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Dawn Song
False pretenses
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
1 person is currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
Sara Craven
493 books266 followersAnne Bushell was born on October 1938 in South Devon, England, just before World War II and grew up in a house crammed with books. She was always a voracious reader, some of her all-time favorites books are: "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, "Middlemarch" by George Eliot, "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë, "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and "The Code of the Woosters" by P. G. Wodehouse.
She worked as journalist at the Paignton Observer, but after her marriage, she moved to the north of England, where she worked as teacher. After she returned to journalism, she joined the Middlesbrough Writers' Group, where she met other romance writer Mildred Grieveson (Anne Mather). She started to wrote romance, and she had her first novel "Garden of Dreams" accepted by Mills & Boon in 1975, she published her work under the pseudonym of Sara Craven. In 2010 she became chairman of the Southern Writers' Conference, and the next year was elected the twenty-six Chairman (2011–2013) of the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Divorced twice, Annie lives in Somerset, South West England, and shares her home with a West Highland white terrier called Bertie Wooster. In her house, she had several thousand books, and an amazing video collection. When she's not writing, she enjoys watching very old films, listening to music, going to the theatre, and eating in good restaurants. She also likes to travel in Europe, to inspire her romances, especially in France, Greece and Italy where many of her novels are set. Since the birth of her twin grandchildren, she is also a regular visitor to New York City, where the little tots live. In 1997, she was the overall winner of the BBC's Mastermind, winning the last final presented by Magnus Magnusson.
She worked as journalist at the Paignton Observer, but after her marriage, she moved to the north of England, where she worked as teacher. After she returned to journalism, she joined the Middlesbrough Writers' Group, where she met other romance writer Mildred Grieveson (Anne Mather). She started to wrote romance, and she had her first novel "Garden of Dreams" accepted by Mills & Boon in 1975, she published her work under the pseudonym of Sara Craven. In 2010 she became chairman of the Southern Writers' Conference, and the next year was elected the twenty-six Chairman (2011–2013) of the Romantic Novelists' Association.
Divorced twice, Annie lives in Somerset, South West England, and shares her home with a West Highland white terrier called Bertie Wooster. In her house, she had several thousand books, and an amazing video collection. When she's not writing, she enjoys watching very old films, listening to music, going to the theatre, and eating in good restaurants. She also likes to travel in Europe, to inspire her romances, especially in France, Greece and Italy where many of her novels are set. Since the birth of her twin grandchildren, she is also a regular visitor to New York City, where the little tots live. In 1997, she was the overall winner of the BBC's Mastermind, winning the last final presented by Magnus Magnusson.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 26, 2016
2 and ½ stars.
Heroine masquerades as her femme fatale stepsister in France. Hero, who has never met the stepsister, nevertheless has an ax to grind with her. Hi-jinks ensue.
Masquerading and deception is not a favourite trope. Still, I had to admire how Sara Craven told us within the first two pages just how horrible the step sister was compared to the heroine.
The step sister is:
Amoral - having an affair with her married boss and hopes he’ll leave his wife and children.
Greedy - wants to stay on her godmother’s good side so she’ll inherit her money on her death.
Heartless blackmailer – will kick the heroine’s old nanny out of her cottage if heroine doesn’t agree to impersonate her.
Shallow – doesn’t really care about her boss – but he’s an MP and she likes power
Heroine is: deep – works with rare old books.
humble – has had no new clothes since her dad died leaving the evil stepmother with the purse strings.
Loyal – will do anything for nanny
Full of guilt for deceiving the old lady in France.
And so it goes – I wish S.C would have been as economical with the story once the heroine got to France. The hero rescues heroine from her car after a sudden rainstorm. Shows her his house and bedroom with the row of windows that catch the dawn light after night of lovemaking. *waggles eyebrows * Virgin heroine is addicted to his kisses - a first for her.
He can’t believe such a hardened man-eater can blush and look so innocent – or that he could possibly be attracted to such a harlot.
Rinse. Repeat.
There’s a backstory with the old lady and her bad marriage that really wasn’t that interesting. The hero is barely two dimensional. And did you know? This is the part of France where the Troubadours roamed. If not, you’ll get a mini lesson in French history.
It’s all a little boring.
When the gig is finally up – we don’t get to see the stepsister brought down. It’s all off page. *sigh*
Heroine masquerades as her femme fatale stepsister in France. Hero, who has never met the stepsister, nevertheless has an ax to grind with her. Hi-jinks ensue.
Masquerading and deception is not a favourite trope. Still, I had to admire how Sara Craven told us within the first two pages just how horrible the step sister was compared to the heroine.
The step sister is:
Amoral - having an affair with her married boss and hopes he’ll leave his wife and children.
Greedy - wants to stay on her godmother’s good side so she’ll inherit her money on her death.
Heartless blackmailer – will kick the heroine’s old nanny out of her cottage if heroine doesn’t agree to impersonate her.
Shallow – doesn’t really care about her boss – but he’s an MP and she likes power
Heroine is: deep – works with rare old books.
humble – has had no new clothes since her dad died leaving the evil stepmother with the purse strings.
Loyal – will do anything for nanny
Full of guilt for deceiving the old lady in France.
