Idylle à Pennington

The Dysarts #4

by Catherine George

Par amour pour son père, Gabrielle n'a pas hésité un instant à quitter Londres pour reprendre l'atelier de restauration de Harry, jusqu'à ce que celui-ci, hospitalisé, soit rétabli. Lourde tâche pour une jeune femme, aussi dynamique soit-elle ! De retour à Pennington, la petite ville où elle a passé son enfance, Gabrielle doit rattraper le retard accumulé en l'absence de son père. Et, comme si cela ne suffisait pas, voilà qu'un fidèle client débarque à l'atelier pour exiger la restauration urgente d'un tableau: difficile de refuser... Et pourtant, à peine a-t-elle appris son identité que la jeune femme lui oppose un refus catégorique. Pas question pour elle d'accorder le moindre passe-droit à Adam Dysart ! Car cet homme, elle vient enfin de le reconnaître : n'est-il pas celui qui, alors qu'ils étaient adolescents, s'était moqué de son physique ingrat ? Une méchanceté gratuite que la jeune femme, désormais ravissante, est bien décidée à lui faire payer ! Car, bien évidemment, lui ne l'a pas reconnue...

Genres: Romance

152 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Deirdre Matthews was born in a village on the Welsh-English border, where the public library featured largely in her life. Her mother, who looked upon literature as a basic necessity of life, fervently encouraged her passion for reading, little knowing it would one day motivate her daughter into writing her first novel.

At 18, she met a future Engineer, who had set in a pendant a gold sovereign, that his grandmother put in his hand when he was born, and she have never taken off since. After their marriage he swept her off to Brazil, where he worked as Chief Engineer of a large gold-mining operation in the mountains of Minas Gerais, a setting which later provided a very popular background for several of her early novels. Nine happy years passed there before the question of their small son's education decided their return to Britain. Not long afterward a daughter was born, and for a time she lived a fulfilled life as a wife and mother who always made time to read, especially in the bath!

Her husband's job took him abroad again, to Portugal, West Africa, and various countries of the Middle East, but this time she stayed home with the family. And spent a lot of lonely evenings in between the reunions when her husband came home on leave. "Instead of reading other people's novels all the time," he suggested one day, "why not have a shot at writing one yourself?" So she did.

But first she took a creative writing course. Encouraged by the other students' enthusiasm for her contributions, she decided to try her hand at romance, and read countless Mills & Boon novels as research before writing one herself. Her first novel was accepted in 1982 as Catherine George, which Romantic Times voted best of its genre for that year, along with more than sixty written since.

These days son and daughter have fled the nest, but they return with loving regularity to where she and her husband back for good from his travels live, with Prince, the most recent Labrador, in a house built at the end of Victoria's reign in four acres of garden on the cliffs between the beautiful Wye Valley and the River Severn.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Art restorer heroine's romance with antique auctioneer hero was one long tedious bickerfest. The heroine has a chip on her shoulder the size of an Arctic Glacier (pre-global warming) because the hero ignored her when she was an acne-riddled teen and because she felt jealous of his close relationship with her father.

The hero is instantly attracted to the heroine and makes it his life's goal to thaw her out little by little as they both take on the daunting project of restoring a badly damaged 19th century painting and research the history behind it. The art forensics part of the story was to be honest the most compelling part of this otherwise tired plot. Turns out the painting is the portrait of two sisters by a famous artist of the era. There is a third person reflected in a mirror on the wall behind the two sisters. He was a textbook rake who was engaged to one of the sisters in the portrait but promptly eloped with the other one days after the painting was completed. So the jilted sister blackened the part of the panting depicting her feckless sister and lover and hid it in the attic where it remained for centuries until it was auctioned off with a bunch of other junk.

Back to the present, hero and heroine fall madly in lust and in love while uncovering the painting. But the hurdle comes along when the hero thinks he is being cheated on by the heroine (she was actually being attacked by a would-be rapist!!! *sigh* a favorite trope of CG). So in a fit of jealous rage, he christens the painting "Portrait of Infidelity" before auctioning it off in front of an avid audience and a disconsolate heroine. After some mutual moping, the Great Big Terrible Misunderstanding is cleared up so they can have their blissful HEA.

What was more appalling than this tepid romance was heroine's parents' divorce-reconciliation subplot. Her father apparently let his "beloved" aunt drive his wife away when she was just a newlywed. He then proceeded to divorce his wife and just ignore her for the next two decades, even after the aunt died. He never lifted a finger to see his ex-wife or have an honest conversation about what broke up their marriage. He stubbornly refused to believe her and instead swallowed up his aunt's lies all the way. He did not even make an effort for the sake of their daughter. But when he got a heart attack two decades later, his ex-wife was the one who showed up to nurse him back to health and PRESTO the two get back together (conveniently now that he needs a nurse and a companion for his old age). There is no resolution there other than a quick line about how the heroine can now put aside her misgivings about marriage by following the sparkling example of her parents' true-love-will-win-in-the-end story. Ugh :(

[Kobie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually when I DNF a book, I feel angry about it, as if the author let me down. I don't feel that way with this. I put it down at 39% and felt good about it. the book just wasn't to my tastes, not the author's fault. it read like a Regency with cellphones.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. There's some pretty decent humour in the story, but I now know more about restoring paintings than I ever wanted to!

[Melody · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at chapter 1.. ho ho ho! This would be my 2nd book to DNF at the first chapter. Why I didn't finish this one? Well, because the heroine was a bitch to the Hero the first time they met years later. Hero was her father's customer (important one) and she was really rude without any valid reason. Oh, well, she had a crush on him when they were teens and Hero did not return her smiles or whatever. So because of that, she had this grudge and treated him rudely years later..very mature and adult of her. And when she learned from her father that the Hero helped him before, she changed her tune. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Thank heavens it was in chapter 1. I just couldn't bring myself to read heroine's blah blah on the next chapters.

[Tia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was way too long, it could of had as much detail and been a novella. I was kind of annoyed by it and how long it was taking, I started to fall asleep. The story as a whole is pretty good but I don't quite appreciate how it was written, I expected more!

[Stephanie Bolen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blech, it was neither here nor there. The only saving grace was the details about the restoration. The characters were sketches, the plot non-existant, the pacing slow and cumbersome, and on a whole it didn't feel real. The antagonism between them could have been real Beatrice and Benadict style stuff, but instead it was a little bit bitchy then she's swept off her feet.

[Amie Doughty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best of the first four Dysarts books so far. I liked Gabriel and the focus on painting restoration.