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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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Taken Over by Penny Jordan

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I like books about people, books that have an emotional connection among the characters and to me. Too often romance novels are sex scenes draped with a thin plot and characters who don’t feel real. I finished Betty Neels’ romances and have looked for more romance authors who create people to care about.

Taken Over is the first Penny Jordan novel I read and the reason I am reading my way through our library’s digital editions of her books. She is unlike Betty Neels in many ways, writing much racier stories with far more emotional turmoil and many of her heroines are fearful and unwilling to take a venture. However some Jordan novels are quite good, rich in emotional content and with the same sense of immediacy and presence that I love in Betty Neels.

Taken Over tells us about Cassie, a brilliant lady who used her math skills and imagination to write top computer games (this takes place over 30 years ago so the terminology differs) and leveraged this into a small, innovative and profitable company. Now she fears her firm is ripe for a takeover. (We aren’t told why/how someone could take it over without her consent but then Taken Over is a romance, not a business text.)

Joel Howard approaches Cassie with a buyout offer and a lot of attitude. He is rich, good looking and used to beautiful ladies wanting him and Cassie wears drab clothes and hunches. He’s snarky and scary so Cassie rejects Joel’s offer and in fact looks for an alliance with a rival firm, whose owner just happens to have an unmarried son willing to marry Cassie in order to secure her company. Not wanting his company to fall to number 3 in the games industry, Joel kidnaps Cassie and forces her to marry him.

Things proceed with plenty of tension as Cassie and Joel fight their own physical and emotional attraction to each other. There are plenty of conflicts. Cassie and Joel don’t want to fall in love, don’t even want to like each other. Joel is insulting and crude yet somehow still caring and Cassie’s danger bells aren’t enough to warn her to keep away. We readers get to follow along and it is an enjoyable ride.

The turning point is Joel’s estranged mother shows up and sweeps Cassie back with her to Florence, where mom plays fairy godmother and teaches Cassie how to dress and present herself. Turns out that Cassie looks pretty good when she’s not wearing beige or hunching! Joel arrives under pretext of stepdad’s birthday party and takes Cassie home. He wants her to hostess a cocktail party for him. Hmmm.

Joel comes home with a migrane and Cassie helps him with it and then end up making love. Like most Penny Jordan heroines she’s too unsure of herself to believe Joel actually meant to make love with her or that he cares about her or wants her. And also like most PJ heroines she’s too proud to hear Joel say anything demeaning and she plows ahead, telling him she didn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. Both are miserable and once the cocktail party makes it clear that Joel no longer has to worry about financing Cassie decides to leave before he kicks her out.

Once more mom-in-law makes a fortuitious appearance and plays good fairy and finally Cassie and Joel fess up to themselves and to each other.

On the good side Taken Over has:

  • Strong characters who are most appealing and likeable
  • A heroine who is extremely smart and uses her brains to help herself
  • A believable and flawed hero
  • Enjoyable side characters, especially good fairy mom-in-law
  • A bit of a Cinderella flavor which I am a sucker for
  • A marriage of convenience that plays off against a strong, but unacknowledged sexual attraction. (I love love love MOC novels with tension between the spouses.)
  • Beautiful descriptions of settings in English country home, London and Florence
  • A great kidnapping move
  • Excellent, believable romance

On the down side Taken Over has a heroine whose tortuous lack of confidence got a bit annoying to read about and who’s awfully quick to get her licks in first after they sleep together. (This by the way is a standard Penny Jordan moment, which I didn’t know until I read more of her books.)

4 Stars

Taken Over is available in E format on Kindle and via Glose from Harlequin. Amazon and Thriftbooks have the paperback version and you can read it for free 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.

A Scandalous Innocent by Penny Jordan

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A Scandalous Innocent combines an unusual plot and girl-meets-boy set up with enjoyable characters who connect emotionally with each other and with us readers. It made a nice change from a run of romances I’ve read the past few days that revolved around sex. This book revolves around people.

There are a few problems with the book, mostly due to the fact it is a Harlequin and thus short, with little time to develop a love affair with trust and commitment. There is little room to explore what could have been a rich plot.

Part of the plot confuses me. Lark is on trial in England’s High Court because her cousin Gary embezzled tens of thousands of pounds from his employer, then took poison and blamed Lark for the embezzlement, claimed she had blackmailed and coerced him. Lark is alone in the world, terrified and the case has gotten immense press coverage. Of course everyone thinks she is guilty.

I was confused because the case appears to combine civil elements – the former employer hired the prosecuting counsel – and criminal because Lark faces prison if convicted. No one had to prove Lark was guilty, instead she had to prove her innocence. No one had to determine where the money went; Lark clearly didn’t have it. There should have been a paper trail, bank deposits or if not then some evidence she used drugs or gambled or sent money to a numbered account. Author Jordan wrote a romance, not a crime story but the disconnects bothered me.

It turns out the prosecuting counsel, James Wolfe, recognized Lark’s innate innocence and convinced the employer to drop the case and asked his mother to hire Lark as her assistant. Of course he and Lark fall in love and we have the usual passionate encounters mixed with distrust and fear.

I particularly liked the tension between Lark and James. She wants to love him but he terrified her at trial and Lark thinks that James believes her guilty. We can put ourselves in her shoes and imagine how it would feel to be in love with someone we think believes us conniving, cruel and vicious, greedy. Of course James could have cleared this up right away, and in fact he tried but Lark couldn’t bear to listen

Jordan complicates the plot with spoiled Charlotte who informs Lark that James and she are engaged. Add that to the mix and we have potent distrust and fear.

The romance rings true despite the melodramatic backdrop. We can see how James would see Lark and her response to him and we can enjoy and sympathize as they learn to trust each other and allow love to overcome past distrust and fear.

I would like to see Jordan rewrite this story outside the Harlequin format confines. She hints that Lark’s aunt and uncle – the embezzler’s parents who took Lark in when her parents died – may have been unscrupulous with her inheritance. Lark remembers the large house and car, lovely antiques and her aunt’s avaricious disappointment when Lark took her mother’s heirloom dresser set with her when she left home.

I would have reading James’ point of view on the romance and the legal case. The romance from the man’s point of view would have gone through the evidence, or lack thereof, and compared Gary’s deathbed accusation with Lark’s obvious lack of money, the absence of lovers’ trysts, few phone calls, and he could have dug into the blackmail claims. How exactly could Lark blackmail her cousin?

Lark suspects Gary had a rich man’s wife as his mistress and that he might have embezzled for her sake. Again, we don’t have any idea what happens to this other lady or whether Lark is right. As a longer novel, with more resolved plot and side stories and more time to develop the characters this could be a wonderful treat.

As a Harlequin novel A Scandalous Innocent suffers from the brevity, the focus on sexual attraction and the hurried brush off of the underlying crime. A sentence says it all: “Despite the time they had spent together, it seemed almost as though they had no point of contact other than as lovers.” It is still quite a good story and I enjoyed reading it.

4 Stars

The Trusting Game by Penny Jordan

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Christa has turned the fabric business she inherited from her great aunt into a profitable design enterprise and she is a member of her local chamber of commerce where Daniel Geshard is speaking this month about his motivational course that trains people to trust their coworkers. Christa wants none of this; after all her best friend married a con artist, supposedly a motivational coach, and got taken to the cleaners, eventually to suicide.

After Daniel’s talk Christa stands up to ask him for his success metrics, can he prove that his course is effective? He can’t, instead challenges her to attend and see what she thinks afterwards. The other chamber members pressure her to accept and off we go to the Welsh mountains where Daniel will take her canoeing, mountain hiking and more, putting her in positions where she must trust and rely on someone else.

Daniel and Christa are instantly and deeply attracted, and given this is a Harlequin, end up as lovers. There are a few hitches, mostly around Christa’s unwillingness to trust Daniel, until Christa goes back home and Daniel overhears one of the chamber members taunting Christa that Daniel romanced her in order to get a successful outcome. Christa doesn’t believe this but Daniel thinks she does, etc., etc., etc. Typical romance where the two characters really don’t know each other well and are quick to take offense or to run off.

I’ve experience with business programs of the day, having gone through enough to know that while they often have merit, the quick and easy courses lack substance and the more difficult ones require long term commitment and usually fail because they do not result in change. It was easy for me to share Christa’s skepticism!

Even though I appreciated Christa’s point of view, she became whiny and obsessed with being too frightened to believe that Daniel had anything more in mind than a quick seduction and course success. That made the story tedious and hard to see why Daniel bothered with her.

The Trusting Game is one of the semi-smutty Harlequins, where the plot and story revolve around instant physical attraction. Will they sleep together? How and when? I’ve read a couple other Penny Jordan romances that have a bit more story, more developed and more likable characters. This one was mediocre.

2 Stars

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