If you like romances about nasty guys and stiff-spine ladies with soft spots for their friends, then you will like Bought with His Name (paid link) by Penny Jordan. Unlike many Penny Jordan heroines, Genista is well off, attractive, self-confident most of the time. What she does suffer from is a too-strong adherence to friends and an even stronger dislike of rude, arrogant men.

Gen meets Luke at a party where he is over the top taken with her while she is both attracted and repelled by his handsome arrogance. She flirts and more or less leads him on until she’s ready to leave, at which time she turns him down flat in front of others. That was her little way to get her own back for all the icky stuck up creeps out there! Sadly, he’s not taking no for an answer and follows her home, tries to force her to let him into her apartment before she outwits him. Gen thinks that’s the last she’ll see of this obnoxious guy until the next morning when she finds he owns the company where she works. Luke thinks she’s having an affair with Bob, her boss and good friend.

Gen is ready to resign until Bob confides his wife Elain faces breast cancer. Luke cons her into going on a supposed business trip with him where he blackmails her into marrying him by saying he’ll tell Elaine that Gen and Bob are having an affair. Gen really doesn’t want him upsetting Elaine (who is also her friend) so she goes along with it. Of course that night Luke realizes she’s a virgin, but he keeps on pushing the “I’m going to tell Elaine” button to keep Gen.

We have the requisite Other Woman, who is finishing with Luke’s married brother and now turning back to Luke. Then Gen realizes she’s pregnant, decides to leave, gets into a car accident, goes back to Luke’s home to recover and Luke says he’s ready to break up. She’s waiting for the taxi to take her back to her own life when Luke comes in, confesses undying love and has a ready to hand explanation for the Other Woman.

Wow! That’s some plot! Now let’s look at the story here.

For some reason Luke simply cannot believe Gen is not having an affair with Bob. His friend told him so and it’s obvious that Bob and Gen are good friends and of course Gen cares enough about Bob and Elaine that Luke can blackmail her. But there is no obvious reason that Luke should continue to believe this over a couple months. Bob brings some papers to Luke’s home and stays to talk to Gen – of course Luke walks in – but Jordan doesn’t describe one incident that would give credence to the Gen/Luke affair. Luke simply won’t accept that Gen hasn’t fallen for him and uses the supposed affair to explain that to himself. Gen denies it but Luke keeps interrupting her to put his own interpretation on her.

Gen is harder to understand. I understand and applaud wanting to keep a sick woman free from worry but there really wasn’t a good reason for Gen to not tell Luke the situation, that she didn’t want to upset Elaine especially with a pack of lies about a non-existent affair. Gen says that it isn’t her place to tell Luke this, but who in their right mind would accept marriage to avoid divulging something private? Gen must have been more intrigued with Luke than she realized or than author Jordan lets us see.

Luke is weak in some ways. He doesn’t accept that he made a mistake about Gen, instead gets angry with her for not telling him she is a virgin and hasn’t been sleeping with Bob. He yells at her for deceiving him, even worse than the usual Harlequin Presents stuck up guy behavior!

After a month or so Gen realizes she’s falling for Luke. I’m always skeptical about the forced seduction to love conversion – either there was some element of love initially or the guy really went above and beyond to court the girl later – and Bought with His Name doesn’t remove my skepticism. Luke is dynamic, interesting, an excellent lover but he’s cruel, hurtful, distrusting. She falls for him within days of marrying him, and how could that happen? Luke accuses her of wishing he were Bob every time they make love, every time they talk. He does almost nothing to change her mind or emotions.

Penny Jordan tells intense stories that usually go so fast that the gaps in emotional reality fly right by. She is just as intense in Bought with His Name but with Luke constantly throwing Bob in Gen’s face we get dashed with the cold water of reality too often and because of it, Bought with His Name is simply not plausible or as good as other Penny Jordan romances. I originally gave this 4 stars but after re-reading to write this review all my little niggling concerns about the romance are still here and the romance has too many holes to be compelling.

3 Stars

I purchased a paperback copy from Thriftbooks and you can find copies on eBay. Read the pdf from Archive.org. Amazon has a Kindle version combined with The Sicilian’s Bought Bride by Carol Marinelli into one E volume or you can purchase the same E book from Harlequin to read via Glose.

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