Marriage Under Suspicion

After five years of marriage, Kate Lassiter returns home from a business trip to find an anonymous letter waiting for. It simply reads, "Your husband is in love with another woman." Shocked, Kate finds an empty bottle of champagne with two glasses; apparently her husband, Ryan, has been celebrating with someone in her absence. Later, she overhears him talking on a phone assuring someone he addresses as "sweetheart" that his wife doesn't know anything yet, and that everything will be all right. He tells Kate that he is meeting his editor for lunch, but lies about the restaurant they are going to, and doesn't bother to correct her misconception that his editor is a man (when in fact he has a new editor who happens to be a sexy young woman). And so it continues...

This was really, really stupid. I mean, really, really, REALLY stupid. It started off all right, with Kate trying to find out the truth. She keeps reaching out to her husband, who in turn keeps rejecting her and lying to her. Everything points towards him having an affair with her best friend, but of course the reader knows it will all turn out to be a BIG MISUNDERSTANDING and Kate and Ryan will live happily ever after. Well, it turns out that the mysterious letter was actually written by Ryan. Apparently he was worried about the state of their marriage, so naturally instead of trying to talk to his wife, he decided that making her think he was cheating on her was the smart thing to do. He keeps rejecting her because, well, he's obviously an idiot. Apparently he decided a time of celibacy would be good for them to work out their differences. Sure, if both parties know what's going on and actually communicate. How refusing to spend any time with his wife was going to save their marriage, I have no idea. Finally he succumbs to his lust and they spend a passionate night together. Ryan is worried that he and Kate only seem to connect on a physical level, so instead of trying to talk to her (gee, you think the reason you don't connect outside of bed is because you refuse to talk to her?) he mocks her for making herself so sexually available to him, and tells her that the sex didn't mean anything. Finally, he goes off on a business trip, turning down Kate when she offers to go with him. She calls his hotel after he leaves, only to discover that he is not due there for another day, and that he has booked into a suite for himself and his "wife". It all finally comes to a head when Kate goes there in a rage, ready to confront her lying, cheating husband and his woman. No other woman can be found, and the truth comes out. For some reason Kate is perfectly happy with all of Ryan's excuses. The champagne in their apartment is never explained, by the way. Personally, I don't see much hope for their future. For all Kate knows, Ryan could very well have been cheating on her all along. She is just so relieved when he claims to love her, that she swallows all his excuses. I find it hard to stomach that after five years of marriage, Ryan's method of conflict resolution is lying to, rejecting, and hurting his wife, rather than open and honest communication. I wouldn't want to stay with a man like this. At the very least, Kate and Ryan should probably get some marriage counselling.

Desperate Measures

Philippa Roscoe needs money for expensive medical treatment for her father. Alain de Courcy wants a wife to counter rumours of his involvement with a married woman. He offers to give Philippa the money she requires in exchange for marrying him.

Yes, yes, the plot is silly and clichéd but I'm not one to hold that against a category romance. The problem was, Philippa was an idiot. She agrees to the marriage with the understanding that it will eventually be consummated and is not merely a marriage in name alone. When Alain comes to her bed on their wedding night, Philippa objects strenuously and he rapes her. In the ensuing weeks, Philippa realises that she is attracted to her husband but decides that she must never give in to that attraction. Meanwhile, rumours are still rife regarding Alain and the married woman he has been involved with. Philippa is mugged one day and rescued by the charming Fabrice. She happily hops in his car and lets him drive her home (never mind that he's a complete stranger). The relationship with Fabrice progresses until the fateful day that Philippa decides to run away from Alain. Fabrice offers to go with her and Philippa accepts, reasoning that  she can now tell Alain she is leaving him for another man. She has no intention of sleeping with Fabrice but assumes she can handle his amorous advances. Right, because she's so smart and experienced I suppose. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I spent this whole book being irritated with Philippa. This was written in 1992 but reads more like something written in the 70s. Philippa enjoys painting and was studying at art college at the start of the book. After her marriage, she decides to continue studying painting. Alain can't understand why she would want any hobby but learning to please him in bed. Philippa's art teacher can't understand why she wants to keep painting when she has a husband rich enough to support her. Huh? Really odd views to have in something written in the 90s. Anyway, my final verdict is simply give this book a miss. There are certainly worse ones but reading this would be a waste of time.

His Convenient Marriage

Chressie Lloyd lost everything when her father was convicted for fraud and died of a heart-attack whilst on remand. Successful thriller author Miles Hunter purchases her house and offers to allow Chressie to rent the housekeeper's flat in return for being his housekeeper cum secretary. One day out of the blue two years later, Miles asks Chressie out to dinner and proposes to her. He suggests a "business arrangement" type of marriage with the possibility of it developing into a "real" marriage in the future. At the same time, Chressie's old beau arrives back in town expecting her to fall into his arms in gratitude.

I was really shocked to see this book was published in 2004. It has the kind of bland characters I expected to see in a much older book. In a word, this was boring. Boring characters, boring plot. No reason is ever given for Miles' proposal. He asks Chressie if she is wondering about his "lack of amorous advances" but never goes on to explain it. Why couldn't he court her normally? Chressie's former boyfriend Alistair turns out to be a sleaze (which was fairly apparent from his introduction) who has been sleeping with his step-mother Linnet. It's meant to be a secret relationship, but they make out in the parking lot of a pub; I'm not sure why they thought that was discreet. Alistair's father had a stroke when he found out about his wife's liaison with his son, so now Alistair hopes to pull the wool over Daddy's eyes again by marrying Chressie whom he will approve of. Meanwhile, Miles has a limp after being injured by a land mine when he was working as a journalist years ago. Sandie, his girlfriend/almost fiancée at the time, dumped him after seeing his scars for the first time. Chressie thinks Miles is still in love with Sandie while Miles thinks Chressie is in love with Alistair. Miles makes frequent trips to London, where Chressie assumes he has innumerable lovers, on the basis that he is an attractive man and doesn't seem to want to have sex with her. She calls his London flat one day and hears a woman's voice, so she jumps to the conclusion that it must be Sandie. What really bugs me, is that it actually was Sandie. There are so many reasons why a woman could be answering the phone at Miles' apartment, and it annoys me that Chressie's jealous assumptions would be even partially correct. Miles' explanation still leaves a lot to be desired though. He claims that Sandie was having marital problems, so she stayed there to think about things while he stayed with other friends. This is the woman he loved, who walked out on him because he was injured. Even if he's moved on now and doesn't hate her, I can't picture them being that good friends that she would have the effrontery to ask to stay at his apartment.

Anyway, feel comfortable to give this book wide berth. You won't be missing out on anything and your brain may even thank you for not feeding it more trash.

Bartaldi's Bride

While driving to her godmother's home, Clare picks up Paola, a 17 year old heiress who is running away from home to elope with her older boyfriend, Fabio. The story sounds very suspicious, so Clare goes to confront the man in question but instead meets Guido Bartaldi, Paola's guardian and fiancé, who assumes Clare is in cahoots with Fabio and has kidnapped Paola. Eventually the misunderstanding is cleared up, and Guido employs Clare to be Paola's companion. Her job is to not only prevent Paola from running away again, but also to help prepare her for marriage to Guido.

The story had potential, but Guido's deception was just silly. I understand that there needed to be some deception initially to get Clare to agree to moving into his house. I think it's quite understandable that she didn't want anything to do with Guido or Paola after being arrested for kidnapping. However once it becomes clear that she's got the hots for Guido but doesn't want to be involved with a man planning on marrying someone else, it is surely time for Guido to 'fess up and admit he doesn't intend to marry Paola. Instead, he gets mad at Clare for thinking he is the type of man who would keep a mistress on the side. When she confronts him about his woman in Siena, he admits there is one, but refuses to explain, again getting mad that she would think him capable of keeping mistresses whilst planning to marry his teenage bride. When the truth about his lady in Siena came out, I couldn't see why he couldn't have been upfront with Clare about it from the start. Clare on the other hand, has this whole background angst story about how her first lover married a rich girl but wanted to keep her on as his mistress. For some reason she needs this to explain why she doesn't want to get involved with a man who is busy planning his marriage to someone else.

Eventually we discover that Guido pretended that he was going to marry Paola to keep her safe from gold diggers, but Paola is actually not an heiress at all because her father gambled away all the family money. Wouldn't the fact that Paola has no money be enough to keep away the gold diggers? And why was Guido courting Paola, buying her little presents and so on?

This book pretty much sums up my addiction with trashy paperback romances. The plot is tissue thin and full of holes, yet somehow I couldn't put it down.

The Marriage Truce

Jenna and Ross Grantham have been divorced for two years. After she had a miscarriage, he had an affair. Now Jenna is the matron of honour for her cousin's wedding, and Ross is the best man.

I normally like stories involving broken marriages being reconciled, but this was awful. Jenna finds out that Ross only slept with the other woman once, and that's enough for her to forgive him, accept all the blame on herself, and agree to marry him again. Yuck. Ross' excuse for sleeping with another woman? She was kind to him. Jenna also finds out that Ross slept with her flatmate Natasha. His excuse for that one? "I found her in my room, stretched across the bed without a stitch on. She looked spectacular, and it seemed - churlish to disappoint her... When it was over I called the cab and she disappeared."

Double yuck. Don't bother reading this one.

The Santangeli Marriage

Marisa is coerced into marrying Lorenzo Santangeli to provide him with an heir. Although he is pressured by his family into the marriage, he enters it quite willingly. She on the other hand, is bitter, angry and resentful. After a disastrous honeymoon, they separate for 8 months, living in different countries. Now Lorenzo is determined to bring Marisa home and make their marriage work.

During their separation, Lorenzo has an affair with a married woman. Normally this would totally ruin the story for me, but in this case is was somehow made palatable. I think it was a combination of things - the reader finds out about the infidelity early in the story, so it's not a sudden shock at the end. Perhaps more importantly, Lorenzo admits to himself that it was wrong and he should never have had the affair. Unfortunately he never really apologises to Marisa for it, and doesn't give her space to deal with it. He gets her straight into bed immediately after she finds out, and is angry when she doesn't give him immediate forgiveness (which he didn't actually ask for). He expects her to implicitly trust his assurance that the affair is over without giving her any reason to. Putting that aside, I like the fact that his infidelity is acknowledged as being wrong, and not just blamed on his wife's neglect, as is done in so many other novels.

I liked this book, and I didn't expect to. It left me feeling good. The ending was pretty cheese-free. No miraculous pregnancy. We don't even find out that Lorenzo purchased the Casa Adriana for Marisa, which I kept expecting from the moment we hear about it. Just a nice happy ending without a whole heap of Deus Ex machina. It's books like these which keep me coming back to Sara Craven even after the horrible stuff she often produces. I'll be reading this one again.

The Forced Bride

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The Marchese's Love-Child

Polly Fairfax left Alessandro Valessi three years ago, believing that he didn't love her. Unbeknownst to either of them, she was pregnant at the time. When he finds out, he coerces her into marriage with him or risk losing custody of their son Charlie.

Books like this are enough to turn me completely off category romances. In fact they often do stop me reading them for a while, but then I'll pick up one of the few really great ones that manage to keep me hooked. It's not so much that the book is bad, but there are just so many little things that really irritate me.

1. When a complete stranger shows up claiming to have been sent by Sandro to threaten/bribe her into leaving him, Polly believes him without question. Even though they are supposedly in love and planning on getting married, she's too proud to confront him and find out the truth.
2. When Sandro, whom Polly believes to be involved with the Mafia, shows up unexpectedly and threatens to take Charlie away from her, Polly basically does nothing. She does not run to protect her son. She allows Julie, a complete stranger in Sandro's employ, take her son out of the room. I guarantee that under the same circumstances I would not be letting my child out of arm's reach, let alone out of my sight in the care of someone I didn't trust implicitly.
3. Polly's mother is a cow, and never really brought to account for her behaviour. She has no adequate reason for keeping Sandro's letters from Polly three years ago, especially in light of Polly's pregnancy. Her excuse that she feared Charlie would be taken away from her simply does not gel, considering the letters began before he was born when she herself wanted Polly to have an abortion. Not only that, she even read the letters. And let's not even get into how she has been trying to steal Charlie away from Polly to make him her own son.
4. Sandro knows that his father bribed and intimidated Polly into leaving. He knows that her mother kept his letters from her. In fact, Sandro holds all the cards, but for some obscure reason of his own never tells Polly the truth of what happened. This doesn't even begin to make sense. Furthermore, how can it have taken him 3 years to find her, when he knew her name and place of employment, and was even able to write letters to her (and obviously expected her to have received them)?
5. Finally my last complaint is what completely ruined the book for me: Sandro's mistresses of which he admits there have been several. Maybe that's why it took him so long to track Polly down? I absolutely hate this fairly prevalent concept in romance novels that whilst the heroine is expected to remain faithfully celibate to a man who doesn't want her, it's perfectly normal, acceptable, and even healthy, for the hero to sleep around with a plethora of sexual partners. I'm not talking about encounters prior to meeting the heroine, but rather during their "estrangement". (Those of you who remember "Friends" might recall Ross excusing cheating on Rachel because they were "on a break".) Of course these sexual encounters are purely physical and unsatisfactory, which makes it all right (rolls eyes). Ugh. There was no need to include this in this story at all, and it if had been excluded I may have been able to overlook the other things I have mentioned. As it is, this was simply the last straw.

Overall this book left a bad taste in my mouth and I wish I could remove it completely from my memory. Ugh, ugh, ugh.