And so it goes – I wish S.C would have been as economical with the story once the heroine got to France. The hero rescues heroine from her car after a sudden rainstorm. Shows her his house and bedroom with the row of windows that catch the dawn light after night of lovemaking. *waggles eyebrows * Virgin heroine is addicted to his kisses - a first for her.
He can’t believe such a hardened man-eater can blush and look so innocent – or that he could possibly be attracted to such a harlot.
Rinse. Repeat.
There’s a backstory with the old lady and her bad marriage that really wasn’t that interesting. The hero is barely two dimensional. And did you know? This is the part of France where the Troubadours roamed. If not, you’ll get a mini lesson in French history.
It’s all a little boring.
When the gig is finally up – we don’t get to see the stepsister brought down. It’s all off page. *sigh*
April 6, 2018
Re Dawn Song - Sara Craven's HP Plus for April of 1994 continues the theme of H's seducing the h to help out a relative. This is a relatively rare trope at this time in HPlandia, tho it is getting more popular as the backlist grows.
As we saw in Robyn Donald's Pagan Surrender, an H REALLY seducing an h he sees as the evil OW to get the h away from a relative or relative's spouse is usually used as a nasty suspicion in the h's mind to build up to the big mopey moment, not an actual fact. But SC likes to go there, so in this instance, the sneaky suspicion is the literal truth.
Before we jump on the spoilerization, a word about the title of this book. SC takes us to Languedoc, which in medieval times was the independent country of Occitania - it was assimilated into France in the late 13th century during the Albigensian Crusade. Sara Craven does throw in a lot of random facts about this in the story, but she doesn't tie them together into a cohesive whole, so unless you know the backstory going in, it seems like SC is having random sporadic historical trivia utterances in weird places.
Up until this time, the region that is now the Languedoc Province was known as Occitania and the immediate area was the County of Toulouse. Even after the Crusade was victorious and it became Languedoc, it was one of the few French provinces with it's own authority to tax and make laws - French Kings were always having to grant special concessions to keep the independently minded area from outright rebellion.
This is one of the areas that was famous for it's Troubadours (what is now modern Northern Provence made up part of the country,) and Occitan poetry is famous for being the songs of Courtly Love. The title of this story is derived from the Spanish word aubade or Dawn Song (Serenade) - which is of course an poetic ode to a lovely lady in comparison with the break of dawn and always done in the morning, preferably from the lady's bedroom door.
(Interestingly, while Courtly Love and Troubadours are definitively a Middle Age Southern France and Italy tradition, the actual sources that drove their creation was from Spain and the Moorish influence, who shared their influences with the Occitan. Thus the word aubade is French, but comes from the Spanish albada that actually got the word from the Old Occitan auba.
However the word aubade doesn't come into use until 1670 when historians declared the time of the Courts of Love from a historical perspective. Such was the totality of the destruction wrought during the Albigensian Crusade, that even the language was suppressed.)
[The Alb. Crusade was Northern France's conquest of the incredibly wealthy Occitania, supposedly because the Gnostic Cathars refused to accept the Catholic Church's structure of priestly intercession between penitents and God - simply put, the Cathar's figured everyone could talk to God themselves and no third party was needed.
But in reality, it was like most conquests of that sort, France needed a big boost in the finance department. It its from one of most horrific battles of that time, the Massacre at Béziers, that we get the infamous paraphrase "Kill them all and let God sort them out." Cause the Abbot in charge of the military campaign allowed the entire population to be killed, without regard to age, sex or combatant status.]
When this book opens, our sweet and somewhat nerdy h is thinking about what to do next. Her job in a rare bookshop is coming to an end as the owner is retiring, her father is dead and his estate is administered by her somewhat conniving and mercenary stepmother.
The h's only close family, aside from her sewer slurper stepmother and conniving tarty harlot stepsister who is currently engaged in home-wrecking her politician boss who has a wife and three kids, is her beloved Nanny, who lives in a cottage on the h's father's former estate.
So when Tarty Harlot stepsis shows up and tells the h that she has to go pretend to be her for a month in France or Nanny will get the boot out of her cottage (the h's dad never put lifelong tenacy in writing,) the h makes a grumpy cranky face and has a snappy moment, but she does it.
Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's godmother has summoned the THH for a month long visit in her Languedoc Chateau. THH is sure with that kind of real estate the godmum must be rich, so her mouse of a stepsister can go play handmaid companion for a month in THH's place and then THH can swoop in and reap the tangible monetary reward for her generous offer of the h as indentured labor.
We get to France and the h, who has arrived a few days earlier than the summons indicates, decides to do a little tour of area. Her former bookshop boss, not being into the 1994 cultic fad book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and since Dan Brown was teaching English and making a music CD instead of writing, the best book he could gift her with as a going away present was The Land Of The Cathars and the h is eager to check it all out.
However, a tremendous rain storm has overtaken her and the h can't see to drive. So she parks her car under a rock overhang and prepares to wait the storm out. All of the sudden, her door is ripped open and an interesting looking Frenchman drags her out of the car - charmingly assuring her it is for her safety from landslides and not because he is going to rape her.
As the h is getting into his car, a giant slide of mud and a tree lands on the driver's side of her rental car. The h goes into shock at the near death miss and the H kindly agrees to get her luggage out of the intact boot. When the H comes back, he is obviously furious and bitingly sarcastic, the h has no clue why, but his attitude changed when he saw the h's luggage tags.
The H drives the h to her little hostel for the night, then he invites her out for dinner. The h, who is feeling the ping of attraction, agrees to meet him and have just one little adventure before she starts her distasteful, but Nanny needs a home, domestic misrepresentation.
Except the H takes her to his restored French mas, otherwise known as a French farmhouse with no north windows, to shield against the fierce Mistrals and their storms. The first floor was traditionally used as a barn for animals and the kitchen, with the family living in a warren of rooms upstairs. But the H has totally revamped the interior and now the upstairs is his ginormous bedroom with a custom made acre of bed, to which the H wastes no time in trying to lure the h into.
The H's staff are distinctly NOT APPROVING of the h being present. After the h almost melts with the H's roofie kiss and his quoting of a lovely aubade at the utterly wrong time as it is night, she rejects his open bed invitation after a phone call from an obvious OW and the H sends his houseman to drive the h back to her auberge. The h isn't too impressed with a man who would cheat on his lover and even less impressed when the H's houseman tells her she isn't wanted and should go back from whence she came.
The h is happy to reassure the man that she will never see him again, but SC mucks that up when the H cancels the h's replacement hire car and shows up to escort her to her servitude destination himself the next day. He is a great friend the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's godmum and a lively discussion of the derivatives of the h's and THH's name (Margot) is endured.
The godmum is pretty Grande Dame, but the h likes her and the chateau is very nice and desperately in need of refurbishment. The H is an architect and seems to be playing a large roll in it's restoration. We get some h domestic companioning with letters being written, the reading of a special book of love poetry and the godmum seems intent on pimping the h out to the H, after she establishes that the h's French is much better than what THH's mother said.
So not only is the h spending what is supposed to be a vacation from a busy and pressurized job doing domestic work, she is also drafted to serve in a secretarial capacity to the H and his architectural restorations. The big problem is the h has a degree in the arts and cannot type or use the intimidatingly impossible electric typewriter as MS Word hasn't made it to the French Countryside yet.
The H makes several crude remarks about what exactly the h's 'secretarial skills' are and intersperses that with a HP travelogue visit to Toulouse and a viewing of the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and a discussion of his sad fate. We get some H roofie kisses designed to instill the Treacherous Body Syndrome in the h and tho the h is resisting her inner meltiness with all her might, we know the HP Lurve Force Mojo rules all.
The h and H stop by his house on the way back to the godmum's and the h is startled to realize that there is another woman in the house as well. h speculation and outrage runs rampant. The staff still hates her and the H is doing his best push/pull impression on the seduction front.
The h warns the H that the godmum's attempt at matchmaking is impossible and we learn that the H's grandfather and the godmum had a huge love incident, but the godmum wouldn't leave her sewer slurper husband and so the H's grandfather exiled himself to Paris and married, while the godmum went into lurve force mojo hibernation and endured a very sad marriage until her husband's death.
The H decides to ramp up the seduction attempts by staying at the godmum's chateau and this leads to the h coming upon him in the library one night and a big confrontation about who the h is leads to the dismissal of the h's unicorn grooming privileges. The lurve club event is perfect, but the aftermath is horrible.
The h thinks the H knows she is impersonating her stepsister, but the H believed he was seducing the Trampy Harlot Homewrecker who trashed his lady cousin's marriage and tried to steal her husband. The H's cousin has dumped the kids on the THH and the cheatin' hubby and fled to the H's farmhouse. The h knows that actually her nanny has taken on the care of the kids and the THH and the hubby are wandering around in the HP mists.
She admits that she is the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's stepsister and there at the godmum's under serious duress, but the H doesn't want to know and has a hissy fit instead. The h throws the brooch that the godmum gave her at the H and tells him to get out.
The h is going to make her grand confession to the godmum the next morning, but she finds the H's restoration paperwork and thinks the H is trying to defraud the sweet godmum. There is a huge fight and the H storms off and it turns out that the godmum is actually selling the chateau to the H and he is paying for the majority of the work and the godmum, who isn't well off, is only paying a token amount.
The h has a mopey moment feeling bad for misjudging the H so completely, but before she can tell the godmum who she really is, the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker shows up. Her bid to be up and coming politician wife number 2 is shot down by the H's cousins big splash in the tabloids and THH is looking for another meal ticket.
THH makes the h look like an insidious con artist impersonating her refined and genteel THH self and the h is pretty much kicked out of the chateau by the godmum. The godmum's parting gift is the book of courtly love poems.
As the h is heartrendingly riding away in a taxi and worried about getting a job and what is going to happen to Nanny, the H blocks the road, pays the taxi driver enough money to let him hijack passengers until the seas run dry and sweeps the h off to his French farmhouse.
We get a sorta big love declaration when the H admits that he subconsciously knew the h wasn't who she said she was, but he was intent on his mission to punish the Trampy Harlot Homewrecker and ignored his intuition to be the full blown bully Alpha H that SC wanted him to be. The godmother actually loves the h, but wanted privacy while she kicked Tarty Tramp Homewrecker to the curb off page. The H also admits that the godmum knew the h was an impostor too and really when you think about it, who is worse?
The h, who wanted to save the only mother figure she had ever known from homelessness, or the H and the godmum, who summon a woman who ostensibly has a busy, important job because of rumor and innuendo and then force her into domestic and secretarial drudgery and in the H's case, deliberately set out to use and abuse her? What if the THH had actually be a really nice girl who was duped by the perviness of her womanizing and user boss?
SC blows this moral dilemma off with the H suggestion that Nanny dump her well-earned retirement to move to France and resume her child caring domestic servitude for the H and h's own children. (Forget all about buying her a nice little retirement cottage nearby and establishing honorary grandmother status as a gesture of devotion, this H believes in hard work for any favors granted.)
The h is overjoyed that her love is seemingly returned and agrees, in true SC throw rug blobule fashion, that whatever the H wants to do is fine with her. As long as he throws a few lines of various aubades in random conversation and keeps the lurve club thumping.
We leave the two of them lurving it up in the H's farmhouse, now that the cousin and her straying hubby are lovin it up in the H's Paris flat and we can call this one a mediocre HP win for another HPlandia HEA outing.
As we saw in Robyn Donald's Pagan Surrender, an H REALLY seducing an h he sees as the evil OW to get the h away from a relative or relative's spouse is usually used as a nasty suspicion in the h's mind to build up to the big mopey moment, not an actual fact. But SC likes to go there, so in this instance, the sneaky suspicion is the literal truth.
Before we jump on the spoilerization, a word about the title of this book. SC takes us to Languedoc, which in medieval times was the independent country of Occitania - it was assimilated into France in the late 13th century during the Albigensian Crusade. Sara Craven does throw in a lot of random facts about this in the story, but she doesn't tie them together into a cohesive whole, so unless you know the backstory going in, it seems like SC is having random sporadic historical trivia utterances in weird places.
Up until this time, the region that is now the Languedoc Province was known as Occitania and the immediate area was the County of Toulouse. Even after the Crusade was victorious and it became Languedoc, it was one of the few French provinces with it's own authority to tax and make laws - French Kings were always having to grant special concessions to keep the independently minded area from outright rebellion.
This is one of the areas that was famous for it's Troubadours (what is now modern Northern Provence made up part of the country,) and Occitan poetry is famous for being the songs of Courtly Love. The title of this story is derived from the Spanish word aubade or Dawn Song (Serenade) - which is of course an poetic ode to a lovely lady in comparison with the break of dawn and always done in the morning, preferably from the lady's bedroom door.
(Interestingly, while Courtly Love and Troubadours are definitively a Middle Age Southern France and Italy tradition, the actual sources that drove their creation was from Spain and the Moorish influence, who shared their influences with the Occitan. Thus the word aubade is French, but comes from the Spanish albada that actually got the word from the Old Occitan auba.
However the word aubade doesn't come into use until 1670 when historians declared the time of the Courts of Love from a historical perspective. Such was the totality of the destruction wrought during the Albigensian Crusade, that even the language was suppressed.)
[The Alb. Crusade was Northern France's conquest of the incredibly wealthy Occitania, supposedly because the Gnostic Cathars refused to accept the Catholic Church's structure of priestly intercession between penitents and God - simply put, the Cathar's figured everyone could talk to God themselves and no third party was needed.
But in reality, it was like most conquests of that sort, France needed a big boost in the finance department. It its from one of most horrific battles of that time, the Massacre at Béziers, that we get the infamous paraphrase "Kill them all and let God sort them out." Cause the Abbot in charge of the military campaign allowed the entire population to be killed, without regard to age, sex or combatant status.]
When this book opens, our sweet and somewhat nerdy h is thinking about what to do next. Her job in a rare bookshop is coming to an end as the owner is retiring, her father is dead and his estate is administered by her somewhat conniving and mercenary stepmother.
The h's only close family, aside from her sewer slurper stepmother and conniving tarty harlot stepsister who is currently engaged in home-wrecking her politician boss who has a wife and three kids, is her beloved Nanny, who lives in a cottage on the h's father's former estate.
So when Tarty Harlot stepsis shows up and tells the h that she has to go pretend to be her for a month in France or Nanny will get the boot out of her cottage (the h's dad never put lifelong tenacy in writing,) the h makes a grumpy cranky face and has a snappy moment, but she does it.
Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's godmother has summoned the THH for a month long visit in her Languedoc Chateau. THH is sure with that kind of real estate the godmum must be rich, so her mouse of a stepsister can go play handmaid companion for a month in THH's place and then THH can swoop in and reap the tangible monetary reward for her generous offer of the h as indentured labor.
We get to France and the h, who has arrived a few days earlier than the summons indicates, decides to do a little tour of area. Her former bookshop boss, not being into the 1994 cultic fad book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and since Dan Brown was teaching English and making a music CD instead of writing, the best book he could gift her with as a going away present was The Land Of The Cathars and the h is eager to check it all out.
However, a tremendous rain storm has overtaken her and the h can't see to drive. So she parks her car under a rock overhang and prepares to wait the storm out. All of the sudden, her door is ripped open and an interesting looking Frenchman drags her out of the car - charmingly assuring her it is for her safety from landslides and not because he is going to rape her.
As the h is getting into his car, a giant slide of mud and a tree lands on the driver's side of her rental car. The h goes into shock at the near death miss and the H kindly agrees to get her luggage out of the intact boot. When the H comes back, he is obviously furious and bitingly sarcastic, the h has no clue why, but his attitude changed when he saw the h's luggage tags.
The H drives the h to her little hostel for the night, then he invites her out for dinner. The h, who is feeling the ping of attraction, agrees to meet him and have just one little adventure before she starts her distasteful, but Nanny needs a home, domestic misrepresentation.
Except the H takes her to his restored French mas, otherwise known as a French farmhouse with no north windows, to shield against the fierce Mistrals and their storms. The first floor was traditionally used as a barn for animals and the kitchen, with the family living in a warren of rooms upstairs. But the H has totally revamped the interior and now the upstairs is his ginormous bedroom with a custom made acre of bed, to which the H wastes no time in trying to lure the h into.
The H's staff are distinctly NOT APPROVING of the h being present. After the h almost melts with the H's roofie kiss and his quoting of a lovely aubade at the utterly wrong time as it is night, she rejects his open bed invitation after a phone call from an obvious OW and the H sends his houseman to drive the h back to her auberge. The h isn't too impressed with a man who would cheat on his lover and even less impressed when the H's houseman tells her she isn't wanted and should go back from whence she came.
The h is happy to reassure the man that she will never see him again, but SC mucks that up when the H cancels the h's replacement hire car and shows up to escort her to her servitude destination himself the next day. He is a great friend the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's godmum and a lively discussion of the derivatives of the h's and THH's name (Margot) is endured.
The godmum is pretty Grande Dame, but the h likes her and the chateau is very nice and desperately in need of refurbishment. The H is an architect and seems to be playing a large roll in it's restoration. We get some h domestic companioning with letters being written, the reading of a special book of love poetry and the godmum seems intent on pimping the h out to the H, after she establishes that the h's French is much better than what THH's mother said.
So not only is the h spending what is supposed to be a vacation from a busy and pressurized job doing domestic work, she is also drafted to serve in a secretarial capacity to the H and his architectural restorations. The big problem is the h has a degree in the arts and cannot type or use the intimidatingly impossible electric typewriter as MS Word hasn't made it to the French Countryside yet.
The H makes several crude remarks about what exactly the h's 'secretarial skills' are and intersperses that with a HP travelogue visit to Toulouse and a viewing of the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and a discussion of his sad fate. We get some H roofie kisses designed to instill the Treacherous Body Syndrome in the h and tho the h is resisting her inner meltiness with all her might, we know the HP Lurve Force Mojo rules all.
The h and H stop by his house on the way back to the godmum's and the h is startled to realize that there is another woman in the house as well. h speculation and outrage runs rampant. The staff still hates her and the H is doing his best push/pull impression on the seduction front.
The h warns the H that the godmum's attempt at matchmaking is impossible and we learn that the H's grandfather and the godmum had a huge love incident, but the godmum wouldn't leave her sewer slurper husband and so the H's grandfather exiled himself to Paris and married, while the godmum went into lurve force mojo hibernation and endured a very sad marriage until her husband's death.
The H decides to ramp up the seduction attempts by staying at the godmum's chateau and this leads to the h coming upon him in the library one night and a big confrontation about who the h is leads to the dismissal of the h's unicorn grooming privileges. The lurve club event is perfect, but the aftermath is horrible.
The h thinks the H knows she is impersonating her stepsister, but the H believed he was seducing the Trampy Harlot Homewrecker who trashed his lady cousin's marriage and tried to steal her husband. The H's cousin has dumped the kids on the THH and the cheatin' hubby and fled to the H's farmhouse. The h knows that actually her nanny has taken on the care of the kids and the THH and the hubby are wandering around in the HP mists.
She admits that she is the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker's stepsister and there at the godmum's under serious duress, but the H doesn't want to know and has a hissy fit instead. The h throws the brooch that the godmum gave her at the H and tells him to get out.
The h is going to make her grand confession to the godmum the next morning, but she finds the H's restoration paperwork and thinks the H is trying to defraud the sweet godmum. There is a huge fight and the H storms off and it turns out that the godmum is actually selling the chateau to the H and he is paying for the majority of the work and the godmum, who isn't well off, is only paying a token amount.
The h has a mopey moment feeling bad for misjudging the H so completely, but before she can tell the godmum who she really is, the Tarty Harlot Homewrecker shows up. Her bid to be up and coming politician wife number 2 is shot down by the H's cousins big splash in the tabloids and THH is looking for another meal ticket.
THH makes the h look like an insidious con artist impersonating her refined and genteel THH self and the h is pretty much kicked out of the chateau by the godmum. The godmum's parting gift is the book of courtly love poems.
As the h is heartrendingly riding away in a taxi and worried about getting a job and what is going to happen to Nanny, the H blocks the road, pays the taxi driver enough money to let him hijack passengers until the seas run dry and sweeps the h off to his French farmhouse.
We get a sorta big love declaration when the H admits that he subconsciously knew the h wasn't who she said she was, but he was intent on his mission to punish the Trampy Harlot Homewrecker and ignored his intuition to be the full blown bully Alpha H that SC wanted him to be. The godmother actually loves the h, but wanted privacy while she kicked Tarty Tramp Homewrecker to the curb off page. The H also admits that the godmum knew the h was an impostor too and really when you think about it, who is worse?
The h, who wanted to save the only mother figure she had ever known from homelessness, or the H and the godmum, who summon a woman who ostensibly has a busy, important job because of rumor and innuendo and then force her into domestic and secretarial drudgery and in the H's case, deliberately set out to use and abuse her? What if the THH had actually be a really nice girl who was duped by the perviness of her womanizing and user boss?
SC blows this moral dilemma off with the H suggestion that Nanny dump her well-earned retirement to move to France and resume her child caring domestic servitude for the H and h's own children. (Forget all about buying her a nice little retirement cottage nearby and establishing honorary grandmother status as a gesture of devotion, this H believes in hard work for any favors granted.)
The h is overjoyed that her love is seemingly returned and agrees, in true SC throw rug blobule fashion, that whatever the H wants to do is fine with her. As long as he throws a few lines of various aubades in random conversation and keeps the lurve club thumping.
We leave the two of them lurving it up in the H's farmhouse, now that the cousin and her straying hubby are lovin it up in the H's Paris flat and we can call this one a mediocre HP win for another HPlandia HEA outing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 11, 2016
To prevent her loathsome stepsister Margot from putting Nanny in a home, nice Meg agrees to impersonate Margot in France. Margot has to stay in London right now, because she’s just about convinced her boss, an aspiring junior MP, to leave his wife and sweet little babies.
Margot has been invited to visit her auntie godmother in France. Her auntie godmother lives in a chateau, so there must be money there, and it will be Margot’s. But only if Meg does a good job of deceiving the nearly blind elderly lady. And besides, Meg has nothing else going on in her life, because the owner of the second hand bookstore where Meg works is retiring, so she’s out of the job.
‘Cathars!’ the second hand bookstore owner says, when Meg tells him of her upcoming visit to the Languedoc. He gives Meg a book.
I too have read books on such things. To show off my reading prowess, I can recommend ‘Montaillou’ by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. It’s an awesome description of village life with a little heresy thrown in. In the 13th century, people had great big refuse piles outside their front doors, were related to everyone, and spent a lot of their day picking lice off each other and gossiping. Sara Craven of course mentions none of this, and just sums up Cathar mysticism. She seems as puzzled as to why this would be romantic as I am, but she started this, not me.
Meg speaks awesome French. When she arrives in France, she rents a car, and there is a massive storm, and she is just about to almost die in a landslide when the caped hero shows up.
‘I’m here to rescue you, not rape you,’ Jerome tells Meg, with silky cynicism. I’ve noticed in my current binge-read of Sara Craven novels that many heroes introduce themselves by stating that they won’t rape the heroine. They always say it as if the heroine is insane for even thinking this is a possibility, but the jokes on them. In the majority of cases, they’ll rape her anyway before the book is done.
Plus, I wish they would stop being silky. Sure, Jerome probably wasn’t silky while he was rescuing Meg, but he turned pretty silky later, the smarmy git. Whenever they start getting silky, I now have the urge to throw them in the washing machine with a bunch of manky gym towels. Punishing kiss, huh? Try my punishing heavy-duty spin cycle, jerkface!
Anyway, Meg resolves that she isn’t going to sleep with Jerome out of gratitude for saving her life, because she’s not that kind of girl. She’s also getting this really weird judgy vibe off him. And when he takes her to his house for dinner, his ancient retainers hate her, and in the middle of getting it on, Jerome takes a phone call from another woman and is all soft and loveable to her. He then has the gall to be irritated that Meg’s ardour has completely cooled.
Meg pats herself on the back for making a lucky escape but oh no: turns out Jerome knows auntie godmother very well, and is using his architect skills to plan renovations on the decrepit chateau.
Auntie godmother is of course lovely and takes to Meg immediately. She wants Meg to marry Jerome, so she asks Meg to do secretary stuff for Jerome to advance the architecting work. And their lurve …
Meg feels terribly guilty about deceiving this super nice lady (although Jerome can rot in hell, damn his super sexy body and smouldering eyes). Now, she has to pretend to know secretary stuff like loathsome Margot.
Jerome brings over a typewriter and tells her to type up three copies of a report on it. The typewriter has this LCD display and is incredibly daunting … and it’s supposed to be clear from this that Meg’s secretarial skills are rubbish. And she’s been hired for other things (knowing sneer).
But what the glob, Sara Craven? Naturally, I am far too young to remember the technology of 1993 but as well as knowing my history of some French stuff, I know my history of when people started using computers and the Internet. And they were using both in 1993. Sure, nobody knew what the Internet was for, so I’ll give you a pass on that. But Meg was twenty at the start of this book, and she’d have attended a school with a computer lab. She would have done weekly classes in that computer lab, and while some of those machines would have been old and grody, and probably Macintoshes, she would have been familiar with Windows and a little thing called MS Word.
She should have taken one look at that typewriter with its weird white out tape function and sneered at it. ‘In my country,’ she should have said, ‘we have computers with big colour screens and a pointing device called a mouse. Such larks! And when we want to write up a document, we do it on a word processor with WYSIWYG, and if we want multiple copies, we send them to our ink jet printers, and voila! As they say in YOUR primitive country.’
Although I guess that would have been a bit racist.
I do, however, approve of her sneaking down later that night to master the obsolete technology. Even now, I would probably still work a fax machine if someone pretended to be surprised that I didn’t know how to do such a thing.
While Jerome is a man of mixed messages, he’s not awful. He’s a considerate lover, and by 1993 it’s clear that other sex stuff was happening beyond vague descriptions of tab A goes in slot B, and people are doing things with their bodies that aren’t a mix of crushing and yearning.
Meg is nice and less eternally miserable than the usual Sara Craven heroine. Their romance blossoms in spite of all the lies and deception! All very likeable, even though I was mostly reading to be outraged by the tech.
Margot has been invited to visit her auntie godmother in France. Her auntie godmother lives in a chateau, so there must be money there, and it will be Margot’s. But only if Meg does a good job of deceiving the nearly blind elderly lady. And besides, Meg has nothing else going on in her life, because the owner of the second hand bookstore where Meg works is retiring, so she’s out of the job.
‘Cathars!’ the second hand bookstore owner says, when Meg tells him of her upcoming visit to the Languedoc. He gives Meg a book.
I too have read books on such things. To show off my reading prowess, I can recommend ‘Montaillou’ by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. It’s an awesome description of village life with a little heresy thrown in. In the 13th century, people had great big refuse piles outside their front doors, were related to everyone, and spent a lot of their day picking lice off each other and gossiping. Sara Craven of course mentions none of this, and just sums up Cathar mysticism. She seems as puzzled as to why this would be romantic as I am, but she started this, not me.
Meg speaks awesome French. When she arrives in France, she rents a car, and there is a massive storm, and she is just about to almost die in a landslide when the caped hero shows up.
‘I’m here to rescue you, not rape you,’ Jerome tells Meg, with silky cynicism. I’ve noticed in my current binge-read of Sara Craven novels that many heroes introduce themselves by stating that they won’t rape the heroine. They always say it as if the heroine is insane for even thinking this is a possibility, but the jokes on them. In the majority of cases, they’ll rape her anyway before the book is done.
Plus, I wish they would stop being silky. Sure, Jerome probably wasn’t silky while he was rescuing Meg, but he turned pretty silky later, the smarmy git. Whenever they start getting silky, I now have the urge to throw them in the washing machine with a bunch of manky gym towels. Punishing kiss, huh? Try my punishing heavy-duty spin cycle, jerkface!
Anyway, Meg resolves that she isn’t going to sleep with Jerome out of gratitude for saving her life, because she’s not that kind of girl. She’s also getting this really weird judgy vibe off him. And when he takes her to his house for dinner, his ancient retainers hate her, and in the middle of getting it on, Jerome takes a phone call from another woman and is all soft and loveable to her. He then has the gall to be irritated that Meg’s ardour has completely cooled.
Meg pats herself on the back for making a lucky escape but oh no: turns out Jerome knows auntie godmother very well, and is using his architect skills to plan renovations on the decrepit chateau.
Auntie godmother is of course lovely and takes to Meg immediately. She wants Meg to marry Jerome, so she asks Meg to do secretary stuff for Jerome to advance the architecting work. And their lurve …
Meg feels terribly guilty about deceiving this super nice lady (although Jerome can rot in hell, damn his super sexy body and smouldering eyes). Now, she has to pretend to know secretary stuff like loathsome Margot.
Jerome brings over a typewriter and tells her to type up three copies of a report on it. The typewriter has this LCD display and is incredibly daunting … and it’s supposed to be clear from this that Meg’s secretarial skills are rubbish. And she’s been hired for other things (knowing sneer).
But what the glob, Sara Craven? Naturally, I am far too young to remember the technology of 1993 but as well as knowing my history of some French stuff, I know my history of when people started using computers and the Internet. And they were using both in 1993. Sure, nobody knew what the Internet was for, so I’ll give you a pass on that. But Meg was twenty at the start of this book, and she’d have attended a school with a computer lab. She would have done weekly classes in that computer lab, and while some of those machines would have been old and grody, and probably Macintoshes, she would have been familiar with Windows and a little thing called MS Word.
She should have taken one look at that typewriter with its weird white out tape function and sneered at it. ‘In my country,’ she should have said, ‘we have computers with big colour screens and a pointing device called a mouse. Such larks! And when we want to write up a document, we do it on a word processor with WYSIWYG, and if we want multiple copies, we send them to our ink jet printers, and voila! As they say in YOUR primitive country.’
Although I guess that would have been a bit racist.
I do, however, approve of her sneaking down later that night to master the obsolete technology. Even now, I would probably still work a fax machine if someone pretended to be surprised that I didn’t know how to do such a thing.
While Jerome is a man of mixed messages, he’s not awful. He’s a considerate lover, and by 1993 it’s clear that other sex stuff was happening beyond vague descriptions of tab A goes in slot B, and people are doing things with their bodies that aren’t a mix of crushing and yearning.
Meg is nice and less eternally miserable than the usual Sara Craven heroine. Their romance blossoms in spite of all the lies and deception! All very likeable, even though I was mostly reading to be outraged by the tech.
August 4, 2022
So so
June 8, 2021
False pretenses
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
August 15, 2018
Meg had to impersonate her stepsister and be the companion of her godmother in France for a month in order to stop her stepmother and her stepsister depriving her beloved Nanny from her house. She felt guilty as hell because by being in France herself, she was allowing her stepsister to seduce a married man and cause another woman's downfall. However, she had no choice. She didn't bargain for loving the dear godmother nor falling in love with the family friend, though.
For all honesty, it is okay and full of emotions, but lacks any informative depth because both the main characters stayed ignorant of each other's lives till the very end. Not much happened as well.
For all honesty, it is okay and full of emotions, but lacks any informative depth because both the main characters stayed ignorant of each other's lives till the very end. Not much happened as well.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2013
I've read several books by Sara Craven. This was ok. Not exactly cringe-worthy like Dark Summer Dawn... Meg came to South of France to stand in and actually pretend to be her cousin Margot who was summoned by a long lost Godmother. She was rescued by Jerome in a weather-mishap and aside from a growing attraction between the two of them, Jerome who happened to be the Godmother's friend and architect, also started doubting her charade.
I liked the love-hate tension between the H and the h. The H obviously was hooked into the h but was torn between feelings of love and repulsion. I thought that the part where Meg was blackmailed into pretending to be Margot was quite silly. I mean, how can one invite a long lost goddaughter and know what she looked like after all those years? (This was the reason why Margot thought they can get away with it...)
In the end, Meg's real identity was discovered and she was on her way to leave for England. I loved the part where Jerome chased her on her way to the airport. I felt though that it ended too soon and Meg gave in just like that. She could have really left France and have Jerome chase her all the way to England.
There was a side story about Cathars and Languedoc which piqued my interest and got me researching about this separately; which led me to a scintillating insight about a history suppressed. (But I digress)
I liked the love-hate tension between the H and the h. The H obviously was hooked into the h but was torn between feelings of love and repulsion. I thought that the part where Meg was blackmailed into pretending to be Margot was quite silly. I mean, how can one invite a long lost goddaughter and know what she looked like after all those years? (This was the reason why Margot thought they can get away with it...)
In the end, Meg's real identity was discovered and she was on her way to leave for England. I loved the part where Jerome chased her on her way to the airport. I felt though that it ended too soon and Meg gave in just like that. She could have really left France and have Jerome chase her all the way to England.
There was a side story about Cathars and Languedoc which piqued my interest and got me researching about this separately; which led me to a scintillating insight about a history suppressed. (But I digress)
November 24, 2017
I am not a big fan of stories that hatch out of fantastic coincidences.
The heroine, her bitchy step sister and the well meaning old aunt, all named Margaret, each spelt differently though.
The hero's sister is having a troubled marriage, courtesy bitchy step sister.
And the heroine lands up in France traveling all the way from England to accidentally bump into the hero.
The rest of the story goes on predictable lines. Hero discovers how dewy fresh and innocent the girl is. And falls for her against his better judgement.
Decent story telling, ok one time read.
3 stars
The heroine, her bitchy step sister and the well meaning old aunt, all named Margaret, each spelt differently though.
The hero's sister is having a troubled marriage, courtesy bitchy step sister.
And the heroine lands up in France traveling all the way from England to accidentally bump into the hero.
The rest of the story goes on predictable lines. Hero discovers how dewy fresh and innocent the girl is. And falls for her against his better judgement.
Decent story telling, ok one time read.
3 stars
September 19, 2022
3.5
Lovely Languedoc setting, sweet godmother, evil stepsister, subterfuge, historical love affairs gone awry. This had it all. The nice to old ladies h, Meg/Marguerite/Margot succumbs to the passionate allure of quintessential french lover man Pepe le Pew. I jest, although he could easily tip over into this. Jerome is an architect whose grandfather was the lover of the owner of the chateau the h is staying in. He sets off trying to punishment-seduce the h in the belief that she is her evil stepsister. The pacing is not quite on point, the ending a little rushed. Nevertheless it has charm.
Lovely Languedoc setting, sweet godmother, evil stepsister, subterfuge, historical love affairs gone awry. This had it all. The nice to old ladies h, Meg/Marguerite/Margot succumbs to the passionate allure of quintessential french lover man Pepe le Pew. I jest, although he could easily tip over into this. Jerome is an architect whose grandfather was the lover of the owner of the chateau the h is staying in. He sets off trying to punishment-seduce the h in the belief that she is her evil stepsister. The pacing is not quite on point, the ending a little rushed. Nevertheless it has charm.
December 9, 2017
اغنية الفجر من روايات قلوب عبير
July 27, 2020
Just OK. Girl impersonating her stepsister to visit stepsister's godmother falls in love with the son of the godmother's former lover.
February 7, 2022
This book is missing two more chapters! What happened to the nice lady? What happened to the mean stepsister? What happened?!! Is nanny okay?! Just too many questions!!!
Read
June 25, 2018False pretenses
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
It was an auspicious and fateful beginning-tossed into the arms of Jerome Moncourt by a violent storm that opened the flood gates to Meg's own raging torment of desire and deception.
For Meg's visit to the glorious south of France was an exercise in duplicity--she was undertaking a charade for which she felt wretchedly guilty. And her plans hadn't included awakening to her own passionate needs with a chance-met stranger who had a well-practiced line of seduction. Especially since Jerome made it clear he wanted all of her secrets...body and soul. And that he wasn't about to disclose any of his own!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews