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The First Officer
What, Katy wondered, could she do now?
She hadn't expected the invitation to cruise on a millionaire's yacht to lend her in such a predicament.
Because of her late father's disgrace, and her marriage breakup, Katy had used an assumed name. Nobody really knew who she was. So how could she suddenly annouce that the yacht's first officer was her estranged husband, Charles Ormond?
Four years earlier, Charles had rejected the young, spoiled Katy, who couldn't make their marriage work. She had changed, and she still loved him. But what were his feelings for her?
She hadn't expected the invitation to cruise on a millionaire's yacht to lend her in such a predicament.
Because of her late father's disgrace, and her marriage breakup, Katy had used an assumed name. Nobody really knew who she was. So how could she suddenly annouce that the yacht's first officer was her estranged husband, Charles Ormond?
Four years earlier, Charles had rejected the young, spoiled Katy, who couldn't make their marriage work. She had changed, and she still loved him. But what were his feelings for her?
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
About the author
Anne Weale
227 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 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 22, 2010
Ah, there's nothing like a Harlequin Presents. The passion... the romance... the rampant sexism. I liked this one but I'm not sure why; it was truly aggravating at times, not only for the dated gender wars but also for a seemingly endless series of sexus interruptus. (They will! No they won't! They will! No they won't!) But I thought it was cool to see an HP hero who's an actual wage-earner, there was an interesting cast of secondary characters, and the tension worked, overall. Thinking it over, I think what I liked most is that the book feels like it has a unique personality, instead of coming straight from the HP cookie cutter. Even though it wasn't a top favorite, I could see rereading it and enjoying it again.
January 4, 2016
Second chance story. Heroine goes along with her employer on a yachting trip. Hero is the first officer in charge of the yacht. Employer makes a play for the hero. Heroine pretends she doesn’t know hero. Hero treats heroine terribly – but still corners her for punishing kisses. Lots of angst and jealousy. Oh, and a nearby boat explodes.
January 16, 2021
She hadn't expected the invitation to cruise on a millionaire's yacht to lend her in such a predicament.
Because of her late father's disgrace, and her marriage breakup, Katy had used an assumed name. Nobody really knew who she was. So how could she suddenly annouce that the yacht's first officer was her estranged husband, Charles Ormond?
Four years earlier, Charles had rejected the young, spoiled Katy, who couldn't make their marriage work. She had changed, and she still loved him. But what were his feelings for her?
Because of her late father's disgrace, and her marriage breakup, Katy had used an assumed name. Nobody really knew who she was. So how could she suddenly annouce that the yacht's first officer was her estranged husband, Charles Ormond?
Four years earlier, Charles had rejected the young, spoiled Katy, who couldn't make their marriage work. She had changed, and she still loved him. But what were his feelings for her?
August 5, 2026
4.5 stars
The First Officer was exactly the sort of vintage Harlequin romance I've been hoping to find. I've recently been exploring older romances because I enjoy their heightened emotions, but I also want plenty of angst and romantic conflict. This book delivered both. It doesn't contain any steamy scenes—which is probably the only thing preventing it from becoming a full five-star read for me—but the emotional intensity more than compensates.
What I loved most was that the romantic conflict remained strong almost until the very end. Charles spends most of the novel fighting his feelings for Katy, which is one of my favourite romance tropes. By the time he finally admits he loves her, his emotional journey feels completely believable. I understood why he resisted for so long, and that made the reconciliation genuinely satisfying.
Katy is now 24, but the backstory begins five years earlier when she was the pampered daughter of a wealthy, self-made businessman. She had been thoroughly spoiled by her father, attended finishing school and had never needed to concern herself with practical life.
At 19 she met Charles, who had served in the Navy before deciding it wasn't the life he wanted. He had spent several years sailing around the world alone before eventually earning his living with his own boat.
Their attraction was immediate. Charles first saw Katy swimming naked in the sea, and what began as physical attraction quickly became something deeper. They fell passionately in love, Katy slept with him before marriage, and once Charles realised she was a virgin, he began to see their relationship as far more than another casual affair. Before long he asked her to marry him.
Katy's father disapproved because Charles could never provide the luxurious lifestyle his daughter had always known. When they married, he refused to support them financially, and Charles would never have accepted the money anyway.
