Jonathan McGuire was infuriating Though Tory was determined not to let him have his own way, he refused to drop his guard -- or his first impression of her as a ruthless woman of the world. But despite Jonathan's opinion of her, Tory was still a virgin, and not equipped to play his sophisticated game...
I have written almost 250 romance novels in contemporary and Regency.
I am a USA Today Bestselling Author and recipient of the 2015 RWA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014 I received a Pioneer of Romance Award from Romantic Times in the US and in 2012 I was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II for my 'outstanding service to literature'.
I am very happily married to Peter with six sons, and live on the Isle of Man
RE The Secret Virgin - Carole Mortimer gives us a unicorn grooming rock star h taking a break at the Isle of Mann family farm, where she meets the very confused about his self identity H.
The H isn't gay, just moody and unsure of his place in his family as his dad isn't really his dad. They fall in love, (or at least she does and he is interested when he isn't being moody about not being famous like the rest of his family.)
The h is not liking how her manager is managing her and when he cheats on her after they were sorta becoming a couple, the h decides to reevaluate her current career trajectory. As these things go, the skeevy manager shows up and tries to bully the h, but she pretty firmly kicks him her out of her life.
However, the H has no clue what the h's career is and when he finds out, he is not kind and calls the h a trampy, tarty tartlet. He sorta gets over it. But then his family, especially his annoying sister who is the h in Bound By Contract , reveals that she manipulated the H into going to the h's home so the h would partner with him on the music he writes.
The H finds out about this deception and takes it out on the h, accusing her of wanting his music as some kind of pity gesture. The h explains that she wants his music to take her career in a new direction and then the H has a meltdown about his brother in law actually being his half brother.
(Which gave me a headache until I realized that his sister who married his brother isn't related to biologically to the guy. The H is half sibling to both of them. It was worse than Anne Mather for a while tho.)
Finally, after a lot more back and forth, they eventually work out the misunderstandings and he becomes a music composer while she goes the musical theatrical route, so HEA all around and she is still a virgin by the end of it.
This one was tedious and really only 2.5 stars, but I liked the h. She had a solidly sensible head on her shoulders and the travelogue about the Isle of Mann was interesting. CM has written worse and so I judge this one an ordinary HPlandia outing with a slightly more mundane H and an okay read if you have nothing better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Did not finish. Nothing wrong with it, just when I read a Harlequin Presents I want a Greek billionaire with a private island of his own, not some yutz who comes to the Isle of Man on vacation and hangs around the heroine's kitchen eating mom's apple pie. No freeloaders wanted, pal!
The H was a total ass. I don’t understand how the h fell for him. Ok, he appeared to be a great kisser, but when his mouth wasn’t kissing, it was insulting Tory.
The H had daddy issues once he learned the truth about his parentage. He had a hard time dealing with the changes and decided to get away from it all.
What he didn’t count on was finding a woman that would push his buttons. Tory was sweet, but her outgoing personality and her curiosity about him put him on the defensive.
Tory found the H attractive but she wasn’t putting up with his crap. She countered his nasty with her own witty banter, putting him in his place quite a few times.
While I liked the book, the H annoyed the hell out of me. Especially after I learned why he was acting like such a douche. For a thirty three year old man, he acted like a thirteen year old through most of the book. This is the reason I gave the book three stars. The H was not worthy.
ذا كنت تجرؤ! كان جوناثان ماكواير شخصاً يثير الغيظ! صحيح أن "توري" قررت أن تضع له حداً وأن لا تتركه يتصرف على هواه، إلا أنه رفض أن يذعن لها... أو أن يتخلى عن رأيه الأول بها بصفتها امرأة متحجرة قاسية:
هل منعت تصرفاتها وازدراؤه بها، توري من الاستسلام لسحر هذا الرجل: لا... فرغم ما يظنه جوناثان بها، كانت "توري" فتاة ساذجة وغير مسلة بالخبرة الكافية لتجاربه.
Personajes: malísimos y raros. Ella es cantante y él es un músico al que no le vi nada lindo. Historia: sin pies ni cabeza. Todavía no entiendo bien de qué iba el argumento. Un héroe atormentado sin sustento. Romance: ni siquiera hubo un HEA, ni hablar. Esta colección de tres libros (Carole Mortimer, Marion Lennox y Jacqueline Baird se va derecho a hacer fuego en la parrilla. Ok, no, que la carne está cara y los libros también, mejor al canje :P)
I admit I picked up this book because I was tantalized by the title and had hoped that the aforementioned virgin was the hero because I’ve grown weary of heroes who have screwed half of the Eastern seaboard and most of the French Riviera and doesn’t hesitate to screw the heroine without protection. That’s just bad manners. Why is it the heroine who’s always the virgin? I can write a whole book on that alone. There’s something about virginity that’s always guaranteed to thaw the hero’s cold heart and bitter cynicism that all women are whores, except this one good one with a pure heart and a unicorn vagina. Virginity separates the whores from the whore-nots. That’s in the Bible or something. Trust.
Tory Buchanan is asked by her friend, the famous actress Madison Famous Actress, to pick up her brother Jonathan Mcguire, an American, from the airport. He will be staying on a holiday at Madison’s house on the Isle of Man for some R&R, which Tory thinks is weird because it happens to be during the Tourist Trophy races, or TT, this annual gigantic biker rally, so the island wouldn’t be ideal for peace and relaxation. Tory is immediately attracted to Jonathan, but she might as well have been chewed up gum stuck on the bottom of his shoe because that’s basically how he treats her from the get-go. He is cold, rude, and not at all grateful that Tory took the time out of her day to pick him up from the airport when she didn’t have to, though she tries to stay pleasant to him because he’s her friend Madison’s brother (though if he were ugly, I doubt she would have tried as hard). Tory drops him off at Madison’s house and hopes never to see him again, but her farm-folk parents invite him to Sunday lunch, much to Tory’s horror. Afterwards, her father suggests that she take out Jonathan on her bike to see the races, so Tory decides to give Jonathan a bit of a payback by showing him she’s hell on wheels and he barfs. Hilarious! Thus begins their awkward courtship of hanging out, Jonathan getting offended and pissed off, pushing Tory away, and Tory running off (or Jonathan storming off). Lather, rinse, repeat.
Jonathan is a broody, pissy guy and boy, has he got a chip on his shoulder. This is a sequel to the book “Bound by Contract,” the aftermath of which he is currently dealing with: his half-sister and half-brother are now married. Yeah, talk about awkward family reunions. Don’t worry, there’s no incest stuff going on, just some Hollywood circle-jerk fuckery, which is quite common, from what E! True Hollywood Story tells us. He’s also the only non-famous member of his family: his mom is a famous actress, his half-sister is an Oscar-winning actress, his half-brother is an Oscar-winning director, his dad was a critically acclaimed director… and he’s, like, just some guy. All right, he runs a bunch of successful casinos, but what he really wants to do is compose music, because he’s artistic, too, okay?!!?! He likes being alone with his guitar sometimes and just… write music. They don’t have words to them because words are dumb and he’s got something against pop songs, like the kind of stuff that pop singer Victory Canan warbles on the radio.
And Victory Canan turns out to be Tory’s alter ego. Imagine that. Our heroine, a humble farm girl who is also a kickass motorcross racer, just happens to be a super famous Sparkle-pony Rockstar, too! I wouldn’t be surprised if she were also a member of a super-secret girl-ninja team for the MI6. When Tory walks in on Jonathan playing on his guitar forlornly, she is really impressed with his skills, but he thinks she’s spying on him and proceeds to berate her. She tells him she thinks he’s great, but he sneers at her and mocks her, asking what the hell does she know about music. DOUCHEBAG. When they go out for a night on the village, Tory gets recognized by the townsfolk and the live band playing at the village shindig asks her to get on stage and that’s when Jonathan realizes that she’s the pop star Victory Canan. Jonathan’s like, ugh, she must have been making fun of my music and leaves her in the middle of the village to make her own way home in the middle of a giant biker convention. What a gentleman this guy is!
To make matters worse, Tory has a ratbag ex-boyfriend she’s been trying to escape for the last few months and he’s becoming a real pain in the ass. He’s been her manager for five years and had recently asked her to marry him (naturally, his name is Rupert because that’s the perfect name for a ratbag), but on the very night he asked Tory to marry him, Tory discovered he was in bed with another woman. She fled to the Isle of Man, where she grew up, to be with her parents and to gets some R&R before a big tour, but Rupert has been unrelenting with his calls for Tory to return to London. When Tory is featured on the newspaper for her impromptu concert, Rupert is pissed off, but especially because Tory was apparently with some “tall, dark, mystery man” who was obviously Jonathan. Jonathan hates all press, having to deal with all that crap due of his famous family, so he doesn’t appreciate being dragged into all of this because of Tory. Ugh, Jonathan is such a sourpuss. It must get so exhausting to be so gloomy all the time. Anyway, Rupert rushes over to the Isle of Man because he’s worried that Tory is canoodling with some mystery man and he’d lose his meal ticket, so he slimes all over Tory, which causes Jonathan to get super jealous and think Tory is the biggest whore. Jonathan’s like, bye, I don’t need this drama. Tory gets super sad.
And then Tory finds out that her famous actress friend Madison set up this whole thing because she was tired of seeing her sadsack brother being such a sourpuss all of the time and thought he would make a good match with Tory since they could make music together, literally. If I were Tory, I would have gone after Madison and set her on fire for putting me through some shit, but whatever. That’s just me and I’m kind of a bitch. Like it’s Tory’s responsibility to fix her emo brother who is a grown-ass man? The woman has her own career to worry about. She’s a superstar in her own right, damn it. She doesn't want to be some dippity pop star anymore. She wants to do... serious music. She's looking for... new sound. She’s not just some farm girl on some lonely British isle tending to ewe and pigs or whatever. Seriously, Madison has some for-real boundary issues.
This book was kind of chore to read through because the hero was so emo and not even in a fun way. He’s just so self-pitying. Oh, boo-hoo, my brother and sister got married to each other. Big deal. Sack up, Jonathan. Okay, so he finds out when he turned 18 that the guy he thought was his dad was not his dad at all and that his real dad died before he was even born, so he’ll never get the chance to get to know him and the guy that his sister just married turns out to be his half-brother. All right, so that might mess up a guy a little, but get over it, guy. What about the man who raised you from babyhood and treated you as his own son from the get-go? Ugh, Jonathan was just a tough guy to like. This book would have been unbearable, had it not been for the heroine. She’s tough, smart, and decisive. Also, spoiler alert, she stays a virgin, so what does her virginity even have to do with anything? Oh, because all pop stars are whores, except for Tory. Got it.
Virginity is meant to be a secret. damn it. Girls do not run around wearing boards around their neck that they are virgins !!! Anyway, that's a rather inconsequential fact in the story.
The hero is a sulking brat with daddy, step daddy issues. Nothing sinister, just an identity crisis. He also has too many popular movie stars in the family and he happens to be the only non-star !! Comes to the heroine's town to do some soul searching. Hero'es sister and the heroine are buddies.
The heroine is also a star, she is a pop musician. Wants to escape the fame and madness and settle for a quaint musical career. Comes home to do some soul searching too.
In the middle of all the soul searching, the two spend a week together. Kiss a little, bicker a little. He is permanently on yelling mode. She deals well with him though.
When the hero starts lamenting about his daddy issues, the girl betters his tale !! She has both mommy and daddy issues. So big deal ! Err, her issue is that she doesn't know who her real parents are and that she is adopted. A switch is turned on in the hero'es brain and he realizes that his problems are not such a big deal at all.
End of story, he claims love at first sight. She proposes marriage by offering to have lunch with him everyday of her life. HEA.
Rather hotch potch writing. Could not empathize with the problems the leads claimed to face. Nothing spectacular in the tale.
Didn't really do it for me at all this story. Jonathan was such a moody sod. I don't know why she put up with it. So he had issues about his father................too much and yet not enough was made of it. Was there a story for Gideon and Madison that would add more to this story? It really needed it. Not enough oomph. Very disappointing.
A decent read. But to describe the hero in his own words, " self - absorbed, arrogant, judgemental, temperamental" are but a few of the adjectives to describe him.
Better to read the connected book before reading this book. Bound by Contract
Kısa ama konusu ilgi çekici bir kitaptı. Okuyabilirsiniz de okumayabilirsiniz de 94 sayfa. 1 saatte bitebilecek derecede. Basit bir kitap o kadar. Diğer Carole Mortimer kitaplarına kıyasla biraz daha kısa bir kitap. Ve adı pek konuya uygun değil doğrusu.Kitabın adı Gizli Bakire değilde daha farklı olabilirdi.
BLAND..that's the word that came into my mind after finishing this one. The story had some some substance but it wasn't good enough. Typical Mortimer book. AND I don't understand the reason for the title at all.. all in all it left me feeling irritated :(
A lukewarm-to-cold, outdated, with too much decorum-rules story. Dull, boring and too british for my taste. It could have been a victorian romance.It reminds me so much of the 19th century mentality.
Tory was asked by Jonathan McGuire's sister to pick him up at the airport. He was disgruntled, not very pleasant. He runs casinos, she's a world renown singer.
singer/musician. i was bored to tears! i felt no chemistry bet the main protagonists and frankly, the book was the flop on all acounts and had no plus point.
Jonathan McGuire was infuriating! Though Tory was determined not to let him have it all his own way, he refused to drop his guard—or his first impression of her as a ruthless woman of the world.
Then Jonathan's sudden interest in her caught her by surprise. But she couldn't let herself respond to the sensual man she sensed lay beneath Jonathan's arrogant exterior. Because, despite Jonathan's less-than-favorable opinion of her, Tory was actually still a virgin, and not equipped to play his sophisticated game