Allison’s romance happens as counterpoint while her aunt and uncle’s marriage disintegrates. Blue and Allison’s story happens in their hearts and minds. All the action occurs with other people.

An Arranged Marriage is a gentle, soft book, but not an exciting one nor is it one of Susan Fox’s best. I got my copy from Thriftbooks and Amazon has paperback in stock too here. Harlequin offers their eBook, which you can read online or via the Glose app, here.

3 Stars

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The Highest Stakes of All – Sara Craven Romance More or Less

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I’m almost embarrassed to admit liking this book. Our heroine, Joanna, along with her card shark con man father, is on the South Coast of France when Vassos brings his yacht in harbor. Joanna and Vassos see each other across the harbor and are immensely attracted.

Sadly for her, Joanna’s dad likes her to help him out by acting all seductive in skimpy dresses when he plays cards and although she doesn’t like acting like a vamp she goes along with him. Unfortunately the last person she helped con was Vassos’ nephew who lost his fiancé and job because he lost so much at cards. Now Vassos is here for revenge.

The Highest Stakes of All is not your typical strong-alpha-obnoxious-domineering-male meets sweet-virginal-girl story although both characters fit those molds. However Joanna is a bit of a gambler herself since she NEVER – repeat NEVER NEVER NEVER – says ANYTHING when her dad (posing as her “uncle”) stakes her on his last hand with Vassos. Anyone who would sit there and watch without screaming her objections in this situation is herself a gambler, wouldn’t you say?

Things progress as we expect. Vassos has his minions take Joanna to his private Greek island (just how many Greek gazillionaires are there and how many private islands are there?) where she is to wait his pleasure. Of course Joanna is a virgin and has a very painful time when Vassos semi-rapes her (i.e., Joanna doesn’t fight him but she isn’t willing either).

The twist that makes The Highest Stakes of All work is that Vassos has a young daughter, probably four, who lives on the island in a separate house with her dead mother’s former maid as nanny. Vassos doesn’t believe she is his daughter and so rejects her (huh??) and does not allow Joanna or anyone else to go there, since after all he provides food and shelter and that’s enough for this unwanted child. Joanna ignores his edict and spends time with his little girl.

Eventually Joanna brings father and daughter together whereupon Vassos realizes he has behaved criminally and summons Joanna’s father to come get her. Dad comes with his new money-grasping wife who informs Vassos he owes and owes a LOT and tells Joanna not to worry because she can surely find a husband at the country club back in America, and if she is pregnant, well, that’s easily solved. This scene makes the book.

Here’s why this whole nonsense works for me:

  • Joanna has a lot of character and isn’t willing to go along with Vassos even after she comes to love him.
  • Vassos isn’t completely a jerk. He treats Joanna with great care and consideration, if you ignore the basic situation. He tracks down his nephew and forces him to admit the truth, that Joanna did not do anything beyond flirt and cajole.
  • The interplay among the characters develops along with considerable emotion.
  • The little girl adds rationality to the story and imbues Vassos’ complete turnaround.
  • The side characters, especially dear old Dad and nasty wife, are great and add considerably.
  • There are some almost-funny scenes, especially with new step-mom.

Here’s what sticks in my throat and won’t allow me to give this more than three stars:

  • Rape is ugly.
  • How do you fall in love with someone who forces you to sleep with them? Who cares how kind and gentle or good looking or engaging he is?
  • Joanna was semi-complicit in the whole let’s-dupe-the-rubes con.
  • Joanna never said NO WAY when dear old dad put her up as a stake

But the biggest negative is that as soon as Vassos abducts her, he tells Joanna that he will sell her on to someone else and make a hefty profit from her. Folks, that’s human trafficking, sex slavery and it’s obscene. Probably Vassos doesn’t mean it, but he said it and Joanna believed it.

So let’s go with 3 stars. I’d say 5 for the sheer fun, but subtract 1 for rape and 1 for sex slavery.

I borrowed the paperback from our state library lending system. Amazon has the comic book version of The Highest Stakes of All and the omnibus His Delicious Revenge which includes this novel and the standalone paperback is available on Thriftbooks. All Amazon links are paid ads.

The Tycoon’s Mistress – by Sara Craven, Harlequin Presents Romance

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So… what’s wrong with this picture?

  • You’re English, a tax accountant, in Greece on a holiday and meet a guy on the beach.
  • You really (REALLY) hit it off with him. He’s kind, compassionate, fun to talk to and you really (REALLY) like kissing him.
  • But… You know nothing about him. Does he have a family? Is he or has he ever been married? Where does he live?
  • You think he is a fisherman who may augment his livelihood by judicious flirting with ladies on holiday and/or dancing in the hotels. But you don’t know because he kind of deflects these questions.
  • You don’t have his phone number but it apparently is possible to get in touch by phoning the local tavern.
  • You’re good at your job. You don’t know what he thinks of working wives.
  • He asks you to marry him within two weeks of meeting.
  • You say yes.

OK, I get it. He’s wonderful. But you really don’t know anything about him. Where will you live? Should you keep working? Does he in fact chat up ladies for a living as you suspect?

Our heroine first says yes, then when she returns to pack up at her hotel on a neighboring island gets a call from her uncle that her dad is in the hospital and likely to die. Now that she’s away from Draco (our gorgeous hero) and they haven’t been necking for a couple hours she’s gotten cold feet/common sense/a chance to step back and reassess the situation. Now here comes the big, huge, horrible mistake: She leaves for England and Daddy without talking to Draco!

Just as in so many Harlequins, a simple phone call could save tons of heartaches. A simple “Hey Draco. I’ve got to go home. Dad’s in the hospital in a bad way. And it’s probably a good idea to take a breather here and give us a week away from necking/each other. OK? I’ll get in touch in a week.”

Now let’s look at it from Draco’s perspective. (Sara Craven does a great job letting us see his thinking, albeit after the fact.)

  • This really (REALLY) hot blonde thinks you’re super. Super as in super sexy, super easy to talk to, super (REALLY REALLY) super kisser.
  • She’s the real thing too. You investigated her (because after all she could simply be a better schemer than all the others) and of course, why not? She truly is a tax accountant – not a profession whose adherents are known for doing crazy spontaneous things like falling in love with a guy they met on holiday and marrying them two weeks later. And her dad was rich until his sugar doll wife conned him out of every penny.
  • On the other hand you told her nothing about yourself and she might even suspect you’re a part time gigolo.
  • You’ve never talked about the future in any concrete terms. You know, stuff like where you’ll live, what you’ll expect from her (Black dresses and five paces behind? Get good internet and work from home? Cook and clean in a shack with or without electricity and running water? Two kids or eight?) Right. All those pesky detailed things.
  • You are falling in lust/love and she is/was a virgin and you really should get married some time and she said “Yes!”
  • So you organize a big hot party in your mansion (oops, you forgot to tell her that) and call all your friends and family (oops, not about them either!) and wait for her to come back from getting her stuff in the fancy hotel just across on the other island.

That’s where it went south for me. Would you seriously organize a party before she returns? Or would you possibly have just a niggle of worry that she might, oh, I don’t know, get cold feet or need a bit of reassurance or even want you to come home with her to meet her family?

The engagement party bust is not a trivial incident either but a major plot point. Draco was humiliated and fell apart emotionally when he finally twigged she took off.

Now if you’re a Greek tycoon whose expected wife failed to show you do the obvious thing. You track her down to her family home where you immediately take over all her father’s debts and issue a nasty ultimatum: Come sleep with me for three months or else! Dad’s going to be broke, your housekeeper will be homeless and, and, oh gee, gosh, well, you’ll be miserable and guilty because you didn’t help dear old Dad when you could. Yes, we now have a Miffed Greek Tycoon Seeks Revenge story.

This is the second plot point that fails. Heroine Cressida tells herself that she can find a larger apartment and move Dad in, that he has his pension so he isn’t completely destitute, that she has a decent salary. But when Draco summons her to appear before him she meekly agrees to play unmarried shack-up mistress kissy face for three months instead of telling him to go pound sand. She has very little monetary motivation to agree to his humiliating proposition.

Dad will be more comfortable in his old home. Yes. But ask yourself. Would you accept mistress-hood in exchange for your dad being more comfy? I don’t think so!

That leaves the other possible reason for Cressida to say “yes”. She loves Draco and regrets taking off without a word, especially when she finds out that he truly was heartbroken and embarrassed. So our guilty-feeling heroine agrees and trots off to sunny Greece, leaving dear old Dad behind to grieve himself into an early grave.

In the last part of The Tycoon’s Mistress author Sara Craven explains that Cressida has a hard time trusting and particularly trusting love, due of course to Dad’s disastrous second foray into marriage. That’s nice but not terribly pertinent. Even people who trust easily might find it overwhelming to marry someone after two sunny holiday weeks.

