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Sunstroke
Was she being bribed to put love on hold?
Alyssa had only days left to free herself from the clutches of her late husband's creditor. So the offer of twenty thousand pounds from Sheikh Tariq's uncle seemed a miracle--even if it meant leaving the state of Ras-Al-Khan forever.
After all, what was she leaving behind? Tariq, the dark-eyed prince, said their love was "only for today" And wasn't he being groomed to marry his young cousin?
Still, Alyssa clung desperately to the tope that one day Tariq would come after her.
Alyssa had only days left to free herself from the clutches of her late husband's creditor. So the offer of twenty thousand pounds from Sheikh Tariq's uncle seemed a miracle--even if it meant leaving the state of Ras-Al-Khan forever.
After all, what was she leaving behind? Tariq, the dark-eyed prince, said their love was "only for today" And wasn't he being groomed to marry his young cousin?
Still, Alyssa clung desperately to the tope that one day Tariq would come after her.
192 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 29, 2016
Re Sunstroke - EO brings us a fast little tale of love in the desert. The h is a 27yr old widow whose very messed up husband left her in debt to the tune of £20,000 to a very nasty man, after his death from a heart ailment. The h married the guy in mad rush and came to bitterly regret it a few months later. Still, she has a sense of loyalty and decides to pay the business debt off to preserve her husband's public memory.
I really think it was because her family told her not to do it, and she just can't go back and say they were right. There were a lot of negative undercurrents there, but EO never gets into them, so the h's motivations are purely speculative. Anyhow, the h takes a really high paying radio job in a Middle Eastern country that is very like a just-starting-it's-economic-boom-early-version-of-Dubai.
The country is on the Gulf of Arabia and the h was hoping for a challenge to go along with the high salary. She is also hiding out from the man who holds her husband's promissory note, the man has a payment in kind scheme in mind. The h is no prude, but she just isn't into slime either.
So the book opens with her at a local expat party when some of the country's royal family stop by for a short visit. She sees a man across the room and they are riveted to each other. She has no idear who the man is, but his eyes are spellbinding. Later she is told he was probably the royal Sheikh's driver or something, the h is a bit disappointed but very aware of how potent his eye stares were.
The h is trying to get more programming introduced at the radio station she works at, but the current program manager is a bit lethargic and the h has a lot of time on her hands. She winds up doing odd jobs like modelling etc in her spare time to earn some extra cash. She is terrified that she is becoming very mercenary, but the man she has to pay is really nasty and she worries about what he might do if she doesn't get him sorted.
(There was a tone that the man who held the notes as being some sort of criminal, even though there were no overt threats made. The h is certainly intimidated by him, and given how cool she was with everyone else, including the somewhat intimidating H, it makes you wonder what EO did not tell us, cause there seems to be a lot glossing over things in this one.)
One day there is a big upheaval at the radio station, the old programming manager is being replaced by the younger brother of the heir to the throne. He is really the Oil minister, not in line for the throne, as he is half English via his mum and went to Harvard, but since the place needs a revamp desperately - he got elected to knock things into order before the real new programming director arrives. This sends the h into a panic, if they cut staff, she will lose her job and her hope of paying the thug off.
Then she meets the new temp program manager and it turns out to be the man from the party. Apparently he isn't anyone's driver. They have some amusing back and forth with him trying to bully her and her not tolerating it. The H throws her for a loop though, when he tells her he is VERY attracted. They both know that in a Muslim country, a love affair is out of the question, so the mutual attraction gets back burnered in place of revising the station's formatting.
We get the usual guidebook tour and there are some conflicts between the H and h illustrating the differences between East and West, mainly that the H is being pressured to submit to an arranged marriage to prove his loyalty to his father's country. The H would have to convert religiously and he is holding out, he has some conflict between his father's legacy and his Western upbringing.
Then the H and h manage to steal off for a day and wind up falling into bed. The whole scene reads like a last-ditch-soon-to-be-lost-love-old-movie-scene with a secret desert palace and mutual declarations of love "if only for today". It was a bit romantic actually. The day ends all too soon, the H has to go to Oslo and the h gets paid off and kicked out of the country by the H's uncle (who is pressuring the 30 yr old H to convert to Islam and marry his 16 yr old daughter.)
Actually the pay off for the h's employment contract comes none too soon, the h's sister calls in a tizzy because the thug has been threatening her. The h returns to England, pays off the thug and records his nefarious plans for her and then lets him know that if she hears any more from him, she will send the tape to his very vindictive wife. That is the thug disposed of - and rather neatly too, so his menace quotient drops by miles.
