As Years Go By

by Margaret Chittenden

Searching the past to find the future

Cornwall 1943

The world is torn apart by war. But in the countryside, Bliss Turner is falling in love with wounded American airman Paul Charmichael. When the war intrudes on their idyllic affair, he leaves her. She never sees him again. She's pregnant.

Cornwall 1995

Simon Flynn is on a quest—to look for Bliss, the woman his grandfather had loved during the Second World War. Once he gets to Cornwall, it isn't long before he finds her...and falls in love with her granddaughter, Rebecca. But Bliss has little memory of the past and an intense hatred for Americans.

Simon has to enlist Rebecca's ait to find out what happened in 1943. But in digging up the past, they uncover an old secret—a secret that threatens their future together.

Genres: Romance

297 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1995

About the author

Margaret Chittenden has also published works under the name Meg Chittenden.

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to spot this in a Little Free Library - I love old category romances and hey, World War II - but this just didn't work for me. The contemporary romance pair weren't my favorites: the hero seemed obnoxious and the heroine was just Nineties Category Romance Heroine #3, if you know what I mean. The hero is in Cornwall to discover the identity of his grandfather's lost WWII-era love, who is obviously the heroine's grandmother. However, it felt like a lot of the narrative tension was caused by a different question that seems pretty obvious from the back cover: are the hero and heroine first cousins? (It cannot possibly be a spoiler to say that no, they are not; this is a Harlequin novel from the 1990s, after all.) The reveal that the hero and heroine are not first cousins (and how) is a couple of quick sentences towards the end of the book, which didn't really feel sufficient given how much woe is caused when it finally occurs to them that they might be.

Anyway, we also know going into it that there will be no happy ending to the WWII-era romance, since the dude (who was married) returned to his wife in the US and has just died at the start of the book, while the lady is embittered and alone. I'll also point out that the reason why the hero and heroine are not first cousins is that the heroine's grandmother had an angry fling with her also-married employer when she discovered her American boyfriend was married; since the American boyfriend had a vasectomy after fathering the hero's mom, her subsequent child couldn't be his. I'm not a big fan of Ye Tragic Romance where the lovers Cannot Be Together, particularly when one party is married; that's not really what I'm looking for from a Harlequin category.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

They were fairly certain they were cousins, FIRST COUSINS,… yet they didn’t see the problem with that. Clearly, it’s ok if only one grandparent is the same … yuck! 🤢 🤮