Katy therefore found herself suddenly married to a hardworking man whose livelihood depended on chartering his boat to wealthy clients.
This is where their marriage began to unravel.
Charles assumed that, having attended finishing school, Katy would at least know how to cook and help entertain guests. Instead, she possessed almost no practical skills. Charles ended up sailing the boat, cooking all the meals and carrying much of the workload himself, while Katy was left with endless cleaning.
She went from rich girl to skivvying for rich people, and found herself scrubbing toilets, cleaning up after wealthy charter guests and dealing with entitled passengers whose behaviour she increasingly resented.
Some of the male guests became unpleasantly lecherous with her, but she never told Charles because she knew he would react angrily and potentially lose valuable business.
Eventually she reached breaking point after being groped. She told Charles she could not live that way any longer and left to stay in one of her father's houses.
She hoped Charles would come after her. She also hoped he might accept a position with her father, who had finally softened and offered him a job.
Charles refused. Partly because of his pride, and partly because he distrusted her father's business. (He suspected the father was a criminal.)
Their marriage collapsed.
Four years later Katy is living in London under the name Katy Brown rather than Katy White.
Following their separation, her father was exposed as a fraud who had ruined countless lives through ruthless business practices. He went to prison amid enormous public scandal before suddenly dying there. Katy was left with nothing.
The experience forced Katy to grow up completely.
Remembering Charles's criticism that she possessed no useful domestic skills, she trained at the Cordon Bleu cookery school before working in catering. Eventually she became housekeeper and cook to successful fashion designer Thalia, who values Katy enormously and has employed her for the last two years.
By the beginning of the novel Katy has rebuilt herself into an independent, capable woman.
She is dating another man who eventually proposes, but she has to refuse because she admits she is still legally married. She has never fallen in love again. Losing Charles—and then losing her father in such devastating circumstances—left her emotionally unable to imagine another marriage.
Looking back, Katy now recognises how immature and spoiled she had been. She finally understands how impossible she must have made life for Charles and blames herself entirely for the failure of their marriage.
Thalia is invited aboard a billionaire's luxury yacht over Christmas and New Year and decides to take Katy as her guest.
The owner immediately notices Katy. He is a very wealthy man in his mid-forties—around twenty years older than her—whose powerful personality makes him attractive despite not fitting the conventional tall, dark and handsome mould.
Thalia, meanwhile, immediately spots another man she finds irresistible.
That man is the yacht's first officer.
Charles.
Neither Katy nor Charles had any idea the other would be there.
Katy is horrified because she has never told Thalia she is married. The subject has simply been too painful. Before she can explain anything, Thalia has already decided that Charles is exactly the sort of man she intends to pursue.
I loved this setup.
Although there is another woman interested in the hero, it never develops into traditional other-woman drama because Charles immediately makes it clear to Katy that he has absolutely no interest in Thalia. He dismisses her as a man-eater who is entirely the wrong type of woman for him.
Thalia, however, continues pursuing him anyway, creating a nice undercurrent of tension throughout the voyage.
Charles's reaction to seeing Katy again is anger.
He resents having her suddenly thrust back into his life and initially mistakes her for another "wealthy" guest. Seeing her aboard such an exclusive yacht convinces him that she must have been living comfortably through wealthy lovers since they separated.
He does however express his regret that he never came to help her when her father went to prison because he was working overseas at the time and never saw the British newspapers. He admits that had he known, he would have come to help her.
Unfortunately, by now he believes her to be an unscrupulous woman and no longer wants anything except distance between them.
That creates exactly the sort of push-and-pull dynamic I love.
Charles cannot stay away from Katy because the chemistry between them remains overwhelming. They dance together, talk privately and continually drift back towards one another.
Then his emotional walls slam back into place.
Each time they grow closer, Charles reminds himself that Katy destroyed his life once already and insists there can be no future between them.
SPOILERS
The pacing never sags. There is always something happening, whether it is Thalia becoming jealous whenever she notices them together, the billionaire owner's growing interest in Katy, or Charles repeatedly battling the attraction he refuses to acknowledge.
Both leads are also genuinely admirable.
Katy has transformed herself into a capable, hardworking woman. She bridges the gap beautifully between being an employee and moving comfortably within wealthy society. She never feels either intimidated or pretentious, and I found her maturity extremely appealing.
