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The Perfect Crightons #5
The Perfect Lover
Recuperando-se da rejeição de seu primo Saul, Louise Crighton caiu direto nos reconfortantes braços de Gareth. Mas conseguiria ela encará-lo novamente enquanto ele suspeitasse que havia sido apenas um substituto para o homem de seus sonhos? E seria Louise capaz de confessar que, na verdade, descobrira em Gareth seu amante perfeito?
186 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published April 1, 1999
7 people are currently reading
119 people want to read
About the author
Penny Jordan
1,125 books667 followersPenelope Jones Halsall
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 26, 2019
Re The Perfect Lover - Penny Jordan is back with another brief episode in her EPIC The Perfect Crightons series.
As usual, we get the cast of characters in this family drama:
BEN CRIGHTON: Proud patriarch of the family, a strong- minded character in his eighties, determined to see his dynasty thrive and prosper.
RUTH REYNOLDS: Ben's sister, a vibrant woman now happily reunited with Grant, the man from whom she was tragically separated during the war years—and also with the daughter she gave up for adoption. Ruth is a caring, perceptive woman and she holds the Crighton family together.
JON AND JENNY CRIGHTON: Steady, family-orientated couple. Jon keeps the Crighton law firm running smoothly, and Jenny is a partner in a local antiques business.
MAX CRIGHTON: Son of Jon and Jerry, a self-assured, sexy, ruthlessly ambitious lawyer who married his wife Madeleine, a gentle woman and daughter of a High Court judge, to advance his career. While Max spends the week in London, Maddy and the two children make their home with Ben in Haslewich. The whole family is concerned about the stability of their marriage.
LOUISE AND KATE: Twin daughters of Jon and Jerry. A year out of university and their careers have pulled them in different directions. Louise is finally over her adolescent crush on her cousin Saul, but still has reason to be embarrassed over her past actions.
SAUL CRIGHTON: After a painful first marriage, he is now happily wed to Tullah and they have a baby son to join his other three young children. He is aware that he needs to tread carefully to close the emotional gap between himself and Louise.
JOSS: Sensitive and caring fourteen-year-old son of Jon and Jenny.
JACK: Two years older than Joss, he is Jon and Jenny's nephew. They have brought him up like their own son since his father, David, mysteriously disappeared and his mother moved away to start new life.
GARETH SIMMONDS: One of Louise's tutors while she was at university. She found temporary comfort in his arms, but he suspected she'd only turned to him as a substitute for Saul. As their paths cross again, Gareth knows they have some issues from the past they need to resolve.
So this book features Louise, who was the Evil Tarty Teenaged OW in Saul's book, Perfect Marriage Material (The Perfect Family). It has been several years since Lou's bad behavior and she is now a researcher in Brussels for a British EU Minister.
Instead of continuing on to the Law Courts of Great Britain, Lou has found her calling dealing with the many cultures and countries that make up the regulatory body of the European Union.
Lou doesn't make it home much, but when the story starts - with the usual Crighton party event- we see that tho her family is still worried, Louise has completely recovered from her crush on Saul.
In part the reason why Louise recovered, tho she refuses to acknowledge it yet, is because during her Saul chasing days, she got her twin sister to sit in on her uni lectures and impersonate her.
Unbeknownst to Lou at the time, Gareth, Lou's lecturer and tutor, had a major yen for Louise and so when her sister Katie pretended to be her, Gareth knew that it was a lie. His yen for Lou's svelte curves means he can instantly tell the two ladies apart.
Gareth threatened Louise with being sent down if she did not start attending her lectures and Louise had a meltdown - this was after Saul's rejection of her- and a drunken Louise roofie kissing moment occurred. Louise eventually got herself back into class, but she and Gareth strike sparks off each other and it comes out as hostility on Lou's part.
Then over the summer, Lou and the rest of the Crighton gang go to their Tuscan summer home. Gareth's family has a villa close by and Lou runs into Gareth when her car breaks down. Gareth soon insinuates himself in with the rest of the Crighton gang and in a fury, because Lou's twin Katie told Gareth all about Lou's thing for Saul, Lou flirts outrageously with a local young Italian.
Gareth happens upon Lou and her wanna be OM when the young man is getting really gropey. Gareth runs the young man off, but Lou is determined, or at least pretends to be determined, to lose her unicorn grooming license and before we know it, the Heights of Purple Passion are achieved.
Then the Crighton family has to rush back to England due to the grandfather having a heart incident and Louise manages to convince herself that the whole thing was a cheap and tawdry one night stand and she will hate Gareth forever after.
Louise changes her courses and gets rid of Gareth as a tutor, shamed to the core that she let her wantoness explode all over him. Six or seven years on, Gareth shows up as the new Chairman of an EU fishing rights committee that Lou's boss is assigned to and the Treacherous Body Syndrome starts up all over again.
In typical PJ style, Louise hides her major attraction to Gareth behind a veil of hostility and with wanna be French and German OM and OW competing for our h and H's attentions, it looks like this romance is going to be a rocky ride.
But PJ has some background and sequel baiting to set up and it is all a big buildup to the next mainstream novel about Max, cheatin', lyin' nematode pustule extraordinaire, and his book The Perfect Sinner.
PJ is also working up to reintroducing David Crighton - the heir apparent and father of Olivia and teenaged Jack- who ran off with a client's money many years earlier and no one has seen him since.
Joss and Jack show up in Brussels and Louise is forced to let them stay at Gareth's flat, she doesn't have the space to accommodate the two teens in her own. We learn that Max is causing a ton of family conflict and drama by taunting young Jack that his own father, David, hates him and abandoned him and he is only living with Louise's parents because they pity him.
Young Jack is on a quest to find his father and Louise gets to display her maturity as she gently helps Jack learn that his family loves him. This puts her into close proximity with Gareth and we learn that Gareth has been carrying a celibate torch for Lou ever since their Purple Passion Tuscan Conjugation.
When Saul shows up to take the boys back to England, he pretends to be makin' the moves on Lou to get Gareth to react. Gareth takes the bait and confronts Louise about her unrequited love for an uncaring married man and Louise is forced to refute a continuing crush on Saul.
The reason there is no love for Saul, Louise explains, is that Louise is massively in love with Gareth and has been since that day in Tuscany. This opens the floodgates on Gareth's big avowal of love and after an explosive reunification moment on the Shores of Transcendental Golden Bliss, the two of them flee for a quick weekend in Tuscany to start lurvin it up and planning the wedding.
PJ leaves us with this HEA and a big teaser- Joss thinks Max is really sad inside and that is why he is so horrible to everyone and Joss, in an HPlandia Mystic Seer Way, announces that soon Max's redemption or permanent oblivion judgement day will soon be at hand....
This one was kinda creepy in the initial Saul and Lou encounters. Saul is a lecturer in his twenties and Lou is 17. The problem is that Louise is so obviously immature and teen agey, that the whole thing takes on a nasty tinge of older guy pervy grooming.
Plus Lou was really hard to like initially, but overall she does grow and we learn some big Crighton family seekrits in the process, so this is a decent build up to PJ's semi redemption of Cheatin' Nematode Slime Pustule Max.
As usual, we get the cast of characters in this family drama:
BEN CRIGHTON: Proud patriarch of the family, a strong- minded character in his eighties, determined to see his dynasty thrive and prosper.
RUTH REYNOLDS: Ben's sister, a vibrant woman now happily reunited with Grant, the man from whom she was tragically separated during the war years—and also with the daughter she gave up for adoption. Ruth is a caring, perceptive woman and she holds the Crighton family together.
JON AND JENNY CRIGHTON: Steady, family-orientated couple. Jon keeps the Crighton law firm running smoothly, and Jenny is a partner in a local antiques business.
MAX CRIGHTON: Son of Jon and Jerry, a self-assured, sexy, ruthlessly ambitious lawyer who married his wife Madeleine, a gentle woman and daughter of a High Court judge, to advance his career. While Max spends the week in London, Maddy and the two children make their home with Ben in Haslewich. The whole family is concerned about the stability of their marriage.
LOUISE AND KATE: Twin daughters of Jon and Jerry. A year out of university and their careers have pulled them in different directions. Louise is finally over her adolescent crush on her cousin Saul, but still has reason to be embarrassed over her past actions.
SAUL CRIGHTON: After a painful first marriage, he is now happily wed to Tullah and they have a baby son to join his other three young children. He is aware that he needs to tread carefully to close the emotional gap between himself and Louise.
JOSS: Sensitive and caring fourteen-year-old son of Jon and Jenny.
JACK: Two years older than Joss, he is Jon and Jenny's nephew. They have brought him up like their own son since his father, David, mysteriously disappeared and his mother moved away to start new life.
GARETH SIMMONDS: One of Louise's tutors while she was at university. She found temporary comfort in his arms, but he suspected she'd only turned to him as a substitute for Saul. As their paths cross again, Gareth knows they have some issues from the past they need to resolve.
So this book features Louise, who was the Evil Tarty Teenaged OW in Saul's book, Perfect Marriage Material (The Perfect Family). It has been several years since Lou's bad behavior and she is now a researcher in Brussels for a British EU Minister.
Instead of continuing on to the Law Courts of Great Britain, Lou has found her calling dealing with the many cultures and countries that make up the regulatory body of the European Union.
Lou doesn't make it home much, but when the story starts - with the usual Crighton party event- we see that tho her family is still worried, Louise has completely recovered from her crush on Saul.
In part the reason why Louise recovered, tho she refuses to acknowledge it yet, is because during her Saul chasing days, she got her twin sister to sit in on her uni lectures and impersonate her.
Unbeknownst to Lou at the time, Gareth, Lou's lecturer and tutor, had a major yen for Louise and so when her sister Katie pretended to be her, Gareth knew that it was a lie. His yen for Lou's svelte curves means he can instantly tell the two ladies apart.
Gareth threatened Louise with being sent down if she did not start attending her lectures and Louise had a meltdown - this was after Saul's rejection of her- and a drunken Louise roofie kissing moment occurred. Louise eventually got herself back into class, but she and Gareth strike sparks off each other and it comes out as hostility on Lou's part.
Then over the summer, Lou and the rest of the Crighton gang go to their Tuscan summer home. Gareth's family has a villa close by and Lou runs into Gareth when her car breaks down. Gareth soon insinuates himself in with the rest of the Crighton gang and in a fury, because Lou's twin Katie told Gareth all about Lou's thing for Saul, Lou flirts outrageously with a local young Italian.
Gareth happens upon Lou and her wanna be OM when the young man is getting really gropey. Gareth runs the young man off, but Lou is determined, or at least pretends to be determined, to lose her unicorn grooming license and before we know it, the Heights of Purple Passion are achieved.
Then the Crighton family has to rush back to England due to the grandfather having a heart incident and Louise manages to convince herself that the whole thing was a cheap and tawdry one night stand and she will hate Gareth forever after.
Louise changes her courses and gets rid of Gareth as a tutor, shamed to the core that she let her wantoness explode all over him. Six or seven years on, Gareth shows up as the new Chairman of an EU fishing rights committee that Lou's boss is assigned to and the Treacherous Body Syndrome starts up all over again.
In typical PJ style, Louise hides her major attraction to Gareth behind a veil of hostility and with wanna be French and German OM and OW competing for our h and H's attentions, it looks like this romance is going to be a rocky ride.
But PJ has some background and sequel baiting to set up and it is all a big buildup to the next mainstream novel about Max, cheatin', lyin' nematode pustule extraordinaire, and his book The Perfect Sinner.
PJ is also working up to reintroducing David Crighton - the heir apparent and father of Olivia and teenaged Jack- who ran off with a client's money many years earlier and no one has seen him since.
Joss and Jack show up in Brussels and Louise is forced to let them stay at Gareth's flat, she doesn't have the space to accommodate the two teens in her own. We learn that Max is causing a ton of family conflict and drama by taunting young Jack that his own father, David, hates him and abandoned him and he is only living with Louise's parents because they pity him.
Young Jack is on a quest to find his father and Louise gets to display her maturity as she gently helps Jack learn that his family loves him. This puts her into close proximity with Gareth and we learn that Gareth has been carrying a celibate torch for Lou ever since their Purple Passion Tuscan Conjugation.
When Saul shows up to take the boys back to England, he pretends to be makin' the moves on Lou to get Gareth to react. Gareth takes the bait and confronts Louise about her unrequited love for an uncaring married man and Louise is forced to refute a continuing crush on Saul.
The reason there is no love for Saul, Louise explains, is that Louise is massively in love with Gareth and has been since that day in Tuscany. This opens the floodgates on Gareth's big avowal of love and after an explosive reunification moment on the Shores of Transcendental Golden Bliss, the two of them flee for a quick weekend in Tuscany to start lurvin it up and planning the wedding.
PJ leaves us with this HEA and a big teaser- Joss thinks Max is really sad inside and that is why he is so horrible to everyone and Joss, in an HPlandia Mystic Seer Way, announces that soon Max's redemption or permanent oblivion judgement day will soon be at hand....
This one was kinda creepy in the initial Saul and Lou encounters. Saul is a lecturer in his twenties and Lou is 17. The problem is that Louise is so obviously immature and teen agey, that the whole thing takes on a nasty tinge of older guy pervy grooming.
Plus Lou was really hard to like initially, but overall she does grow and we learn some big Crighton family seekrits in the process, so this is a decent build up to PJ's semi redemption of Cheatin' Nematode Slime Pustule Max.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2022
4.5 stars
A romantic and angsty tale of unrequited love.
Combine hot sexual chemistry with Gareth's forbidden, unrequited feelings for Louise—he'd been her professor at one point—and you have a compelling read. I also love a smitten hero which Gareth personified. He really did live up to the title of "the perfect lover": kind, smart, studly and family-oriented. Mmm! But even perfect men have imperfect love lives. Gareth never revealed his feelings to Louise because he believed she loved someone else. Poor guy. He really suffered.
I wasn't sure if I was going to like Louise as she seemed so immature in the preceding books. I'm happy to say that she'd matured during the course of this story. Some soul searching over a previously painful experience with love enabled Louise to recognize her faults. (She'd imagined herself in love with a hot cousin, Saul, hero of Perfect Marriage Material (The Perfect Family).)
Unfortunately, her once-burned-twice-shy experience also left Louise wary of revealing her feelings for Gareth. Compounding this was Louise's incorrect belief that Gareth hated her guts, so the two suffered in silence for a few years until they reunited because of their respective careers and finally(!) cleared the misunderstandings between them.
P.S. I liked how they both stayed celibate after their one time together where Gareth de-virginized Louise.
A romantic and angsty tale of unrequited love.
Combine hot sexual chemistry with Gareth's forbidden, unrequited feelings for Louise—he'd been her professor at one point—and you have a compelling read. I also love a smitten hero which Gareth personified. He really did live up to the title of "the perfect lover": kind, smart, studly and family-oriented. Mmm! But even perfect men have imperfect love lives. Gareth never revealed his feelings to Louise because he believed she loved someone else. Poor guy. He really suffered.
I wasn't sure if I was going to like Louise as she seemed so immature in the preceding books. I'm happy to say that she'd matured during the course of this story. Some soul searching over a previously painful experience with love enabled Louise to recognize her faults. (She'd imagined herself in love with a hot cousin, Saul, hero of Perfect Marriage Material (The Perfect Family).)
Unfortunately, her once-burned-twice-shy experience also left Louise wary of revealing her feelings for Gareth. Compounding this was Louise's incorrect belief that Gareth hated her guts, so the two suffered in silence for a few years until they reunited because of their respective careers and finally(!) cleared the misunderstandings between them.
P.S. I liked how they both stayed celibate after their one time together where Gareth de-virginized Louise.
December 4, 2015
I wanted to slap the heroine silly.
August 12, 2025
"The Perfect Lover" is the story of Louise and Gareth.
The fact that the heroine was in love with her cousin, and spent half of the book whining about him while judging the patient hero and using people around her really put me off the book. Very unlikable heroine.
SWE for me
1.5/5
The fact that the heroine was in love with her cousin, and spent half of the book whining about him while judging the patient hero and using people around her really put me off the book. Very unlikable heroine.
SWE for me
1.5/5
April 18, 2014
This is my first time that I remember I ever read a romance between tutor and his pupil. Usually I avoid this theme like a plague, I guess I feel that a tutor is a boring person. lol.
Anyway, Garreth indeed a boring person, well, almost, if not for his complicated love for his own pupil, who loved another man. A mess for a boring lecturer, I must say. Louise herself was in love (so she thought) with her cousin, Saul, for a long time. Yes, this book is pretty old when marriage between cousins still a normal thing I guess.
One thing led to another, Garreth believed that Louise saw him as a substitute for Saul when they made love. They're apart and Louise stayed away from him until she graduated and they never meet again for years. But once again they bumped to each other in their work field.
Garreth was still believed she loved Saul while he's desperately in love with her so he didn't dare to confess his feeling to her. Meanwhile, since their last passionate encounter Louise also had her own clarity about her true feeling.
The story is simple yet touching in some ways. Some would say it's boring, but while I'm in the mood for something simple, this story really makes it up to me. A pleasure read. I'm so feeling generous right now :))
Anyway, Garreth indeed a boring person, well, almost, if not for his complicated love for his own pupil, who loved another man. A mess for a boring lecturer, I must say. Louise herself was in love (so she thought) with her cousin, Saul, for a long time. Yes, this book is pretty old when marriage between cousins still a normal thing I guess.
One thing led to another, Garreth believed that Louise saw him as a substitute for Saul when they made love. They're apart and Louise stayed away from him until she graduated and they never meet again for years. But once again they bumped to each other in their work field.
Garreth was still believed she loved Saul while he's desperately in love with her so he didn't dare to confess his feeling to her. Meanwhile, since their last passionate encounter Louise also had her own clarity about her true feeling.
The story is simple yet touching in some ways. Some would say it's boring, but while I'm in the mood for something simple, this story really makes it up to me. A pleasure read. I'm so feeling generous right now :))
April 21, 2023
Sometimes you just need good ol' PJ novel to safe the day!
Loved Gareth and their celibacy during separation. Louisa was dense, as usual PJ's heroine.
December 30, 2022
Part of the "Perfect Family"/Crightons series, this book follows Louise Crighton, who we last saw in the book featuring Saul Crighton and his h Tullah, "Perfect Marriage Material". She was a bit of an OW there, in that she was an immature teen who could be self-destructive and selfish - like her brother Max - and had a crush on her cousin Saul so intense that she almost harmed his love interest in a bid to get his attention.
Louise's book looks at her almost 5-6 years after that, capturing how she's growth and what caused her to mature, while also providing buildup for her brother Max's story (The Perfect Sinner), some hints at David's story (Coming Home), and a tiny hint of story for her twin Katie (The Perfect Night).
Technically the book begins with a Christmas party among the Crightons, where Louise is being goaded by her brother and also finally patches up with Tullah and Saul, apologizing for her behaviour back then and being reassured that they understand and still love her. We find her ruminate over how she feels towards Saul just the same way she would feel for any cousin...but PJ holds off on *why*.
We find out that Louise didn't join law practice at home like most of her family did and instead lives in Brussels, where she is the research assistant for the British rep at a committee. It's a job that suits her more passionate nature and she's pretty happy and settled, until her ex-tutor Gareth Simmonds re-enters her life as the chairman of a committee that she is meant to be working with.
The story hereon oscillates between the past and the present: while Louise is navigating political connections and thwarting interested men, she also has to deal with the floods of memories the presence of Gareth brings. He was her tutor at Oxford and noticed immediately when Louise started making her twin Katie sit in her place in class at the height of her crush on Saul (Perfect Marriage Material laboured over this point quite often in Louise's few PoV scenes, and we find out why at the end of this book). Louise resents his presence at university because he seems a lot stricter than her previous professor and because she feels he is contemptuous of her, and this only intensifies when he threatens consequences for ignoring her studies.
He later bumps into a heartbroken Louise who is still reeling from losing Saul, and Louise winds up kissing him. They meet again in Tuscany shortly after, when Louise is visiting her family home. It's in Tuscany that Louise truly begins to acknowledge her attraction to Gareth. Unfortunately she's still holding tight to her perceived crush on Saul, and flirts quite a bit with a boy whose mother works at the villa to get a reaction out of Gareth.
On Louise's final week at Tuscany, she finds herself in an uncomfortable situation with the boy until Gareth intervenes and the two get into a rather messy fight that results in them sleeping together. However, Louise accidentally *almost* lets Saul's name slip in the act, and Gareth believes he was simply a substitute for the man she couldn't have. He attempts to contact her later on, only to discover she has changed courses and is avoiding him altogether. From his PoV scenes we discover that Gareth had been having feelings for Louise the whole time and realized his love for her in that afternoon in Tuscany, and that the only woman he can ever love, or marry, will always be Louise.
Louise, for her part, didn't completely understand the magnitude of how she felt towards Gareth until months later. Still affected by her actions during the whole Saul/Tullah episode, she went in the exact opposite direction with Gareth by hiding away and never letting him know she'd fallen in love with him.
This brings us to the present, where our two protagonists agonize over their unrequited love for each other and resign to living celibate for the rest of their lives because they're SO sure their affections will never be returned. Mutual pining at its max.
There's sexual tension galore (including some making out by the pool) that plunges them both further into despair, until Louise's brother Joss and cousin Jake make an appearance at her flat (Jake is trying to locate his father David), and Gareth - seeing Louise suffering from a migraine - takes over and offers to have them stay at his place. The two forge a bit of a truce and soften towards each other, until Saul reappears to take the boys home which makes Gareth seethe in jealousy (Louise notices, but misunderstands his reaction to be one of contempt).
Saul, however, catches the tension between the two and realizes better than Louise exactly what Gareth's problem is, and pretends to be more affectionate to her to goad him into confessing his feelings. It works, we get the grand reveal of their feelings, and Gareth whisks Louise off to Tuscany for the most romantic getaway that I've read in a while!
The epilogue features hints of Louise's brother Max's deteriorating relationship with his wife Maddy, and the tiniest hint that Katie, Louise's twin, may not be too far behind her sister in nursing feelings for someone who loves someone else.
I love professor heroes but not always in settings where the love interest is their student...but I honestly loved this one. Gareth was so compelling as an H and I thought there was more than enough there to convince me that he was fighting a losing battle with his own feelings, and that he truly cared for Louise. In the present we see how affected he is by his memories of Louise, and how still in love with her he is, as well as his insights into her family which reveal to us exactly how much his time with them mattered to him.
A point that hints at his feelings in Saul's book, and that provides some background for Louise's twin Katie's unrequited feelings for him in the next, is that he is immediately able to differentiate between the twins where others cannot - he is so crazy about Louise that he can instantly identify her even in the presence of her twin and (spoilers for "A Perfect Night") Katie misunderstands this and falls headlong in love with him at the same time.
My favourite aspect of this book has to be the gradual reveal of the depth of Louise's feelings. The flashbacks happen bit by bit, and along with that so does the reveal of the full depth of Louise's love for Gareth. We start out believing that she didn't feel more than attraction for him as we read the flashbacks, but each one unravels layer upon layer of her hidden emotions.
PJ also takes care to create a distinct voice for her younger Louise, in comparison to the matured one, while ensuring they don't sound like two different people. Younger Louise is impetuous, impulsive, still not fully aware of her selfishness and recklessness, and extremely stubborn. The Louise who lives in Brussels is a lot more aware of what the consequences of her actions could be and is far more cautious, but still holds on to her stubbornness (only this time it's focused on keeping her love for Gareth a secret). We don't see her growth in a linear fashion, but it all comes together and makes for a compelling story.
This was a story I wasn't completely expecting to like but I absolutely loved, mainly on the strength of a smitten hero and the slow reveal of the heroine's past feelings. It's definitely a lovely one for a reread. My only issue is that the cover doesn't really match the book much for me. Gareth and Louise are an exciting, tempestuous, wildly romantic couple and none of that comes across in the cover illustration to me.
Louise's book looks at her almost 5-6 years after that, capturing how she's growth and what caused her to mature, while also providing buildup for her brother Max's story (The Perfect Sinner), some hints at David's story (Coming Home), and a tiny hint of story for her twin Katie (The Perfect Night).
Technically the book begins with a Christmas party among the Crightons, where Louise is being goaded by her brother and also finally patches up with Tullah and Saul, apologizing for her behaviour back then and being reassured that they understand and still love her. We find her ruminate over how she feels towards Saul just the same way she would feel for any cousin...but PJ holds off on *why*.
We find out that Louise didn't join law practice at home like most of her family did and instead lives in Brussels, where she is the research assistant for the British rep at a committee. It's a job that suits her more passionate nature and she's pretty happy and settled, until her ex-tutor Gareth Simmonds re-enters her life as the chairman of a committee that she is meant to be working with.
The story hereon oscillates between the past and the present: while Louise is navigating political connections and thwarting interested men, she also has to deal with the floods of memories the presence of Gareth brings. He was her tutor at Oxford and noticed immediately when Louise started making her twin Katie sit in her place in class at the height of her crush on Saul (Perfect Marriage Material laboured over this point quite often in Louise's few PoV scenes, and we find out why at the end of this book). Louise resents his presence at university because he seems a lot stricter than her previous professor and because she feels he is contemptuous of her, and this only intensifies when he threatens consequences for ignoring her studies.
He later bumps into a heartbroken Louise who is still reeling from losing Saul, and Louise winds up kissing him. They meet again in Tuscany shortly after, when Louise is visiting her family home. It's in Tuscany that Louise truly begins to acknowledge her attraction to Gareth. Unfortunately she's still holding tight to her perceived crush on Saul, and flirts quite a bit with a boy whose mother works at the villa to get a reaction out of Gareth.
On Louise's final week at Tuscany, she finds herself in an uncomfortable situation with the boy until Gareth intervenes and the two get into a rather messy fight that results in them sleeping together. However, Louise accidentally *almost* lets Saul's name slip in the act, and Gareth believes he was simply a substitute for the man she couldn't have. He attempts to contact her later on, only to discover she has changed courses and is avoiding him altogether. From his PoV scenes we discover that Gareth had been having feelings for Louise the whole time and realized his love for her in that afternoon in Tuscany, and that the only woman he can ever love, or marry, will always be Louise.
Louise, for her part, didn't completely understand the magnitude of how she felt towards Gareth until months later. Still affected by her actions during the whole Saul/Tullah episode, she went in the exact opposite direction with Gareth by hiding away and never letting him know she'd fallen in love with him.
This brings us to the present, where our two protagonists agonize over their unrequited love for each other and resign to living celibate for the rest of their lives because they're SO sure their affections will never be returned. Mutual pining at its max.
There's sexual tension galore (including some making out by the pool) that plunges them both further into despair, until Louise's brother Joss and cousin Jake make an appearance at her flat (Jake is trying to locate his father David), and Gareth - seeing Louise suffering from a migraine - takes over and offers to have them stay at his place. The two forge a bit of a truce and soften towards each other, until Saul reappears to take the boys home which makes Gareth seethe in jealousy (Louise notices, but misunderstands his reaction to be one of contempt).
Saul, however, catches the tension between the two and realizes better than Louise exactly what Gareth's problem is, and pretends to be more affectionate to her to goad him into confessing his feelings. It works, we get the grand reveal of their feelings, and Gareth whisks Louise off to Tuscany for the most romantic getaway that I've read in a while!
The epilogue features hints of Louise's brother Max's deteriorating relationship with his wife Maddy, and the tiniest hint that Katie, Louise's twin, may not be too far behind her sister in nursing feelings for someone who loves someone else.
I love professor heroes but not always in settings where the love interest is their student...but I honestly loved this one. Gareth was so compelling as an H and I thought there was more than enough there to convince me that he was fighting a losing battle with his own feelings, and that he truly cared for Louise. In the present we see how affected he is by his memories of Louise, and how still in love with her he is, as well as his insights into her family which reveal to us exactly how much his time with them mattered to him.
A point that hints at his feelings in Saul's book, and that provides some background for Louise's twin Katie's unrequited feelings for him in the next, is that he is immediately able to differentiate between the twins where others cannot - he is so crazy about Louise that he can instantly identify her even in the presence of her twin and (spoilers for "A Perfect Night") Katie misunderstands this and falls headlong in love with him at the same time.
My favourite aspect of this book has to be the gradual reveal of the depth of Louise's feelings. The flashbacks happen bit by bit, and along with that so does the reveal of the full depth of Louise's love for Gareth. We start out believing that she didn't feel more than attraction for him as we read the flashbacks, but each one unravels layer upon layer of her hidden emotions.
PJ also takes care to create a distinct voice for her younger Louise, in comparison to the matured one, while ensuring they don't sound like two different people. Younger Louise is impetuous, impulsive, still not fully aware of her selfishness and recklessness, and extremely stubborn. The Louise who lives in Brussels is a lot more aware of what the consequences of her actions could be and is far more cautious, but still holds on to her stubbornness (only this time it's focused on keeping her love for Gareth a secret). We don't see her growth in a linear fashion, but it all comes together and makes for a compelling story.
This was a story I wasn't completely expecting to like but I absolutely loved, mainly on the strength of a smitten hero and the slow reveal of the heroine's past feelings. It's definitely a lovely one for a reread. My only issue is that the cover doesn't really match the book much for me. Gareth and Louise are an exciting, tempestuous, wildly romantic couple and none of that comes across in the cover illustration to me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 4, 2022
Um dos volumes mais dinâmicos da série, onde somos levados por vários lugares, da Inglaterra à Itália e à Bruxelas. Se isso não é o bastante para chamar sua atenção, então que tal o fato que o casal protagonista tem sua história sendo construída desde o primeiro romance?
Louise começou a história que seria pano-de-fundo para a paixão infantil que nutriu por um bom tempo e que modificou profundamente a sua forma de viver, inclusive sua escolha profissional e atitude com a família - em volumes anteriores.
Gareth, seu par, também já havia sido mencionado e havia até um quê - não muito sútil - do que poderia estar implicado entre eles. O professor universitário jovem e bonitão e a aluna voluntariosa demais para ter bom senso.
A saga da família Crighton em si também avança, pois vários personagens envelheceram e as crianças, agora quase adultas, já provocam ações e revelam novos traumas pelo resultado dos acontecimentos anteriores.
Uma boa pedida, mesmo para quem não acompanha a série.
Louise começou a história que seria pano-de-fundo para a paixão infantil que nutriu por um bom tempo e que modificou profundamente a sua forma de viver, inclusive sua escolha profissional e atitude com a família - em volumes anteriores.
Gareth, seu par, também já havia sido mencionado e havia até um quê - não muito sútil - do que poderia estar implicado entre eles. O professor universitário jovem e bonitão e a aluna voluntariosa demais para ter bom senso.
A saga da família Crighton em si também avança, pois vários personagens envelheceram e as crianças, agora quase adultas, já provocam ações e revelam novos traumas pelo resultado dos acontecimentos anteriores.
Uma boa pedida, mesmo para quem não acompanha a série.
October 23, 2020
The Perfect Lover by Penny Jordan was thee first romance and first Penny Jordan novel I had read, and what a lovely, feel-good, quick but thorough and satisfying, relatable in all areas book it is. I would give it 4 1/2 stars if I could. Easy to understand and pick back up. All characters and situations were down to earth and relatable. I am looking forward to reading more into Louise and Gareth's life together. - I have a strange suspicion about her twin sister Katie!
July 21, 2018
Now to find the other 10 books in the series. This was book five. An interesting story. I enjoyed the fact that he was in love with her all the time. Her family still judged her by her (former) crush on her cousin Saul. The interesting ending with the confession (to herself) of , Louise's twin, Katie's crush.
May 8, 2020
Part of a set. Enjoyed it
May 16, 2015
This was a trite tale. I felt for Louise but she was just such an annoyingly know-it-all teenager filled with angst that I just wanted to slap some sense into her. Gareth is much too good for her. her. The family relationships are interesting, and the language is good. But seriously, Louise was just a royal pain.
August 17, 2020
Boring
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