Craven could have played up Cressida’s cut and run – without any notice – which, while possibly understandable, was mean. There was no reason she couldn’t have at least left a message at her hotel or called the taverna where she stayed on the second island. Draco was justifiably angry about being stood up.

The other unsatisfying thing about the story is that Draco never did the formerly-nasty-Greek-tycoon-with-loving-bride grovel. I missed that!

Sara Craven wrote many marriage of convenience novels and a few of the tycoon-meets-innocent-girl type and I find her MOC novels are far more satisfying and better written. (She combined both tropes in a couple stories, notably Wife in the Shadows, and those were also very good.) The Tycoon’s Mistress lacks the dramatic tension of the MOC A High Price to Pay or the deeply emotional characters in MOC Wife Against Her Will. Nonetheless, I enjoyed The Tycoon’s Mistress and followed Cressida and Draco love affair and was sad to reach the novel end.

3 Stars. I’d give it 4 except the two characters fell into misery because they didn’t bother to get to know each other, too busy necking!

All Amazon links are paid ads. I borrowed this through the Archive.org and there are copies on Amazon and Thriftbooks as of October 2020. Please note there is a comic book version but I read and reviewed the original text story.

A Place of Storms – Married Forced by Blackmail in France

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At first I was not terribly impressed with Sara Craven’s A Place of Storms. It didn’t affect me the way some of her other books do, but after a bit I found myself wanting to re-read and I enjoyed the story more each time I read it.

A Place of Storms is one of Sara Craven’s earliest Harlequin Presents novels, written in 1978 and has her trademark strong emotion and well-done characters. English Andrea and older Frenchman Blaise are interesting people we want to know although the character development is not quite as strong as in Craven’s later novels.

Andrea is used to helping her flighty cousin Clare avoid richly deserved trouble and now Clare wants her help to avoid a marriage of convenience to an unknown distant relation, Blaise. Blaise is blackmailing Clare with her letters promising to marry him, to force her into marriage even though they never met. Clare now is engaged to a wonderful man and doesn’t want any part of scandal and certainly not a temporary marriage!

What neither Clare nor Andrea know is that Blaise is desperate to marry to secure custody of his nephew from his unscrupulous ex-fiancé – who is the boy’s aunt, greedy and heartless, unwilling to marry a poor man or one with a scarred face.

Blaise lives in a crumbling chateau where every bedroom room leaks, the bathrooms are ancient and fussy and the furniture huge and is barely eking a living from his vineyards. Plus Blaise himself is scarred inside and on his face from the fire in the family’s former island plantation home that killed his brother.

Blaise isn’t a particularly attractive potential husband. Unfortunately for Andrea he is also not dumb. He researched Clare’s family before asking her to marry him and knows all about Clare, her father’s ill health and her cousin Andrea and knows immediately who Andrea is when she arrives at his chateau to retrieve Clare’s foolish letters.

Andrea is shocked to see the dilapidated state of the house and by Blaise’s intention to foist not just a marriage of convenience but a 5 year old nephew onto her cousin. She is terrified because Blaise is attractive and she recognizes the huge potential he has to hurt her emotionally. Blaise will use every trick and pressure possible to get his own way and confronts Andrea when he finds her going through his dresser, threatening endless scandal and publicity if she will not marry him. Andrea agrees, assuming that he is offering the paper marriage he offered to her cousin and that he stressed the evening she met him. Fortunately for our novel, he is intending and demanding far more, a real marriage in every way.

We now have the set up for a delicious romance: A man who is ruthless and determined to marry the woman who is determined not to lose her heart. But wait! There is still more! Sara Craven has three other characters that add complexity.

  • Alan is researching the Gallic wars and lives in the chateau’s gatehouse. He is the neutral character who is a friend to Andrea and not any threat to Blaise and Andrea’s marriage.
  • Five year old nephew Phillipe lost his parents and now must live with his scarred uncle; Phillipe is not a strong child, he is polite but timid.
  • His aunt Simone is nasty, vindictive and cruel, tells Phillipe stories about a distant ancestor who threw his wife’s bastard son out of the tower window and makes him frightened of his uncle Blaise, claiming Blaise will kill him for the non-existent insurance money. Andrea learns only after a week or so that Simone and Blaise had been engaged until Blaise was scarred.

The author hints that Blaise was disillusioned about Simone even before he got hurt in the fire, but Simone implies that she dumped him because of the scar. There is no love lost between them now. Simone tries her best to make trouble with Phillipe and trouble between Andrea and Blaise and even tries to drag Alan into the mix. She’s the arch-Other Woman and nasty.

The real story is how Andrea and Blaise end up in love. Craven only tells us through Andrea’s eyes so we don’t get a good idea how Blaise feels. He calls Andrea “his heart” or “his love” (in French of course) and gives her a beautiful nightgown for a wedding gift and tries to seduce her a couple of time but we don’t see many loving gestures or comments. In fact he’s mean and uses kisses and threatens forced seduction to punish Andrea. He tells her to obey him and threatens but does not do violence. Try to ignore these (thankfully) outdated elements and enjoy the story.

One indicator of a good story and great characters is that I want to put myself in there, to come up with what I would say to Blaise, how I would react. He has a nasty habit of threatening Andrea sexually, and claiming the high ground. For instance, when he is trying to seduce her Blaise says “be a little merciful. Don’t force me to take you like this.” Andrea should say “No one is forcing you Blaise. If you don’t want to feel like a rapist then don’t be one!” (He wasn’t raping her, but he was trying to gain a response Andrea didn’t want to give.) Or when he tells her that he didn’t offer her a paper marriage as he did to her cousin, Andrea should have reminded him that he did exactly that the first night they met, and he claimed he knew who she was at the time. OK, I’m splitting hairs here but some of these overly domineering types give me a pain!

Sara Craven creates a moody, atmospheric setting too, using the gloomy old chateau set in a gorgeous hilly region of France to heighten the tension. Andrea tries to brighten the place with lighter paints and fabrics while Simone uses the setting and old history to frighten Phillipe.

Overall, on second or third or fourth reading I have to give this one 4 stars. I got my copy from Thriftbooks.com and as of this writing Amazon has copies but it is not available on Archive.org.

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Hired by the Playboy and Unspoken Desire by Penny Jordan

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These two romances by Penny Jordan feature likeble characters facing echoes from their past filled with emotional bludgeons.

Gemma in Hired by the Playboy has rich, snobby parents with whom she has little in common. Years earlier she had made friends with Luke from the wrong side of the tracks, an older guy that she spent a summer sharing everything she had picked up about the construction industry and polite etiquette. Their summer friendship ended when she asked him to teach her how to kiss in case her brother’s friend should be interested. Of course that spawned emotional trouble for her!

Now Luke is rich and even her mother invites him to larger gatherings. Gemma never realizes that Luke had been on the edge of falling in love with her years earlier and believes Luke only tolerates her. Events progress, the two fall into bed and end up married.

Unspoken Desire is less believable from both a plot and an emotional perspective. Rebecca was in love with older 2nd cousin Fraser and when she was 18 Fraser’s bother Rory had an affair while his new wife was expecting twins and convinced Rebecca that she should take the fall with Fraser as the other woman. Of course Fraser was livid and full of contempt for Rebecca; she naively thought he’d realize that the story was a lie and that Rory was sleeping with Fraser’s girlfriend, not with Rebecca.

The action centers around Rory’s 8-year old twins whom Rory ignores; the only use he has for his children is if he can use them as weapons to hurt Fraser, the brother he hates. Eventually Fraser learns the truth about Rebecca and he and Rebecca end up married and with the twins.

Both novels are preposterous in terms of plot and both have over-the-top emotional stories. Yet they work. Author Jordan makes us care about these people and her excellent secondary characters.

For example, Gemma’s snobby mother and father are stereotypes, true, but Jordan makes them people we can visualize acting as these do. Little snippets give the story verisimilitude. For example, Gemma learned to ride as a child but when her mother realized the other students in her riding class were from families just like theirs – and not the country gentry – she lost interest in Gemma’s riding. Why spend the time and money to ride if it won’t result in social advancement? This is a good way to show us snobbery instead of telling us.

Rory, the twins and Aunt Maud are great characters in Unspoken Desire. Rory is a cad, selfish, uncaring, jealous, hating, but charming. The twins are alone, essentially abandoned by their parents and reliant on Fraser, Aunt Maud and each other for any friendship or caring. Jordan shows us how they act.

Jordan makes good use of sexual awareness that simmers just below the surface and gets in the way of the two main characters as they try to navigate through painful memories. In both books she allows the characters to come together; making love initially causes even more problems that eventually get explained away.

I’m going to give both books 3 stars for the emotional content.