Charles is equally attractive. He is competent, confident and quietly authoritative as the yacht's first officer. His natural dominance never tips into unpleasantness, and his competence makes him enormously appealing.
The emotional conflict between them is excellent. Katy openly admits that she wants another chance. Charles refuses.
Even after he realises she has never been involved with another man and finally believes her, he continues insisting there is no future for them. And that he values his career too much and would choose it over a marriage, which would have to be long distant and miserable as he works months without breaks and isn't allowed a wife on board ship. Plus he doesn't trust her.
When Katy is even offered work aboard the yacht, solving the practical obstacle, Charles still refuses to resume their marriage. He insists that all he wants is one final affair. Nothing more.
He repeatedly tells her that he cannot trust her again and that while he still wants her physically, he will never risk loving her again.
I absolutely loved this dynamic.
Watching a hero fight his feelings this fiercely is one of my favourite romance tropes, and Anne Weale sustains that emotional tension almost until the very end.
There is also an enjoyable thread of other-man drama.
The billionaire owner gradually decides that, after three failed marriages, he now wants a genuine wife and children. His friendship with Katy convinces him she would make an ideal partner.
She is kind, sensible, enjoys domestic life and genuinely wants children.
Eventually he proposes marriage.
His proposal becomes one of the triggers that pushes Charles into some of his harshest behaviour.
Believing Katy intends to marry another man, Charles offers her a divorce—but demands one final night together first.
Up to this point Katy has resisted becoming physically involved again because Charles wanted sex without commitment. And yet she also hoped for an emotional resumption of their physical relationship in hopes it would show Charles that their love was still alive.
Now she feels completely broken at his horrible proposal.
She knows she will never marry the billionaire, but she is exhausted emotionally from Charles rejecting every attempt she has made to rebuild their relationship. This time she accepts because she wants one final memory of the man she has always loved.
It is heartbreaking.
She hopes that sharing one last night together might finally make Charles admit what he feels.
Instead, afterwards he simply walks away.
That completely destroys her.
She declines the billionaire's proposal, quietly leaves the yacht, having finally reached the end of her emotional strength.
The heroine finally giving up is also a fave tropes for me. I loved it.
Only then does Charles realise what he has lost. His panic feels completely authentic. He risks everything—including the career he has repeatedly insisted matters more than their marriage—to go after her.
That is exactly the kind of ending I love. A runaway heroine and the hero finally realising his feelings and chasing her to make things right, choosung her over everything else.
It made the entire emotional journey worthwhile.
The only thing missing for me was open door steamy love scenes. Those scenes were pivotal, intense, and full of emotional highs and lows, and seeing them on page would have elevated the romance to almost perfect.
Even so, The First Officer came remarkably close to becoming a five-star read. I will enjoy rereading this one.
The First Officer was exactly the sort of vintage Harlequin romance I've been hoping to find. I've recently been exploring older romances because I enjoy their heightened emotions, but I also want plenty of angst and romantic conflict. This book delivered both. It doesn't contain any steamy scenes—which is probably the only thing preventing it from becoming a full five-star read for me—but the emotional intensity more than compensates.
What I loved most was that the romantic conflict remained strong almost until the very end. Charles spends most of the novel fighting his feelings for Katy, which is one of my favourite romance tropes. By the time he finally admits he loves her, his emotional journey feels completely believable. I understood why he resisted for so long, and that made the reconciliation genuinely satisfying.
Katy is now 24, but the backstory begins five years earlier when she was the pampered daughter of a wealthy, self-made businessman. She had been thoroughly spoiled by her father, attended finishing school and had never needed to concern herself with practical life.
At 19 she met Charles, who had served in the Navy before deciding it wasn't the life he wanted. He had spent several years sailing around the world alone before eventually earning his living with his own boat.
Their attraction was immediate. Charles first saw Katy swimming naked in the sea, and what began as physical attraction quickly became something deeper. They fell passionately in love, Katy slept with him before marriage, and once Charles realised she was a virgin, he began to see their relationship as far more than another casual affair. Before long he asked her to marry him.
Katy's father disapproved because Charles could never provide the luxurious lifestyle his daughter had always known. When they married, he refused to support them financially, and Charles would never have accepted the money anyway.
Katy therefore found herself suddenly married to a hardworking man whose livelihood depended on chartering his boat to wealthy clients.
This is where their marriage began to unravel.
Charles assumed that, having attended finishing school, Katy would at least know how to cook and help entertain guests. Instead, she possessed almost no practical skills. Charles ended up sailing the boat, cooking all the meals and carrying much of the workload himself, while Katy was left with endless cleaning.
She went from rich girl to skivvying for rich people, and found herself scrubbing toilets, cleaning up after wealthy charter guests and dealing with entitled passengers whose behaviour she increasingly resented.
Some of the male guests became unpleasantly lecherous with her, but she never told Charles because she knew he would react angrily and potentially lose valuable business.
Eventually she reached breaking point after being groped. She told Charles she could not live that way any longer and left to stay in one of her father's houses.
She hoped Charles would come after her. She also hoped he might accept a position with her father, who had finally softened and offered him a job.
Charles refused. Partly because of his pride, and partly because he distrusted her father's business. (He suspected the father was a criminal.)
Their marriage collapsed.
Four years later Katy is living in London under the name Katy Brown rather than Katy White.
Following their separation, her father was exposed as a fraud who had ruined countless lives through ruthless business practices. He went to prison amid enormous public scandal before suddenly dying there. Katy was left with nothing.
The experience forced Katy to grow up completely.
Remembering Charles's criticism that she possessed no useful domestic skills, she trained at the Cordon Bleu cookery school before working in catering. Eventually she became housekeeper and cook to successful fashion designer Thalia, who values Katy enormously and has employed her for the last two years.
By the beginning of the novel Katy has rebuilt herself into an independent, capable woman.
She is dating another man who eventually proposes, but she has to refuse because she admits she is still legally married. She has never fallen in love again. Losing Charles—and then losing her father in such devastating circumstances—left her emotionally unable to imagine another marriage.
Looking back, Katy now recognises how immature and spoiled she had been. She finally understands how impossible she must have made life for Charles and blames herself entirely for the failure of their marriage.
Thalia is invited aboard a billionaire's luxury yacht over Christmas and New Year and decides to take Katy as her guest.
The owner immediately notices Katy. He is a very wealthy man in his mid-forties—around twenty years older than her—whose powerful personality makes him attractive despite not fitting the conventional tall, dark and handsome mould.
Thalia, meanwhile, immediately spots another man she finds irresistible.
That man is the yacht's first officer.
Charles.
Neither Katy nor Charles had any idea the other would be there.
Katy is horrified because she has never told Thalia she is married. The subject has simply been too painful. Before she can explain anything, Thalia has already decided that Charles is exactly the sort of man she intends to pursue.
I loved this setup.
Although there is another woman interested in the hero, it never develops into traditional other-woman drama because Charles immediately makes it clear to Katy that he has absolutely no interest in Thalia. He dismisses her as a man-eater who is entirely the wrong type of woman for him.
Thalia, however, continues pursuing him anyway, creating a nice undercurrent of tension throughout the voyage.
Charles's reaction to seeing Katy again is anger.
He resents having her suddenly thrust back into his life and initially mistakes her for another "wealthy" guest. Seeing her aboard such an exclusive yacht convinces him that she must have been living comfortably through wealthy lovers since they separated.
He does however express his regret that he never came to help her when her father went to prison because he was working overseas at the time and never saw the British newspapers. He admits that had he known, he would have come to help her.
Unfortunately, by now he believes her to be an unscrupulous woman and no longer wants anything except distance between them.
That creates exactly the sort of push-and-pull dynamic I love.
Charles cannot stay away from Katy because the chemistry between them remains overwhelming. They dance together, talk privately and continually drift back towards one another.
Then his emotional walls slam back into place.
Each time they grow closer, Charles reminds himself that Katy destroyed his life once already and insists there can be no future between them.
SPOILERS
The pacing never sags. There is always something happening, whether it is Thalia becoming jealous whenever she notices them together, the billionaire owner's growing interest in Katy, or Charles repeatedly battling the attraction he refuses to acknowledge.
Both leads are also genuinely admirable.
Katy has transformed herself into a capable, hardworking woman. She bridges the gap beautifully between being an employee and moving comfortably within wealthy society. She never feels either intimidated or pretentious, and I found her maturity extremely appealing.
Charles is equally attractive. He is competent, confident and quietly authoritative as the yacht's first officer. His natural dominance never tips into unpleasantness, and his competence makes him enormously appealing.
The emotional conflict between them is excellent. Katy openly admits that she wants another chance. Charles refuses.
Even after he realises she has never been involved with another man and finally believes her, he continues insisting there is no future for them. And that he values his career too much and would choose it over a marriage, which would have to be long distant and miserable as he works months without breaks and isn't allowed a wife on board ship. Plus he doesn't trust her.
When Katy is even offered work aboard the yacht, solving the practical obstacle, Charles still refuses to resume their marriage. He insists that all he wants is one final affair. Nothing more.
He repeatedly tells her that he cannot trust her again and that while he still wants her physically, he will never risk loving her again.
I absolutely loved this dynamic.
Watching a hero fight his feelings this fiercely is one of my favourite romance tropes, and Anne Weale sustains that emotional tension almost until the very end.
There is also an enjoyable thread of other-man drama.
The billionaire owner gradually decides that, after three failed marriages, he now wants a genuine wife and children. His friendship with Katy convinces him she would make an ideal partner.
She is kind, sensible, enjoys domestic life and genuinely wants children.
Eventually he proposes marriage.
His proposal becomes one of the triggers that pushes Charles into some of his harshest behaviour.
Believing Katy intends to marry another man, Charles offers her a divorce—but demands one final night together first.
Up to this point Katy has resisted becoming physically involved again because Charles wanted sex without commitment. And yet she also hoped for an emotional resumption of their physical relationship in hopes it would show Charles that their love was still alive.
Now she feels completely broken at his horrible proposal.
She knows she will never marry the billionaire, but she is exhausted emotionally from Charles rejecting every attempt she has made to rebuild their relationship. This time she accepts because she wants one final memory of the man she has always loved.
It is heartbreaking.
She hopes that sharing one last night together might finally make Charles admit what he feels.
Instead, afterwards he simply walks away.
That completely destroys her.
She declines the billionaire's proposal, quietly leaves the yacht, having finally reached the end of her emotional strength.
The heroine finally giving up is also a fave tropes for me. I loved it.
Only then does Charles realise what he has lost. His panic feels completely authentic. He risks everything—including the career he has repeatedly insisted matters more than their marriage—to go after her.
That is exactly the kind of ending I love. A runaway heroine and the hero finally realising his feelings and chasing her to make things right, choosung her over everything else.
It made the entire emotional journey worthwhile.
The only thing missing for me was open door steamy love scenes. Those scenes were pivotal, intense, and full of emotional highs and lows, and seeing them on page would have elevated the romance to almost perfect.
Even so, The First Officer came remarkably close to becoming a five-star read. I will enjoy rereading this one.
October 23, 2023
2.5
It was decent read.
The only issue being the h to be little less on throwing herself at the H and H to be little less prideful and condescending towards the h.
I didn't like the H continue rejecting the h in his life but i do believe they will have an hea as the h is very accommodating.
It was decent read.
The only issue being the h to be little less on throwing herself at the H and H to be little less prideful and condescending towards the h.
I didn't like the H continue rejecting the h in his life but i do believe they will have an hea as the h is very accommodating.
January 20, 2024
I haven't read a Harlequin Romance in a very long time. This didn't hold up.
December 23, 2024
Older hero married younger heroine in a fit of mutual lust then they both promptly regretted it when the sex wore off. He was condescending and sarcastic, while she was an immature daddy’s girl and prone to tantrums. They divorced and lost touch for several years, until they coincidentally meet on a millionaire’s yacht where he is the titular first officer and she is one of the guests of the millionaire. The hero is cutting, demeaning, verbally and physically abusive. The heroine thinks she deserves this mistreatment and plays St Bernadette, suffering humiliation and pain in silence. Believing her to be a gold digger who is going to marry the millionaire, the contemptuous hero spends one last night with her where he treats her like a blow up doll. The next morning, the heroine flees and the hero finds out from the millionaire that the heroine turned down his proposal because it is the hero she loves. He goes in hot pursuit of her, and they get their dubious, depressing HEA. This will work for fans of angst, old school caveman heroes and doormat heroines. They were both irredeemable in my opinion so I hated this story. Worst book I have read from this normally pleasant author.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews