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All That Heaven Allows
Reid seemed to take over her life. Her ailing mother liked him yet beneath his great charm, Diana sensed Reid was a hard tough man whose success had not been easily acquired.
By his own admission his motives were always based on self-interest. So she wondered if his proposal was only motivated by a desire for the stately home her family refused to sell him.
Even if he didn't love her, he was difficult to refuse. And even if his motives were hidden, she had a secret far more terrible than his!
By his own admission his motives were always based on self-interest. So she wondered if his proposal was only motivated by a desire for the stately home her family refused to sell him.
Even if he didn't love her, he was difficult to refuse. And even if his motives were hidden, she had a secret far more terrible than his!
- GenresHarlequin Presents
187 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1983
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Anne Weale
220 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 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 20, 2018
"-În fiecare zi mor oameni în mod accidental, mai ales tineri. E îngrozitor de trist, dar dacă moartea lor contribuie la progresul medicinei, atunci nu mai este chiar atât de groaznic. E frumos să vezi cum o viață stinsă dă naștere alteia."
"-Alături de el, viața ta va fi mult mai ușoară. Poate că banii nu aduc fericirea, dar au totuși o contribuție importantă. Trebuie să fii realistă."
"-Alături de el, viața ta va fi mult mai ușoară. Poate că banii nu aduc fericirea, dar au totuși o contribuție importantă. Trebuie să fii realistă."
January 27, 2022
Anne Weale continues her lifelong hommage to Lady Diana by actually naming her heroine Diana and having her wear a Lady Di inspired pearl choker and other similar fashion choices.
Our Mary Sue heroine is the product of a mesalliance between her aristocratic mother and her never do well father, causing her grandfather to disown them all.
As a result, after her father’s death, she and her widowed mother scrape an existence by cleaning rich people's villas in Europe's touristy spots while never losing their innate sense of noblesse oblige. She is a real life Cinderella.
Gramps croaks and leaves them a majestic but utterly ruined English manor. Between the costly repairs and upkeep of the manor and her mother's heart transplant surgery, heroine feels obliged to acquiesce to the rich hero's kind but very business like proposal of a marriage of convenience. Unfortunately heroine had a short-lived and painful affair (both emotionally and physically) with a big fat jerk when she was 18 and is now quite understandably terrified of sex and unsure of herself.
It isn't long of course before H's magical penis cures her of her sexual hangups amidst the admittedly romantic setting of a sunny picnic that husband and wife undertake au naturel in a secluded spot of countryside. However, our hero is a consummate rake who makes it rather unchivalrously clear that it isn't the first time he has set up such a successful pastoral seduction scene. Boo.
H and h are clearly gaga over each other but too proud or maybe afraid to admit it. So the author contrives a kidnapping out of absolutely nowhere to act as the trigger to their love declaration. After that life and death situation, h and H finally confess their love for each other.
I will probably remember this one for the fact that the elderly butler Ratty died in his chair in the kitchen on the night of their wedding, putting a rather ghastly shadow on the nuptials! I'm not sure I'd be able to cook in that kitchen let alone eat in it after that!
Our Mary Sue heroine is the product of a mesalliance between her aristocratic mother and her never do well father, causing her grandfather to disown them all.
As a result, after her father’s death, she and her widowed mother scrape an existence by cleaning rich people's villas in Europe's touristy spots while never losing their innate sense of noblesse oblige. She is a real life Cinderella.
Gramps croaks and leaves them a majestic but utterly ruined English manor. Between the costly repairs and upkeep of the manor and her mother's heart transplant surgery, heroine feels obliged to acquiesce to the rich hero's kind but very business like proposal of a marriage of convenience. Unfortunately heroine had a short-lived and painful affair (both emotionally and physically) with a big fat jerk when she was 18 and is now quite understandably terrified of sex and unsure of herself.
It isn't long of course before H's magical penis cures her of her sexual hangups amidst the admittedly romantic setting of a sunny picnic that husband and wife undertake au naturel in a secluded spot of countryside. However, our hero is a consummate rake who makes it rather unchivalrously clear that it isn't the first time he has set up such a successful pastoral seduction scene. Boo.
H and h are clearly gaga over each other but too proud or maybe afraid to admit it. So the author contrives a kidnapping out of absolutely nowhere to act as the trigger to their love declaration. After that life and death situation, h and H finally confess their love for each other.
I will probably remember this one for the fact that the elderly butler Ratty died in his chair in the kitchen on the night of their wedding, putting a rather ghastly shadow on the nuptials! I'm not sure I'd be able to cook in that kitchen let alone eat in it after that!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 10, 2020
Reid seemed to take over her life. Her ailing mother liked him yet beneath his great charm, Diana sensed Reid was a hard tough man whose success had not been easily acquired.
By his own admission his motives were always based on self-interest. So she wondered if his proposal was only motivated by a desire for the stately home her family refused to sell him.
Even if he didn't love her, he was difficult to refuse. And even if his motives were hidden, she had a secret far more terrible than his!
By his own admission his motives were always based on self-interest. So she wondered if his proposal was only motivated by a desire for the stately home her family refused to sell him.
Even if he didn't love her, he was difficult to refuse. And even if his motives were hidden, she had a secret far more terrible than his!
January 27, 2022
More complex characters and emotions make this enjoyable
March 28, 2024
Despite the *very* odd plot, I quite liked both Diana and Reid.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
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April 14, 2024Chatooo muito chatoooo. Não
December 16, 2025
Heaven should never have allowed Ms. Weale to write such a boring book. No chemistry whatsoever between the H and h. The fact that he doesn't care that he casually shrugs off the fact that she had a sexy Latin lover (though apparently as much of a dud in bed as this book is to read), when most of these H's are "no hymen no diamond" shows not a willingness to understand we all make mistakes, but a total lack of interest. (You get the hint when he inquires if he was the first of several?) Shye couldn't care anything about his past either, whereas most h's have a twinge of jealousy thinking about the women in the H's past, and it's not from a liberal attitude, but disinterest.
No one wants a H and h who'll spend most of their time yawning at each other, and as I knew that's what I'd be doing if I kept reading (despite my weakness for stately old houses, The only thing of interest here), this became a DNF!
This was my first attempt to read a book by Ms. Weale and might be my last!
No one wants a H and h who'll spend most of their time yawning at each other, and as I knew that's what I'd be doing if I kept reading (despite my weakness for stately old houses, The only thing of interest here), this became a DNF!
This was my first attempt to read a book by Ms. Weale and might be my last!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 29, 2016
Boring, boring, boring! Flipped most of it! Gave me a dreadful headache! GOD!
February 22, 2010
Now this really was full of LOLZ. There's even a kidnapping!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews