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Chance Meetings
"All I need is a man--a rich man."
Caro's mad scheme shocked her cousin Marian. But the bank was pressing for the sale of Trevelyans, the Cornish estate that had been in Caro's family for generations, and the auction was less than a month away.
No wonder Caro was ecstatic, then, to happen upon wealthy architect Francis Albany and his attractive cousin Will. Fate, she decided, could be very kind, indeed, although it sometimes needed a hefty push.
Too late she learned that the two men were not in the area entirely by chance. Unfortunately, by that time Caro was already in love--and so was Marian.
Caro's mad scheme shocked her cousin Marian. But the bank was pressing for the sale of Trevelyans, the Cornish estate that had been in Caro's family for generations, and the auction was less than a month away.
No wonder Caro was ecstatic, then, to happen upon wealthy architect Francis Albany and his attractive cousin Will. Fate, she decided, could be very kind, indeed, although it sometimes needed a hefty push.
Too late she learned that the two men were not in the area entirely by chance. Unfortunately, by that time Caro was already in love--and so was Marian.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Vanessa James
24 books41 followersaka Sally Beauman
Sally Kinsey-Miles graduated from Girton College, Cambridge (MA in English Literature) She married Christopher Beauman an economist. After graduating, she moved with her husband to the USA, where she lived for three years, first in Washington DC, then New York, and travelled extensively. She began her career as a journalist in America, joining the staff of the newly launched New York magazine, of which she became associate editor, and continued to write for it after her return to England. Interviewed Alan Howard for the Telegraph Magazine in 1970 in an article called 'A Fellow of Most Excellent Fancy'. (Daily Telegraph Supplement, May 29th.) Apparently a very long interview. The following year they met again, and the rest is history. After a long partnership Sally and Alan married in 2004. She has one son, James, and one grandchild.
Sally had a distinguished career as a journalist and critic, winning the Catherine Pakenham Award for her writing, and becoming the youngest-ever editor of Queen magazine (now Harper’s & Queen). She has contributed to many leading newspapers and magazines in both the UK and the USA, including the Daily Telegraph ( from 1970-73 and 1976-8 she was Arts Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Magazine), the Sunday Times, Observer, Vogue, the New York Times and the New Yorker. She also wrote nine Mills & Boon romances under the pseudonym Vanessa James, before publishing her block-buster novel Destiny in 1987 under her real name. It was her article about Daphne du Maurier, commissioned by Tina Brown, and published in The New Yorker in November 1993, which first gave her the idea for writing Rebecca de Winter’s version of events at Manderley – an idea that subsequently became the novel, Rebecca’s Tale. In 2000 she was one of the Whitbread Prize judges for the best novel category.
Sally Kinsey-Miles graduated from Girton College, Cambridge (MA in English Literature) She married Christopher Beauman an economist. After graduating, she moved with her husband to the USA, where she lived for three years, first in Washington DC, then New York, and travelled extensively. She began her career as a journalist in America, joining the staff of the newly launched New York magazine, of which she became associate editor, and continued to write for it after her return to England. Interviewed Alan Howard for the Telegraph Magazine in 1970 in an article called 'A Fellow of Most Excellent Fancy'. (Daily Telegraph Supplement, May 29th.) Apparently a very long interview. The following year they met again, and the rest is history. After a long partnership Sally and Alan married in 2004. She has one son, James, and one grandchild.
Sally had a distinguished career as a journalist and critic, winning the Catherine Pakenham Award for her writing, and becoming the youngest-ever editor of Queen magazine (now Harper’s & Queen). She has contributed to many leading newspapers and magazines in both the UK and the USA, including the Daily Telegraph ( from 1970-73 and 1976-8 she was Arts Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Magazine), the Sunday Times, Observer, Vogue, the New York Times and the New Yorker. She also wrote nine Mills & Boon romances under the pseudonym Vanessa James, before publishing her block-buster novel Destiny in 1987 under her real name. It was her article about Daphne du Maurier, commissioned by Tina Brown, and published in The New Yorker in November 1993, which first gave her the idea for writing Rebecca de Winter’s version of events at Manderley – an idea that subsequently became the novel, Rebecca’s Tale. In 2000 she was one of the Whitbread Prize judges for the best novel category.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 17, 2016
I had a hard time trying to rate this book. It is realistic and bittersweet and not everyone would like the ending.
This story is about love not just the love between a man and a woman but a girl's love for the only home she has ever known no matter how run down the place has become.. a mother's love for her daughter, the love and bond between two cousins who are more like sisters which is the dominate story. It is about making sacrifices and loving two other people so much that you want to see them happy even if it causes you to be miserable.
This story is about love not just the love between a man and a woman but a girl's love for the only home she has ever known no matter how run down the place has become.. a mother's love for her daughter, the love and bond between two cousins who are more like sisters which is the dominate story. It is about making sacrifices and loving two other people so much that you want to see them happy even if it causes you to be miserable.
April 12, 2016
RE Chance Meetings - this one is another different HP. The biggest problem with it is that the character who would usually be the h in the typical HPlandia outing is relegated to a secondary character who gives up her chance for love to help another and the gold - digging tart wins in the end all around.
The story is that there are two sets of cousins, the female pair live in a big house in Cornwall that is in danger of being sold as there are a lot debts and the estate has not been managed well by prior generations. The h is the one whose father owned the house and now it is her mum's and her mum wants to auction it off, with the influence of some high pressure sales tactics. The h is the gold-digger tart, she gets the brilliant idear to marry for money and save the house.
The female cousin of the h is an orphan, and has a teaching position. She was raised with the h when her parents died and she is the exemplary HP h, but of course she isn't in this one. Yet we get her POV in first person and we only get the h's in the third for a significant portion of the book and it makes things a bit skewed.
The two ladies are out and about and the h has decided she will find and marry a rich man when two male cousins happen to arrive on the scene. The h makes her move and goes for the more obvious flash one while Marian, the female cousin of the h, gets to be with the quiet one. The h decides she is in love with Flash Man and they spend some time together and Marian is really liking the quiet one.
Then Flash Guy goes off to London and the Quiet Man takes the h out in his stead. There is some kissing and passion between the two while the h develops her love-making skills, and the h feels her loyalties switching to Quiet Guy. Then it turns out that Flash Guy is the developer behind the pressure to sell the house. He was using a third party to get the house well below what it is really worth and lied quiet a bit about it to both women. The h and Marian find out his lies and kick both Flash Guy and Quiet Guy out of their lives, though Quiet Guy was sincerely trying to help and it turns out he is richer than Flash Guy.
Except the h supposedly really is in love with Quiet Guy and Marian feels sad for her, so she goes to test out Quiet Guy and QG loves the h back. Then Marian knows her love is lost, so she gives Quiet Guy an in with the h and smooths the way for their reunion, denying her own love for him -which he belatedly recognizes, but there isn't anything to say at that point. The house goes up for auction and QG shows up, the h goes to fling herself off a cliff and QC rescues her and they have more wild kissing.
The mum changes her mind about selling the house, instead QC (now the H), helps the h use the funds from selling off some valuable family porcelains to set up a sort of artisan colony and lost old building repair technique school and makes the h wait six months before consummating their relationship to make sure of her feelings. Marian finds another teaching position and resigns herself to no love and leaving the H and h's lives.
The H and h finally make it to bed and then have mutual declarations of love and a marriage proposal and HEA. VJ tries to write Marian off as being content to be an aunt, but the whole scene comes across as Marian being grossly under-served and shuffled off to oblivion in a really shoddy fashion.
Most of the that comes from VJ not really determining who the h and H actually are for almost half the book. Then she picks the character that would usually be the HP OW not the h. The problem is even more compounded by so much time spent in Marian's POV. She tires to pass the h off later as sort of innocently flighty, but still this is a woman who values her family estate more than anything and was quite willing to put out to get it.
The actual h goes from one man to the next and tops it when she uses the H to test her lovemaking skills in anticipation of the return of the man she thought was wealthier. Marian on the other hand, was very loyal and decent and in any other HP would be the h. Instead she gets sent to a strict boarding school and essentially barred from the only home she has known, and has to lie about her feelings for six months until she can leave. Marian gets the spike, and it was very disappointing.
The H turns out to be just as shallow in the end, he is obsessed with Flash h just as the h originally was obsessed with Flash Guy at the beginning, and I can't help but wonder what VJ's motives were for writing this. Was ennui settling in with HPlandia or did she genuinely not have a good way to give both women an HEA?
As it is, the good people lose and the H turns out to be a toss out too, he dated Marian but wanted the h and that makes him zilch by the last page, for not recognizing the better woman. This one is well written, and the h squeaks by as barely passable, but I think a lot of readers would feel cheated that the wrong girl got the guy and that is never a happy outing in HPlandia.
The story is that there are two sets of cousins, the female pair live in a big house in Cornwall that is in danger of being sold as there are a lot debts and the estate has not been managed well by prior generations. The h is the one whose father owned the house and now it is her mum's and her mum wants to auction it off, with the influence of some high pressure sales tactics. The h is the gold-digger tart, she gets the brilliant idear to marry for money and save the house.
The female cousin of the h is an orphan, and has a teaching position. She was raised with the h when her parents died and she is the exemplary HP h, but of course she isn't in this one. Yet we get her POV in first person and we only get the h's in the third for a significant portion of the book and it makes things a bit skewed.
The two ladies are out and about and the h has decided she will find and marry a rich man when two male cousins happen to arrive on the scene. The h makes her move and goes for the more obvious flash one while Marian, the female cousin of the h, gets to be with the quiet one. The h decides she is in love with Flash Man and they spend some time together and Marian is really liking the quiet one.
Then Flash Guy goes off to London and the Quiet Man takes the h out in his stead. There is some kissing and passion between the two while the h develops her love-making skills, and the h feels her loyalties switching to Quiet Guy. Then it turns out that Flash Guy is the developer behind the pressure to sell the house. He was using a third party to get the house well below what it is really worth and lied quiet a bit about it to both women. The h and Marian find out his lies and kick both Flash Guy and Quiet Guy out of their lives, though Quiet Guy was sincerely trying to help and it turns out he is richer than Flash Guy.
Except the h supposedly really is in love with Quiet Guy and Marian feels sad for her, so she goes to test out Quiet Guy and QG loves the h back. Then Marian knows her love is lost, so she gives Quiet Guy an in with the h and smooths the way for their reunion, denying her own love for him -which he belatedly recognizes, but there isn't anything to say at that point. The house goes up for auction and QG shows up, the h goes to fling herself off a cliff and QC rescues her and they have more wild kissing.
The mum changes her mind about selling the house, instead QC (now the H), helps the h use the funds from selling off some valuable family porcelains to set up a sort of artisan colony and lost old building repair technique school and makes the h wait six months before consummating their relationship to make sure of her feelings. Marian finds another teaching position and resigns herself to no love and leaving the H and h's lives.
The H and h finally make it to bed and then have mutual declarations of love and a marriage proposal and HEA. VJ tries to write Marian off as being content to be an aunt, but the whole scene comes across as Marian being grossly under-served and shuffled off to oblivion in a really shoddy fashion.
Most of the that comes from VJ not really determining who the h and H actually are for almost half the book. Then she picks the character that would usually be the HP OW not the h. The problem is even more compounded by so much time spent in Marian's POV. She tires to pass the h off later as sort of innocently flighty, but still this is a woman who values her family estate more than anything and was quite willing to put out to get it.
The actual h goes from one man to the next and tops it when she uses the H to test her lovemaking skills in anticipation of the return of the man she thought was wealthier. Marian on the other hand, was very loyal and decent and in any other HP would be the h. Instead she gets sent to a strict boarding school and essentially barred from the only home she has known, and has to lie about her feelings for six months until she can leave. Marian gets the spike, and it was very disappointing.
The H turns out to be just as shallow in the end, he is obsessed with Flash h just as the h originally was obsessed with Flash Guy at the beginning, and I can't help but wonder what VJ's motives were for writing this. Was ennui settling in with HPlandia or did she genuinely not have a good way to give both women an HEA?
As it is, the good people lose and the H turns out to be a toss out too, he dated Marian but wanted the h and that makes him zilch by the last page, for not recognizing the better woman. This one is well written, and the h squeaks by as barely passable, but I think a lot of readers would feel cheated that the wrong girl got the guy and that is never a happy outing in HPlandia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 24, 2022
I'm giving 3 stars because Vanessa James is an accomplished writer but this book is a queer fish. And if that's an old fashioned way to describe something, it's because this is a very old fashioned novel. In tone it reminded me of Dodie Smith's I capture the castle. Two cousins, plain, school mistress Marian and beautiful, impetuous deb Caro are spending summer together in their decaying Cornish coastal stately home. Caro, whose family owns the property, is desperate not to have to sell it but the debts are mounting and her ineffectual widowed mother has run out of options. Caro has a dream that she can solve all their problems by marrying a rich man. As if fated, the morning after, the girls meet two glamorous male cousins, one dark, one fair, bowling into the village in a gorgeous grey Bentley. And so it begins.
Initially the fair man, and younger of the two (Will) is seen as the rich catch and Caro sets her sights on him. Meanwhile Marian is more drawn to the dark, dour Francis. As the tale progresses the men are revealed to be not as they originally appeared. Caro switches affection and the romance proper gets underway. Alas, it's not such a happy ending for plain Marian. The hardest thing about this was that it gave both Caro's and Marian's povs. It certainly shows how the modern HP (M&B) formula of pure focus on one H and h pairing makes for a more romantic read.
Older, slower, with a certain charm but not one I can see myself rereading.
Initially the fair man, and younger of the two (Will) is seen as the rich catch and Caro sets her sights on him. Meanwhile Marian is more drawn to the dark, dour Francis. As the tale progresses the men are revealed to be not as they originally appeared. Caro switches affection and the romance proper gets underway. Alas, it's not such a happy ending for plain Marian. The hardest thing about this was that it gave both Caro's and Marian's povs. It certainly shows how the modern HP (M&B) formula of pure focus on one H and h pairing makes for a more romantic read.
Older, slower, with a certain charm but not one I can see myself rereading.
May 2, 2020
All I need is a man--a rich man."
Caro's mad scheme shocked her cousin Marian. But the bank was pressing for the sale of Trevelyans, the Cornish estate that had been in Caro's family for generations, and the auction was less than a month away.
No wonder Caro was ecstatic, then, to happen upon wealthy architect Francis Albany and his attractive cousin Will. Fate, she decided, could be very kind, indeed, although it sometimes needed a hefty push.
Too late she learned that the two men were not in the area entirely by chance. Unfortunately, by that time Caro was already in love--and so was Marian.
Caro's mad scheme shocked her cousin Marian. But the bank was pressing for the sale of Trevelyans, the Cornish estate that had been in Caro's family for generations, and the auction was less than a month away.
No wonder Caro was ecstatic, then, to happen upon wealthy architect Francis Albany and his attractive cousin Will. Fate, she decided, could be very kind, indeed, although it sometimes needed a hefty push.
Too late she learned that the two men were not in the area entirely by chance. Unfortunately, by that time Caro was already in love--and so was Marian.
March 20, 2013
This novel was bittersweet. I was routing for Marian but Caro was kind of selfish and she really pissed me off. I wanted to smack her for going after a man her cousin had picked. It was all bullshit. I want Marian's story. poor girl.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews