Losing Battle

by Kerry Allyne

Losing Battle by Kerry Allyne released on Jul 25, 1988 is available now for purchase.

Genres: Romance, Harlequin Romance

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Kerry Allyne was born in England, UK. Her early childhood was uneventful, she remembered, until her father came home one day and began talking about emigrating to Australia. When they eventually arrived in Australia, Kerry took to her new land with a passion. During the family's first years "down under," she explored as much of the country as she could, journeying northward into Queensland and out onto the Great Barrier Reef, and sometimes south through New South Wales into Victoria. As a adult she returned to England for a short time. A long working holiday enabled her to travel the world before returning to Australia where she met her engineer husband-to-be, and they had a couple of children. The family eventually moved to a rural area and she started to write. She used the people and countryside as inspiration for her romances. She was published by Mills & Boon from 1976 to 1994.

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wildly unremarkable category romance from the 1980's with an unlikeable heroine - whose sole attraction for the hero seems to be that she wants to avoid male attention, leading him to basically act like a lovestruck toddler who thinks if he hits another toddler hard enough he will finally gain possession of the coveted blue plastic truck (in this case, the heroine's love is the blue plastic truck). The basic plot is that the heroine's older sister got pregnant as a teenager and is now an unwed mother, leading to Scandal for the family; the heroine then got engaged to some goofball who decided, two weeks before the wedding, that he should (1) call off the wedding but (2) proposition the heroine (who heretofore had steadfastly refused all sex before marriage) to move in with him instead "while he made up his mind." This is a pretty high level of ridiculous even for a category romance where the author has half a paragraph to make it clear that the heroine's ex is a jerkface, and that half-paragraph is all we're ever going to get by way of explanation.

Anyway, the heroine's response to this has been to dress as unflatteringly as possible, to the point where we have detailed outfit descriptions of how awful they all are while she swans around being rude to the guests of her parents' hotel. In the meantime, the hero - who is there for the polocrosse tournament, polocrosse being explained in excruciating detail that could have been used on say, character development - finds this incredibly exciting, for some reason, and starts following the heroine around, throwing temper tantrums about her clothes, and cutting her ponytail holders off so she wears her hair down. There is another woman who's wild about the hero and irritated with the heroine for monopolizing his attention, leading to an excellent moment where she calls the heroine a "cheap little slut" and tells her the hero will never be really interested in a girl like her, to which the heroine cheerfully responds that's great, she's frankly surprised the OW considers her competition, but since the OW feels so strongly about it could she please do something to get the hero to stop pursuing the heroine since the heroine has never encouraged him and would like him to go away? The heroine would be ever so grateful.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, this book does the "enemies" part of "enemies-to-lovers" surprisingly well. It didn't really stick the landing for me, because besides being hot and rich Thane doesn't seem to have much going for him, although on the other hand Adair's also more than a little annoying with her bizarre insistence that she's going to wear camo pants everywhere in an effort to avoid The Torments Of Men even though she doesn't actually like her camo pants. Like, wear what you want and tell annoying dudes to screw off, problem solved. Thane woos Adair by being intensely annoying, and Adair is Betrayed By Her Betraying Body, but they're both being obnoxious and rude to each other more or less up until the end so I'm not sure I get that it's a happy ending.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The heroine (22) works at her parents's motel, where she meets the H (a guest - there for the polocrosse tournament). She is really off men, due to being jilted, plus seeing her sister as a single mother and her father friendly with other women (whilst still married). She dresses dowdily to try to avoid men. The H pursues her and a bickerfest begins. Meanwhile, her sister (older then the h by 9 years) starts a relationship with the H's father (who is around 50) and the heroine, her sister and her sister's daughter travel to the father/ H's property in the outback. More bickering ensues but then they live HEA.