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Do You Remember Babylon?
He could have chosen any woman he wanted
Adam Rocquaine, idolized the world over for his looks and singing voice, was a man completely out of Maggie Hornchurch's experience. So far, her experience had been strictly limited to building her career.
Though Adam wanted her professional talents as an interior designer for his newly acquired villa in Spain, Maggie found it hard to believe he could be seriously interested in her as a woman.
Maggie agreed to the prestigious commission and found herself inevitably responding to Adam's charm. But that was before she found out about Elizabeth....
Adam Rocquaine, idolized the world over for his looks and singing voice, was a man completely out of Maggie Hornchurch's experience. So far, her experience had been strictly limited to building her career.
Though Adam wanted her professional talents as an interior designer for his newly acquired villa in Spain, Maggie found it hard to believe he could be seriously interested in her as a woman.
Maggie agreed to the prestigious commission and found herself inevitably responding to Adam's charm. But that was before she found out about Elizabeth....
192 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1989
29 people want to read
About the author
Anne Weale
218 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 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 4, 2024
Things went downhill pretty fast when the author compared the crooner hero favorably to the king of oily schmaltz, Julio Iglesias, and, almost in the same breath, had her female protagonist name Prince Charles as her "beau ideal." Why not Barry Manilow while she was at it? *Sexy Times*
Anyhoo, the store begins on a Carribean island, where the international crooner H is vacationing, while the heroine is there to do some interior design for one of her clients. They meet and both are instantly smitten. He wines and dines her that very night, ostensibly for the purpose of discussing hiring her to do his newly bought vacation house in Spain, but it is soon clear that the evening is filled with romantic fluttering and sexual electricity between them. Their date concludes with a kiss that knocks the socks off the usually prim and proper heroine and a promise to meet up the next day.
The heroine wakes up still in the throes of last night's coup de foudre only to find out from the gossipy housekeeper that the hero is actually on the island with his live-in girlfriend, and she implies that he took the heroine out for a bit of fun only because said girlfriend had a migraine that kept her in bed all day.
The miffed heroine flies back to England but not before she gives a piece of her mind to the hero, who does not deign to defend himself or deny her accusations that he was wooing one woman while he was vacationing with another. TYPHOON OF TACKINESS!
Back in England, the two of them cross paths again, whether by sheer coincidence or through the machinations of the hero, it is never really made clear. The hero is still very interested in the heroine and he does mention he is "no longer associated" with the woman he shared his Carribean vacation with. The heroine is far from trusting him. Was the vacationing girlfriend a one-off, a long-term, a fling, what???!!! And is the heroine just another notch in his busy, international crooner bedpost?
The two of them fall into an uneasy semi-friendship, semi-professional relationship, during which the heroine cautiously mulls over whether she will accept the gig of decorating his Spanish vacation house, let alone take up a romance with him. Eventually, they do spend the night together at his ancestral home on Guernsey Island. There are mutual avowals of love and marriage plans by both and all seems rosy.
OF COURSE, the mysterious OW from the Carribean vacation shows up the next morning to tell the heroine pityingly that the hero and OW have been passionate, insatiable, on-and-off, Cathy-and-Heathcliff-like lovers since they were teenagers. Their affair lasted even through the OW's marriage to hero's best friend and continued through her subsequent widowhood. She concludes by telling heroine that heroine's so-called "relationship" with the hero is nothing more than him scoring off the ex once again in their long, tumultuous, toxic on-and-on, lifelong affair. She assures the heroine very sweetly that the heroine will always be second-best and that the hero will eventually crawl back to OW as he always does.
The heroine is distraught that the hero, who she thought was The Love of Her Life, once again lied to her. He had made it sound like the ex was no one important in his life yet the ex's emotional performance in front of the heroine, coupled with some gossip bits the heroine picked up here and there (like the fact that hero, OW and OW's husband were widely considered to be an inseparable menage a trois, and that the hero continued supporting the OW financially after her husband died) tell a different story.
Shortly after the heroine returns to England, she receives a curt note from the hero. Far, far from groveling, apologizing or even explaining anything, he dumps her for not trusting in him and even tells her he decided to sell his villa in Spain so she lost her job too!
The author then expects us to believe in an abrupt HEA whereby the hero, after a few weeks, comes to England to perform a new song on the BBC that he wrote for the heroine, telling her of his love for her. She shows up on his doorstep all grateful and apologetic for her lack of trust in him and voila!
Puh-leeze!
The vile OW, who said some horrible things to the heroine never gets a comeuppance. The hero's callous treatment of his ex, who he sneeringly described to the heroine as a "faute de mieux" i.e. "for want of better" girlfriend despite their very longstanding relationship, and that he dropped like a hot potato afterwards, don't show a very nice picture of him. This is further buttressed by how callously he treated the heroine, supposedly someone he loved and wanted to marry. He hurt her so badly with a freaking Dear John letter, all due to his pride and ego. So I think the conclusion suggests a HFN rather than HEA.
I for one believe the OW version of the story much much more. The guy struck me as a weasely liar with a huge ego and unfinished business with the OW.
Another one where you have to force yourself to be happy that the heroine is happy...for now.
For fans of AW, the story has cameos from couples from her previous books, Neptune's Daughter, and Catalan Christmas, two much better stories imho.
Anyhoo, the store begins on a Carribean island, where the international crooner H is vacationing, while the heroine is there to do some interior design for one of her clients. They meet and both are instantly smitten. He wines and dines her that very night, ostensibly for the purpose of discussing hiring her to do his newly bought vacation house in Spain, but it is soon clear that the evening is filled with romantic fluttering and sexual electricity between them. Their date concludes with a kiss that knocks the socks off the usually prim and proper heroine and a promise to meet up the next day.
The heroine wakes up still in the throes of last night's coup de foudre only to find out from the gossipy housekeeper that the hero is actually on the island with his live-in girlfriend, and she implies that he took the heroine out for a bit of fun only because said girlfriend had a migraine that kept her in bed all day.
The miffed heroine flies back to England but not before she gives a piece of her mind to the hero, who does not deign to defend himself or deny her accusations that he was wooing one woman while he was vacationing with another. TYPHOON OF TACKINESS!
Back in England, the two of them cross paths again, whether by sheer coincidence or through the machinations of the hero, it is never really made clear. The hero is still very interested in the heroine and he does mention he is "no longer associated" with the woman he shared his Carribean vacation with. The heroine is far from trusting him. Was the vacationing girlfriend a one-off, a long-term, a fling, what???!!! And is the heroine just another notch in his busy, international crooner bedpost?
The two of them fall into an uneasy semi-friendship, semi-professional relationship, during which the heroine cautiously mulls over whether she will accept the gig of decorating his Spanish vacation house, let alone take up a romance with him. Eventually, they do spend the night together at his ancestral home on Guernsey Island. There are mutual avowals of love and marriage plans by both and all seems rosy.
OF COURSE, the mysterious OW from the Carribean vacation shows up the next morning to tell the heroine pityingly that the hero and OW have been passionate, insatiable, on-and-off, Cathy-and-Heathcliff-like lovers since they were teenagers. Their affair lasted even through the OW's marriage to hero's best friend and continued through her subsequent widowhood. She concludes by telling heroine that heroine's so-called "relationship" with the hero is nothing more than him scoring off the ex once again in their long, tumultuous, toxic on-and-on, lifelong affair. She assures the heroine very sweetly that the heroine will always be second-best and that the hero will eventually crawl back to OW as he always does.
The heroine is distraught that the hero, who she thought was The Love of Her Life, once again lied to her. He had made it sound like the ex was no one important in his life yet the ex's emotional performance in front of the heroine, coupled with some gossip bits the heroine picked up here and there (like the fact that hero, OW and OW's husband were widely considered to be an inseparable menage a trois, and that the hero continued supporting the OW financially after her husband died) tell a different story.
Shortly after the heroine returns to England, she receives a curt note from the hero. Far, far from groveling, apologizing or even explaining anything, he dumps her for not trusting in him and even tells her he decided to sell his villa in Spain so she lost her job too!
The author then expects us to believe in an abrupt HEA whereby the hero, after a few weeks, comes to England to perform a new song on the BBC that he wrote for the heroine, telling her of his love for her. She shows up on his doorstep all grateful and apologetic for her lack of trust in him and voila!
Puh-leeze!
The vile OW, who said some horrible things to the heroine never gets a comeuppance. The hero's callous treatment of his ex, who he sneeringly described to the heroine as a "faute de mieux" i.e. "for want of better" girlfriend despite their very longstanding relationship, and that he dropped like a hot potato afterwards, don't show a very nice picture of him. This is further buttressed by how callously he treated the heroine, supposedly someone he loved and wanted to marry. He hurt her so badly with a freaking Dear John letter, all due to his pride and ego. So I think the conclusion suggests a HFN rather than HEA.
I for one believe the OW version of the story much much more. The guy struck me as a weasely liar with a huge ego and unfinished business with the OW.
Another one where you have to force yourself to be happy that the heroine is happy...for now.
For fans of AW, the story has cameos from couples from her previous books, Neptune's Daughter, and Catalan Christmas, two much better stories imho.
April 1, 2017
Re Do You Remember Babylon - AW is back and the title of this one refers to a song the H has written and sings about lost love. This book is actually linked to Anne Weale's Neptune's Daughter and Catalan Christmas, both the H and h's from those books have big secondary parts in DYRB.
The story begins with the H, a huge international singing star AW compares to Charles Aznavour, (the Frank Sinatra of France,) and Julio Iglesias (The pop god of Spain,) seeing the h's room designs in an in-flight magazine and telling his current girlfriend he thinks he wants the h to design his house he just bought from the H of Neptune's Daughter.
The we switch to the the h, who has had a childhood marred by indifferent divorced parents, working on a house in Barbados. The h is an interior designer and most of the first few chapters are taken up with AW's name dropping of a whole bunch of famous 1980's celebs of various fields that no one remembers now and are supposed to be comparisons to both the H and h. (It is a bit tedious, cause I had to spend a lot of time googling and I hate that.)
So anyhows, the H finds out the h is in the same location he is and goes to see her to convince her to work on his house. (The house is in the same village that the architect H from Catalan Christmas was working on.) He asks her out and they are very attracted to each other, but then the h finds out that his girlfriend is staying with him and the H failed to mention that he had one. The h immediately suspects an H on the make and goes back to London, turning down the H's commission on the grounds that finding people to work with her on the house in Spain is problematic because of the isolated location and claiming she is too booked up to do it.
Then we have the introduction of the OM, a man who just moved his own offices into the floor beneath the h's office/home in her building. Lots of time is spent with the h and the OM going out together and the h ends up with the OM at a dinner party with the H and h from Neptune's Daughter who want the h to do their houses, (next door to the H,) in the Spanish village. The H is at the dinner party too, and he and the h are cautiously polite. Eventually the h agrees to do all three houses and then we see the h at the H's house in Guernsey, the H wants the h to use furniture from that house in his new Spanish house.
Amdist all the HP Guernsey travelogue, the H and h are also getting closer to each other and the H confirms that he has ended the relationship with his ex girlfriend, who was also his dead best friend's wife. He claims it was a relationship of convenience, they knew each other since childhood, they found themselves thrown together and it was easier to hook up with the widow than have to interview other candidates, cause he has such a busy singing schedule. But he has pretty casually dismissed the woman, cause now he is in love with the h and they have a boudoir bounce and a marriage proposal and everything is just ducky cause they are in love.
Then the ex girlfriend shows up and tells the h off and that the H is only meant for the ex and the h needs to take herself off. So the h does, she leaves Guernsey without talking to the H and goes back to London. The H tries to talk about the situation and about the OW, but the h accuses him of being deceitful, so the H sends a letter ending things. The h has mopey moments and also wanders off with her OM to his parent's house for the weekend. The OM proposes, but the h doesn't want to know, so we all go back to London.
The H's Guernsey housekeeper comes to see the h and explains that the H's ex-girlfriend is a troublemaker and only wants the H for his lucrative lifestyle. She tells the h that the H is in London doing a guest spot on a TV show and the h decides to watch it. The H sings a song he wrote for the h on the show and the h rushes over to his flat to see him. They both apologize for being spoiled brats and decide that they love each other and need to marry for the HEA.
This one was tedious, there was so much name dropping and filler and H and h non time together that I was sorta wondering where the actual romance was. AW puts in too many scenes with the secondary characters, so while it was nice to see them being happy, it was confusing unless you have read the other books. There was very little passion between the H and h and the OW scenario where she confronts the h really made no sense when the h leaves without even talking to the H. But they did get to the rather indifferent HEA at the end, so we can hail a last farewell to Anne Weale as she completes her HPlandia adventures in favor of HRtopia.
The story begins with the H, a huge international singing star AW compares to Charles Aznavour, (the Frank Sinatra of France,) and Julio Iglesias (The pop god of Spain,) seeing the h's room designs in an in-flight magazine and telling his current girlfriend he thinks he wants the h to design his house he just bought from the H of Neptune's Daughter.
The we switch to the the h, who has had a childhood marred by indifferent divorced parents, working on a house in Barbados. The h is an interior designer and most of the first few chapters are taken up with AW's name dropping of a whole bunch of famous 1980's celebs of various fields that no one remembers now and are supposed to be comparisons to both the H and h. (It is a bit tedious, cause I had to spend a lot of time googling and I hate that.)
So anyhows, the H finds out the h is in the same location he is and goes to see her to convince her to work on his house. (The house is in the same village that the architect H from Catalan Christmas was working on.) He asks her out and they are very attracted to each other, but then the h finds out that his girlfriend is staying with him and the H failed to mention that he had one. The h immediately suspects an H on the make and goes back to London, turning down the H's commission on the grounds that finding people to work with her on the house in Spain is problematic because of the isolated location and claiming she is too booked up to do it.
Then we have the introduction of the OM, a man who just moved his own offices into the floor beneath the h's office/home in her building. Lots of time is spent with the h and the OM going out together and the h ends up with the OM at a dinner party with the H and h from Neptune's Daughter who want the h to do their houses, (next door to the H,) in the Spanish village. The H is at the dinner party too, and he and the h are cautiously polite. Eventually the h agrees to do all three houses and then we see the h at the H's house in Guernsey, the H wants the h to use furniture from that house in his new Spanish house.
Amdist all the HP Guernsey travelogue, the H and h are also getting closer to each other and the H confirms that he has ended the relationship with his ex girlfriend, who was also his dead best friend's wife. He claims it was a relationship of convenience, they knew each other since childhood, they found themselves thrown together and it was easier to hook up with the widow than have to interview other candidates, cause he has such a busy singing schedule. But he has pretty casually dismissed the woman, cause now he is in love with the h and they have a boudoir bounce and a marriage proposal and everything is just ducky cause they are in love.
Then the ex girlfriend shows up and tells the h off and that the H is only meant for the ex and the h needs to take herself off. So the h does, she leaves Guernsey without talking to the H and goes back to London. The H tries to talk about the situation and about the OW, but the h accuses him of being deceitful, so the H sends a letter ending things. The h has mopey moments and also wanders off with her OM to his parent's house for the weekend. The OM proposes, but the h doesn't want to know, so we all go back to London.
The H's Guernsey housekeeper comes to see the h and explains that the H's ex-girlfriend is a troublemaker and only wants the H for his lucrative lifestyle. She tells the h that the H is in London doing a guest spot on a TV show and the h decides to watch it. The H sings a song he wrote for the h on the show and the h rushes over to his flat to see him. They both apologize for being spoiled brats and decide that they love each other and need to marry for the HEA.
This one was tedious, there was so much name dropping and filler and H and h non time together that I was sorta wondering where the actual romance was. AW puts in too many scenes with the secondary characters, so while it was nice to see them being happy, it was confusing unless you have read the other books. There was very little passion between the H and h and the OW scenario where she confronts the h really made no sense when the h leaves without even talking to the H. But they did get to the rather indifferent HEA at the end, so we can hail a last farewell to Anne Weale as she completes her HPlandia adventures in favor of HRtopia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
abrierto-to-read-hr-other
May 10, 2021He could have chosen any woman he wanted.
Adam Rocquaine, idolized the world over for his looks and singing voice, was a man completely out of Maggie Hornchurch’s experience. So far, her experience had been strictly limited to building her career.
Though Adam wanted her professional talents as an interior designer for his newly acquired villa in Spain, Maggie found it hard to believe he could be seriously interested in her as a woman.
Maggie agreed to the prestigious commission and found herself inevitably responding to Adam's charm. But that was before she found out about Elizabeth...
Adam Rocquaine, idolized the world over for his looks and singing voice, was a man completely out of Maggie Hornchurch’s experience. So far, her experience had been strictly limited to building her career.
Though Adam wanted her professional talents as an interior designer for his newly acquired villa in Spain, Maggie found it hard to believe he could be seriously interested in her as a woman.
Maggie agreed to the prestigious commission and found herself inevitably responding to Adam's charm. But that was before she found out about Elizabeth...
January 3, 2016
I had never read a Mills & Boon book, so when I got this one in the post as part of a quirky giveaway with a CD, I thought I'd give it a try. The cover wasn't very promising, but fairly accurate in summing up the book - generally very bland with occasional moments of amusement prompted by just how dated some of it was.
It's fairly light and readable.
The heroine spends a lot of the book wondering what the hero sees in her, and I have to say I'm not sure what he does see in her. It seems to be a love at first meeting sort of a thing. The barriers to them being together (in the form of his ex Elizabeth) seem pretty manufactured and she hops on a plane in a huff without actually talking to him so often I'm not sure she deserved a happy ending at all. Although he demands that she hop on a plane somewhere quite a lot too, so perhaps they deserve each other.
It's fairly light and readable.
The heroine spends a lot of the book wondering what the hero sees in her, and I have to say I'm not sure what he does see in her. It seems to be a love at first meeting sort of a thing. The barriers to them being together (in the form of his ex Elizabeth) seem pretty manufactured and she hops on a plane in a huff without actually talking to him so often I'm not sure she deserved a happy ending at all. Although he demands that she hop on a plane somewhere quite a lot too, so perhaps they deserve each other.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews