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Όσα θα Ζήσουμε - Χρυσά Άρλεκιν #61
Μετά από τόσα ανούσια χρόνια που πέρασε η Μαρίνα στην επαρχία, είδε τη ζωή της ν' αλλάζει ριζικά, λες και την άγγιξε το μαγικό ραβδί κάποιας καλής νεράιδας. Μόνο που η νεράιδα εδώ ήταν ο διάσημος διακοσμητής εσωτερικών χώρων, Τζέιμς Σεμπάστιαν, ο οποίος της ζήτησε να εργαστεί κοντά του στο Λονδίνο.
Έτσι η Μαρίνα ζει μια συναρπαστική ζωή ανάμεσα σε αξιόλογους ανθρώπους που τη θαυμάζουν, κάνοντας μια πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα δουλειά. Κι όμως, από όλο αυτό το παραμύθι λείπει κάτι σημαντικό ... το πριγκιπόπουλο!
Η Μαρίνα θα ήθελε στο ρόλο αυτό τον γοητευτικό Τζέιμς, εκείνος, όμως, δε φαίνεται να έχει τέτοιες προθέσεις ...
Έτσι η Μαρίνα ζει μια συναρπαστική ζωή ανάμεσα σε αξιόλογους ανθρώπους που τη θαυμάζουν, κάνοντας μια πολύ ενδιαφέρουσα δουλειά. Κι όμως, από όλο αυτό το παραμύθι λείπει κάτι σημαντικό ... το πριγκιπόπουλο!
Η Μαρίνα θα ήθελε στο ρόλο αυτό τον γοητευτικό Τζέιμς, εκείνος, όμως, δε φαίνεται να έχει τέτοιες προθέσεις ...
160 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1978
43 people want to read
About the author
Anne Weale
218 books49 followersJay Blakeney
aka Anne Weale, Andrea Blake
Jay Blakeney was born on Juny 20, 1929. Her great-grandfather was a well-known writer on moral theology, so perhaps she inherited her writing gene from him. She was "talking stories" to herself long before she could read. When she was still at school, she sold her first short stories to a woman's magazine and she feels she was destined to write. Decided to became a writer, she started writing for newspapers and magazines.
At 21, Jay was a newspaper reporter with a career plan, but the man she was wildly in love with announced that he was off to the other side of the world. He thought they should either marry or say goodbye. She always believed that true love could last a lifetime, and she felt that wonderful men were much harder to find than good jobs, so she put her career on hold. What a wise decision it was! She felt that new young women seem less inclined to risk everything for love than her generation.
Together they traveled the world. If she hadn't spent part of her bridal year living on the edge of a jungle in Malaysia, she might never have become a romance writer. That isolated house, and the perils of the state of emergency that existed in the country at that time, gave her a background and plot ideally suited to a genre she had never read until she came across some romances in the library of a country club they sometimes visited. She can write about love with the even stronger conviction that comes from experience.
When they returned to Europe, Jay resumed her career as a journalist, writing her first romance in her spare time. She sold her first novel as Anne Weale to Mills and Boon in 1955 at the age of 24. At 30, with seven books published, she "retired" to have a baby and become a full-time writer. She raised a delightful son, David, who is as adventurous as his father. Her husband and son have even climbed in the Andes and the Himalayas, giving her lots of ideas for stories. When she retired from reporting, her fiction income -- a combination of amounts earned as a Mills & Boon author and writing for magazines such as Woman's Illustrated, which serialized the work of authors -- exceed 1,000 pounds a year.
She was a founding member of the The Romantic Novelists' Association. In 2002 she published her last novel, in total, she wrote 88 novels. She also wrote under the pseudonym Andrea Blake. She loved setting her novels in exotic parts of the world, but specially in The Caribbean and in her beloved Spain. Since 1989, Jay spent most of the winter months in a very small "pueblo" in the backwoods of Spain. During years, she visited some villages, and from each she have borrowed some feature - a fountain, a street, a plaza, a picturesque old house - to create some places like Valdecarrasca, that is wholly imaginary and yet typical of the part of rural Spain she knew best. She loved walking, reading, sketching, sewing (curtains and slipcovers) and doing needlepoint, gardening, entertaining friends, visiting art galleries and museums, writing letters, surfing the Net, traveling in search of exciting locations for future books, eating delicious food and drinking good wine, cataloguing her books.
She wrote a regular website review column for The Bookseller from 1998 to 2004, before starting her own blog Bookworm on the Net. At the time of her death, on October 24, 2007, she was working on her autobiography "88 Heroes... 1 Mr. Right".
aka Anne Weale, Andrea Blake
Jay Blakeney was born on Juny 20, 1929. Her great-grandfather was a well-known writer on moral theology, so perhaps she inherited her writing gene from him. She was "talking stories" to herself long before she could read. When she was still at school, she sold her first short stories to a woman's magazine and she feels she was destined to write. Decided to became a writer, she started writing for newspapers and magazines.
At 21, Jay was a newspaper reporter with a career plan, but the man she was wildly in love with announced that he was off to the other side of the world. He thought they should either marry or say goodbye. She always believed that true love could last a lifetime, and she felt that wonderful men were much harder to find than good jobs, so she put her career on hold. What a wise decision it was! She felt that new young women seem less inclined to risk everything for love than her generation.
Together they traveled the world. If she hadn't spent part of her bridal year living on the edge of a jungle in Malaysia, she might never have become a romance writer. That isolated house, and the perils of the state of emergency that existed in the country at that time, gave her a background and plot ideally suited to a genre she had never read until she came across some romances in the library of a country club they sometimes visited. She can write about love with the even stronger conviction that comes from experience.
When they returned to Europe, Jay resumed her career as a journalist, writing her first romance in her spare time. She sold her first novel as Anne Weale to Mills and Boon in 1955 at the age of 24. At 30, with seven books published, she "retired" to have a baby and become a full-time writer. She raised a delightful son, David, who is as adventurous as his father. Her husband and son have even climbed in the Andes and the Himalayas, giving her lots of ideas for stories. When she retired from reporting, her fiction income -- a combination of amounts earned as a Mills & Boon author and writing for magazines such as Woman's Illustrated, which serialized the work of authors -- exceed 1,000 pounds a year.
She was a founding member of the The Romantic Novelists' Association. In 2002 she published her last novel, in total, she wrote 88 novels. She also wrote under the pseudonym Andrea Blake. She loved setting her novels in exotic parts of the world, but specially in The Caribbean and in her beloved Spain. Since 1989, Jay spent most of the winter months in a very small "pueblo" in the backwoods of Spain. During years, she visited some villages, and from each she have borrowed some feature - a fountain, a street, a plaza, a picturesque old house - to create some places like Valdecarrasca, that is wholly imaginary and yet typical of the part of rural Spain she knew best. She loved walking, reading, sketching, sewing (curtains and slipcovers) and doing needlepoint, gardening, entertaining friends, visiting art galleries and museums, writing letters, surfing the Net, traveling in search of exciting locations for future books, eating delicious food and drinking good wine, cataloguing her books.
She wrote a regular website review column for The Bookseller from 1998 to 2004, before starting her own blog Bookworm on the Net. At the time of her death, on October 24, 2007, she was working on her autobiography "88 Heroes... 1 Mr. Right".
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 27, 2014
The River Room is one of a string of vintage romances I've read recently. It was written in 1978 and is such an interesting product of its time that I'm puzzled by the low reviews.
Marina Linwood at the start of the novel is managing her deceased grandfather's antique business and caring for her elderly grandmother when world-renowned interior designer James Sebastian wanders into her shop. Though she has long admired his work, at first Marina doesn't recognize him. They don't even meet again until her grandmother has passed away, she has closed the antique business and James offers her a position in his interior design firm based on the strength of the work she did in the home of a friend.
Admittedly, the story is a bit all over the place, with the cover copy making it seem as though there is a serious rival for Marina's affections named David. But really, David is set up as a traditional foil for James's fast ways and very modern acceptance of career-minded women. James cautions Marina early on not to get married because her attention will, of necessity, be divided between her job (which she loves) and her husband. David leaves the picture fairly early on.
No, The River Room is about women finding their place in a new sexual world (thanks to the Pill), a new work world and a tenuous ability to purchase property as a single woman. In fact, the river room of the title is the heroine's pride and joy, an apartment overlooking the Thames that she decorates herself. Though it seems possible that she may not be able to get a bank loan at first, the hero offers to lend her the money as an employee. It turns out not to be necessary, as her inheritance comes through, but it establishes James as a modern-minded man and not just in the ways of the bedroom.
The only aspect of this book that gave me pause is that Marina is quite conflicted about the idea of extra-marital sex for most of the novel. And her objections aren't the slightest bit religious--she's an atheist. She isn't even swayed when James suggests that they move in together, splitting their time between his gloriously-decorated flat and her "river room". Marina is a tiny bit judgmental of people (both men and women) who choose to go the route of premarital sex. But this is largely because promiscuity holds no allure for her and she believes that sex shouldn't not happen outside of a loving relationship. Since this is pretty much what my parents told me growing up (I was born in 1978), this attitude doesn't seem especially antiquated to me, though I would have preferred a bit less judgment on its part of those who make different choices.
James makes several attempts at seduction, but none are creepy or manipulative, which I would have judged harshly. He remains a gentleman throughout; gently, nimbly rescuing her from several awkward situations involving other men. Plus he spends a fair bit of time wooing her with gifts, a new position with another designer when she decides she can no longer work for him because of their attraction and a very romantic love letter and gesture at the end of the novel. There is a bit of hot kissing in the book, but no other sexual contact.
The River Room also has the descriptions of high end decor and create fashion to recommend it. I was enthralled and rather wish a movie could be made so I could see the 1920s dress Marina sells at the beginning of the novel and the eclectic decor of her river room. Plus, the couple visits both Spain and France over the course of the book through James's work as an internationally-known designer, in true Presents fashion.
I thought The River Room was an impossibly romantic novel even though it displayed sexual mores that would have been a teeny bit dated even when the novel was written. I thought it was charming, entertaining, and fascinating as a cultural study. I'll be seeking out more by this author, if I can. I'm hoping to discover if she continued to write into the 1980s to see if her heroines' views on sex and marriage and work changed at all. Truly an intriguing read.
Marina Linwood at the start of the novel is managing her deceased grandfather's antique business and caring for her elderly grandmother when world-renowned interior designer James Sebastian wanders into her shop. Though she has long admired his work, at first Marina doesn't recognize him. They don't even meet again until her grandmother has passed away, she has closed the antique business and James offers her a position in his interior design firm based on the strength of the work she did in the home of a friend.
Admittedly, the story is a bit all over the place, with the cover copy making it seem as though there is a serious rival for Marina's affections named David. But really, David is set up as a traditional foil for James's fast ways and very modern acceptance of career-minded women. James cautions Marina early on not to get married because her attention will, of necessity, be divided between her job (which she loves) and her husband. David leaves the picture fairly early on.
No, The River Room is about women finding their place in a new sexual world (thanks to the Pill), a new work world and a tenuous ability to purchase property as a single woman. In fact, the river room of the title is the heroine's pride and joy, an apartment overlooking the Thames that she decorates herself. Though it seems possible that she may not be able to get a bank loan at first, the hero offers to lend her the money as an employee. It turns out not to be necessary, as her inheritance comes through, but it establishes James as a modern-minded man and not just in the ways of the bedroom.
The only aspect of this book that gave me pause is that Marina is quite conflicted about the idea of extra-marital sex for most of the novel. And her objections aren't the slightest bit religious--she's an atheist. She isn't even swayed when James suggests that they move in together, splitting their time between his gloriously-decorated flat and her "river room". Marina is a tiny bit judgmental of people (both men and women) who choose to go the route of premarital sex. But this is largely because promiscuity holds no allure for her and she believes that sex shouldn't not happen outside of a loving relationship. Since this is pretty much what my parents told me growing up (I was born in 1978), this attitude doesn't seem especially antiquated to me, though I would have preferred a bit less judgment on its part of those who make different choices.
James makes several attempts at seduction, but none are creepy or manipulative, which I would have judged harshly. He remains a gentleman throughout; gently, nimbly rescuing her from several awkward situations involving other men. Plus he spends a fair bit of time wooing her with gifts, a new position with another designer when she decides she can no longer work for him because of their attraction and a very romantic love letter and gesture at the end of the novel. There is a bit of hot kissing in the book, but no other sexual contact.
The River Room also has the descriptions of high end decor and create fashion to recommend it. I was enthralled and rather wish a movie could be made so I could see the 1920s dress Marina sells at the beginning of the novel and the eclectic decor of her river room. Plus, the couple visits both Spain and France over the course of the book through James's work as an internationally-known designer, in true Presents fashion.
I thought The River Room was an impossibly romantic novel even though it displayed sexual mores that would have been a teeny bit dated even when the novel was written. I thought it was charming, entertaining, and fascinating as a cultural study. I'll be seeking out more by this author, if I can. I'm hoping to discover if she continued to write into the 1980s to see if her heroines' views on sex and marriage and work changed at all. Truly an intriguing read.
June 8, 2025
A low-angst, old-fashioned story of a Mary Sue and a reluctantly reformed rake, who will get a long lasting HEA because of their shared, fiery, obsessive, unquenchable passion for…antiquing. Anne Weale's ho-hum office romance, The River Room, is a veritable treasure trove of antiques and interior decorating. It reads more like a combined infomercial for Antiques RoadShow and Architectural Digest than a typical Harlequin. All the antique-porn rather overwhelms the courtship of the would-be lovers, which is nice but a lot less flamboyant than the assorted tchotkes, objets d'art, and ancient mansions featured in this tale.
August 25, 2020
This one was a bit too boring for me. The characterization was one dimensional with a perfect Mary Sue and the typical harley rake. The travelogue was interesting but it overtook the plot. I liked the perspectives on design and antiquing, but again they were overplayed.
Christina Comes to Town still remains my favorite by this author. Though it is a bit out dated with a 60's vibe, it was fun to read and took me back to my youth.
Christina Comes to Town still remains my favorite by this author. Though it is a bit out dated with a 60's vibe, it was fun to read and took me back to my youth.
March 29, 2018
I read this a long time ago but didn’t write a review.
This book might not appeal to everyone, but I liked it a lot. There is a lot of travelogue and descriptions of interior design, which personally I like, but may not appeal to many readers.
Anne Weale is a very elegant and old world style author with particular attention to upper class manners. Her romance stories, like this one, are a slow burn. The Hero is attracted to the heroine quite early in the book, but he has a reputation of a rake. He behaves very well and gentlemanly towards the heroine, but true to his reputation, he tries to get her into bed. That being said, I liked that he still did it in a gentle, teasing manner and was never the jerk or a—hole like Heroes in other books.
The liked the virginal heroine as well. She would have been out of date by now, but at the time, 1978, she was quite in keeping with the mores of the day. She was a career girl (22yrs old) who wanted to have a chance at concentrating on her field and who stuck to the principles she was brought up with. I think many readers now, might be fed up with her resistance to the Hero, but I think she was totally in tune with her time. In fairness, she was not just holding out for a wedding ring, she wanted a sincere commitment of love from the Hero.
I find the author quite progressive in her books. Though her slow burn, good mannered style has not changed much throughout the years, it’s of note that in a later look, “The Lost Lagoon”,written in 1987. She has almost the same trope. A successful interior designer heroine who is not a virginal girl and, unlike the heroine in “the River Room”, has a sexual relationship with her Hero.
I really liked “The River Room” the love story was slow, but the characters were sincere and, for want of a better word, well-behaved. :-) It sometimes makes a nice change when the Hero does not display extreme flares of uncontrollable passion, leading to unforgivable acts Like the forced seduction, so prevalent in this genre. Or a sensible well-bred heroine not prone to hysterical idiotic behaviour typical of other harlequins. At the end I believed in the love and respect the couple had for each other, and was totally convinced of their HEA.
This book might not appeal to everyone, but I liked it a lot. There is a lot of travelogue and descriptions of interior design, which personally I like, but may not appeal to many readers.
Anne Weale is a very elegant and old world style author with particular attention to upper class manners. Her romance stories, like this one, are a slow burn. The Hero is attracted to the heroine quite early in the book, but he has a reputation of a rake. He behaves very well and gentlemanly towards the heroine, but true to his reputation, he tries to get her into bed. That being said, I liked that he still did it in a gentle, teasing manner and was never the jerk or a—hole like Heroes in other books.
The liked the virginal heroine as well. She would have been out of date by now, but at the time, 1978, she was quite in keeping with the mores of the day. She was a career girl (22yrs old) who wanted to have a chance at concentrating on her field and who stuck to the principles she was brought up with. I think many readers now, might be fed up with her resistance to the Hero, but I think she was totally in tune with her time. In fairness, she was not just holding out for a wedding ring, she wanted a sincere commitment of love from the Hero.
I find the author quite progressive in her books. Though her slow burn, good mannered style has not changed much throughout the years, it’s of note that in a later look, “The Lost Lagoon”,written in 1987. She has almost the same trope. A successful interior designer heroine who is not a virginal girl and, unlike the heroine in “the River Room”, has a sexual relationship with her Hero.
I really liked “The River Room” the love story was slow, but the characters were sincere and, for want of a better word, well-behaved. :-) It sometimes makes a nice change when the Hero does not display extreme flares of uncontrollable passion, leading to unforgivable acts Like the forced seduction, so prevalent in this genre. Or a sensible well-bred heroine not prone to hysterical idiotic behaviour typical of other harlequins. At the end I believed in the love and respect the couple had for each other, and was totally convinced of their HEA.
October 23, 2016
It takes a lot for me to drop a book. I love Ye Olden Harlequins... but this one, it bored me to tears. The writing just seems heavy handed. I know that in older books the speech is much more formal than current books. This one takes the cake. They all sound like high society debutantes and gentlemen. None of the dialogue sounds believable. For someone running a small antique shop in a tourist town, she sure has something going on. They all almost sound snobbish. That and the many "presently, he..." and "Presently, she"... yes I get that it was a form of saying "immediately", but it's SO overused in this books. *twitch*
October 9, 2020
Marina was talented as an interior designer, but had no chance to finish her studies due to her parents sudden death and her grandparents' need of her. She grow up as an enthusiastic young lady who owned an antique shop with one faithful friend. It was through that friend that she had the chance to have a job with James Sebastian, the famous interior designer. After months of working with him, he asked her to accompany him to Spain as an assistant which was a very good opportunity to show him her capabilities. Unfortunately, Pat, his secretary, warned her that whoever goes with James on a trip comes back as a lover! Marina through she was immune until James started showing her his real self.
The story is a typical vintage harlequin book, but it was more painful than most in lacking angst and real passion. Not one I would read again in a near or far future.
The story is a typical vintage harlequin book, but it was more painful than most in lacking angst and real passion. Not one I would read again in a near or far future.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2022
"You're too naive. Don't trust David."
James's tawny eyes glinted in the light of the candle on the table between them. In spite of his warning, Marina knew that he was far more dangerous than her friend David.
James Sebastian was one of the nine top interior designers in Europe. Handsome, wealthy, excitingly masculine, he could have had any woman in the world--except Marina.
But now she was certain that, on her side, physical attraction had deepened into love. And loving him, how much longer could she resist him?
James's tawny eyes glinted in the light of the candle on the table between them. In spite of his warning, Marina knew that he was far more dangerous than her friend David.
James Sebastian was one of the nine top interior designers in Europe. Handsome, wealthy, excitingly masculine, he could have had any woman in the world--except Marina.
But now she was certain that, on her side, physical attraction had deepened into love. And loving him, how much longer could she resist him?
February 1, 2015
A nice heartwarming story of love.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews