Between the Lines

by Jayne Ann Krentz, Amy McFadden (Narrator)

There was no passion to break her heart, no love to risk and lose. Marrying her boss, prominent businessman Cormick Grayson, was a very reasonable proposition for a woman who'd been hurt in love before. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

At first. But something wasn't right. The heat in Gray s eyes told her there was more to this than a polite, passionless marriage. But Gray s cool, impersonal distance left Amber wondering about the man she'd married.

Amber never imagined she'd be the one demanding more, yearning to feel things she vowed she would never risk again.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance, Fiction, Audiobook, Mystery, Marriage Of Convenience

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

The author of over 50 consecutive New York Times bestsellers, JAYNE ANN KRENTZ writes romantic-suspense in three different worlds: Contemporary (as Jayne Ann Krentz), historical (as Amanda Quick) and futuristic (as Jayne Castle). There are over 30 million copies of her books in print.

She earned a B.A. in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and went on to obtain a Masters degree in Library Science from San Jose State University in California. Before she began writing full time she worked as a librarian in both academic and corporate libraries.

Reviews

[StMargarets · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gray and Amber – our H/h - have color names. What a surprise.

Also, H is intelligent, self-employed/wealthy with a mysterious past and an equally mysterious love of a z-list “cowboy poet” from the Victorian era.

Heroine is nursing a broken heart from a Californian race car driver, so she moves to the Seattle area and finds a job with the hero. She assists with his scholarly articles about the cowboy poet, but since she is a terrible typist, she moves on to help the hero with his consulting business.

After three months of working together the hero proposes a marriage of convenience. Heroine accepts since she is convinced that she is done with passion and she thinks the H is a quiet man who won’t expect too much. They combine business with a honeymoon when the hero inspects a dude ranch an investment consortium is thinking of purchasing.

That’s where the author raises the stakes so H/h can join forces to solve the mystery and fall in love along the way. (FYI – hero loved her all along, but everyone but the heroine knew that from the beginning) The OM returns to bother the heroine and to give everyone a good look at how superior the hero is.

One more added delight for the English majors in the peanut gallery – some truly bad poetry and facile analysis that any 9th grader would be proud to plagiarize.

Just a fun story.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of Ms. Krentz's early books, published in the mid-80's. Her heroine is typical of her books - someone who has intelligence and is capable. The hero is also typical - strong and understated. This book lacks a murder, which was refreshing. And I really enjoyed the fact that Gray was so willing to let Amber find her own way. He trusted her and really paid attention to her. Yes, he makes mistakes, but they are not because he is overbearing or condescending towards Amber.

Because this book was written in the 80s the sex lacks detail, but this is not a story of deflowering a virgin. Amber is not an inexperienced girl who has never experienced passion. Rather, she is someone who has learned a lesson about herself that she doesn't want to repeat. But, while she has her moments of embarrassment, there is no censure over her past.

The bits about the bad Southwestern poet are humorous. I admit that I saw the twist very early, but it was still entertaining to see it play out. Overall I'm glad I saw this book on the library shelf. It was a very quick read and managed to have most of the elements that I so enjoy in Krentz's writing.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be kind of frustrating for a variety of reasons.


At the beginning of the story we have the hero, Gray, proposing a "friendship" marriage to the heroine, Amber. Amber goes on and on about how she's not a passionate person and doesn't want anything more than a quiet, respectful relationship with Gray. Then, immediately after they get married she starts basically throwing herself at him and getting extremely frustrated when he doesn't have sex with her. In short, she does a complete 180 as soon as they say their vows.

Meanwhile, Gray, who has secretly been in love with Amber for the last three months and deliberately got her into this marriage as part of his plan to unlock her hidden passion, decides that the best thing to do with his suddenly sex-crazed wife is to give her the cold shoulder and repeatedly remind her that their honeymoon is actually just a business trip for him. It just doesn't make sense. And this issue was compounded by the fact that we as the reader spent almost no time in Gray's head after their marriage. Prior to the wedding we get a glimpse of his perspective but once they go on their honeymoon, all we see is Amber's frustration and Gray's super-cold act. It really would have helped to read about him desperately warring with himself over whether or not to sleep with his new bride or suffering sleepless nights as his body ached to hold her, etc. SOMEthing to let us know what was going on in his head.

We got some line in the beginning about how he wanted to be patient and wait for her to desire him, not just feel she needed to do her "wifely duty", but it just doesn't make sense. On their wedding night she practically begged him to have sex with her and he turned her down. What more was he waiting for? And it wasn't as if he was executing some kind of seduction plan to get her even more hot and bothered for him. He basically ignored her for the rest of their "honeymoon"; frequently leaving her alone for hours at a time so that he could conduct his business and only inviting her to do things with him that would assist in said business. How exactly was this masterful plan supposed to result in her falling madly in love with him??

That baffling performance takes up the entire first half of the book during which time both Amber and the reader are left feeling frustrated, unsatisfied and confused as to Gray's intentions. Once they finally do sleep together the fireworks are good and the couple basically get busy every night thereafter. Even Gray admits that there was no real reason for him to have kept turning Amber down in the first half of the book. Which makes me want to write JAK a letter and ask her why then, if we're all in agreement that it didn't make sense in the plot, she still wrote the book that way.

Outside of that issue, both the hero and heroine deliberately grab the idiot ball with respect to their personal issues. Amber has a jerk ex-boyfriend who has suddenly decided he wants her back and despite claiming to trust and respect her new husband, Amber deliberately contrives to keep this information from Gray. She makes a bunch of vague and extremely weak excuses about how she doesn't want to let this jerk endanger her marriage and how she'll handle things on her own but that's incredibly stupid. Anyone with half a brain would know that keeping the ex-boyfriend's harassment a secret, and then meeting with him on the sly, would do far more damage to her marriage than just, you know, being up front with Gray. And she ends up telling him the truth right after all this secretive crap anyway so why did she even bother?

Meanwhile, Gray has a couple of hired thugs on his tail. His job is to investigate potential business deals for his clients and the dude ranch he took Amber to for their mock honeymoon was one such business deal. It took him all of one day to become suspicious that the deal was bad but he spent a few more days investigating and in doing so tipped off the would-be swindlers. Two thugs tried to bribe him and when that didn't work, they were about to try their hand at beating him into cooperation when Amber showed up and ruined their plans. After that Gray and Amber left the ranch within five minutes to avoid any further violence from the thugs. But despite that situation, Gray holds off on submitting his report to the client explaining that the deal is bad. He gives some vague hand-wave explanation about how he learned long ago that people don't like getting results too soon because it makes them think he didn't spend enough time on the project, but that's just stupid. At this point in his well-established career, his clients should trust him enough to know that he does a good, thorough job so those kinds of parlor tricks shouldn't be necessary. And, if ever there was an occasion when he should submit his report in a timely fashion this was it. Once the report is in the client's hand, the thugs have no reason to come after Gray and Amber because it won't change anything. But by holding back on the report, it leaves them vulnerable to further "persuasion" tactics from the bad guys, which is of course exactly what happens at the end of the book.

Here again Gray acts like an idiot for no reason other than plot contrivance. The thugs turn up in his and Amber's home town and make very clear threats against Amber as their new tactic for persuading Gray to doctor his report...then they let Gray walk away. At this point he could have 1) called the police and reported the threats, 2) submitted his report to the client thereby removing the thugs' reason for being there, 3) hired some bodyguards to protect him and his wife. Any or all of those things would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, he decides that the best idea is to go home and almost accuse Amber of having an affair with her jerk ex-boyfriend, then force her onto a plane to Canada where a friend of Gray's can babysit her. There's just no reason for this. Aside from all the perfectly sane options already listed, if Gray wanted to get Amber out of town he could have said that he was surprising her with a trip to a spa or needed her to go on a sudden business trip for him or something like that. There are other, much less mean and less damaging to their marriage things he could have done to get her out of town. Making her feel like he considered her a scarlet woman who was likely to succumb to her ex's advances was pretty much the worst thing he could have done. And it's made worse by the fact that he tells his friends all about this ex so Amber is humiliated by having his apparent lack of trust in her public knowledge.

All the way around it was kind of a frustrating book. The hero wasn't abusive the way so many of JAK's 1980's heroes are, but he was kind of too far in the other direction. He basically sat around not only doing nothing to advance their relationship, but actively working against it for the first half of the book, and then turned into an illogical moron in the second half. Amber was slightly better as the heroine but changed her personality completely as soon as she got married and also acted like a moron at times.

Oh and I agree with what the other reviewers have said regarding the bad poet theme. Way, way too much time was spent discussing the crappy poet and reciting lines from his poems and then reading articles written about him. This was a pretty short book to begin with, 248 pages in paperback, so having a bunch of time wasted on bad poetry was irritating. Especially when that time could have been used to flesh out the relationship or beef up the plot.

[Penelope · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE: I just listened to the audio version of BETWEEN THE LINES by Jayne Ann Krentz, performed by Amy McFadden. Amy did a delightful job, as I again enjoyed this “oldie” very much (originally published 1986). By today’s standards the hero is perhaps a bit “heavy-handed”(alpha) at times (including the final action scene) but the heroine pulls the same stunt earlier in the book so - I wasn’t bothered by that. The ending also includes a classic Misunderstanding/Miscommunication scene - which I detest. But it is dealt with very quickly and the characters get their sweet HEA.

ORIGINAL POST:
An early novel by Jayne Ann Krentz, “Between the Lines” holds up very well over time. I first read this novel shortly after it’s initial release and have reread it a number of times since then. The FMC/Amber has just quit her successful job in southern CA, broken off her turbulent affair with her philandering ex-lover/boyfriend and moved to Bellevue, WA looking for a fresh start. Cormick Grayson (Gray)/MMC operates his own business investments consulting firm from a home office and after employing Amber as his business assistant for 3 months, proposes to her saying, “It occurs to me there’s no good reason why we shouldn’t get married.” Of course, there is more. ;)

“Between the Lines” is a sweet romance story about an intelligent and spunky, yet cautious woman and the new man in her life who truly loves her. The characters are well drawn out. Several conflicts arise that threaten Amber and Gray’s relationship but I found myself wanting everything to work out for them. The heat level of this novel is closer to Sweet than Steamy but with several intimate moments. I truly enjoyed rereading “Between the Lines” and do recommend it to readers of contemporary romantic fiction who can appreciate honorable alpha heroes and spunky heroines.

[Marybelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why I love this book. The male protagonist, Gray, is arrogant and thinks he knows it all when it comes to the female protagonist, Amber. Amber, let's face it, is a total twit. Who else but a twit would think that a friendly, amicable marriage without passion could work? But there is something in their chemistry that keeps the reader interested. Perhaps it's because all of us at one time or another play into both these extremes when it comes to relationships. Perhaps it's because sometimes, like Amber, we try to hide and fool ourselves, so as not to be hurt again after a bad break up. Or, like Gray, we are sometimes so sure, that we run roughshod over those we love. Either way it makes for any entertaining read.

[DENISE I. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a fun read

I could tell from the beginning this was one of her earlier works. But it was a fun read. No deep analysis of the development of the characters or storyline. Just a quick fun story.

[Luna Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly hilarious

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. A short gem of a romance that didn’t take itself seriously allowing its plot contrivances to go down smooth and easy. I devoured it... I keep thinking in food terms. It was like that little ball of sherbet you get between courses at really fancy restaurants to cleanse your palette. I guess I think that because I read it after reading a thick book that was redundant in some places and that took itself entirely seriously even though it had as many plot contrivances as this story has. It also makes me think of the French phrase describing an appetizer type course as being “to amuse your palette”. This was brief and amusing and I’m now repeating myself. I thought this story was also romantic and I enjoyed that.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hovered between three and four stars for this book, but the characterization and dialogue, as usual, pushed me up a notch. The plot and humor are also good. I have read this book many times, and although not one of my favorites, I still have no problem re-reading it over and over.

[Kate McMurry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a 1986, short, contemporary romance that is definitely not a good example of Krentz's writing. It contains a frequently boring plot and a frustrating hero and heroine who both make stupid mistakes.

Skip this one and read some of her later works.

[Iris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Gray a bit too chauvinistic. And the story more suited to a different era.

[Jessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

When she married Cormick (Gray) Grayson, Amber thought it was the meeting of minds. She knew that she didn't want a marriage with passion, she had been burned by that in her last relationship. So a quiet, almost business-like marriage of contentment would work just fine.
Gray was ready to bide his time. He knew Amber had been burned but he knew that he could bring the flames of her passion back to life (ew). A business trip is just the place to celebrate their honeymoon (or something). But the property he's reviewing isn't quite up to snuff and the owner isn't above a little intimidation.
Very much a product of its time. Good for nostalgia but maybe not for today's readers.

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been an OK read, but it was very rushed and some things developed at a very strange pace.

AND THEN I figured it out - they got me AGAIN! STUPID ABRIDGED AUDIO BOOK!!!!! GRRRRRR!!!! Honestly, ffs, this book was 240 pages to begin with - who needs to abridge 240 pages of a romance suspense?! This would have been maybe 6 hours of audio, now squished into 2.5 !!! LUDICROUS! It's supposed to be a beach read - if you don't want to read it - don't ! Why do a Coles Notes version of a romance novel?! SOOO STUPID!!!! Ok, rant over!

[Gina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Between the Lines (Hardcover)
by Jayne Ann Krentz (Goodreads Author)

Another of JAK's 1986 early books, I couldn't make myself even get through it.
Amber is the young naive nitwit; Gray is the older, wiser, wealthy man that wants her before she even knows she's attracted to him. But don't worry, he'll tell her what to think, what she needs, and when.

There isn't even a real story line.

Boring, Boring, Boring.

[Marcia Haskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the usual Jayne Ann Krentz novel

This book is the story of 2 people who spend their time trying to persuade each other that they are each a quiet boring person who wants stability and peace. In reality each has a deep streak of passion and love just waiting for their mate to demonstrate that it is ok to show who they are.

Not the usual mystery or supernatural effects that I love in JAK’s books, but pleasant reading.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some suspense and romance, but the book is held back by dated language about the female character’s fear of passion, the possessiveness of the male character and his persuading her they would be suited because they were both passionless. It might have worked as a historical western. Written in 1986 maybe it’s a product of it’s time, by even then it seems a little dated. The characters were close to equals and she showed physical prowess. It didn’t take itself too seriously.

[Janet Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amber Langley relocates to Washington state to escape from a fiery relationship. Within months of beginning work as assistant to a man she thinks of as cool and calm, he surprises her with a proposal. "Marry me," Gray says.
Amber agrees only because she wants a dull life. Little does she know what passion he will ignite in her.
Added to that, danger follows them, from his seemingly mundane job to the man Amber had hoped to never see again.
This is a well written and good story.

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't think I would like this one when I began reading it, but was soon caught up in the story. Business investigator and poetry enthusiast Cormick Grayson ( Grey) asks his assistant Amber to marry him. A supposedly mutually beneficial arrangement, so it seemed at first. But the pair would soon find out that there was much more to the arrangement than they originally thought. A good story with great characters that fit well together. This one falls into my re-read on a lazy day category.

[J.W. Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ehh contemporary romance leaves me a little bland really. I keep trying it but the characters always feel so underdeveloped and weak compared paranormal romance, just a personal thing I guess. I need more fictional fiction that possible fiction.

A quick little read, strong silent man and a woman with a past. Marriage of convience turned passionate,

[Carolane · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
1) I found this so funny in a geeky 🤓 kind of way. Also, I think I’m in love...Grayson is so fantastic.
2) I loved the narration by Amy McFadden! She did a great job!
3) I cannot believe this was originally published in the 80s, seemed very modern.
4) I have a new appreciation for the word “contentment”

[Debbie Katauskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesomely delightful

This was a most definitely delightful read!!! I give this 5 stars because she doesn't go in the traditional way of romance novels!!! Those who would like to read something with humor, romance, mystery, intrigue, plenty of plot twists, and lots of interesting story characters!!! I recommend this book!!!! 😎

[Elgyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

s. 32 neš-lo
s. 41 Většinu času ztrávil
s. 59 zkoumaliy Náhle
s. 71 podi-vnou
s. 113 řekla.:„Jsem
s. 133 na-dšením
s. 141 zbalil
s. 147 pravdu, Zdá
s. 176 Aho,j
s. 191 Habsburkského

čárka - s. 15, 17, 56, 174
by jsi/bys - s. 172

[H.Cleary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an okay read but definitely not one of her best. There wasn’t as much humour and I found the male lead controlling and a little creepy. It kept me mildly entertained for a few hours. There are much better JAK books out there that I really love.

[Kirstie Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible

Assuming one of her first attempts. Granted all of her books are predictable, but usually there is humour and some character development. Not only do I regret purchasing I wish I had not wasted time reading.

[*CJ* · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Between The Lines" is the story of Amber and Gray.

Sooo dull.

Office colleagues decide to enter a marriage of convenience and then have sex and some drama and the end. Zero chemistry between the two but they were good friends.

Meh.

Safe..ish
1.5/5

[Kitty M Raja · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope.

First of all: gahd both the MCs are so freaking boring.

Sorry that’s it. There’s no secondary or tertiary points.

I also found out this was written in the 80s? Maybe if I’d read it in the early aughts I might’ve thought this passable.

[SaraJean · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book didn't live up to Krentz's usual reputation at all. It's simply a slightly better written romance novel.

[Misti · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early JAK and very predictable. I’m giving it a pass on a few things because of when it was written and it was enjoyable enough.

[Jana Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this fake romance & I liked watching Amber & Grey's relationship grow. This story had the right mix of romance, suspense, sexiness, & conflict.

[Fremom3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holds up quite well for a book published in the 80s. Gotta love JAK and her quirky characters. Glad she mentioned this one in her last newsletter. :)