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Pennington #3
The Perfect Solution
夫のポールが自動車事故で亡くなった。しかもひとりではなく、愛人ローザといっしょに…。ショックに打ちのめされるジョアンナの元へローザの弟マークが、姉の臨終の言葉を伝えるためにやってきた。ローザの遺言は、ポールとの間にできた子どもポリーをジョアンナに引き取ってほしいというものだった。ジョアンナは今日まで、愛人の存在などまったく知らなかった。まして子どもがいるなんて、考えてもみなかった。それなのに…。混乱する彼女に、マークは言った。「あなたが見すごしていることがひとつあります」。
- GenresHarlequin RomanceRomance
Hardcover
Published March 13, 1992
31 people want to read
About the author
Catherine George
443 books73 followersDeirdre Matthews was born in a village on the Welsh-English border, where the public library featured largely in her life. Her mother, who looked upon literature as a basic necessity of life, fervently encouraged her passion for reading, little knowing it would one day motivate her daughter into writing her first novel.
At 18, she met a future Engineer, who had set in a pendant a gold sovereign, that his grandmother put in his hand when he was born, and she have never taken off since. After their marriage he swept her off to Brazil, where he worked as Chief Engineer of a large gold-mining operation in the mountains of Minas Gerais, a setting which later provided a very popular background for several of her early novels. Nine happy years passed there before the question of their small son's education decided their return to Britain. Not long afterward a daughter was born, and for a time she lived a fulfilled life as a wife and mother who always made time to read, especially in the bath!
Her husband's job took him abroad again, to Portugal, West Africa, and various countries of the Middle East, but this time she stayed home with the family. And spent a lot of lonely evenings in between the reunions when her husband came home on leave. "Instead of reading other people's novels all the time," he suggested one day, "why not have a shot at writing one yourself?" So she did.
But first she took a creative writing course. Encouraged by the other students' enthusiasm for her contributions, she decided to try her hand at romance, and read countless Mills & Boon novels as research before writing one herself. Her first novel was accepted in 1982 as Catherine George, which Romantic Times voted best of its genre for that year, along with more than sixty written since.
These days son and daughter have fled the nest, but they return with loving regularity to where she and her husband back for good from his travels live, with Prince, the most recent Labrador, in a house built at the end of Victoria's reign in four acres of garden on the cliffs between the beautiful Wye Valley and the River Severn.
At 18, she met a future Engineer, who had set in a pendant a gold sovereign, that his grandmother put in his hand when he was born, and she have never taken off since. After their marriage he swept her off to Brazil, where he worked as Chief Engineer of a large gold-mining operation in the mountains of Minas Gerais, a setting which later provided a very popular background for several of her early novels. Nine happy years passed there before the question of their small son's education decided their return to Britain. Not long afterward a daughter was born, and for a time she lived a fulfilled life as a wife and mother who always made time to read, especially in the bath!
Her husband's job took him abroad again, to Portugal, West Africa, and various countries of the Middle East, but this time she stayed home with the family. And spent a lot of lonely evenings in between the reunions when her husband came home on leave. "Instead of reading other people's novels all the time," he suggested one day, "why not have a shot at writing one yourself?" So she did.
But first she took a creative writing course. Encouraged by the other students' enthusiasm for her contributions, she decided to try her hand at romance, and read countless Mills & Boon novels as research before writing one herself. Her first novel was accepted in 1982 as Catherine George, which Romantic Times voted best of its genre for that year, along with more than sixty written since.
These days son and daughter have fled the nest, but they return with loving regularity to where she and her husband back for good from his travels live, with Prince, the most recent Labrador, in a house built at the end of Victoria's reign in four acres of garden on the cliffs between the beautiful Wye Valley and the River Severn.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 6, 2019
A terrifying tsunami of tackiness.
When she was in her mid-twenties, heroine married a social climbing man two decades her senior in order to save ye olde, crumbling, ancestral manor that had belonged to her aristocratic family for two hundred years. The heroine's family was long on pedigree but short on money so they pimped her out to the wealthy social parvenu to inject some much needed coins into their illustrious but empty coffers.
The husband knew the score and was fine with a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience. He was rich but wanted a trophy society wife to give him access to social echelons that his money alone could not buy. Plus, he wanted a young, beautiful bride of good stock to provide him with heirs who could solidify his grand dreams of founding his own dynasty.
The marriage was still in the honeymoon phase when the young bride had a riding accident and miscarried her baby.
In an unfathomable rage, her husband destroyed the poor, beloved horse who had belonged to her since she was a girl. He then left his poor, young bride after learning that not only she had lost the baby but that she wouldn't be able to have more children in the future due to her accident.
Unbeknownst to the heroine, her husband went on to live with his mistress for the next four years, impregnating her and installing her and the love child in a cottage in the country.
When the story begins, husband and mistress have crashed their car and died. The heroine finally found out what her husband had been up to, including fathering a love child.
As a final insult from beyond the grave, the only thing that the vile husband left heroine in his will is a painting of a horse that looked similar to the beloved one that he had destroyed after her riding accident. He left everything else of his vast money and assets to the love child.
The day of the funeral, the mistress' brother has the amazing nerve to show up on heroine's doorstep with the love child in tow and bluntly inform her that it was his sister's death bed wish that the heroine raise the love child. The mistress supposedly felt guilty about being the other woman, admired the heroine from afar for her class and kindness, and felt sorry for her infertile condition. She concluded that giving her the love child to raise would atone for everything else. HA! Obviously, tackiness runs in this family.
The mistress' brother is the hero of the piece and he is a real piece of shit. Entitlement galore. Not only does he think it is ok to place the burden of emotional guilt on the poor heroine, forcing her to care for a child who is the symbol and daily reminder of everything that went wrong with her life, but he also tries to bribe/threaten her with making her financial status difficult if she refuses the responsibility. He arrogantly holds the purse strings because he is the legal guardian for the little heiress to her daddy's money and assets.
He also has the gall of criticizing heroine for being a parasitic, jobless, gold-digging hall of famer who married for money and status. This guy sees absolutely no irony in shaming the heroine when his own sister had no qualms being the mistress of a very married, very morally bankrupt man who abandoned his wife after a painful and traumatic miscarriage!
To add insult to injury, he insists on putting a clause in a legal contract that will enable him to retrieve the love child from heroine's custody if she ever remarries.
Finally, he dumps the love child with heroine with a parting shot that he will wreak havoc on her if she so much as harms a hair on her little head.
After all this, the pathetic heroine fell in love almost instantly with this character. Whaaaaaa???!!!!!
What the hell did he have that she fell in love with? The guy was vile, shameless and entitled and he remained that way til the end.
The author wants me to buy an HEA because the hero's apparently magical penis managed to impregnate the heroine's tundra-like womb against the odds and they get married in the end, but I wanted to barf!
When she was in her mid-twenties, heroine married a social climbing man two decades her senior in order to save ye olde, crumbling, ancestral manor that had belonged to her aristocratic family for two hundred years. The heroine's family was long on pedigree but short on money so they pimped her out to the wealthy social parvenu to inject some much needed coins into their illustrious but empty coffers.
The husband knew the score and was fine with a mutually beneficial marriage of convenience. He was rich but wanted a trophy society wife to give him access to social echelons that his money alone could not buy. Plus, he wanted a young, beautiful bride of good stock to provide him with heirs who could solidify his grand dreams of founding his own dynasty.
The marriage was still in the honeymoon phase when the young bride had a riding accident and miscarried her baby.
In an unfathomable rage, her husband destroyed the poor, beloved horse who had belonged to her since she was a girl. He then left his poor, young bride after learning that not only she had lost the baby but that she wouldn't be able to have more children in the future due to her accident.
Unbeknownst to the heroine, her husband went on to live with his mistress for the next four years, impregnating her and installing her and the love child in a cottage in the country.
When the story begins, husband and mistress have crashed their car and died. The heroine finally found out what her husband had been up to, including fathering a love child.
As a final insult from beyond the grave, the only thing that the vile husband left heroine in his will is a painting of a horse that looked similar to the beloved one that he had destroyed after her riding accident. He left everything else of his vast money and assets to the love child.
The day of the funeral, the mistress' brother has the amazing nerve to show up on heroine's doorstep with the love child in tow and bluntly inform her that it was his sister's death bed wish that the heroine raise the love child. The mistress supposedly felt guilty about being the other woman, admired the heroine from afar for her class and kindness, and felt sorry for her infertile condition. She concluded that giving her the love child to raise would atone for everything else. HA! Obviously, tackiness runs in this family.
The mistress' brother is the hero of the piece and he is a real piece of shit. Entitlement galore. Not only does he think it is ok to place the burden of emotional guilt on the poor heroine, forcing her to care for a child who is the symbol and daily reminder of everything that went wrong with her life, but he also tries to bribe/threaten her with making her financial status difficult if she refuses the responsibility. He arrogantly holds the purse strings because he is the legal guardian for the little heiress to her daddy's money and assets.
He also has the gall of criticizing heroine for being a parasitic, jobless, gold-digging hall of famer who married for money and status. This guy sees absolutely no irony in shaming the heroine when his own sister had no qualms being the mistress of a very married, very morally bankrupt man who abandoned his wife after a painful and traumatic miscarriage!
To add insult to injury, he insists on putting a clause in a legal contract that will enable him to retrieve the love child from heroine's custody if she ever remarries.
Finally, he dumps the love child with heroine with a parting shot that he will wreak havoc on her if she so much as harms a hair on her little head.
After all this, the pathetic heroine fell in love almost instantly with this character. Whaaaaaa???!!!!!
What the hell did he have that she fell in love with? The guy was vile, shameless and entitled and he remained that way til the end.
The author wants me to buy an HEA because the hero's apparently magical penis managed to impregnate the heroine's tundra-like womb against the odds and they get married in the end, but I wanted to barf!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 26, 2020
I liked the interaction between the heroine and the orphaned daughter of her husband and his mistress. I wasn't as fond of the hero. In fact I find most of Catherine George's heroes a bit too much, much too full of themselves and not very likable.
April 4, 2023
Sort of unbelievable premise. Liked the domesticity, H, and Polly.
September 18, 2025
enjoyed this book nice story.
November 21, 2012
28/Oct/13
Don't remember much? But since I gave it 2 stars..I guess didn't like it much.
Don't remember much? But since I gave it 2 stars..I guess didn't like it much.
December 11, 2013
It was all a bit of an enigma and contradiction. Good however.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews