ΟΡΓΙΣΜΕΝΗ ΚΑΙ ΕΡΩΤΕΥΜΕΝΗ ΣΥΛΛΟΓΗ 506

by Margaret Pargeter

The future held no bright prospects.

Melissa's wealthy cousin Helen tried to pressure her into a loveless marriage, so Melissa fled back to her Cornish home.

There she found that the small market garden business leased by her mother and stepfather had declined during her six absent years. Now it was nearly bankrupt! Worse still, their landlord, the handsome, aggressive Ryan Trevelyan, was demanding the three years' back rent—unless Melissa agreed to his despicable plan.

She found herself trapped between concern for her mother, and Ryan—a man who had set himself to run her life!

Genres: Enemies To Lovers, Harlequin Presents, Romance, Harlequin

Unknown Binding

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

Margaret Pargeter was a popular writer of 50 romance novels in Mills & Boon from 1975 to 1986.

Reviews

[Ivy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.




LOL. There's a foot stomping, temper tantrum throwing, LAZY, spoilt hoyden heroine in the house in this unforgettable and unique novel by Margaret Pargeter ! Melissa is unlike every other heroine I've ever read about in MPargeterlandia.

And, what's worse is that I totally dig this ( horrible ) girl ! Because...she kinda reminds me of someone I know very well, who has 2 equally spoilt, bratty, little white dogs with similar entitled personalities.





And now, after reading this review, all my Goodreads' friends will totally hate and despise my lazy/entitled ass for actually enjoying a book that will make other readers scream and wanna kill this heroine.







OK, seriously now: Sometimes we all read a book and encounter a character who reminds us so much of ourselves that it's freaking awesome or scary or embarrassing. Lol. I like to think I'm a pretty OK sort of person but I am aware of all my many personality flaws and I've accepted them. It would've been so easy to jump on my high horse and gallop away, to annihilate this heroine in my review. I've done it before to heroines and sometimes I get a gleeful sadistic zeal from doing it. But I can't, in all honesty, do that to Melissa because it would be the height of hypocrisy since she reminds me so much of myself. When I looked back at all the shitty stuff Melissa did in this book and the even shittier reasons why she did them, I ask myself: what would I have done under those circumstances ? The answer: I probably would've done many of the same things because I've always been a spoilt daddy's girl who wasn't close to my mom. And, if my mom cheated with some guy and married him 2 weeks after my beloved dad died, the way Melissa's mom had done, I would totally despise her and want her to suffer in purgatory forever and ever... I'm also lazy, superficial and self indulgent and I always think first of how a situation would affect me personally before I think of how it will impact on my loved ones. That's not a pretty picture of a very nice person and Melissa did all and more - she's a little worse than me, thankfully... LOL.

This is the bratty heroine from Hell, Melissa:



This is the H, Ryan:



This novel is set in Melissa's quaint, provincial, childhood Cornish village. The H Ryan, is like the local squire; he's also the landlord for all the local tenant farmers. Melissa's mother Mary and her stepfather Lewis owe him 3 years' back rent and cannot even pay recurrent rental fees. Melissa doesn't really care much about all this because she resents Mary and Lewis for betraying her father while he'd been terminally ill. The heroine had run off in a huff to go and live with her father's widowed cousin Helen, after her mother's hasty marriage to Lewis 6 yrs ago. Melissa would've probably never returned home to see her mother, if cousin Helen hadn't tried to force her to marry a rich titled guy. Melissa's also afraid of intimacy with men; she finds kissing distasteful after the time she'd spied Mary and Lewis swallowing each other's tongues in the kitchen, while her poor sick daddy lay dying !



Melissa's led a very luxurious life during the 6 yrs she lived with Helen. She attended an elite fancy school and got to travel all over the world. But now, she's run away to her old village in Cornwall because Helen was obstinate in her demand that the heroine marry the pompous, titled Lord Freddy. At the start of the story, Melissa is stranded in a snowstorm and the H saves her. The following fictional dramatization will help to explain everything in a more entertaining fashion:

RYAN: ( Ryan's internal monologue when he saw Melissa: OMG I want to bang this hot girl so
bad ! I've never seen a more beautiful siren of a woman in my life and I have bedded
many hot ladies, so that's saying something )

Hey, you either accept my help or die from hypothermia !

MELISSA: ( Melissa's internal monologue when she saw Ryan: Why is he looking at me as if I'm
food ? Oh well, I'm used to men ogling me like this. It is...like...so annoying but that's
just part of life's problems if you're beautiful little me. Hmnnnn... he IS awfully tall,
handsome and sexy though, but I wish he would stop smirking at me. It makes me want
to slap him or kick his shins !)

I didn't ask for your help you jerk. But I will grace you with my princessy presence and
make you an omelet because I'm feeling unusually generous this evening. ( Melissa
burns the omelet because she stopped in the middle of cooking it, to go and comb her
pretty hair ! )

The MC's agree to get along while she's stranded for the night at his home.

The rest of the story goes like this:

MARY: Melissa, you need to help us out here ! We're drowning in debts.

MELISSA: And how is that MY fault ? You married Lewis the loser and brought him into my daddy's
home. Besides, how can I help ? I don't have a job...




MARY: You can go have sex with Ryan ! He'll totally write off our debts if you bang him. Lewis
and I have seen how he ogles you as if you're food. It's just a little sacrifice Melissa...

MELISSA: ( Melissa's internal monologue: I'm not a skanky whore like you, you pimptastic,
shameless bitch who totally cheated on my daddy and fucked over his legacy and
memory. )

NO ! I hate Ryan and I will not even smile at him. Besides, his ugly rude housekeeper said
that he has a girlfriend - a snobbish, socialite called Angela, who totally treats me like
crap because she's jealous that my awesome natural beauty eclipses her wan, average
looks even when she's dressed in her best outfit.

MARY: ( Pleads to Melissa. ) OOOkaaay then princess, but will you help me out a little by
working in the shop selling vegetables ?

MELISSA: ( Rolls her eyes in childish petulance and sighs as she looks condescendingly at her
mother. ) B---ut ? Uh ! What ? That is totally...like...beneath my dignity ! I attended
an elite fancy school ! I cannot work in a mere vegetable shop. What about my image ?
What will people think ? I've already suffered enough by leaving most of my fancy clothes
at Helen's mansion. I have to walk around in dumb old jeans while Angela laughs at me
! I will die if I have to let people see me weighing vegetables like a common minion in a
market.

MARY: ( Almost in tears and at the end of her rope with her daughter. ) Alright Melissa. I
understand.

MELISSA: ( Feeling ashamed of herself when she sees how stressed her mom is. ) OK OK I
guess I can weigh and sell a few vegetables for you since you're begging me so nicely.

-----------------------------------------


But, unlike other HPlandia Mary Sues, Melissa doesn't do anything else to help out Mary and Lewis. She does no chores, refuses to work in the greenhouse and wakes up late every single morning. The H Ryan eventually gets exasperated with her attitude and threatens to throw them all out on their asses until she starts helping out on the farm. The lazyass heroine gives him a verbal agreement but continues to spend all her time lazing around, visiting her friends and going to the town everyday to walk around aimlessly since she can't do any shopping without money. Now this part I totally understood because if my mom had cheated on my dad and married the guy 2 weeks after my dad's funeral, there was no way in hell I'd want to sully my hands doing manual labour to help their adulterous asses. But Melissa didn't realize that she was cutting off her nose to spite her face, because she also depended on the farm for her bare existence. And she also did something I wouldn't have done: she kept insulting the H for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. That part made so sense, because Ryan started off by being one of Margaret P's more laid back and nicer H's. It was Melissa's horrid behaviour that catalyzed the change in him: he went from being flirtatious, solicitous, benign and neighbourly to being rude, vindictive, scheming, insulting and he even delivered a lot of punishing kisses and groping too ! At times in the story, I wanted to scream at the way these MC's fought so much:



The storyline took an OTT turn when the MC's were in a state of all out battle with each other. The heroine refused to work on the farm and told the H that he was mean for wanting them to pay back all the rents owed, especially when he was so rich and didn't need the money ! LOL. That was so awful and shameless on her part ! I might be a little similar to Melissa but I do NOT ever ever ever believe in mooching off of other people like a parasite...

Anyway, that was the final straw for the long suffering H. He got so mad with Melissa that he sent a lawyer's letter of eviction to the heroine and her family. This was the turning point in the story because Melissa finally saw that Mary, while still being an adulterous cheating whore ( LOL ), was still her mom and she didn't want to see her mom suffer. That was so sweet of Melissa and I don't know if I would've felt so sorry for my mom under the same circumstances. I probably would've still continued to laugh in silent glee and think that it's her due punishment for cheating. I know...I know... I'm a terrible person but I don't forgive people easily when they hurt someone I love. The real truth behind Mary and Lewis's debts is soon revealed: apparently, Lewis had become addicted to gambling so Mary had used up all of her late husband's savings to pay off his gambling debts !



To make the situation even worse, Lewis was also an alcoholic:




By this time, though, Melissa had undergone a positive change in her character arc. The heroine finally decided to get down to doing some hard manual labour a la all good Mary Sues in HPlandia. This was a turnaround point for the MC's relationship too because the H started to treat her better when he saw how hard she was working. Things weren't always easy though, because of the interfering and malicious antics of the H's housekeeper and the wannabe OW Angela. In fact, there were a couple of OTT incidents that totally shocked me in this novel:

1. The housekeeper acted like she was the H's mother and treated Melissa like a skank ! The housekeeper was also a minion who worshipped at the feet of the wannabe OW Angela.

2. The jealous wannabe OW Angela slapped Melissa hard on the face when she realized how besotted the H was acting towards the heroine.

3. Melissa and Ryan slapped each other on their respective faces, during one nasty argument ! Actually, it was Melissa who slapped him first and he slapped her back, because he said women fought hard for equality, so they should expect a slap in return if they hit a man. I don't like violence in books but I can overlook it in a book that's as old as this.

4. There was no forcible seduction and the H tried to behave himself when he realized that Melissa had a phobia about intimacy with men. There was one scene where he did get so mad with jealousy after she insulted him, that his punishing kiss caused her lip to bleed a little. However, for the most part, Ryan tried subtle seduction, did not force himself on her and respected her desire for him to keep his hands to himself. Melissa, on the other hand, kept telling him to leave her alone, while totally giving him little signals to keep touching her:



5. The H was so besotted and crazed with jealousy that he demanded, as part of their debt repayment agreement, that she absolutely stopped dating all other men. It was the weirdest clause in a debt repayment contract ever ! LOL

"I want you to promise that until we get this market back on its feet you will concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else. With this in mind you must give up your present friendship with Barry Ward and Ben, when he returns from the States."

There was so much OTT drama in this trainwrecky romance novel ! It was kinda like The Taming of The Shrew by Shakespeare, but a soap opera type, plastic surgery version that's on steroids. The HEA was kinda sweet because the besotted H totally didn't mind that Melissa still couldn't cook ! In fact, he agreed to hire a chef and a new housekeeper too. Melissa, for the most part, became so besotted and in love with her man that she even said she'd do a little housework if she had to ! Lol. I totally laughed at the new and obedient Melissa at the end:

"I'll do everything I can, Ryan, to deserve you."

The MC's were both in happy and in love at the end but I think that the H will be more besotted with Melissa than she is with him. I don't think most readers will enjoy this novel because Melissa's a very difficult heroine and Ryan's vengeful, spiteful schemes to punish her were a little OTT. The wannabe OW Angela also got no comeuppance for all her lying and scheming but the bitchy housekeeper was replaced. Melissa is also the polar opposite personality of the selfless, lovable, super hardworking heroine Sherry from Born of the Wind , also by Margaret Pargeter. I wish the H Scott Brady, from BOTW, had had Melissa for a heroine ! She'd have delivered many well deserved bitch slaps to his bullying ass ! Melissa also mended her relationship with her mother Mary and even became friends with her stepfather Lewis. I think Mary was sincerely sorry for how she'd behaved in the past, but she never did apologize for trying to pimp out Melissa to the H, in exchange for the rent payments.

Safety: A wannabe OW who stalk the H, a couple of wannabe other men but I don't think the H cared about the OW. He might have been involved with her before Melissa arrived but I don't think there was any cheating because he was totally obsessed only with the heroine. He did throw the wannabe OW in the heroine's face a few times, but I think it was just to see if she would become jealous.

[StMargarets · Rating 3 out of 5]

Open the dictionary and you will find the heroine's picture next to "high maintenance." The run your finger down to "smitten" and you'll see the hero. All that sexual tension and bad behavior - insults, pouting, sulking, slaps, brutal kisses, jealous maneuvers, humiliation, gossip, and lies - make for quite the ride.

Ivy has the definitive review with plot points and why this story is so much fun - even though the heroine would have made an excellent OW in any other HP. The hero is brutal enough to match her OW energy and by the end these two have found a way to domesticate this sort of "love."

One bright side to having an OW-type as your heroine is that the reader knows the hero truly is smitten and will never stray. What a pairing.

[Wendy, Lady Evelyn Quince · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Pargeter’s Savage Possession begins like any ordinary HP, with the h & H meeting under unusual circumstances with the situation soon getting heated afterwards.

In this case, Melissa’s car is trapped in the snow and along comes the hero, Ryan Trevelyan, to give her a lift. She’s dressed in bulky winter clothes so he assumes she’s a boy. As they’re driving along in his car he’s berating ‘him’ for driving under such horrible circumstances. When she takes off her cap, Ryan realizes, “Oh noes, she’s this unbelievably beautiful, green-eyed, redhead woman! How easily mistaken I was to think she was a boy because she was wearing a hat and coat! Well since she tricked me, I’ll force her to spend the night at my house even though there are plenty of other places in town that she can stay. That’ll her teach her a lesson!”

I wondered to myself just where this book was going. It was weird. It seemed all over the place on plotting.

The heroine does not act like do not act out as the HP caricatures they’re supposing to: swooning, selfless, kind to all, and eager to work hard to prove her worth. Melissa has just returned home after years of mooching off her wealthy socialite aunt. Auntie wanted to name Melissa her heir, but only if Melissa married the man of her choosing. Not up for that, Melissa returns home to her family’s financially-troubled farm.

Her parents are all too keen to pimp her out to Ryan, their landlord, for their past-due rents. Mom is 3 YEARS behind on the payments, and Ryan hasn’t evicted her—yet. So mum and stepdad make the not too subtle hints that Melissa should sell herself out to save the farm. Melissa angrily refuses. She may be a mooch, but she’s no whore!

Eventually, Melissa begs Ryan to give her mother another chance to save the farm. Melissa promises to work at the family store selling their farm goods. Despite her pleading, she refuses to do anything to help mum save her home.



Melissa doesn’t feel like going to work, instead spending her days with other men. She’s utterly lazy, a slacker. I have never related to a heroine as much as this one! XD

The only decent fellow in this whole story is Ryan Trevelyan. Who, despite his sensible inclinations, keeps giving Melissa and her family chance after chance to make due on their past balances.

But did I mention that Melissa is:



Ryan gets fed up with her and sparks fly. The plot here doesn’t matter; it’s the interactions with these complicated three- dimensional characters that make this a fun read. The writing isn’t overwrought, and the sarcastic banter between the two mains is great. And at the end, Melissa actually grows as a character, realizing she needs to be a better person.

Looking forward to reading more Pargeters, a Harlequin author I was unfamiliar with before this book.

4 stars

[RomLibrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The future held no bright prospects

Melissa's wealthy cousin Helen tried to pressure her into a loveless marriage, so Melissa fled back to her Cornish home.

There she found that the small market garden business leased by her mother and stepfather had declined during her six absent years. Now it was nearly bankrupt! Worse still, their landlord, the handsome, aggressive Ryan Trevelyan, was demanding the three years' back rent--unless Melissa agreed to his despicable plan.

She found herself trapped between concern for her mother, and Ryan--a man who had set himself to run her life!

[Live2Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Definitely a romance of its time! Angsty good if one can appreciate it. Although, talk about the verbal abuse to physical, then also getting sexually assaulted in the span of less than a minute. Yes, that’s exactly what this harsh, angry passionate hero did to the ungrateful, unfeeling heroine in critical scenes. Wished otherwise, but again, such are common of the vintage. His passion for her was apparent, thus it felt implausible seeing how abruptly he would occasionally ends their intimacy. Could have let them gone longer if not all the way, or don’t bothered much at all until it was very necessary. Oh well…

[MissKitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Available on Open Library.

The Hero was a domineering bully who made it his mission to ‘cure’ the heroine of her inhibitions. The condescending brute also forced her to “pay” for her adulterous mother and worthless step fathers mistakes!

Im glad the heroine was spoiled, it gave her the spirit and gumption to stand up to the Hero’s dictates! The asshole almost broke her spirit 😡

I dislike books where the Hero is indulgent towards the OW just to humiliate the heroine because he cant deal with his obsession over her.

Solid 2-stars the 3 star is all for the feisty heroine.

[Scarlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally a heroine I could relate to. This heroine was lazy lazy lazy 😂Hated manual work but the H made sure she got her hands soiled. All jokes aside.. it was a nice read and it kept me interested till the last page. I could tell H was crazy inlove with her from the first meeting and wanted to keep her with him so she wouldn't run off to her rich cousin.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this and it was a bit stomach turning so skipped to the end which was gag a maggot time. Ick. Everything is her fault?? I guess that's Rule #1 for Harlequins but it's hard to take sometimes.

She was hard to take too, obnoxious and entitled.

[Myrna · Rating 1 out of 5]

The female protagonist is a total DISGRACE.

[Zenith Kafka · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ml is a walking red flag. Not too much to the book, good for a casual read.

[Tricia Murphy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disliked them both.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not too keen about this story. Found the heroine irritating at times. Not to keen on her mother and drunken stepfather and their attempts to push the heroine into hero's life.