ΤΟ ΑΣΗΜΕΝΙΟ ΚΛΟΥΒΙ ΝΟΡΑ 75

by Jane Donnelly

Even after she and Kern McCabe were married Philippa felt she must be dreaming. Why should such an attractive man want to make her his wife? But she might have come to understand his love for her--if the glamorous Lilias Storr hadn't suddenly come back into Kern's life.

Genres: Harlequin Romance, Harlequin, Second Chance

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Jane Donnelly began earning her living as a writer as a teenage reporter. When she married the editor of the newspaper she freelanced for women's mags for a while. After she was widowed she and her 5 year old daughter moved to Lancashire. She turned to writing fiction to make a living while still caring for her daughter, she sold her first Mills & Boon romance novel as a hard-up singleparent in 1965. She wrote over 60 romance novels for Mills & Boon until 2000. Now she lives in a roses-round-the door cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon, with four dogs and assorted rescued animals. Besides writing she enjoys travelling, swimming, walking and the company of friends.

Reviews

[StMargarets · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intense little story of a whirlwind romance and marriage between an author hero and a young "ugly duckling" heroine with low self-esteem. The heroine is blessed/cursed with two good-looking selfish parents who can't believe they have such a plain uninteresting daughter. This is reinforced by friends and everyone around her. Enter hero who is captivated by her when she thinks he's the father of a redheaded boy she teaches at nursery school - an assumption because the hero has red hair.

Instead of feeling painfully shy and stupid around him, the heroine laughs at her own mistake and for once thinks life is worth living. Thus follows a few chapters of a lovely courtship, with the tension ratcheting up for the reader as more and more characters warn her off of the hero.

But they marry, have a honeymoon in Wales and move back to the Cotswolds where the hero's ex makes mischief. This OW is truly awful and the hero shuts down more and more as he retreats into the book he is writing. The heroine takes a job as a secretary to a lawyer who knows the hero and his ways. The heroine tries to talk to the hero about her doubts, but he gives her no reassurances.

It all comes to a head when the hero goes to Cornwall for some research and the lawyer tells her that the OW has followed him there. The heroine goes to the house in Wales where they honeymooned to think and the hero shows up right before the proverbial blizzard. Snowed in, they are at a stand off until the heroine gets sick, and the hero takes care of her. They finally talk and find that each has been jealous and doubtful and that they still love each other. HEA

The misunderstandings and angst do go on too long, and the hero's motivations for shutting down aren't spelled out - but the heroine is a delight and so was their courtship.

The ending is abrupt, but their reconciliation is sweet and funny and heartfelt. Here's a snippet I liked:



'When you sat there writing, that
first night--'

'Trying to write,' he interrupted her. 'I didn't have my mind on it. At the time I wanted to shake you.'

'Was that all?' She laughed softly. 'Well, I was lying there thinking how lovely it would be to hit you with the poker.'

'What stopped you?'

'I thought you might hit me back.'

His hands were still clasped behind her in an embrace of protective tenderness. 'Pity you didn't,' he said. 'If we'd come to blows it would have saved a lot of time, because if I'd laid hands on you it would have been in love—even if you had just taken a swing at me with the
poker. When I hold you I hold my life.'

For her too. 'Oh, my dear,' she said shakily. 'Oh, my dearest one.'

[Leona · Rating 5 out of 5]

A young woman suffers from low self-esteem and constantly feels inadequate next to her beautiful mother and her famous father. She views herself as the ugly duckling in the family. Her parents are pressuring her to marry a family friend so that they don't have to worry about her anymore.

She meets hero at a party and they fall pretty hard, pretty fast for one another. She really blossoms under is tender loving care and all of a sudden the ugly duckling is a swan. They marry within weeks of meeting each other and they are well on the way to the HEA, until nasty OW shows up and things start to unravel fast.

This one was filled with more tension than other Jane Donnelly books I have read. I typically don't care for the big misunderstanding that comes from believing hubby is messing around with OW. But this time it all felt very real to me and my heart went out to the heroine as she struggled against losing the love of her life.

For me, this one hit the spot.

[Grrrrace · Rating 4 out of 5]

While there are many familiar Donnelly tropes in this one (ugly duckling who blossoms under hero's attention; OW/OM drama; a tough hero who is softened by the likeable heroine--until he's not, anyway), this is a somewhat unusual "marriage in trouble" story from her. (I like both the HR and M&B covers for this one--the HR cover artist is Bern Smith, I'm pretty sure , and love that pop of her yellow blouse against the misty English background. The M&B cover is more "painterly" and the body language and hint of stormy seas actually suits the story better:

The hero and heroine meet and are instantly attracted/quickly in love. The fairytale beginning gets scuttled quickly by the heroine's insecurity and the pernicious OW's attempts to destabilize their marriage. The hero soon believes the heroine, 19 to his mid-30s, married him looking for a father figure (her own parents are self-involved and gorgeous and have always been dismissive of their changeling daughter), and he's a workaholic, so he doesn't offer the heroine much in the way of reassurance and is generally impatient and uncommunicative.

The naive heroine grows up a lot after her whirlwind marriage to the hero, gaining confidence and sophistication and discovering what fashion and makeup can do to transform an attractive, if understated, young woman into a beauty. But her past--the benign neglect and dismissive attitudes of her parents--and her lack of self confidence make her easy prey for the OW's manipulations, and she soon comes to believe that her husband thinks he has made a mistake marrying her and no longer loves her.

Donnelly generally doesn't glorify virginity; her heroines are often not virgins and it's brushed aside as normal (as it definitely was and is in modern times--most 20+ woman are not and weren't in the 70s/80s either). In this story, the heroine is very innocent and it's not really a plus for her or for the hero--he points out at one point that he's the only man she's ever known and it's not really a compliment, it's part of the problem. She's not sure what she feels or what she wants, too--at one point, she starts to accept the hero's assumptions that she got caught up in the sexual attraction between them and wonders if she would feel the same for other men.

The OW/OM drive a wedge between them, but it's the heroine's lack of confidence and the hero's impatience with it that cause most of the problems between them. The fact that they barely know one another is a factor too. Once they get over being so angry with one another and talk, most of the trouble between them is resolved. The time they spend together at a remote cabin helps too--their concern for one another overrides the distance between them (he takes care of her when she is sick; she understands and treats his need to work as the priority it is for him and is concerned for his wellbeing as well, despite trying to stay cold and distanced to avoid humiliating herself further).

"Stay married to me always," he tells her when they have resolved their differences, reconfirmed their love for one another, and put their rings back on. Real life is never far away in many of Donnelly's novels--the acknowledgment that marriage can take work and commitment, as well as love, and that happily EVER AFTER isn't a given is there, but it doesn't spoil the romance in this one, because the hero and heroine really do suit one another; there was some truth to the OW's observation that the hero wanted a wife who would not mind coming second to his work--the heroine takes his writing as seriously as he does and shows that she actually can fit into his life well with the confidence that comes from being loved.

The misunderstanding dragged on a bit but this was still a good one overall.

NB: I couldn't help comparing this a little to Robin Donald's Smoke on the Wind in that having read that story recently, it made me kind of sympathetic to the OW in Donnelly's story. In both stories, the hero's "mistress" (in Harley terms; "girlfriend," is what we'd really call them both) gets dumped when the hero meets a young, innocent girl and falls for her. In Donnelly's book, we are glad for the heroine and think the OW is a toad. In Donald's book, I seriously despised the girl the hero marries (the heroine's cousin) and feel terrible for the dumped girlfriend, Venetia, whom he cut out of his life so brutally. In Donnelly's book, the hero and the OW have broken up before he meets the heroine--but the hero and OW were involved for more than a year, and she was practically living at his apartment while they were together, and probably figured they'd be getting back together, only to find out that he married someone after only knowing her for a few weeks. So there's that. Funny how perceptions and judgment can vary.

[Megzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those stories that make you feel. It is well written with likeable characters. The first 1/3 is like a fairytale but you know there is a storm in horizon. She is the normal looking ignored daughter of two very selfish parents, a TV movie star mother who is only 37 but looks more like an older much more beautiful sister, and a athlete dad who is also very good looking. Their only daughter is not only looks normal but is very boring until she meets a famous author at one of her parent's party. The ugly duckling turns into a swan and remains a swan throughout the story. After three weeks of spending all possible time together, they get married. He has a very beautiful, sophisticated EX who is taking her time waiting to destroy their marriage...

My only problem was that he basically forgot who she really was.. an unwanted daughter with very low self steam. He allowed his ex, his friends and media to create a havoc in their life instead of letting her see what was really going on. At the end, I felt like he basically punished her for a good part of their marriage for caring for her and falling inlove with her. He had no family of his own, both parents passed a way when he was less than 5 and his grand father passed a way when he just turned 16, so I do feel it scared him to care so deeply for someone and he retaliated by driving her away.

[Aou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks StMargarets for your excellent review. 🙏

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Debby]

This book is for people with patience. And I don’t have any.

[Ellyn (Mrs. Darcy in my Dreams) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars⭐️⭐️⭐️this was such a sweet story!! I wanted to scream many times with frustration at the lack of communication!! Love these old vintage books

[Laur Laur · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ended up so much better than I expected, Philippa almost came across as almost manic in the first half, but where I thought she'd become a sad sack when trouble came, she stayed pretty strong. And really, how could Kern resist her? She was the most adorable, sweetest heroine ever. Kern on the other hand, was a bit of a douche at times, but I believed him when he thought he would lose some of her hero worship if he told her too much of his past. The girl barely had a backbone, but really, that's part of what made this work.

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly, this book really gets deep into an exploration of what makes the traditional virginal 1970s Harlequin heroine tick; our heroine here, Philippa, is the stereotypical ugly-duckling daughter of two attractive, charismatic, selfish parents, and gets the stereotypical meet-cute in which she falls, hard, for a handsome, important playwright. There are plenty of people implying that the whole romance is moving too quickly and Philippa is in for a rude awakening, but the characterization saves this - Philippa is believably intelligent and witty and self-aware in some very specific ways, and making a conscious choice to love and marry Kern (sigh, yes really) despite knowing that there could be some dark spots on the horizon. That said, she is all of twenty, and her basic plan going into the marriage is "don't bother my husband in any way so that he'll be okay with keeping me around" and that isn't really how adults can manage long-lasting relationships; her inability to use her words means that as people keep commenting on Kern's relationship with his ex (who was practically living with him until shortly before he met and married Philippa), Philippa can't help but think there's something to what they're saying.

Anyway, this part was interesting and believable and Philippa is a really endearing heroine in a way that a lot of heroines of this era aren't, because she's not stupid just very young and in love and not emotionally equipped for an adult relationship, but Kern is just kind of... there. Cardboard, one might even say. At various points he is obsessed with work, being pursued by his ex, and annoyed with his wife's constant presence - in none of these periods does it seem like he is actually concerned for his wife's feelings or whether she loves him, making the final showdown seem pretty unrealistic. Would he really care if she were having an affair with another man? It seems unlikely. At one point he tells Philippa that her real interest in the marriage was trying to find the safety and nurturing which she was missing from her actual parents, and he may not be wrong; so I found myself dubious, at the end, that the marriage would actually make it longer than another year or two.

[Bea Tea · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really good book, very well written and amazing characters - but I couldn't *settle* with it. I was on edge the whole time, and it made me feel tense and unhappy. Not what I want to be feeling when I dip into romance. I spent the first 3/4 feeling extremely anxious because you KNOW something horrible is about to happen - then the last 1/4 of the book is these two being suspicious and miserable, then out and out horrible to each other.

As far as drama goes its a banger - but I didn't enjoy a single heart flutter moment of romance joy because I kept waiting for shit to go wrong, then when it did it was just unpleasant to read.

[Neri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this. At first the writing was a little more stripped back than I was used to, but it's endearing and sweet and moves the story along.

I am smitten with the h and H. The h in particular is a perfect portrait of someone who's been belittled their whole life and copes any way they can. I really liked her. And the hero is a sweetheart. And I am a rarity who does like a (the b*tchier the better) OW, but I could have done without her and just read pages of their courtship.

[ANTC · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. This story had me hookeddd and the angst definitely hit. The drawbacks were:

- No steam

- The hero's 180 personality flip from warm and friendly to cold and abrasive came out of nowhere. I was left feeling like I didn't really know him.

- The conflict was resolved too quickly and with no epilogue, which is the case for many of these older books

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. However I enjoyed the last few chapters of the book more than the whole book. the first four chapters were a drag and it seemed to take forever for their romance to progress into marriage (as it indicated on the back description). Plus the heroine had serious issues with her self image and was full of jeolousy of her own mother it seemed.

[Xandri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ooh I loved this book. I cried for her when she said: "Do you believe that life evens out and happiness has to be paid for?" I was crying and whispering... you already paid my dear, you already paid.

[Feeling-bookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this author's writing style and the way she creates and develops her characters. This is among my favorite books by her.

[Anuradha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review by stmargarets says it all, I have nothing beyond that to add.
I completely echo her sentiments.

4 stars.

[Jason Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Left me wanting more.

[More Books Than Time · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. The story is more complex with subtle layers we don’t see in all harlequins.

[Diedre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long beginning establishing their relationship. Great build up of tension perpetrated by the friends and family, and of course the slimy OW. The doubt sower. Great HEA.

[Bless · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute story kinda rushed ending but nothing too exciting

[RomLibrary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Even after she and Kern McCabe were married Philippa felt she must be dreaming. Why should such an attractive man want to make her his wife? But she might have come to understand his love for her--if the glamorous Lilias Storr hadn't suddenly come back into Kern's life.

[Rongbu]

Enjoyed the first half of the book. The misunderstanding and self-imposed threat went on for a bit too long, and ending too quickly.

[Lefthandedbibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars