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The Guarded Heart
His was a terrible vengeance
Alannah's thoughtlessness when she was sixteen had caused an accident with tragic consequences. Then, three years later, when she'd finally come to terms with the past, she was painfully reminded of her guilt.
Nicholas Challoner, haunted, brooding for his dead wife and unborn child, was not a man to forget--or to forgive.
He demanded a retribution that only Alannah could pay. And the elaborate web he had woven as part of his revenge left her no way out!
Alannah's thoughtlessness when she was sixteen had caused an accident with tragic consequences. Then, three years later, when she'd finally come to terms with the past, she was painfully reminded of her guilt.
Nicholas Challoner, haunted, brooding for his dead wife and unborn child, was not a man to forget--or to forgive.
He demanded a retribution that only Alannah could pay. And the elaborate web he had woven as part of his revenge left her no way out!
191 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 1987
About the author
Robyn Donald
453 books150 followersRobyn Elaine Donald was born on 14 August 1940 in Northland, New Zealand. She was the oldest child in her family, and as a child, she thrilled her four sisters and one brother with bloodcurdling adventure tales, usually very like the latest book she'd borrowed from the library.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
April 2, 2021
Ahhh, gotta say this woman, Robyn Donald, has an extremely weird notion of what romance is... I thought that her Return to Yesterday is one sick kind of a book, but I seriously have to reconsider this now.
Half of the characters are batshit crazy and need to be sent to a loony bin. Another half of them are plain disgusting and need to be burnt at stake.
I bet this author takes pleasure in raising the stakes when it comes to offending her readers' sensibilities.
The heroine inadvertently causes the hero's pregnant wife death so 3 years later he blackmails her into becoming his brood mare to atone for the loss and then all the toxic shit breaks loose...
Four sick and shining stars
(don't ask)
Half of the characters are batshit crazy and need to be sent to a loony bin. Another half of them are plain disgusting and need to be burnt at stake.
I bet this author takes pleasure in raising the stakes when it comes to offending her readers' sensibilities.
The heroine inadvertently causes the hero's pregnant wife death so 3 years later he blackmails her into becoming his brood mare to atone for the loss and then all the toxic shit breaks loose...
Four sick and shining stars
(don't ask)
May 17, 2010
The book has A COMPLETE BOXED SET of the usual twisted, dwama-making elements : blackmail ; revenge ; pimping mommie (not the usual pimp daddy for once. Yay !) ; icy, creepy, vindictive, merciless, venomous, pervy dictator (hero) ; downtrodden, martyr-like sex slave cum brood mare (heroine) ; lifelong bondage ; forced pregnancy ; H/H throwing sly digs @ each other ; the fork-tongued viper aka alleged mistress ; the requisite bitch-slap & name-calling (“ conceited ape” vs “stupid / hypocritical bitch”) ; a plethora of ‘I hate U !’, ‘I despise you !’ & ‘I hate this baby !’. To sum it all up : May–December romance @ its most dwamatic 8^P
Alannah is fresh off her Swiss finishing school & ready to pick up where she left off w/ her next-door 21 y/o boyfriend David. Mommie dearest for some reason shows signs of disapproval of their reunion & Alannah finds out why soon after. On her 19th B-day bash, her nitemare comes true. Nicholas, the 30 y/o chauvinistic Slug shows up. She wonders why mommie invited him in the 1st place ‘cuz 3 years ago, 16 y/o Alannah & her outta-control skateboard had caused a freak accident that killed Nick’s wife (6 months preggers) & unborn baby. The inquest proved that it’s not really her fault. A month after the tragic incident, Alannah & daddy showed up @ Nick’s hotel room to express her genuine remorse, but li’l did she know, Nick had overheard her nervous giggle as soon as she stepped outta the room, unwittingly triggering a chain of life-altering events. After that interview, Nick executed his 3-year revenge plot. It’s methodical yet so effective as he’s dead set on marrying & impregnating her (it sure beats a sudsy, lethargic episode of “Melrose Place” !) :
- While Alannah polished her skills @ school, Nick befriended her daddy & set out to ruin him. Daddy keeled over, leaving mommie to raise 2 young gals on her own.
- He underwrites older sista’s med school expenses
- He pays for Alannah’s finishing school in Swiss
- He eliminates Alannah’s boytoy w/ a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship from L.A. Uni.
- Mommie is indebted to him thanx to much-needed loans
Nick drops the bombshell on Alannah : a forced marriage & an heir to replace the ones he’d lost due to Alannah’s unintentional carelessness. If she won’t dance to his tune, he’ll pull the plugs on sista’s med school & airhead mommie’s pricey lifestyle.
PIMP MOMMIE : ‘I know. So romantic, Ally darling ! He told me that he’d never forgotten you, even though he only saw you for those ten minutes or so that time.’
I see, ‘cuz 3 years ago Alannah prolly looked shagadelic in her Catholic school gal get-up a la Britney Spears < gag me w/ mothballs >. Ah… only in HPlandia a mercenarial mommie can get away w/ pimping out her 19 y/o hawt daughter to a loony bin.
Another convenient plot twist : her beloved sista fesses up that she’s luved Alannah’s BF since she was a kid so it’ll all work out eventually. Anyhoo, H/H get hitched 10 days after & since it’s a Marriage of Mutual Benefits, Alannah specifically picks her wedding day, w/ calendar & diary @ hand, to fall right @ the beginning of her fertile cycle. God forbid he’ll be shooting blanks. She hopes that all it takes is 1 shot for Nick to put his bun in her oven. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Alannah’s trapped in a gilded cage (New Zealand), isolated & kept short of money. What’s a gal to do ? Throw hissy fits, of course. He wants to cow her thoroughly & break her. Alas, she’s made of sterner stuff. She lets him use her body as his receptacle but she won’t let him into her heart (now why does this cliché-tastic line sound so darn familiar ?). Not that he’s blessed w/ a King Dong, it’s just that he’s such a skilled luver that he can coax her body into wanting him as he shags her, but she doesn’t reach her peak. Their miserable marriage’s filled w/ forced kisses, vicious taunting, sneering, jeering, mocking, e.g. :
‘Obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. I find you bed-worthy, Alannah, and I don’t care whether / not you enjoy the conception of my children. You’ll conceive as often as I want you to.’
Back to regularly-scheduled purgatory. Alannah gets preggers & earns a smack across her cheekbones real hard when she provokes him w/ an upper cut to his male ego (‘The only way I can bear your hands and mouth on me is to close my eyes and pretend that you’re David.’). Hell hath no fury like a man scorned. U’d think @ this pivotal juncture of their disastrous marriage, she’d call 911 but this is New Zealand. Mayhap she dunno the emergency line for domestic abuse, so she stays. Typical of HP hero, he offers a half-assed apology the next day but shifts the blame on her that it’s justified after all (‘I wouldn’t have hit you except that you offered me an intolerable insult.’) & he promises it’s hands-off policy from this point on, no worries.
He brings home his business associate & li’l trampy daughter, which adds more fuel to the boiling cauldron. This ho also happens to be Nick’s late wife’s cousin. It’s a small world. After she pops out their baby boy, he casually mentions that he opens a bank account for her. Whoopie Doo. How charitable of him. To rub chilli sauce into her sore open wounds, he brings home her mommie & sista to visit her, along w/ her former boyfriend. That’s when she knows once & for all, that she’s never been in luv w/ him all this time. It’s the sadistic hubby that she really luvs. In a sick twist heaped upon twistable plot, Nick decides to prove the bottomless depth of his luv for her, by letting her go, telling her that she can go home w/ her family for eternity w/ the stipulation that she’ll let their son come visit him sometimes. HEA is not complete w/out the logic-defying heart-to-heart talk.
Some of WTF convo / confessions :
‘Then don’t provoke me,’ he said thinly, releasing her. ‘I don’t care if you lie like a log in my arms, you stupid little bitch. But I have no intention of allowing you privileges you don’t deserve just because we make love together—or because you are my wife. If you want consideration from me you’ll have to earn it.’ (then why duncha hump a dead tree, plenty of ‘em out there !)
‘You needn’t worry,’ he said contemptuously, ‘I’ve never had to hit a woman and I certainly don’t anticipate having to use force with you.’ (yet he does exactly that, self-control isn’t his forte !)
‘I own you. I bought you, paid highly for you, and I intend to get the most use out of that delectable little body that I can.’ With infuriating familiarity slapped her lightly on the tight, flat plane of her belly. ‘Now, get a baby tucked away in there and you’ll make me very happy.’ (how ‘bout U sink your b@ll$ in acid 1st !)
: ‘If that happens, my love, I’ll divorce you and marry someone who’s already proved her fertility.’ He kissed her, hard, and whispered into her ear, ‘But I’ll keep you as my mistress, incarcerated in a luxurious prison just for my pleasure.’ (Verra impressive caveman tactics)
And the epiphany that made me scratch my crooked wig (keep in mind that hero was 27 y/o & heroine was just 16 y/o back then) :
Nick : ‘I’ll admit that I was in shock. I loved Ngaire—oh, not like this—this all-consuming emotion I feel for you—but she was sweet and gentle and she depended entirely on me. I grieved deeply for her. And a month after her death I met a redheaded little sixteen-year-old who stared at me as if I were the devil and enraged me by giggling once she thought she was safely out of earshot. And this little traitor in your throat throbbed and throbbed while the air between us fairly sparked with sexual tension. And I wanted to take her into my bedroom and strip her and make myself master of that slender young body. Why else do you think I schemed to get you completely in my power?’
Her eyes were wide with astonishment. ‘I don’t believe you!’ ‘No? Then why did I deliberately set out to entrap your father into risking his money? Although I meant to allow you no escape, I didn’t mean you to be unhappy. I’m everything you’ve ever called me, but I’m not a monster. I truly thought that you’d be as happy as it was in you to be.’ (sure, I believe U, whatevah.)
Methinks he has a skewed perception of what a monster means. After subjugating & subjecting her to verbal abuse & mental rape, he calls it ‘all-consuming emotion’ & we’re supposed to believe his pervy actions were all based on luv / lust @ 1st sight. I didn’t understand his motivations & his 180 turnaround (he was supposed to be grieving for his wife & baby’s deaths, not drooling over the culprit who caused the accident). This was 1 of those books where U just gotta check your belief @ the door. It’s quite angsty, but it’s just not my kinda angst. The POV was all heroine’s so we get v. little insight as to what made him tick. He treated her w/ disdain, as if she's merely his possession.
I haven't read that many RD books 'cuz her heroes tend to be cruel bastards but she knows how to write. I'll prolly dig up my boxes to re-read her oldies if I ever feel like reading jerkwad obsessive HP heroes.
Alannah is fresh off her Swiss finishing school & ready to pick up where she left off w/ her next-door 21 y/o boyfriend David. Mommie dearest for some reason shows signs of disapproval of their reunion & Alannah finds out why soon after. On her 19th B-day bash, her nitemare comes true. Nicholas, the 30 y/o chauvinistic Slug shows up. She wonders why mommie invited him in the 1st place ‘cuz 3 years ago, 16 y/o Alannah & her outta-control skateboard had caused a freak accident that killed Nick’s wife (6 months preggers) & unborn baby. The inquest proved that it’s not really her fault. A month after the tragic incident, Alannah & daddy showed up @ Nick’s hotel room to express her genuine remorse, but li’l did she know, Nick had overheard her nervous giggle as soon as she stepped outta the room, unwittingly triggering a chain of life-altering events. After that interview, Nick executed his 3-year revenge plot. It’s methodical yet so effective as he’s dead set on marrying & impregnating her (it sure beats a sudsy, lethargic episode of “Melrose Place” !) :
- While Alannah polished her skills @ school, Nick befriended her daddy & set out to ruin him. Daddy keeled over, leaving mommie to raise 2 young gals on her own.
- He underwrites older sista’s med school expenses
- He pays for Alannah’s finishing school in Swiss
- He eliminates Alannah’s boytoy w/ a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship from L.A. Uni.
- Mommie is indebted to him thanx to much-needed loans
Nick drops the bombshell on Alannah : a forced marriage & an heir to replace the ones he’d lost due to Alannah’s unintentional carelessness. If she won’t dance to his tune, he’ll pull the plugs on sista’s med school & airhead mommie’s pricey lifestyle.
PIMP MOMMIE : ‘I know. So romantic, Ally darling ! He told me that he’d never forgotten you, even though he only saw you for those ten minutes or so that time.’
I see, ‘cuz 3 years ago Alannah prolly looked shagadelic in her Catholic school gal get-up a la Britney Spears < gag me w/ mothballs >. Ah… only in HPlandia a mercenarial mommie can get away w/ pimping out her 19 y/o hawt daughter to a loony bin.
Another convenient plot twist : her beloved sista fesses up that she’s luved Alannah’s BF since she was a kid so it’ll all work out eventually. Anyhoo, H/H get hitched 10 days after & since it’s a Marriage of Mutual Benefits, Alannah specifically picks her wedding day, w/ calendar & diary @ hand, to fall right @ the beginning of her fertile cycle. God forbid he’ll be shooting blanks. She hopes that all it takes is 1 shot for Nick to put his bun in her oven. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Alannah’s trapped in a gilded cage (New Zealand), isolated & kept short of money. What’s a gal to do ? Throw hissy fits, of course. He wants to cow her thoroughly & break her. Alas, she’s made of sterner stuff. She lets him use her body as his receptacle but she won’t let him into her heart (now why does this cliché-tastic line sound so darn familiar ?). Not that he’s blessed w/ a King Dong, it’s just that he’s such a skilled luver that he can coax her body into wanting him as he shags her, but she doesn’t reach her peak. Their miserable marriage’s filled w/ forced kisses, vicious taunting, sneering, jeering, mocking, e.g. :
‘Obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. I find you bed-worthy, Alannah, and I don’t care whether / not you enjoy the conception of my children. You’ll conceive as often as I want you to.’
Back to regularly-scheduled purgatory. Alannah gets preggers & earns a smack across her cheekbones real hard when she provokes him w/ an upper cut to his male ego (‘The only way I can bear your hands and mouth on me is to close my eyes and pretend that you’re David.’). Hell hath no fury like a man scorned. U’d think @ this pivotal juncture of their disastrous marriage, she’d call 911 but this is New Zealand. Mayhap she dunno the emergency line for domestic abuse, so she stays. Typical of HP hero, he offers a half-assed apology the next day but shifts the blame on her that it’s justified after all (‘I wouldn’t have hit you except that you offered me an intolerable insult.’) & he promises it’s hands-off policy from this point on, no worries.
He brings home his business associate & li’l trampy daughter, which adds more fuel to the boiling cauldron. This ho also happens to be Nick’s late wife’s cousin. It’s a small world. After she pops out their baby boy, he casually mentions that he opens a bank account for her. Whoopie Doo. How charitable of him. To rub chilli sauce into her sore open wounds, he brings home her mommie & sista to visit her, along w/ her former boyfriend. That’s when she knows once & for all, that she’s never been in luv w/ him all this time. It’s the sadistic hubby that she really luvs. In a sick twist heaped upon twistable plot, Nick decides to prove the bottomless depth of his luv for her, by letting her go, telling her that she can go home w/ her family for eternity w/ the stipulation that she’ll let their son come visit him sometimes. HEA is not complete w/out the logic-defying heart-to-heart talk.
Some of WTF convo / confessions :
‘Then don’t provoke me,’ he said thinly, releasing her. ‘I don’t care if you lie like a log in my arms, you stupid little bitch. But I have no intention of allowing you privileges you don’t deserve just because we make love together—or because you are my wife. If you want consideration from me you’ll have to earn it.’ (then why duncha hump a dead tree, plenty of ‘em out there !)
‘You needn’t worry,’ he said contemptuously, ‘I’ve never had to hit a woman and I certainly don’t anticipate having to use force with you.’ (yet he does exactly that, self-control isn’t his forte !)
‘I own you. I bought you, paid highly for you, and I intend to get the most use out of that delectable little body that I can.’ With infuriating familiarity slapped her lightly on the tight, flat plane of her belly. ‘Now, get a baby tucked away in there and you’ll make me very happy.’ (how ‘bout U sink your b@ll$ in acid 1st !)
: ‘If that happens, my love, I’ll divorce you and marry someone who’s already proved her fertility.’ He kissed her, hard, and whispered into her ear, ‘But I’ll keep you as my mistress, incarcerated in a luxurious prison just for my pleasure.’ (Verra impressive caveman tactics)
And the epiphany that made me scratch my crooked wig (keep in mind that hero was 27 y/o & heroine was just 16 y/o back then) :
Nick : ‘I’ll admit that I was in shock. I loved Ngaire—oh, not like this—this all-consuming emotion I feel for you—but she was sweet and gentle and she depended entirely on me. I grieved deeply for her. And a month after her death I met a redheaded little sixteen-year-old who stared at me as if I were the devil and enraged me by giggling once she thought she was safely out of earshot. And this little traitor in your throat throbbed and throbbed while the air between us fairly sparked with sexual tension. And I wanted to take her into my bedroom and strip her and make myself master of that slender young body. Why else do you think I schemed to get you completely in my power?’
Her eyes were wide with astonishment. ‘I don’t believe you!’ ‘No? Then why did I deliberately set out to entrap your father into risking his money? Although I meant to allow you no escape, I didn’t mean you to be unhappy. I’m everything you’ve ever called me, but I’m not a monster. I truly thought that you’d be as happy as it was in you to be.’ (sure, I believe U, whatevah.)
Methinks he has a skewed perception of what a monster means. After subjugating & subjecting her to verbal abuse & mental rape, he calls it ‘all-consuming emotion’ & we’re supposed to believe his pervy actions were all based on luv / lust @ 1st sight. I didn’t understand his motivations & his 180 turnaround (he was supposed to be grieving for his wife & baby’s deaths, not drooling over the culprit who caused the accident). This was 1 of those books where U just gotta check your belief @ the door. It’s quite angsty, but it’s just not my kinda angst. The POV was all heroine’s so we get v. little insight as to what made him tick. He treated her w/ disdain, as if she's merely his possession.
I haven't read that many RD books 'cuz her heroes tend to be cruel bastards but she knows how to write. I'll prolly dig up my boxes to re-read her oldies if I ever feel like reading jerkwad obsessive HP heroes.
April 13, 2017
Trainwreck alert! Trainwreck alert!
The heroine has a guarded heart. Why, you ask?
Because the hero, before he forced her to marry him, explained that this was revenge for his dead wife and unborn child. The heroine was to give him a child to make up for the one he had lost when the heroine burst out on the street on her skateboard causing his wife to crash.
The heroine had been 16 at the time and the idea for marriage and revenge popped into his head when she came to apologize a month after the accident. He’s been a busy hero these last three years – what with undermining her father’s investments, paying for the heroine’s year in Europe at finishing school, paying for her sister’s schooling and creating a scholarship to get the heroine’s boyfriend out of the country. That is one obsessed hero.
We know from before their first time in bed together that the hero doesn’t want resistance – he even says ‘it doesn’t have to be like this.” But resist the heroine does – confounding this obsessed hero with her strength of will – her guarded heart.
I think that’s why I could enjoy this – the heroine gave as good as she got. The hero was just as tortured as the heroine, but he couldn’t drop his tough guy act for a second. I also liked the housekeeper who warmed up to the heroine eventually and didn’t bat an eye at the drama going on around her. (Including a bruise on the heroine’s face after the hero strikes her)
When the hero reveals his pain and offers the heroine her freedom, he seems surprised and humbled that his caveman tactics didn’t work. LOL – he really thought he could win her over after a few weeks in bed and he was frustrated because he didn’t want her to be unhappy.
This is a very unPC story – so be warned – but there are some touching scenes with the baby and the ending worked for me.
The heroine has a guarded heart. Why, you ask?
Because the hero, before he forced her to marry him, explained that this was revenge for his dead wife and unborn child. The heroine was to give him a child to make up for the one he had lost when the heroine burst out on the street on her skateboard causing his wife to crash.
The heroine had been 16 at the time and the idea for marriage and revenge popped into his head when she came to apologize a month after the accident. He’s been a busy hero these last three years – what with undermining her father’s investments, paying for the heroine’s year in Europe at finishing school, paying for her sister’s schooling and creating a scholarship to get the heroine’s boyfriend out of the country. That is one obsessed hero.
We know from before their first time in bed together that the hero doesn’t want resistance – he even says ‘it doesn’t have to be like this.” But resist the heroine does – confounding this obsessed hero with her strength of will – her guarded heart.
I think that’s why I could enjoy this – the heroine gave as good as she got. The hero was just as tortured as the heroine, but he couldn’t drop his tough guy act for a second. I also liked the housekeeper who warmed up to the heroine eventually and didn’t bat an eye at the drama going on around her. (Including a bruise on the heroine’s face after the hero strikes her)
When the hero reveals his pain and offers the heroine her freedom, he seems surprised and humbled that his caveman tactics didn’t work. LOL – he really thought he could win her over after a few weeks in bed and he was frustrated because he didn’t want her to be unhappy.
This is a very unPC story – so be warned – but there are some touching scenes with the baby and the ending worked for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2021
Well, I have finally read this after avoiding it like the plague because of the author’s well-known Old Skool Crazy Trainwreck-iness. This book should not only come with the usual trigger warnings but preferably locked inside a titanium box wrapped in an ancient wizard protection spell and dropped inside Mordor’s most blistering volcano to be forever drowned in a lake of molten lava.
Having said all of that, I loved it solely because of the heroine. Backbone of steel, tongue like a ginsu knife, and a brain to boot, even if she sometimes lets her emotions get the better of it. She freaking took this psychopathic, cruel, bloodthirsty, ruthless, devoid of any conscience, totally irredeemable villain who seemed to have descended from the Borgias or the Lannisters, or even a nest of poisonous cobras, and bent him to her will. Putty in her hand. Prostrate before her feet. A whimpering, messy, trembling puddle of goo. That was honestly balm to my heart after so many spineless jellyblob heroines who fall in love with their captor at first kiss.
This story was epically trainwrecky but at least, it kept me enthralled to the end and gave me a satisfying conclusion of a Queen who triumphed over all her enemies. I am almost wondering if Robyn Donald ate psychedelic mushrooms before writing this because this is usually not her types of heroines!
Having said all of that, I loved it solely because of the heroine. Backbone of steel, tongue like a ginsu knife, and a brain to boot, even if she sometimes lets her emotions get the better of it. She freaking took this psychopathic, cruel, bloodthirsty, ruthless, devoid of any conscience, totally irredeemable villain who seemed to have descended from the Borgias or the Lannisters, or even a nest of poisonous cobras, and bent him to her will. Putty in her hand. Prostrate before her feet. A whimpering, messy, trembling puddle of goo. That was honestly balm to my heart after so many spineless jellyblob heroines who fall in love with their captor at first kiss.
This story was epically trainwrecky but at least, it kept me enthralled to the end and gave me a satisfying conclusion of a Queen who triumphed over all her enemies. I am almost wondering if Robyn Donald ate psychedelic mushrooms before writing this because this is usually not her types of heroines!
April 13, 2017
I first read this 30 odd years ago and it squicked me out. Not so much the H, tho he was a hideous pustule on a blobfish, but the fact that her own mother and the housekeeper pimped her out and did all that they could to keep her in beaten submission.
That was just so shocking to me, that women would do that to another woman - of course years have passed and as I have ventured further into HPlandia, I have come to realize that the other ladies' treatment of the h was part and parcel of the RD experience. But I have never been able to overcome my distaste for this one, or believe the HEA- even tho it is well written, it just will never work for me --my brain was scarred for life.
That was just so shocking to me, that women would do that to another woman - of course years have passed and as I have ventured further into HPlandia, I have come to realize that the other ladies' treatment of the h was part and parcel of the RD experience. But I have never been able to overcome my distaste for this one, or believe the HEA- even tho it is well written, it just will never work for me --my brain was scarred for life.
June 3, 2020
Reviews for this one are poles apart: if uber-alpha merciless Hs, dub-con/non-con sex scenes, and an h who's not a doormat but completely outclassed/overwhelmed are your cuppa, this will scratch the itch and be a 4-5 star read. If all of those things squick you out or make your heart pound with rage, then this is probably a 1-2 star read. Trigger warning: the H slaps the h at one point (and she is pregnant at the time). Very much a "Demon King" story (as the h calls him at one point) and very much representative of the bodice-ripper tropes of the very early 80s.
This is on my keeper shelf because my tastes run to dark romances with uber-alpha H and a level of tolerance for non-con/dub-con scenes that border on, if not straying into, D/s territory. This one very much does.
The H in this is probably the coldest and cruelest of RD's heroes (and that is saying something). He basically grooms a teenage girl as his wife and takes her when she is 19, forcing her to be his sex slave and broodmare. He has no guilt or regret about it--even at the end, he lets her go only because the plan didn't go as expected and he realizes she is not going to give in. He is physically abusive (he slaps her once and bruises her on multiple occasions, including very rough sex) and mentally and emotionally cold and domineering. Definitely not for the faint of heart or for those who like romance novels to actually have some romance. This is very much a domination/submission tale and if your tastes run to that, you'll appreciate it for the very non-PC tropes but it is very much a product of an earlier time when bodice-rippers were the norm and the crueler the hero, the better.
This is on my keeper shelf because my tastes run to dark romances with uber-alpha H and a level of tolerance for non-con/dub-con scenes that border on, if not straying into, D/s territory. This one very much does.
The H in this is probably the coldest and cruelest of RD's heroes (and that is saying something). He basically grooms a teenage girl as his wife and takes her when she is 19, forcing her to be his sex slave and broodmare. He has no guilt or regret about it--even at the end, he lets her go only because the plan didn't go as expected and he realizes she is not going to give in. He is physically abusive (he slaps her once and bruises her on multiple occasions, including very rough sex) and mentally and emotionally cold and domineering. Definitely not for the faint of heart or for those who like romance novels to actually have some romance. This is very much a domination/submission tale and if your tastes run to that, you'll appreciate it for the very non-PC tropes but it is very much a product of an earlier time when bodice-rippers were the norm and the crueler the hero, the better.
November 18, 2011
Another one which is most horrible book i have ever read i really want to ask the author Robyn Donald
"Do you think hitting a pregnant 19 year old wife is romantic?"
The guy is upset because the girl was responsible for an accident that took the life of his wife and unborn child. She was 16 at the time and it was simply an unfortunate accident. The guy basically has her stalked till she turns 18 and forces her to marry him by blackmailing her. He threatened to ruin her widowed mother and her sister. He is a lot older and makes her sleep with him until she is pregnant. Once she is pregnant she tells him that she thinks of her former boyfriend when they are having sex he hits her, hard enough to leave a mark. He later does apologize, but it didn't feel heartfelt at all. She does stay with him because he doesn't allow her to drive and she also is scared that if she leaves her hubby will ruin her mom, sis and boyfriend and she doesn't want to feel responsible for that happening.even the servants treat her horibly n she is kept locked in the house isolated from the world and after all this the ending is hero brings the old boyfriend n tells wife to leave with him then hero says I love u,girl says i love you i was like "WHAT"
Since this is a Harlequin you know she stays but would you have stayed with a monster like him? No amount of love can explain emotional and physical abuse.
all this amount of hatred,revenge,anger ,resentment would have been justified if it was a deliberate life taking but girl was only 16 when it happened and she regretted it and even stopped driving from then ,it was an accident,i just can't understand it
why aren't there zero stars,i really can't give any star to it not even 1 star
Do Not Recommend it
"Do you think hitting a pregnant 19 year old wife is romantic?"
The guy is upset because the girl was responsible for an accident that took the life of his wife and unborn child. She was 16 at the time and it was simply an unfortunate accident. The guy basically has her stalked till she turns 18 and forces her to marry him by blackmailing her. He threatened to ruin her widowed mother and her sister. He is a lot older and makes her sleep with him until she is pregnant. Once she is pregnant she tells him that she thinks of her former boyfriend when they are having sex he hits her, hard enough to leave a mark. He later does apologize, but it didn't feel heartfelt at all. She does stay with him because he doesn't allow her to drive and she also is scared that if she leaves her hubby will ruin her mom, sis and boyfriend and she doesn't want to feel responsible for that happening.even the servants treat her horibly n she is kept locked in the house isolated from the world and after all this the ending is hero brings the old boyfriend n tells wife to leave with him then hero says I love u,girl says i love you i was like "WHAT"
Since this is a Harlequin you know she stays but would you have stayed with a monster like him? No amount of love can explain emotional and physical abuse.
all this amount of hatred,revenge,anger ,resentment would have been justified if it was a deliberate life taking but girl was only 16 when it happened and she regretted it and even stopped driving from then ,it was an accident,i just can't understand it
why aren't there zero stars,i really can't give any star to it not even 1 star
Do Not Recommend it
March 21, 2021
"The Guarded Heart" is the story of Alannah and Nicholas.
16 year old heroine was responsible for the death of the hero's pregnant wife. As a 19 year old school graduate, she thinks the world is at her feet until she is blackmailed by the hero to be his wife.. a heir for a heir he demands. Heroine is madly in love with her boyfriend, but is pulled by responsibility to her selfish mother and nice sister.
Anyways, its a marriage of wills where the heroine provokes the hero at every turn and he retaliates by mockery and also sexually. There is a scene of "slapping" after the heroine finds out she's pregnant- so hard that it leaves a mark- so be warned. Anyways, there's loads of OW/OM jealousy, misunderstandings, fights before both of them get their heads out of their ass and finally give in and confess their feelings.
I enjoyed it but would have more if not for the slap. No excuse for violence IMO, especially against a pregnant woman- NO MATTER THE PROVOCATION.
Safe
4/5
16 year old heroine was responsible for the death of the hero's pregnant wife. As a 19 year old school graduate, she thinks the world is at her feet until she is blackmailed by the hero to be his wife.. a heir for a heir he demands. Heroine is madly in love with her boyfriend, but is pulled by responsibility to her selfish mother and nice sister.
Anyways, its a marriage of wills where the heroine provokes the hero at every turn and he retaliates by mockery and also sexually. There is a scene of "slapping" after the heroine finds out she's pregnant- so hard that it leaves a mark- so be warned. Anyways, there's loads of OW/OM jealousy, misunderstandings, fights before both of them get their heads out of their ass and finally give in and confess their feelings.
I enjoyed it but would have more if not for the slap. No excuse for violence IMO, especially against a pregnant woman- NO MATTER THE PROVOCATION.
Safe
4/5
October 28, 2021
Well I don't really know what to say. I only know I kiled this crazy kinky stuff.
I don't know who's more insane, the hero, the heroine or the author.
I suppose the author.
The plot is crazy.
When the heroine was 16 she caused an accident where the hero's pregnant wife died.
She went to the hero to apologize, then she left to study abroad.
After 3 years she's back and she finds out that the hero has become her family's best friend.
The hero approaches her and blunlty tells her she's got to marry him and give him the child she killed otherwise he will ruin her family and they will be all destitute (included her boyfriend, ehem)
She accepts but of course she's resentful and angry and their marriage is a battlefield, where she accepts to be used sexually but doesn't enjoy the act, and he keeps on hurting her (also physically, because he slaps her when she's pregnant, meh)
This heroine is not a doormat and she doesn't fall for the hero at once, and this was good because I'm so tired of victim heroines who love the men who abuse them.
She's a real bitch and of course he deserves it all because what real woman can accept happily to be blackmailed and forced to marry a man who hates her and resents her because she caused his wife's death?
Actually as time goes by the heroine begins to feel a growing attraction to the hero and of course in the end (in the very end) she falls in love with him even if she never let him know her feelings.
She also gets pregnant almost immediately and that makes all the situation more difficult because she resents her child too, since she was forced to get pregnat.
I found her feelings very realistic: she calls her child the parasite, not very motherly, but of course she can't be happy to be pregnant with the child of a man who says he hates her, but later, when she feels her child moving, she can't help loving it.
The hero. Man, the hero.
Ok, it turns out that he was in love with her since she went to apologize (she was 16) and he decided he would marry her, but since she was almost engaged he thought the best thing to do was to blackmail her and force her to marry him.
He thought she would accept graciously the marriage and fall in love with him and they would live happy together. Why not?
Very astute.
This man needs a basic course in " the fundamental elements in relationships".
Really, he's mad.
And kinky.
Because even if the accident was just that, an accident, where his wife was driving too fast and to avoid the heroine she smashed the car and died, I found quite creepy that her husband fell in love with the person who - even indirectly- caused the accident.
Other nice moments where we have that fatal attraction of the hero to the wife in labour, and the kinky breastfeeding immediately after sex... yuk!
Om/ow mild drama, the heroine was too young and in love with a boy two years older, that is understandable, and the hero had a wannabe ow snooping around who was also his late wife's cousin, but he was never interested in her and used her to make the heroine jealous.
I loved the excess, the gothic athmosphere of drama who permeates the whole book, the fierce passions and strong feelings. Both characters are insane but the man is really obsessed with the heroine and it's easy to understand that he was smitten with her and wanted to marry her for many reasons but revenge was not one of these.
The heroine was a hellcat and I appreciated this because even if she was young and immature, she didn't give up and eventually the poor hero had to admit defeat and declare his love first.
Crazy interesting reading, for people who are not interested in politically correct books ;-)
Delighfully angsty.
I don't know who's more insane, the hero, the heroine or the author.
I suppose the author.
The plot is crazy.
When the heroine was 16 she caused an accident where the hero's pregnant wife died.
She went to the hero to apologize, then she left to study abroad.
After 3 years she's back and she finds out that the hero has become her family's best friend.
The hero approaches her and blunlty tells her she's got to marry him and give him the child she killed otherwise he will ruin her family and they will be all destitute (included her boyfriend, ehem)
She accepts but of course she's resentful and angry and their marriage is a battlefield, where she accepts to be used sexually but doesn't enjoy the act, and he keeps on hurting her (also physically, because he slaps her when she's pregnant, meh)
This heroine is not a doormat and she doesn't fall for the hero at once, and this was good because I'm so tired of victim heroines who love the men who abuse them.
She's a real bitch and of course he deserves it all because what real woman can accept happily to be blackmailed and forced to marry a man who hates her and resents her because she caused his wife's death?
Actually as time goes by the heroine begins to feel a growing attraction to the hero and of course in the end (in the very end) she falls in love with him even if she never let him know her feelings.
She also gets pregnant almost immediately and that makes all the situation more difficult because she resents her child too, since she was forced to get pregnat.
I found her feelings very realistic: she calls her child the parasite, not very motherly, but of course she can't be happy to be pregnant with the child of a man who says he hates her, but later, when she feels her child moving, she can't help loving it.
The hero. Man, the hero.
Ok, it turns out that he was in love with her since she went to apologize (she was 16) and he decided he would marry her, but since she was almost engaged he thought the best thing to do was to blackmail her and force her to marry him.
He thought she would accept graciously the marriage and fall in love with him and they would live happy together. Why not?
Very astute.
This man needs a basic course in " the fundamental elements in relationships".
Really, he's mad.
And kinky.
Because even if the accident was just that, an accident, where his wife was driving too fast and to avoid the heroine she smashed the car and died, I found quite creepy that her husband fell in love with the person who - even indirectly- caused the accident.
Other nice moments where we have that fatal attraction of the hero to the wife in labour, and the kinky breastfeeding immediately after sex... yuk!
Om/ow mild drama, the heroine was too young and in love with a boy two years older, that is understandable, and the hero had a wannabe ow snooping around who was also his late wife's cousin, but he was never interested in her and used her to make the heroine jealous.
I loved the excess, the gothic athmosphere of drama who permeates the whole book, the fierce passions and strong feelings. Both characters are insane but the man is really obsessed with the heroine and it's easy to understand that he was smitten with her and wanted to marry her for many reasons but revenge was not one of these.
The heroine was a hellcat and I appreciated this because even if she was young and immature, she didn't give up and eventually the poor hero had to admit defeat and declare his love first.
Crazy interesting reading, for people who are not interested in politically correct books ;-)
Delighfully angsty.
May 25, 2026
Man, Harlequins really were the wild, wild west of the romance genre, because what do you mean you can go from "Mr. Darcy-coded grump" to "card-carrying sociopath" just by switching authors? THE GUARDED HEART is a pretty difficult read, because the hero is incredibly cruel. I would recommend going into this expecting a dark romance with noncon and breeding, because that's basically what this is. And there is definitely a market for that! I see it all the time in the Facebook groups I'm in. It's just a little shocking to see it in an Harlequin Presents.
Alannah accidentally "killed" a woman when she was sixteen years old. She was skateboarding on a blind corner and a woman, in swerving to avoid her, accidentally drove off the edge of an embankment, killing herself and her unborn baby. Her husband, Nicholas Challoner, has never forgiven or forgotten this, and when nineteen year old Alannah returns from boarding school, she finds that he has bought up her father's debts and blackmailed her mother into allowing him to take her on as broodmare and wife on pain of total financial ruin.
I'm generally okay with noncon but the age-gap (19 vs 30) made the interactions between them a lot harder to read, and I did not like the fact that he hit her and repeatedly talked about how much he enjoyed causing her pain. For me, I have to buy that a couple will be able to have an HEA together and this one felt dicey. That said, as a character portrait, it was fascinating-- chilling even-- and the writing was beautiful and appropriately tense. I probably wouldn't recommend this book to most romance readers but I do genuinely think most dark romance readers will probably enjoy it.
3 stars
Alannah accidentally "killed" a woman when she was sixteen years old. She was skateboarding on a blind corner and a woman, in swerving to avoid her, accidentally drove off the edge of an embankment, killing herself and her unborn baby. Her husband, Nicholas Challoner, has never forgiven or forgotten this, and when nineteen year old Alannah returns from boarding school, she finds that he has bought up her father's debts and blackmailed her mother into allowing him to take her on as broodmare and wife on pain of total financial ruin.
I'm generally okay with noncon but the age-gap (19 vs 30) made the interactions between them a lot harder to read, and I did not like the fact that he hit her and repeatedly talked about how much he enjoyed causing her pain. For me, I have to buy that a couple will be able to have an HEA together and this one felt dicey. That said, as a character portrait, it was fascinating-- chilling even-- and the writing was beautiful and appropriately tense. I probably wouldn't recommend this book to most romance readers but I do genuinely think most dark romance readers will probably enjoy it.
3 stars
April 4, 2021
I really loved this, reading it, found out I hated Return to Yesterday cause there was cheating 🙈
September 3, 2021
Look. This H is straight up awful.
Which, of course, means I was picking out china patterns waaaaay before we got to the inevitable grovel. 👀🤡
My only complaint is that we go through all the angst and drama just to have it resolved with an emotional conversation. I needed/wanted more. 🤷🏼♀️
Did I still love it?
Yes. Yes. I did. 😏
Which, of course, means I was picking out china patterns waaaaay before we got to the inevitable grovel. 👀🤡
My only complaint is that we go through all the angst and drama just to have it resolved with an emotional conversation. I needed/wanted more. 🤷🏼♀️
Did I still love it?
Yes. Yes. I did. 😏
April 13, 2017
Loved this book but his reasoning as Julz said in her review really didn't make sense but gotta love an obsessed hero!
June 26, 2024
So this book touches on a lot of the things I love. The hero was scheming, manipulative, and determined to have the heroine whether she wanted him or not. He wasn't above coercion either. What makes it even that much juicer, and probably WRONG in normal people's eyes, is that he met the heroine when she was only SIXTEEN years old after she caused the car accident that killed his WIFE and unborn CHILD! It was then that he started to get all his dominoes in line so when he finally nudged them, they would all fall perfectly to give him the outcome that he desired.
So our h, at the age of 19, reluctantly agrees to marry the H ( in his 30's ) to save her family from financial ruin, as well as to ensure that the man she thinks she's in love with ( neighbor boy in early 20's ) can maintain a scholarship opportunity. She's determined to not love the H or find any pleasure in his arms, though. To her utter horror, that last one proves to be quite difficult. So our entire book is about the H realizing the err of his ways in how he went about securing the h, as well as the h realizing how much she does love the H and would only want to be with him anyway. It just didn't come about under the best of circumstances. Throw in some OW drama, some miscommunication, and a not so surprising pregnancy and you've got all the ingredients for a rather yummy little romance. Totally recommend!
Original Reaction when I was done reading it:
I’m truly starting to enjoy these old school harlequin romances. I mean, they’re no-holds-barred! Hidden agendas be damned and no f**ks given to political correctness. It’s just incredible storytelling with all the edgy provocativeness of the entertainment I remember from my youth (that my mom wouldn’t let me indulge in back then 🤣) that’s incredibly difficult to find in today’s content. And what can I say, like all the other people in their 30’s and 40’s out there, I’m such a sucker for all things nostalgic 😁! Actual RTC, but now I must sleep. ❤️
So our h, at the age of 19, reluctantly agrees to marry the H ( in his 30's ) to save her family from financial ruin, as well as to ensure that the man she thinks she's in love with ( neighbor boy in early 20's ) can maintain a scholarship opportunity. She's determined to not love the H or find any pleasure in his arms, though. To her utter horror, that last one proves to be quite difficult. So our entire book is about the H realizing the err of his ways in how he went about securing the h, as well as the h realizing how much she does love the H and would only want to be with him anyway. It just didn't come about under the best of circumstances. Throw in some OW drama, some miscommunication, and a not so surprising pregnancy and you've got all the ingredients for a rather yummy little romance. Totally recommend!
Original Reaction when I was done reading it:
I’m truly starting to enjoy these old school harlequin romances. I mean, they’re no-holds-barred! Hidden agendas be damned and no f**ks given to political correctness. It’s just incredible storytelling with all the edgy provocativeness of the entertainment I remember from my youth (that my mom wouldn’t let me indulge in back then 🤣) that’s incredibly difficult to find in today’s content. And what can I say, like all the other people in their 30’s and 40’s out there, I’m such a sucker for all things nostalgic 😁! Actual RTC, but now I must sleep. ❤️
August 25, 2018
Actually 3 and a half stars. I like the angyst. Plot was great but hero was so cruel at first and heroine was so stubborn till the end. Of course she should be in real world but come on, this is HPlandia. ;)
July 22, 2022
Toxic beyond belief, and quite mesmerizing. The heroine ends the book with the awareness that her mother set her up to be married to a psychological and sexual sadist in the interest of preserving her comfortable lifestyle; that her criminally self-absorbed sister was turning a blind eye to the h's suffering because it was convenient and allowed her to pursue the OM, and with the incipient knowledge that her husband had lied to her about his relationship with the OW.
Despite the mutual love declarations, I feel very sure that the heroine was not quite finished with tormenting the hero, despite what she was saying in the throes of youthful passion.
This brings me to the healing epilogue. The h goes to college part-time where she studies engineering and completes her degree at 28. She has to complete a practicum to graduate. During the practicum she ends up inventing a sensor that detects when an electronic device is overheating and begins a cooling sequence. She patents it under her own name since she is not being paid for her work.
She is offered a full-time job after graduation. The H surprisingly agrees to her working outside the home, but he is actually resentful and has only agreed so he can punish her. After a month or so, he intimates that he will take up with the OW, who is still a business acquaintance. After an incident where she finds out he has taken the OW and the h's son and toddler daughter for a day at the beach, she snaps and files for divorce. The H is furious and forces her to sign a contract where she only receives custody and child support, to which she quickly agrees. The divorce is obtained rapidly. He is surprised at how untroubled the h is about how she'll support herself.
It turns out that the h has been in negotiations with a major technology company to use her sensor in all of their devices. She signs the contract 2 weeks after the divorce and within a year is a multi-millionaire. She becomes famous and is a role model for girls who want to enter the STEM fields.
She decides to stop working for a while since she wants the quality time with her sons. Since her emphasis is on quality time, not quantity time, she hires a manny (male nanny) who is a former special ops soldier and who will also act as a bodyguard. He is soon besotted by the smart, fiery h, and is straightforward in his admiration for her. She is very attracted to him, as he is honorable, sweet, and unsurprisingly brawny. They fall in love and marry.
When her mother declines physically, the h puts her in a luxurious nursing home right near where the h's sister lives. The day they move her mom in, the h shows her mother a recording of the h offering to pay all the expenses for her mom to move into the h's sister's house -- building a separate granny flat, hiring 24-hour care, a chef and a driver-- so the sister would not have any extra work because the mom was living with her -- she'd actually have less. The recording shows the sister declining because her mom is too "emotionally needy." This shatters the relationship between the h's mom and her sister and torments the mother for the rest of her life.
The sister, who married the OM and became a mediocre doctor, has her comeuppance when the h pays the OM to leave her. She also makes a recording of that so her sister can see the OM hitting on the h and then accepting an embarrassingly low amount to leave his wife.
The h eventually receives a prestigious engineering award that has never been won by a woman before. During an interview, the h is asked about her family and youth and she tells them about the H and his obsession with her since she was 16 and her mother's role in forcing her to marry the H. The h does this because her own daughter is a teenager at the time and she feels it is important for young women to know about sex predators.
This interview ruins the H and the h's mother, who is shunned at the nursing home. The H suffers a series of heart attacks that make it impossible to take impotency drugs. His health declines and he is also put into a nursing home. The h kindly pays for it, which allows her and her new husband to visit the H once a year to taunt him with their happiness.
Despite the mutual love declarations, I feel very sure that the heroine was not quite finished with tormenting the hero, despite what she was saying in the throes of youthful passion.
This brings me to the healing epilogue. The h goes to college part-time where she studies engineering and completes her degree at 28. She has to complete a practicum to graduate. During the practicum she ends up inventing a sensor that detects when an electronic device is overheating and begins a cooling sequence. She patents it under her own name since she is not being paid for her work.
She is offered a full-time job after graduation. The H surprisingly agrees to her working outside the home, but he is actually resentful and has only agreed so he can punish her. After a month or so, he intimates that he will take up with the OW, who is still a business acquaintance. After an incident where she finds out he has taken the OW and the h's son and toddler daughter for a day at the beach, she snaps and files for divorce. The H is furious and forces her to sign a contract where she only receives custody and child support, to which she quickly agrees. The divorce is obtained rapidly. He is surprised at how untroubled the h is about how she'll support herself.
It turns out that the h has been in negotiations with a major technology company to use her sensor in all of their devices. She signs the contract 2 weeks after the divorce and within a year is a multi-millionaire. She becomes famous and is a role model for girls who want to enter the STEM fields.
She decides to stop working for a while since she wants the quality time with her sons. Since her emphasis is on quality time, not quantity time, she hires a manny (male nanny) who is a former special ops soldier and who will also act as a bodyguard. He is soon besotted by the smart, fiery h, and is straightforward in his admiration for her. She is very attracted to him, as he is honorable, sweet, and unsurprisingly brawny. They fall in love and marry.
When her mother declines physically, the h puts her in a luxurious nursing home right near where the h's sister lives. The day they move her mom in, the h shows her mother a recording of the h offering to pay all the expenses for her mom to move into the h's sister's house -- building a separate granny flat, hiring 24-hour care, a chef and a driver-- so the sister would not have any extra work because the mom was living with her -- she'd actually have less. The recording shows the sister declining because her mom is too "emotionally needy." This shatters the relationship between the h's mom and her sister and torments the mother for the rest of her life.
The sister, who married the OM and became a mediocre doctor, has her comeuppance when the h pays the OM to leave her. She also makes a recording of that so her sister can see the OM hitting on the h and then accepting an embarrassingly low amount to leave his wife.
The h eventually receives a prestigious engineering award that has never been won by a woman before. During an interview, the h is asked about her family and youth and she tells them about the H and his obsession with her since she was 16 and her mother's role in forcing her to marry the H. The h does this because her own daughter is a teenager at the time and she feels it is important for young women to know about sex predators.
This interview ruins the H and the h's mother, who is shunned at the nursing home. The H suffers a series of heart attacks that make it impossible to take impotency drugs. His health declines and he is also put into a nursing home. The h kindly pays for it, which allows her and her new husband to visit the H once a year to taunt him with their happiness.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 13, 2015
if you can get beyond the forced thing then this book is ok. He was an ass and he was obsessive but he really did want her and he had been through a horrible shock. I really thought it would be worst based on the other reviews but it was much better then I thought. Then end for me on the bed with the baby made up for it. It felt natural and real. I like it.
June 6, 2016
Rating: 4 stars
This was just what I was looking for. I wanted a book with a lot of angst and drama and this gave me it. I was annoyed that Nick took out another woman several times while he was married to the heroine. I hate it even more how Nick had slapped Alannah. Overall, a good read.
This was just what I was looking for. I wanted a book with a lot of angst and drama and this gave me it. I was annoyed that Nick took out another woman several times while he was married to the heroine. I hate it even more how Nick had slapped Alannah. Overall, a good read.
February 10, 2014
This whole novel was absolutely crazy. From the death of a first wife, to falling in love with the 16 year old that killed said wife, by accident I might add. Then to making her marry him, raping her and then falling in love. It was nuts but holy hell was it amazing.
March 14, 2014
A heroine who hates her own baby (her own words not mine) is not a heroine as far as I'm concerned. Just an evil, obnoxious, unfeeling bitch. 80's Harlequins are crazy but in a good way. Not in this case with this particular book.
September 10, 2018
This wasn't boring but in end the hero came across pretty creepy with his confession. He took his revenge to a next level.
June 9, 2014
Another vengeful Greek tycoon with his own private island. Heroine accidentally causes accident that kills his pregnant wife when she is 16. He waits until she is 19, then blackmails her into marrying him to give him a child. It's a twisted trope I like, but the emphasis on how plain/not pretty the heroine is kinda dampened it for me.
May 17, 2012
This story made no sense if you believe his reasoning at the end, unless he really was a sociopath. Definitely interesting. Will shock a good many ladies so reader beware. I tend to like it when it's dark, though.
March 15, 2019
There’s a terrible accident the heroine at 16 runs into the road on her skateboard and collides with a car killing the pregnant driver. A month later she knocks on the the husbands door to apologise, unbeknown to her that’s when he decides she will be his wife, really at 16 what a creep. So he befriends her father and lures him to bankrupt himself after which he totally funds the family finances, helped by the fact that the heroines mother is one of those flighty useless creatures. Once our heroine is 19 he blackmails her into marrying him or else her mother and sister will suffer. The heroines boyfriend he gets rid of by offering a scholarship that’s miles away.
Boy this guy was a real creep, I had admiration for the heroine who refused to let him dominate her or show any reaction to his lovemaking. Nevertheless I didn’t get her complete turnaround at the end it didn’t make sense.
Boy this guy was a real creep, I had admiration for the heroine who refused to let him dominate her or show any reaction to his lovemaking. Nevertheless I didn’t get her complete turnaround at the end it didn’t make sense.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 3, 2024
“My life would be unbearably dull without you fizzing and erupting in the background. I enjoy having my own small volcano.”
Four stars because of the feisty h. It’s very rare to have a h with a real backbone. Actually I can’t remember another HP with a h as strong-willed as this h.
She was being put through a lot by the very cruel a**hole H, but she stood up to him, she held her ground (until the end) and she hurt him back with her words. Too many h’s are doormats but this h definitely isn’t.
Anyway, don’t overanalyze or overthink this story, it’s just a HP. I like that it’s different and not politically correct.
Four stars because of the feisty h. It’s very rare to have a h with a real backbone. Actually I can’t remember another HP with a h as strong-willed as this h.
She was being put through a lot by the very cruel a**hole H, but she stood up to him, she held her ground (until the end) and she hurt him back with her words. Too many h’s are doormats but this h definitely isn’t.
Anyway, don’t overanalyze or overthink this story, it’s just a HP. I like that it’s different and not politically correct.
January 29, 2017
This is puzzling. I thought this was a book I hadn’t read and I pulled it from the TBR after I saw some readers discussing it at the Amazon Forums. I knew I had it, went looking for it and finally found it in one of the many bins holding my prints books. Then went to Goodreads to mark it as “Want To Read” only to see I had read this one sometime in 2010…yet, I don’t remember anything about it. Usually when I read something I’ve already read, a scene or two will jump out at me and I’ll know I’ve read it before but this one…there was nothing about it that reminded me of a previous read.
Heroine was involved in an accident that killed the hero’s wife and unborn child when heroine was sixteen years old. At the time, hero was twenty-seven. After the accident, the heroine and her father go to pay their respects to the hero. Because the heroine was nervous, he overheard her laughing as she and her father were leaving. That event snowballs into the hero befriending her family while she’s away at school and when she comes back three years later, the hero tells her that she will marry him (to replace his deceased wife) and she will give him a child (to replace the one she stole from him when she killed his wife). He makes it so she can’t refuse him without her mother and sister suffering from her decision. There begins the constant fighting/bickering “I hate you! I’ll never forgive you for this!” that is a staple for older Harlequin Presents stories. She hates him, he tells her he doesn’t care, he wants only her body and for her to give him a child. She fights him the whole time, at one point she says something to him (I can’t even remember right now what it was) and he responds by slapping her across the face. This is a few pages before they find out she’s pregnant.
There’s the typical other woman who is snarking to the heroine when they’re alone but oh so sweet when the hero is around them. There’s the business trips he takes that the other woman is always around for while the heroine is at home hating the hero and at times hating her pregnancy, etc etc etc.
Then comes the last couple of pages where it’s all changed. He’s loved her since he first saw her…remember their first meeting? She was paying her respects to him on the loss of his wife, who he lost a month before. She was sixteen. He was twenty-seven at that meeting. He’d loved his wife oh so much but then the heroine walked into his house a month after his wife died and he was just drawn to her. Hmm. OK. We’ll go with that. Then, the heroine — who spent the whole story fighting him and refusing to respond to him sexually any time he touched her — blurts out that’s she loves him oh so much and is so happy that he loves her too. Hmm. Maybe this whole WTFery about how they met and the revenge plot on his part is why I forgot everything about this book the first time I read it? So much eye-rolling on my part. So. Much.
Heroine was involved in an accident that killed the hero’s wife and unborn child when heroine was sixteen years old. At the time, hero was twenty-seven. After the accident, the heroine and her father go to pay their respects to the hero. Because the heroine was nervous, he overheard her laughing as she and her father were leaving. That event snowballs into the hero befriending her family while she’s away at school and when she comes back three years later, the hero tells her that she will marry him (to replace his deceased wife) and she will give him a child (to replace the one she stole from him when she killed his wife). He makes it so she can’t refuse him without her mother and sister suffering from her decision. There begins the constant fighting/bickering “I hate you! I’ll never forgive you for this!” that is a staple for older Harlequin Presents stories. She hates him, he tells her he doesn’t care, he wants only her body and for her to give him a child. She fights him the whole time, at one point she says something to him (I can’t even remember right now what it was) and he responds by slapping her across the face. This is a few pages before they find out she’s pregnant.
There’s the typical other woman who is snarking to the heroine when they’re alone but oh so sweet when the hero is around them. There’s the business trips he takes that the other woman is always around for while the heroine is at home hating the hero and at times hating her pregnancy, etc etc etc.
Then comes the last couple of pages where it’s all changed. He’s loved her since he first saw her…remember their first meeting? She was paying her respects to him on the loss of his wife, who he lost a month before. She was sixteen. He was twenty-seven at that meeting. He’d loved his wife oh so much but then the heroine walked into his house a month after his wife died and he was just drawn to her. Hmm. OK. We’ll go with that. Then, the heroine — who spent the whole story fighting him and refusing to respond to him sexually any time he touched her — blurts out that’s she loves him oh so much and is so happy that he loves her too. Hmm. Maybe this whole WTFery about how they met and the revenge plot on his part is why I forgot everything about this book the first time I read it? So much eye-rolling on my part. So. Much.
December 14, 2013
absolutely loved it ! as fantasy only ofc ! really, a man in love does not force the woman concerned into marriage n does not go on 2 rape her whenever he feels like having sex wid his wife. no means no n she was clearly in love wid another man even if it was only infatuation. he also forced her 2 bear him a child. so it's very ugly n the hero was clearly psychotic. perhaps in the eighties, this was acceptable behavior but not nowadays. he actually abused her n is actually the villain but ofc dats our usual harlequins. n it's a 4 star bcoz i liked it very much, it's very intense n their relationship was scorching hot !! very nice 1, what i want in a book ? entertainment, entertainment n entertainment !n this one delivered brilliantly :D
August 23, 2015
The H was cruel, manipulative jerk who physically and mentally abused the h. This was all explained with the reasoning that he loved her. He even financially ruined h's father to get at her.
The h was blackmailed into marriage and she readily accepted it without trying to find any alternative solution out of the mess. Even when confronted by her sister she did not utter a word.
Overall an un pc book but giving it a 2 star as its train wreck quality kept me reading till the end.
The h was blackmailed into marriage and she readily accepted it without trying to find any alternative solution out of the mess. Even when confronted by her sister she did not utter a word.
Overall an un pc book but giving it a 2 star as its train wreck quality kept me reading till the end.
August 20, 2012
Robyn Donald is one of my favourite authors and I like most of her books a lot, including "Smoke in the Wind".
But I give only three stars to this book because as other reviewers have noted, the final reasoning of the hero is not very convincing if we take into account the many different things that the heroine had to suffer and endure from him.
But I give only three stars to this book because as other reviewers have noted, the final reasoning of the hero is not very convincing if we take into account the many different things that the heroine had to suffer and endure from him.
March 15, 2021
3.5 stars
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