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

The Spanish Connection – Stereotyped Romance by Kay Thorpe

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I enjoy most Kay Thorpe romances but this one! The Spanish Connection combines all my most-disliked Harlequin Presents attributes.

  • Stereotyped characters. He’s Spanish, rich. He’s arrogant, thinks he’s God’s gift to women, bossy, obnoxious, uncaring. He files suit to take custody of his dead brother’s sons from their mother! That’s pretty low.
  • Our jerky hero is so colossally full of himself that he tells our heroine that men are always superior to women. Oh my, where to start with this one? Can we just take it as read that superiority depends on the individual and the particular area?
  • He declares he intends to “take” her and that it wouldn’t be rape because he is so gorgeous and sexy and and and. By this point, page 50 or so, I was gagging.
  • He expected all women to be docile doormats. (I worked with a lovely lady from Spain who was the furthest thing possible from doormat-hood.)
  • It’s nauseating to stereotype Spanish men the way this novel does.
  • She falls for him sexually right away and they sleep together the second night she’s in his home. Hey lady, get a grip!! He’s manipulative and obnoxious and out for his own agenda. And if you sleep with him you’ll be so confused he can lead you by the nose.

Plus the story itself is unconvincing. I just don’t buy the romance here. Nina is reflexively jealous of Rafael’s wanna-be girlfriend despite events; she simply sees Rafael with her and assumes they are sleeping together. That’s not love, that’s stupidity.

The plot is nuts, the characters don’t feel real. Even Kay Thorpe’s normal good writing can’t salvage this mess.

Feeling generous today.

2 Stars (I’d give it 1 Star except I did finish it and it is Kay Thorpe!)

I read this initially on Hoopla, which you may be able to access via your library. It’s also available in E format on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Harlequin.com. Look for paperback copies on these sites plus Thriftbooks.com and eBay. I got a paperback copy in a lot with several other books on eBay so it now clutters up my shelves.

Dangerous Charlotte Lamb Romance Harlequin Presents

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Charlotte Lamb said once that she could write a book a month, and with that pace a few duds will slip in along with her many stellar stories. Dangerous (paid ad) is a romance between Laura, a nurse chaperoning a resentful, rebellious 16 year old daughter of a very rich man, and that man Domenicos.

Charlotte Lamb tends to take her time and word count to build strong secondary characters, in Dangerous she writes a good, believable story about Laura and Amanda. Amanda starts to grow up and leave behind rebellion for rebellion’s sake, mostly because Laura is wisely indulges her on small things and lets Amanda to meet the boy she likes under the aegis of her grandmother.

Dangerous has side stories: Amanda grows up, Domenicos begins to know her, Domenicos relationship with his mother, Laura’s friendship with Marcel, the uncle of the boy Amanda wants to date. Lamb does a nice job sketching in these stories, enough to keep us interested in the characters, but she doesn’t actually tie off the loose ends.

My biggest disappointment is the romance between Laura and Domenicos is not believable. Domenicos despises women in general and Laura fascinates him because she is honest, does not chase him nor play games and she obviously cares for Amanda and his mother. Plus she’s attractive and radiates innocence. Laura finds Domenicos attractive and she enjoys the time they spend together but she’s sensible enough to be wary of him and not want an affair.

So why do they end up planning to marry? Would Domenicos, a brilliant businessman whose first marriage was a disaster and who doesn’t trust anyone, truly propose after just a month or less, probably less than 24 hours total spent with Laura? I don’t think so. Laura thinks he is propositioning her when he does propose (he words it that way) yet she is willing to risk all for a few moments of joy. It doesn’t ring true to me.

I did not get emotionally involved with any of the characters nor engaged with the story. It was a book I could put down and pick up a day later.

Overall Dangerous is a decent read, well-written with plenty of scenes in and around Paris, with well-done secondary characters. It is meant to be a romance and on that level it doesn’t rate above a skimpy 3 stars. I didn’t love the story, or the characters nor did I get so irritated that I wanted to whack them over the head with a 2×4. (I give 5s for books that engage me to the point where I fume about the jerky hero for days after reading.)

I got my copy of Dangerous from Thriftbooks. Amazon has used copies as of this writing and you likely will find copies on eBay and other used book sites.

All Amazon links are paid ads.

Solitaire by Sara Craven

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Sara Craven tends to write stories where the primary conflict is in the heroine’s head, when she convinces herself that although she is deeply in love, the hero does not and never can love her, and therefore she faces a lifetime of misery. Usually she protects herself by acting as though she cares little, or that the attraction is physical only.

Sometimes this theme happens after marriage, marriage to take care of a child (Devil and the Deep Sea), a coerced marriage for financial/business reasons (Wife Against Her Will, The Marriage Proposition), even when the marriage was ostensibly for love (His Wedding Night Heir). In Solitaire (link is paid ad) her agony of the heart happens during courtship, when Martine leaves her aunt’s house to go to her older cousin, Uncle Jim, in France and discovers Jim is dead and film director Luc Dumaris owns his house now. Martine is not sophisticated but she’s wise enough to realize that there is no future for her with Luc.

Unfortunately she falls for Luc despite telling herself over and over to stop. For the moment she is stuck in his house because she hasn’t enough money to leave (nor anywhere to go since her aunt doesn’t want her back) and she works for him as a companion for his son to earn enough to return to England. She doesn’t see all that much of Luc but everytime they run into each other she is pulled deeper. Luc is likewise attracted and keeps grabbing Martine, kissing and caressing her and suggests they go upstairs to make love. Luc of course loves Martine but she doesn’t realize it and is reluctant to even suspect it.

This is where author Craven must be her strongest, to make such an implausible story work. Martine has zero experience of men and Luc is strong, masculine, successful, good looking, intelligent and fun to be with. In fact Martine spends very little time with Luc and is surprised to find he can be a delightful companion when he’s not kissing her senseless. Solitaire doesn’t show us anything about Luc’s feelings except through his actions, but it’s clear Luc is attracted to Martine physically but also to her integrity and innocence. He’s about 15 years older, an obvious target for her to have a huge crush.

Unfortunately Craven can’t quite pull this off. The romance is all too likely but it is hard to believe they love and are not simply attracted or infatuated or in love with love or with an ideal. The love story is not compelling.

One reason Solitaire falls just short is the sheer implausibility of the pairing, especially given the fact very young women tend to fall in and out of love until they finally are mature enough to love and not simply be in love. A second reason is that Craven doesn’t show us what Luc thinks. He avoids Martine and spends time with the older, more sophisticated other woman. We could infer that he avoids Martine because he’s attracted to her strongly and wants to play fair with such an innocent, or we could surmise that he’s not interested in her except physically and is decent enough to avoid that. If I were in Martine’s place I don’t think I would figure Luc feels love. Lust, yes. Definitely. But love is not evident in his behavior.

Craven shows us too much inside Martine, as she constantly agonizes over Luc and how he doesn’t/can’t love her. She is responsible and has integrity and wants to earn her wage, first by companioning Luc’s son and then by typing his manuscript. If Martine had been older or wiser she would have asked Luc just what was going on the first time he grabbed her and kissed her silly. He could have been leading up to an affair, or he could have been expressing frustration. Or he could have been showing love.

Had Martine been brave enough to confess her love to Luc, risking rejection or even worse, having him rush her into an affair without love, she would have seen that he did love her. Almost all of Craven’s heroines are cowards when it comes to saying “I love you”, and then they are lost in the woods because they have to wait for a crisis to prompt the man to say it. Since the ladies have spent almost 170 pages being aloof, it’s not too easy for the man to say it either.

Craven sometimes builds excellent characters, uses dialogue and actions to reveal them to us. Martine, Luc’s son Bernard, and Jean Paul, the student working at a local café who dates Martine are quite well developed and we can feel like we might recognize them if we were to meet. Luc is an enigma. We know Martine by her verbal dialogue and her inner thoughts, and I feel Craven uses far too many internal monologues to set the stage and show us Martine.

Overall Solitaire is a solid 3+ stars, not quite 4 but certainly worth reading. I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks and you might see copies on eBay or other used book sites. Amazon has copies available as I write this. The Open Library at Archive.org does not have Solitaire yet.

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House of Mirrors – How to Be a Second Choice – by Yvonne Whittal

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How would you like to be your husband’s second choice? To marry the man you love, and have loved for years, knowing he will never love you, that he gave his heart to a manipulative woman who deserted him when he needed her most?

Plot and Story Synopsis

In House of Mirrors Yvonne Whittal confronts this situation, although here the beloved was never the spouse, only Grant’s much desired girl friend Myra. Myra who manipulated Grant with her beautiful face and body and who deserted him when he lost his status as revered surgeon due to a serious hand injury. When story opens Grant is bitter and alone and hiding in his cottage in rural South Africa where his former neighbor Liz, seeks him out. Liz has loved him for years, way back when he was pursuing her older sister Pamela and still loves him. She comes over, finds his cottage is a pigsty, that he doesn’t cook or eat much, that he’s angry and hurting from losing Myra and his career. (Apparently it never occurred to him that he could practice medicine or teach even with a bad hand.) He tells Liz to go away, that he doesn’t need her or want to see anyone.

Grant is sulking.

Liz is a breath of fresh air for him; she is eminently practical, she comes over every day, cleans his house, cooks his meals, washes his clothes, gives him company when he wants it but never burdens him with her feelings or says much about herself. Eventually Grant kisses her and discovers that he isn’t quite as dead or numb as he thought, Liz responds to him and he wants her. He says he wants her physically but in fact he is looking for stability and comfort and knows instinctively that Liz is that.

The proposal scene is funny. He asks her to marry him, she tells him a marriage proposal usually comes after a declaration of love. He admits he has no love to offer her but he needs a wife. Liz the blunt then says he needs a woman in his bed, which he agrees with. He also says she’s lively company (oh my, a compliment!), a good cook and irons his shirts. Wow. Be still my heart. Of course he can offer her a good life, in material terms, and he can offer her physical passion and why isn’t that enough?

Liz tells him she wants a lot more, she wants love. Then, unlike 99% of all Harlequin heroines, she tells him she loves him and she wants him to love her. He insists he cannot give her love, but he will give her respect, companionship and the physical side of love. She points out she must be a glutton for punishment and accepts.

This is the crux of the story from her side. She loves him, she isn’t just in love and she has no illusions about him or what he feels for her. She knows she risks a life of pain married to someone who feels little for her and she isn’t stupidly optimistic about the chance his feelings might grow. She hopes he might but she doesn’t expect it and she marries him with her eyes wide open.

She knows she has the right to expect his fidelity. He won’t tell her what he thinks about Myra – it’s none of her business, which is a danger sign – and Liz worries he is using her to forget the woman he really wants. Myra is in Paris but could return at any time and Liz isn’t sure that his respect and desire for herself would prevent him from turning to Myra. This second conflict starts subtly, mostly inside Grant and Liz, a foreshadowing.

Liz challenges Grant to have another operation and therapy on his hand. He regains his dexterity and career and is once again the successful, well-known surgeon.

Things go well until Myra shows up and Grant falls apart. He begins staying out at night, sleeping apart from Liz, when they do make love he is tender, almost desperate. True to Harlequin etiquette, Myra makes the classic Other Woman visit, tells Liz to make everyone happy and fade off into the sunset, that Grant is hers once again. Liz, no weeping doormat, tells Myra that all Grant has to do is ask her to leave, but that she is not running when things get tough, a direct hit since Myra ran out on Grant before.

Myra comes home one afternoon after having the doctor confirm she is pregnant, ready to share the good news with Grant but worried that he might feel compelled to stay with her only for the baby. Not to worry. Grant is home early to tell her that although he never wanted to hurt her, blah blah blah, he “needs to be free to sort himself out”. He married Liz when he was “at his lowest ebb” or as Liz says, he knew Myra would not have him then and Liz was better than nothing.

This is where Grant’s complete lack of self-knowledge peeks out. He denies that he made do with Liz or that she was there to help him pass the time. He refuses to discuss Myra even when Liz tells him that Myra never loved him and never will, but he is concerned where Liz is going and wants her to have the car he gave her. In fact Liz was right. Grant did make do, he did use Liz when she was good enough, better than nothing, and now he’s getting the first intimation that she may be more than that and that he’s making a horrible mistake. But since he’s clueless and lets Myra manipulate him, because he wants to believe Myra is the sweet, loving person he wants her to be, he lets Liz walk out.

Liz goes home to her sister’s house, has a miscarriage, refuses to talk about Grant and goes back to writing her children’s books. Sister Stacy blasts Grant through the phone a few days after the miscarriage, tells him to leave Liz alone.

Eventually Liz stops hating Grant and goes to the cottage when she knows he will be there. They have a big reconciliation, Grant grovels, gives a heartfelt apology, says he realized he was facing an abyss of misery the day after Liz left when he suddenly could see Myra as the cold, selfish person she is and rejected her.

There’s a mini-epilogue a few months later, where Liz tells Grant she’s pregnant and Grant says he ran into Myra and once more confirmed that Myra has no hold on him.

Characters – Liz

Yvonne Whittal did a marvelous job here letting us see the heartbreak of being second best, without tears or self-pity, and she used the plot and dialogue to advance Liz’s and Grant’s stories.

Liz’s story is of loving without being loved, of providing endless support both emotional and physical, of losing what is most dear to her, Grant and then the baby, of dealing with grief without becoming bitter. The plot mirrors Liz’s growth and evolution from a girl who wants to help a man she’s always respected and loved to a wife deeply in love with her husband, through rejection and loss to being redemption for Grant.

Whittal made me connect with Liz and ask myself how I would feel to be second best, and a poor second at that. Lots of romance novels have a theme of the heroine thinking she’s not who the hero wants, but usually either the heroine or other woman imagines this, or the hero doesn’t want anyone, neither heroine or Other Woman or he’s making up his mind. In House of Mirrors the conflict is real, tangible and happening now. We see it and we feel it.

Very few Harlequin heroines will risk admitting their love. Either they fear the hero will manipulate them or they let pride get in the way or they can’t face rejection or mockery. Not Liz.

Liz has courage. She handles the hurt and rejection with grace and character. It takes losing her baby, and hearing the obstetrician believe it was due to stress from Grant rejecting her, that turns her love into hate short term. She couldn’t have hated him if she had not loved him.

Myra on the other hand, does not take rejection with any character. She wants to be the one who dumps, not the one dumped. She visits Liz and preens looking into the mirrors all around the room yet she has nothing to offer anyone beyond exterior, physical beauty.

Characters – Grant

What to say about Grant. He’s dumb and cruel, selfish and shows no appreciation for Liz throughout the story. Early on, when Liz visits the cottage he sits at the table, smokes and drinks coffee and watches her wash dishes and cook and clean up the mess – his dishes, his meals, his mess. He doesn’t help her. (Later Liz remembers when they were first married at the cottage he would help her dry the dishes. Big whoopie deal.)

Liz mentions she wants to continue writing children’s books, which is how she earned her living. Grant says in a bored voice, “You can please yourself. You can write your little stories or you can be a lady of leisure.” Time to whap him alongside the head, Liz!

He values her passionate response to him but he seems not to realize that the passion is mostly because she loves him and wants to give herself to him, to be as close as possible, to have that wonderful emotional connection.

A few weeks after they marry Grant decides it’s time to go back to the city and informs Liz. She has no idea where she stands with him, and braves her uncertainty to first ask him whether he’s taking her along, and then to tell him he should discuss ideas and plans with her while he’s considering them, not just inform her of the result. She tells him she wants to be part of his life, not to cling or embarrass him, to be more than the woman he sleeps with, that she wants to share the ups and the downs with him. He ruthlessly pushes her away, tells her she married him knowing what he offered and she could leave if she didn’t like it. He is almost proud of not offering her anything beyond physical desire. He slams out of the cottage. Later he has enough sense (barely) to be glad that she’s still there when he returns, but he still lacks basic awareness to ask himself why he is glad, why he worried she might have left. He feels a lot more for her than desire, but that’s all he will admit.

Grant tells Liz that he didn’t try to seduce her before marriage because he “wanted a marriage, something stable and solid” and he knew he could have that with Liz. She takes it as a huge compliment which puzzles Grant since he doesn’t see her stability and integrity as special, doesn’t realize he admits he could never have relied on Myra for anything nor built a strong, stable marriage with her.

Grant still is clueless when he brings her to the house that Myra decorated. The house is full of mirrors, a metaphor for the relationships among the characters. Myra cares about Myra so she likes the mirrors to show herself. Grant cares about Myra and wants the mirrors to show her. Liz has no vanity and doesn’t like the mirrors at all. Grant has enough consideration and common sense to use a different set of rooms than the ones he shared with Myra but he fails to see that the house itself is a problem for him and Liz, and that Myra permeates every room.

Sloppy Seconds? Settle for What You Can Get? Or Hold Fast to Your Principles?

What happens here? Does Liz decide that she’s always second best and dump Grant in disgust? Does she settle for what she can get, make the most of a delightful physical relationship? Or does she love Grant with all she has and work to build something, however lopsided, with him? She doesn’t settle. She values what she has, she appreciates it and she uses it as a base for a true relationship in marriage. Too bad Grant doesn’t value that relationship when shiny object Myra shows up; he’s a magpie, dumping what he has for the elusive new thing.

Liz uses her principles to guide her. She loves Grant, so she goes to his cottage and takes care of him. She loves him and wants him and knows she can offer him a happy marriage so she says yes to his proposal. She loves him but she won’t borrow trouble when Myra comes sparkling in his path, but when he says he wants his freedom, Liz gives it to him. She spends the entire book giving to Grant, giving him care, good food, clean house, ironed shirts, love, passion, encouragement, strength, integrity and finally, freedom.

Real Life?

Why does House of Mirrors appeal so much to me? It’s the fact that being second best/also-ran/loser is so hurtful and how Liz and others respond to this.

This idea of being #2 bothers me when I think of people who have remarried after their spouse died. It’s easy to imagine that the new spouse might feel second best, especially when someone compares them to the deceased. No one likes to feel like a loser in any field but it must be devastating in marriage. Making this even harder for Liz, the other woman is alive and pushy and wants Grant and knows how to use her looks and history to charm and manipulate.

Liz handles this perfectly. She is a strong person, willing to tell Grant she loves him and what she wants from him, yet she backs off when he tells her to not demand what he won’t give. She loves him and gives him everything she can, practical help, loyalty, commitment, even freedom when he wants it. I admire her.

Yvonne Whittal writes novels set in South Africa. Her heroines are strong and courageous and willing to risk themselves to keep their integrity. House of Mirrors is so far the best I have read by this author.

5 Stars

I thank Archive.org for providing this novel in pdf format to read online.

The Iron Man by Kay Thorpe, Trip to Africa Gone Bad

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The Iron Man was a good news/bad news sort of book. On the good side we have Kay Thorpe’s writing, meaning the book flows well, the dialogue and interactions move the story, she includes setting and she does not rely on inner musings to tell us what is happening to Kim and Dave. The characters are well done, although I couldn’t identify with either, and there are several conflicts that must be solved and sticky situations to wade through to achieve the trademark happy ending.

On the bad side Dave is a hard guy to appreciate and Kim is a bit of a goof. Dave is iron on the outside with a spine of steel and is opportunistic, decisive, dominant but not nasty. Kim is silly enough to come to Sierra Leone in the early 1970s without a return ticket on the off chance that her fiancé had an accident/amnesia/complete loss of contact. She is convinced fiancé Chris would never ever in a zillion years simply drop her without writing to tell her the romance was off.

Kim has all of 20 pounds (somewhere under $1000 in today’s money) to her name, not enough to get back home and not enough to keep her while she looks for Chris. She gets up to the mine in the mountainside to find him, expecting a joyous reunion. (Yes, she’s that naïve!)

Dave fired Chris some time before when Chris got into a fight over a married lady and took off with said lady. Kim can’t believe that Chris would do this and goes willingly with Dave back to the capital, Freetown, to find Chris. Chris tells Kim it’s over and he won’t come home or drop Mai. Now she’s stuck with no way to get home.

Dave says he’s returning to England in 5 weeks and suggests they marry until then so she can travel with him at company expense, then they will separate and he will help her get on her feet. Kim infers he means a platonic marriage and accepts. Dave of course means nothing of the sort, thus the first conflict.

Dave is hard and unemotional – of course he has emotions but he doesn’t yield to them – and Kim is impetuous and often lets her feelings drive her, thus a second conflict and one that will endure.

Kim and Dave forge a tenuous relationship as she makes a home for him, insists the servant man clean the cupboards and improves the cuisine and he manages to relax with her. They are beginning to get along almost as friends when they go to Freetown for a weekend and meet Dave’s friends on the beach. Friends include Karen, an obvious former girlfriend, who makes it clear she’s interested in Dave and intends to get him. (It isn’t clear why she wants him, she doesn’t love him and she doesn’t need his money and she’s not interested in following him around the world to mining camps. But this is a Harlequin Presents so take it as given that all the girls want Dave.)

Old fiancé Chris shows up wanting money. Kim and Dave make a sordid bargain where Kim will stop pretending she doesn’t want him in exchange for Dave helping Chris escape the country and Mai’s relatives. This isn’t exactly a conflict but sand in the wheels of their friendship.

Dave runs the mining camp and is hands on. When a landslide blocks the road, incidentally blocking Karen in at the camp, Dave gets in the bulldozer to clear it out and the dozer turns over and crushes his arm. He lies to Kim that his arm is merely broken, tells her to go home, that he wants Karen, not her.

This third conflict means that Kim must confront Dave and tell him she loves him and she is convinced he loves her too. She’s on some shaky ground here! Dave rejects love to stay strong and invulnerable and now, with his arm in bad shape, he’s even less willing to admit emotion or accept Kim.

Kim pushes him, finally loses her temper and calls him a coward and not worth her bother and he finally admits he wants to believe she loves him. The story ends here but it’s obvious Kim and Dave have a long, hard road, albeit a happy one, because Dave now has a bad arm and a wife to consider when the next job looms. He’s a skilled engineer and leader but staying in a softly civilized country is a big change after traipsing around the world. Plus he’s not used to having another person love him or to admit to any emotional weakness. Kim’s a strong person despite being emotional and impetuous – witness how she took the rough camp and terrible weather and scorpions and lousy food in her stride – and she’s determined to drag Dave out of his heart’s hidey hole and I think she will succeed.

Please note the story is set in Africa in the early 1970s. Dave and Kim respect the natives and treat them as people but the book refers to Africans as “boys”, part of the baggage in any novel set in this time frame.

Kim Thorpe writes detailed and believable settings. Here we are in the hot mountains in a tropical climate, just before the rainy season lets loose. There are bugs, spartan living conditions, a gravity-fed shower and it’s hot. The rain makes mud everywhere and landslides and potholes and the road is full of deep ravines filled with gooey mud. The author doesn’t belabor these things but we can see them and think that we’d not be nearly as cheerful as Kim.

My favorite romances make me feel like I’m right there, they have a sense of immediacy and movement. The Iron Man doesn’t quite manage that. I felt more like I was watching the story than living it.

I got my paperback copy on eBay in a Kay Thorpe lot (so far my only eBay book purchase that had damaged books) and you can probably find this on Thriftbooks. Archive.org has a pdf copy you can borrow but there is no version for an E reader.

Rating this is a bit of a six of one, half a dozen of another. The plot was nothing outstanding, the setting was excellent. Characters were a mix with the minor characters being 2-dimensional and the main characters reasonably well developed although not terribly sympathetic.

At first I thought Kim was a dope but her better qualities grew on me in retrospect; I realized that it takes a fine character to cheerfully accept mud, heat, bad food and primitive living conditions! Dave has many great qualities but he hides his compassion and I wonder about fidelity.

Because I couldn’t identify with any of the characters or feel like I knew them, or that they are real people, I’m rating this

3 Stars

A Cinderella for the Greek – Julia James Light Romance

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If you are in the mood for a light, almost frothy romance, try A Cinderella for the Greek by Julia James. (Paid link) It is mostly enjoyable but not a story that will move you or will linger in your mind.

Ellen is tall, rather large-boned and teaches gym to a local school. Her father died a year ago and she has been busy fending off his greedy widow – her stepmother – and her equally greedy stepsister. Both disparage her, call her names, mock her, all the usual Cinderella treatment. They went through her rich father’s money and now all that is left is their valuable English manor home, and some of the remaining art and antiques. The two are shameless, stealing even Ellen’s jewelry.

Max develops property and tours the house, thinking to purchase it as an investment, but realizes when he arrives that this could be a home. The steps encourage him and do not tell him that they own only two thirds of the house. Ellen cooks and serves lunch, then corners Max to say she owns a third and will not sell. This is her home.

The steps claim Ellen has never accepted them and refuses to sell just for spite. Max discovers Ellen is not fat but incredibly in shape, an athlete and decides to sweep her off to London for a makeover and a ball. (See where the Cinderella title comes in?) Things progress from there. Ellen and Max hit it off and spend a few weeks together travelling, enjoying each other’s company and sleeping together.

Max tells her he did all this to show her that there is life beyond her home and to entice her to sell to him. He is not being entirely truthful of course because he also has fallen in love. He asks her to buy out her steps and she explains that she has no money, that they took everything, spent an enormous fortune before her dad died and now are ghoulishly stripping everything left. Max is dumbfounded. Ellen leaves. She later decides Max was right and agrees to sell. When she arrives to sign her sales agreement Max surprises her and proposes for a happy ever after.

A Cinderella for the Greek could have explored the stepmother/sister resentment or why Ellen was such a doormat that she even allowed stepsister to appropriate her pearl bracelet. It does not. Author Julia James lays out the situation and proceeds to tell the story straightforward, giving us plenty of Max’s viewpoints to show us how he thinks Ellen is and how he wants her to be.

Overall this is a light, enjoyable story but not one I could recall even the day after I read it. Max is the best character, interesting, willing to help, manipulative, kind, loving, certain he is right and knows everything, self-confident. Ellen is more two-dimensional, not a fully-realized person and the steps are stock characters.

I did appreciate that the “Greek” in the title refers to Max having a Greek father. For a nice change we don’t get all the heavy-handed, heavy breathing me-boss/you-female nonsense that too many Harlequins offer.

2 Stars

I purchased my copy from Harlequin.com to read via Glose E reader. Amazon and Barnes and Noble both offer E versions and you can purchase paper copies new from all three retailers or check eBay and Thriftbooks for used copies. There is a comic version too. All Amazon links are paid ads.

Bought with His Name – Penny Jordan Harlequin Presents

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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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The Billion-Dollar Bride – Real Stinker by Kay Thorpe

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I read this stinker of a Harlequin Presents last fall through Hoopla and now got the paperback version in a book lot on eBay. Ugh. Much as I enjoy Kay Thorpe’s writing The Billion-Dollar Bride is boring, pretentious, stupid, with an on-again/off-again “heroine” who dumps her loving adoptive family to embrace the mega-rich lifestyle that her grandfather-by-blood has left her.

See, her nasty old grandfather forced his unwed daughter, heroine’s birth mother, to give her up for adoption but now has second thoughts and wants forgiveness. In the meantime birth mom and birth grandma died and good old grandpa remarried and adopted his stepchildren, making his adopted son the heir to his fortune and boss of his companies. (He gave stepdaughter – whom he also adopted – money but no affection.) He decides to leave his “real daughter” (our heroine) an enormous fortune provided she marries her step/adopted/no-real-relation brother, the aforementioned company boss and stays married for a year.

At first our heroine is all set to renounce any inheritance and fly back home to England, but when she discovers the number of zeros before the decimal point she dumps that for a bad idea, stays in California, marries the hero and embraces the life of the idle rich.

So we have the step/adopted daughter, the step/adopted son, the blood/but dumped daughter and 2nd wife all in a happy circle. The most interesting character is the step/adopted daughter who is furious at getting a tiny pittance (OK, to you or to me it would be a lot of money!) compared to the heroine. Does the heroine give any of her new riches to this lady who is now her sister in law? No. Does our heroine act responsible for the company positions she inherited in any way? No.

Do we like the heroine? No.

Is the writing style up to Kay Thorpe’s usual standard? No.

Is the hero a delightful hunk we can drool over? No.

Is there tension or any romantic suspense. No.

The setting and minor characters get a lick and a promise, definitely not up to Kay Thorpe standards. The Billion-Dollar Bride is part of Harlequin’s Welocked! series, which includes some excellent reads so I was doubly disappointed.

1 Star

Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Harlequin all have E and paper versions of this stinker and you can look for used copies on Thriftbooks and eBay. Personally I advise you to skip it!

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Count Valieri’s Prisoner by Sara Craven Harlequin Presents

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Oh boy. You know the author is good when you read right by the idiotic plot because you care about the characters. Count Valieri’s Prisoner (#ad) is the story of (surprise!) Andrea, Count Valieri, an Italian businessman, and Madeline Lang, an English researcher for a television company. Madeline is engaged to Jeremy Sylvester, an up and coming man with a driven autocrat for a father. Andrea detests and despises Jeremy’s father and wants to use Madeline as leverage to force him to document how he framed Andrea’s father for embezzlement. Andrea uses the bait of a soprano who suddenly stepped away from music to entice Maddie to Italy where he holds her in his mansion.

At this point you are rolling your eyes and thinking Melodrama! Stockholm Syndrome! Inane Plot! but don’t. Hold your fire and read this. Count Valieri’s Prisoner (#ad)is very good!

First Maddie is no whiny Wilma. She’s tough and uncompromising with Andrea at first, tells him that eventually he’ll have to let her go and then she’ll press criminal charges. She knows that Jeremy’s dad won’t pay a penny for her release, and since Jeremy himself has no money she tells the Count he’s not going to get anything he wants out of this, only a world of hurt when the police arrest him.

The Count holds her in a bedroom with trompe l’oeil scenes and doors that confuse and disorient her and he hid her clothes, leaving her nightgowns and robes to wear. Her room is in a high story so escape is difficult. Nonetheless Maddie persists and manages to get to an abandoned village where – guess who! – is waiting for her. She has encountered a big snake and a wolf by then so Andrea looks pretty good in comparison.

Andrea and Maddie develop first a reluctant friendship, then a type of love for each other, but both are tiptoeing around the fringes of emotion when Andrea takes Maddie to meet his mother. Mom is the singer Maddie came to Italy to interview; Mom is also the lady who’s first husband – Jeremy’s dad – betrayed. Needless to say, Mom isn’t too happy with Jeremy’s family and although she likes Maddie, she and Andrea suspect Maddie is as bad as the family she intends to marry into.

Eventually Andrea convinces Jeremy’s dad that he has incriminating documents and unless dear old dad confesses all in writing and gives up his expected knighthood, Andrea will release everything. Dad complies and sends a toad flunky to bring the papers and get the girl. Maddy takes one look at Toad and decides to make her own way home.

By the last week of her imprisonment Maddie agrees Andrea is justified and once past that hurdle she allows herself to feel the emotional connection and physical attraction that flows between them. However, Maddie is still engaged to Jeremy and still convinced she loves him and will marry him, faith sorely tested when Toad arrives, not Jeremy. She is dumbfounded when Andrea pushes her away to go back to England and he never acknowledges the emotional connection she feels so strongly. She leaves.

It is only when she’s back home she sees Jeremy again and this time he’s pressuring her to marry now, at once. And his mother, who is going to be the mother-in-law from hell, has told the dressmaker to finish the wedding gown NOW. By now Maddie is confused. She believes Andrea. Maddie’s getting suspicious about Jeremy and she’s wondering how much he loves her when he never tried to come to her, and she’s wondering how much she loves him if she could fall for Andrea. She visits future mother-in-law and learns that Jeremy isn’t just a passive dupe with his dad, but a real, bona fide contributing partner and he knows all about the corruption and theft years ago. And it doesn’t bother Jeremy a bit.

Now poor Maddie is in a bad spot. The Count is gone. He pushed her aside and onto a plane. Jeremy is gone. The man she loved didn’t exist and she cannot love the man he is now. Of course a couple months later the Count comes to London and professes eternal love and they have their happy ending.

Let’s look at this story as story.

  • Plot is ridiculous. Who would kidnap the future daughter-in-law of the man you want to destroy? Anyone else see any flaws with this plan? Especially since it should have been obvious to the Count that father-in-law cared nothing for Maddie and Jeremy was not all that keen either.
  • Setting and clothing choice are gothic. A room with painted doors that don’t open? Satin nightwear?
  • Characters are lively and engaging; I was sympathetic to the Count even before learning why he kidnaps Maddie and of course Maddie makes a great heroine, a girl who wants to run her own life and doesn’t roll over either for Jeremy or Andrea.
  • We feel the emotional connection between Maddie and the Count.
  • Somehow the overall story works. It just does. Yes, the plot is nuts but the combination of goofy plot and great characters and strong emotional interactions makes Count Valieri’s Prisoner another winner from Sara Craven.

4 Stars

I got my Ebook copy from Harlequin.com, reading it on the Glose app. You can get the Kindle Ebook from Amazon and the Nook book from Barnes and Noble too. If you prefer a printed book then look at Barnes and Noble or Amazon or used books from Thriftbooks.com or eBay. All links are paid ads.

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Girl for a Millionaire – Intense Romance by Roberta Leigh

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Wow. Girl for a Millionaire is good! The emotions and plot are complex and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Overall it is a story of faith and the simple question of how much to believe in someone else.

Roberta Leigh gives us not one but two romances. The main story with Laurel and Nicholas builds slowly, starting as two people make a pact to get through a cruise without compromising their principles. They spend time together, have the inevitable lying other woman, pass through a violent scene, separation, misunderstanding and lies, then finally into love. The second romance is sweet, touching and refreshingly normal as Laurel’s doctor friend Lewis falls for Laurel’s 40-something boss Bunty; they court then marry.

Laurel and Nicholas have a difficult road to loving happiness. They meet when Laurel is asked to join a small group of people on Tony Minelli’s yacht; Laurel thinks she’s to chaperone Tony’s girlfriend but Tony and everyone else knows she’s there to um, “entertain” Tony’s guest Nicholas. Laurel doesn’t figure this out until the yacht is well off shore and Tony refuses to return to let her off. Instead she makes friends with Nicholas who is also there under pretense; he wants a contract with Tony and has to be friendly to get it, but he’s not interested in a girl brought onboard for him. They agree to pretend to be romantic in order to keep the other guests from making Laurel miserable or costing Nicholas his contract. The first two days together Nicholas thinks she knew the score and simply chickened out, that she’s welshing on the deal. As he gets to know her they get along great and by the second week of the cruise Nicholas is actively courting Laurel and she’s falling in love.

At Monte Carlo Nicholas and Laurel spend the day the day together happy, then in the evening a lady and her lovely daughter Gillian join them. The girl’s mother tells Laurel that Gillian and Nicholas are engaged, that he is waiting only for his company prospects to improve so he can support the girl. There doesn’t seem any reason to doubt her, so broken hearted, Laurel decides she needs to leave now, to get away from Nicholas before she listens to any more lies. She gets her passport but once more the yacht is moved off the harbor, she needs transport to get back to land and the crewman she asks demands 100 pounds. She has only 10 and decides to borrow from Nicholas.

Now here is where we get into trouble. Laurel doesn’t want to tell Nicholas she’s leaving – pride apparently – and she takes the money, then just as she’s sitting down to write an IOU and farewell note, Nicholas comes in drunk and furious. He got the contract and the crewman told him that Laurel is leaving and that she’s in his cabin stealing his money. (Apparently no one ever closes drapes and he could see through the porthole.) Nicholas furiously tells Laurel that he didn’t think she was a thief but now knows she’s not only a thief but a liar and grabbing her, he’s going to get his back now. They have a knock down fight where he accidentally throws Laurel into the wall before she manages to conk his head with a vase. She comes back to consciousness before Nicholas, gets off the boat and flies back to London. She has a terrible headache and nausea which doesn’t go away.

After months of missteps Laurel and Nicholas clear up their misunderstandings and marry. It’s the path to that understanding that makes Girl for a Millionaire so good.

Both Laurel and Nick have problems with faith. Laurel expects Nick to have faith in her to realize she’s honest and not a thief or sleep around. Nick expects Laurel to have faith that his courtship was honest.

Laurel has three main problems:

  1. Laurel expects Nicholas – if he loves her – to know her well enough to realize her integrity. She forgets they only knew each other for two weeks, and even with love one can have doubts.
  2. She is proud. Laurel lets her pride dictate how she responds when Nicholas says he loves her. Between expecting Nicholas to know her better and being too proud to say anything, Laurel does not tell him why she’s leaving (he’s engaged) and even the next time they meet she still doesn’t tell him.
  3. Laurel believes Nicholas is engaged, thus his courtship was a lie and she thinks she is out of his class.

Nicholas has three main problems:

  1. He expects Laurel to know him well enough to believe he is in earnest when he courts her, and to believe him when he says he loves her. (Same problem as Laurel’s #1!)
  2. He’s got a niggling doubt about Laurel; he loves her, he doesn’t think she’s really a good-time girl or a thief, but finding her with his cash infuriates him.
  3. He’s aggressive. In business this is why he’s on the yacht and in personal affairs it’s why he acts as if he’s going to rape Laurel when he finds she took his money.

Somehow they both must reconcile their unrealistic expectation that the other will somehow automatically know them well enough to bury all doubts, and open themselves up to rejection, to bury pride and connect now for the rest of their lives.

In contrast, Lewis Freed courts Bunty by dating, by talking, by visiting, by kissing, by marriage. He’s not afraid of rejection and he doesn’t let pride or some utopian belief in the power of love keep him from claiming his bride. Eventually Nicholas follows suit, convincing Laurel that he loved her enough to have faith without another’s testimony.

I liked Girl for a Millionaire for the dual romance and the emotional insights. Laurel was not willing to allow Nicholas to believe her based solely on someone else’s word, she knew that if he couldn’t believe her based on his own knowledge of her character that they would have many incidents of distrust in the future. She had to eventually believe that Freed only helped cement Nick’s own faith.

Nicholas shows greater faith and perseverance than Laurel. He tracks her down twice to apologize and restate his faith and love and it’s only the second time, when he states Freed simply precipitated the meeting, that Laurel believes him.

I enjoyed Girl for a Millionaire immensely. I loved seeing Nick and Laurel stumble their way past distrust and fear through forgiveness to faith and love. I liked seeing Lewis convince Bunty that they would be happy together. And I was very pleased that Nick and Laurel are off to get married at the end.

5 Stars

I got my paperback copy on eBay. Amazon has copies in stock; Thriftbooks does not at this moment.

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