The h is temping at a London radio station when the H finally comes looking for her. He is a bit peeved she ran off like she did and she is a bit peeved he had her kicked out of the country. They end up in bed again and when the h wakes, the H is gone and she is sad because during the arguing the night before, the H had said he wanted to marry her and she thought he only wanted her to be his mistress after he married the 16 yr old, and she isn't down with that.
Now the h is sad because the H just vanished, he did tell her he loved her, but she figures he doesn't now and she is stuck with a broken heart. Then the h gets a surprise invitation from one of her former colleagues for dinner at Maxims in Paris.
She gets all dressed up and goes to the airport, but it isn't the colleague waiting for her, it is the H. She finally explains what the whole money situation was about and about her marriage and the H sweeps her aboard his big Lear Jet and takes her off into the sunset to be his wife and the mum of his kids and HEA.
This one moved fast, the love story clipped along and there wasn't a great deal of angst. The biggest menace was the thug the h owed money to and his threat was neutralized pretty quickly by the h once she could pay him off.
Admittedly the whole "preserving the memory of my lame duck husband I felt sorry for" story line was pretty outlandish, but the h was nice, the H was nice and their interactions were witty and fast paced. I have definitely read worse and the h wanting to work to pay her debt made a huge change from the blackmailed mistress trope we usually get with the desert lurve tales of HPLandia.
I really think it was because her family told her not to do it, and she just can't go back and say they were right. There were a lot of negative undercurrents there, but EO never gets into them, so the h's motivations are purely speculative. Anyhow, the h takes a really high paying radio job in a Middle Eastern country that is very like a just-starting-it's-economic-boom-early-version-of-Dubai.
The country is on the Gulf of Arabia and the h was hoping for a challenge to go along with the high salary. She is also hiding out from the man who holds her husband's promissory note, the man has a payment in kind scheme in mind. The h is no prude, but she just isn't into slime either.
So the book opens with her at a local expat party when some of the country's royal family stop by for a short visit. She sees a man across the room and they are riveted to each other. She has no idear who the man is, but his eyes are spellbinding. Later she is told he was probably the royal Sheikh's driver or something, the h is a bit disappointed but very aware of how potent his eye stares were.
The h is trying to get more programming introduced at the radio station she works at, but the current program manager is a bit lethargic and the h has a lot of time on her hands. She winds up doing odd jobs like modelling etc in her spare time to earn some extra cash. She is terrified that she is becoming very mercenary, but the man she has to pay is really nasty and she worries about what he might do if she doesn't get him sorted.
(There was a tone that the man who held the notes as being some sort of criminal, even though there were no overt threats made. The h is certainly intimidated by him, and given how cool she was with everyone else, including the somewhat intimidating H, it makes you wonder what EO did not tell us, cause there seems to be a lot glossing over things in this one.)
One day there is a big upheaval at the radio station, the old programming manager is being replaced by the younger brother of the heir to the throne. He is really the Oil minister, not in line for the throne, as he is half English via his mum and went to Harvard, but since the place needs a revamp desperately - he got elected to knock things into order before the real new programming director arrives. This sends the h into a panic, if they cut staff, she will lose her job and her hope of paying the thug off.
Then she meets the new temp program manager and it turns out to be the man from the party. Apparently he isn't anyone's driver. They have some amusing back and forth with him trying to bully her and her not tolerating it. The H throws her for a loop though, when he tells her he is VERY attracted. They both know that in a Muslim country, a love affair is out of the question, so the mutual attraction gets back burnered in place of revising the station's formatting.
We get the usual guidebook tour and there are some conflicts between the H and h illustrating the differences between East and West, mainly that the H is being pressured to submit to an arranged marriage to prove his loyalty to his father's country. The H would have to convert religiously and he is holding out, he has some conflict between his father's legacy and his Western upbringing.
Then the H and h manage to steal off for a day and wind up falling into bed. The whole scene reads like a last-ditch-soon-to-be-lost-love-old-movie-scene with a secret desert palace and mutual declarations of love "if only for today". It was a bit romantic actually. The day ends all too soon, the H has to go to Oslo and the h gets paid off and kicked out of the country by the H's uncle (who is pressuring the 30 yr old H to convert to Islam and marry his 16 yr old daughter.)
Actually the pay off for the h's employment contract comes none too soon, the h's sister calls in a tizzy because the thug has been threatening her. The h returns to England, pays off the thug and records his nefarious plans for her and then lets him know that if she hears any more from him, she will send the tape to his very vindictive wife. That is the thug disposed of - and rather neatly too, so his menace quotient drops by miles.
The h is temping at a London radio station when the H finally comes looking for her. He is a bit peeved she ran off like she did and she is a bit peeved he had her kicked out of the country. They end up in bed again and when the h wakes, the H is gone and she is sad because during the arguing the night before, the H had said he wanted to marry her and she thought he only wanted her to be his mistress after he married the 16 yr old, and she isn't down with that.
Now the h is sad because the H just vanished, he did tell her he loved her, but she figures he doesn't now and she is stuck with a broken heart. Then the h gets a surprise invitation from one of her former colleagues for dinner at Maxims in Paris.
She gets all dressed up and goes to the airport, but it isn't the colleague waiting for her, it is the H. She finally explains what the whole money situation was about and about her marriage and the H sweeps her aboard his big Lear Jet and takes her off into the sunset to be his wife and the mum of his kids and HEA.
This one moved fast, the love story clipped along and there wasn't a great deal of angst. The biggest menace was the thug the h owed money to and his threat was neutralized pretty quickly by the h once she could pay him off.
Admittedly the whole "preserving the memory of my lame duck husband I felt sorry for" story line was pretty outlandish, but the h was nice, the H was nice and their interactions were witty and fast paced. I have definitely read worse and the h wanting to work to pay her debt made a huge change from the blackmailed mistress trope we usually get with the desert lurve tales of HPLandia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2011
the story was decent, except for the heroine gallantly (!) covering up her husband's flaws/debts AFTER he died! duh! it defies logic for a person to make a promise to basically a dead person which makes those who are still living miserable.
March 4, 2023
I tend to avoid sheikh romances, but this one was in a giant box of old Harlequins I bought on ebay, so here we are. I'm left with very mixed feelings. Alyssa, our heroine, works in a fictional sheikhdom at a public radio station in the 1980s; the accounts of the actual country, Alyssa's work, and a lot of the dynamics were kind of interesting, since they reminded me of a friend's parents' stories about being expats in Saudi in the 80s. Tariq, our hero, is very much a Harlequin Presents "sheikh" - he's explicitly half-English, grew up in the UK, came back to the kingdom as an adult, and later in the book tells Alyssa he's not Muslim; basically, he's being given positions of power in the royal family because He's Just That Awesome.
The book wasn't terribly rapey (although there are some references to him nicknaming her "slave girl" when they got romantic, which ick) but the flip side of that is that it isn't actually very romantic, either. There's not much chemistry between Alyssa and Tariq, and given that she's recovering from a bad marriage (and some sexual harassment from her husband's major creditor) and he's sort-of-engaged to his sixteen-year-old cousin (because it's a Harlequin Presents sheikh novel) they hang out as platonic friends a lot and when they suddenly Succumb To Temptation it's just kind of implausible.
That said, what happens afterwards is entirely plausible:
Racism check: it's not super racist, but it's also not super culturally sensitive, either; it's basically just a pile of cultural nonsense which you may find either insulting or benign. Alyssa does a lot of dumb stuff (posing for a swimwear catalogue while pretending to swill champagne in public). There's a lot of happy conversation about oil money, petro companies, and people blasting air conditioning in unoccupied houses in the middle of the desert year-round which made me cringe. Maybe don't read if you're an environmentalist. Honestly I'd say maybe don't read unless you have it in a box of Harlequins you ordered from eBay, or you find it in the Little Free Library I'm going to leave this in.
The book wasn't terribly rapey (although there are some references to him nicknaming her "slave girl" when they got romantic, which ick) but the flip side of that is that it isn't actually very romantic, either. There's not much chemistry between Alyssa and Tariq, and given that she's recovering from a bad marriage (and some sexual harassment from her husband's major creditor) and he's sort-of-engaged to his sixteen-year-old cousin (because it's a Harlequin Presents sheikh novel) they hang out as platonic friends a lot and when they suddenly Succumb To Temptation it's just kind of implausible.
That said, what happens afterwards is entirely plausible:
Racism check: it's not super racist, but it's also not super culturally sensitive, either; it's basically just a pile of cultural nonsense which you may find either insulting or benign. Alyssa does a lot of dumb stuff (posing for a swimwear catalogue while pretending to swill champagne in public). There's a lot of happy conversation about oil money, petro companies, and people blasting air conditioning in unoccupied houses in the middle of the desert year-round which made me cringe. Maybe don't read if you're an environmentalist. Honestly I'd say maybe don't read unless you have it in a box of Harlequins you ordered from eBay, or you find it in the Little Free Library I'm going to leave this in.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews