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Bellaire and Chalmers #2
Different Dream
He'd force her to see the truth
Lucilla wanted stardom--had since she was very small--and she was prepared to go to any lengths to get it. Or so she thought...
But the glamorous, sophisticated persona Lucilla presented to the world cloaked a lost and vulnerable little girl, and Nicholas Barrington saw right through her. He was neither bowled over by her beauty nor repelled by her attempts to be ruthless.
Suddenly she was faced with a situation she couldn't handle--one filled with real emotion and a desire for love.
Lucilla wanted stardom--had since she was very small--and she was prepared to go to any lengths to get it. Or so she thought...
But the glamorous, sophisticated persona Lucilla presented to the world cloaked a lost and vulnerable little girl, and Nicholas Barrington saw right through her. He was neither bowled over by her beauty nor repelled by her attempts to be ruthless.
Suddenly she was faced with a situation she couldn't handle--one filled with real emotion and a desire for love.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
82 people want to read
About the author
Frances Roding
7 books15 followersAKA Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Penny Halsall, Lydia Hitchcock, Penny Jordan, and Melinda Wright.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 16, 2017
Twenty-eight-year-old Lucilla comes from a famous acting family and the one thing she has wanted most in life is to become a popular actress. Since she resembles her late, famous actress mother Cressida, people assume Lucilla also inherited Cressida’s great acting talent. Lucilla has believed this for years, even though she has been told numerous times she really has no acting talent. Lucilla just assumes they are jealous and are lying to her. One day she meets Nick Barrington (35) who tells her she is wasting her life away trying to be an actress. He thinks she would make a very good agent. She has the connections in the acting world, knows people, and is intelligent. At first Lucilla ignores him, but the more she thinks about it, the more she believes what he says.
I really liked Nick. He was handsome, charming, caring, and thoughtful. And he was obviously crazy about Lucilla. It took a bit longer for me to warm up to Lucilla. At first she wasn’t likable at all. Lucilla was in the previous, connected book “Some Sort of Spell” (by Frances Roding aka Penny Jordan) and she was pretty bad in that one. Selfish, rude, unkind to that heroine (Beatrice)… But her character started to improve a bit halfway through this book and we got to find out some reasons why she acted the way she did.
I liked how both Nick and Lucilla had a lot in common. They both came from prestigious acting families, they both thought they could be actors, and they both found out they had no acting talent. They also had selfish and uncaring parents.
Lucilla and Nick had good chemistry. I enjoyed catching up with Beatrice and Elliott from the previous book “Some Sort of Spell”.
A wonderful and highly enjoyable read.
I really liked Nick. He was handsome, charming, caring, and thoughtful. And he was obviously crazy about Lucilla. It took a bit longer for me to warm up to Lucilla. At first she wasn’t likable at all. Lucilla was in the previous, connected book “Some Sort of Spell” (by Frances Roding aka Penny Jordan) and she was pretty bad in that one. Selfish, rude, unkind to that heroine (Beatrice)… But her character started to improve a bit halfway through this book and we got to find out some reasons why she acted the way she did.
I liked how both Nick and Lucilla had a lot in common. They both came from prestigious acting families, they both thought they could be actors, and they both found out they had no acting talent. They also had selfish and uncaring parents.
Lucilla and Nick had good chemistry. I enjoyed catching up with Beatrice and Elliott from the previous book “Some Sort of Spell”.
A wonderful and highly enjoyable read.
January 10, 2017
Re A Different Dream - PJ's Alter Ego Frances Roding makes an appearance here, this time with an interesting role reversal of an h behaving badly and the warm, kind, caring, nurturing H.
ADD is actually a sequel to the HR Some Sort of Spell, but it isn't necessary to read SSoS before this one. In fact I recommend you do NOT read SSoS first, cause the h in ADD is the very evil wanna be OW in SSoS and you will be even less empathetic to her than you are probably going to be while reading this one. This woman behaves very badly indeed.
The h is half daughter of a legendary actor/actress couple. Her mother was a world renowned actress who married the h's father in a moment of madness. The h's father was NOT an actor, he was a business tycoon. The mother then divorced the h's father and reconnected with her previous world famous actor hubby. She took the h along to join the rest of the family which includes various actor and actress siblings and Beatrice (who is the h from Some Sort of Spell). Bea is the epitome of mothering kindness and would never dream of stepping on stage, for which she was roundly martyred for it in her own book until this h's step-brother swept Bea up and carried her off on his white horse.
Naturally this h is the epitome of HP blonde OW glamour and determined to step into her now deceased mother's crown. She also has a ton of jealousy issues over Beatrice and her step-brother's relationship and the other various siblings, especially one brother, are pot stirrer's extraordinaire's.
This one starts with our h determined to get a particular role from a producer. She is 28 and her manipulations, blackmailings and intrigues are gossip legend in the English theatrical/drama community. This h has no problem accusing a producer of rape if she thinks it will get her a starring role. Interestingly, PJ keeps her a virgin ice queen, so this h is more a tease than a tart.
The h is working her wiles, but instead of her target, she runs into his brother in law. The brother in law made his move to run interference because the h isn't right for the part, his brother in law is notoriously faithful to his sister and the h literally has no talent. The brother in law offers the h a job in his recently acquired theatrical agency as an agent instead. Amazingly, the h does have a talent for getting the right actors into the right parts and she must have inherited some of her father's business savvy, cause she knows the art of the deal as well. The brother in law is also gobsmacked with love when he sees the h.
So even tho the h isn't the most pleasant person or the most scrupulous, like so many HP h's who had to drink the kool aid and try to reform their badly behaving HP destined true love, the H goes ahead and takes that fateful drink. Now he has to get the h to at least a modicum of decorous and decent behavior. This is going to involve a lot of angst and probably some tears are going to be shed along the way -just whose remains to be seen.
So the H and h start doing drama agent stuff and the h is doing well but the H seems to really admire her half sister Bea, and so all the pain that the h inflicted on Bea in the previous book is reflected right back at the h in this one. Who said Karma wasn't a witch?
As the h gets more unhappy that the H is liking her half sister more than her own blonde self and the jealously quota is rising higher with each page, we get a moment of sympathy for the h who was locked into dark cupboards as a child and her famous actress mother either did not know or did not care.
The H cares tho, especially when the h has a dramatic PTSD moment when she gets trapped in a priest hole while scouting out a Tudor house for a film location and the H has to rescue her.
We get more insight into the h's bad behavior and it is the standard HP H line of she just needed to be loved as a child and wasn't. The H is actually the one that best understands her pain, because there was doubts that the man his famous mother was married to was his actual father and the H had his off the rails bit when he was a teenager - until his grandfather took him in hand.
The h did not have any empathetic but strong family members to sort her out when she was younger, so she has to learn to grow up now. Which she kinda does until her jealousy and the H's fear that she is still playing games causes a major relationship rift.
Then the H, in a huge leap of faith, throws his heart out there and tells the h he loves her. Since she has made some efforts to be a nicer and more upright person - which is displayed by her changing her makeup and her clothing style, and her finally telling the malicious gossip spreading other brother off in an assertive but positive manner - the h reacts in the typical h fashion of declaring her love back and we arrive at the big HEA and it really is believable.
We can also see the embryonic prototype for future PJ h's in the books Power Play and Silver by the progression of the h in this book. This h even winds up running the H's theatrical agency while he goes back to his regular conglomerate Honcho job - tho the h's in the latter two books are way more developed than what PJ/FR had the page count for here and they are a ton more likable.
What truly make this book readable and literally saves the story, because the h is barely tolerable even by the end, is the H.
He is the epitome of kindness and love and it a very interesting role switch combined with sheer story telling talent that allows the H to keep his HP manliness, yet help the h to become a decent and almost likable person by the end. I can't say that I really wanted this woman to get an HEA. I was very, very biased from the previous book. However in this case I can be happy that the H is happy, and I NEVER thought I'd be saying that in HPlandia.
For further reading in this little mini-series, look for the FR HP's A Law Unto Himself and Gentle Deception as well as the aforementioned Some Sort of Spell. All of the other books have much more conventional HP h's and aren't so intensely character analytical as this one is.
ADD is actually a sequel to the HR Some Sort of Spell, but it isn't necessary to read SSoS before this one. In fact I recommend you do NOT read SSoS first, cause the h in ADD is the very evil wanna be OW in SSoS and you will be even less empathetic to her than you are probably going to be while reading this one. This woman behaves very badly indeed.
The h is half daughter of a legendary actor/actress couple. Her mother was a world renowned actress who married the h's father in a moment of madness. The h's father was NOT an actor, he was a business tycoon. The mother then divorced the h's father and reconnected with her previous world famous actor hubby. She took the h along to join the rest of the family which includes various actor and actress siblings and Beatrice (who is the h from Some Sort of Spell). Bea is the epitome of mothering kindness and would never dream of stepping on stage, for which she was roundly martyred for it in her own book until this h's step-brother swept Bea up and carried her off on his white horse.
Naturally this h is the epitome of HP blonde OW glamour and determined to step into her now deceased mother's crown. She also has a ton of jealousy issues over Beatrice and her step-brother's relationship and the other various siblings, especially one brother, are pot stirrer's extraordinaire's.
This one starts with our h determined to get a particular role from a producer. She is 28 and her manipulations, blackmailings and intrigues are gossip legend in the English theatrical/drama community. This h has no problem accusing a producer of rape if she thinks it will get her a starring role. Interestingly, PJ keeps her a virgin ice queen, so this h is more a tease than a tart.
The h is working her wiles, but instead of her target, she runs into his brother in law. The brother in law made his move to run interference because the h isn't right for the part, his brother in law is notoriously faithful to his sister and the h literally has no talent. The brother in law offers the h a job in his recently acquired theatrical agency as an agent instead. Amazingly, the h does have a talent for getting the right actors into the right parts and she must have inherited some of her father's business savvy, cause she knows the art of the deal as well. The brother in law is also gobsmacked with love when he sees the h.
So even tho the h isn't the most pleasant person or the most scrupulous, like so many HP h's who had to drink the kool aid and try to reform their badly behaving HP destined true love, the H goes ahead and takes that fateful drink. Now he has to get the h to at least a modicum of decorous and decent behavior. This is going to involve a lot of angst and probably some tears are going to be shed along the way -just whose remains to be seen.
So the H and h start doing drama agent stuff and the h is doing well but the H seems to really admire her half sister Bea, and so all the pain that the h inflicted on Bea in the previous book is reflected right back at the h in this one. Who said Karma wasn't a witch?
As the h gets more unhappy that the H is liking her half sister more than her own blonde self and the jealously quota is rising higher with each page, we get a moment of sympathy for the h who was locked into dark cupboards as a child and her famous actress mother either did not know or did not care.
The H cares tho, especially when the h has a dramatic PTSD moment when she gets trapped in a priest hole while scouting out a Tudor house for a film location and the H has to rescue her.
We get more insight into the h's bad behavior and it is the standard HP H line of she just needed to be loved as a child and wasn't. The H is actually the one that best understands her pain, because there was doubts that the man his famous mother was married to was his actual father and the H had his off the rails bit when he was a teenager - until his grandfather took him in hand.
The h did not have any empathetic but strong family members to sort her out when she was younger, so she has to learn to grow up now. Which she kinda does until her jealousy and the H's fear that she is still playing games causes a major relationship rift.
Then the H, in a huge leap of faith, throws his heart out there and tells the h he loves her. Since she has made some efforts to be a nicer and more upright person - which is displayed by her changing her makeup and her clothing style, and her finally telling the malicious gossip spreading other brother off in an assertive but positive manner - the h reacts in the typical h fashion of declaring her love back and we arrive at the big HEA and it really is believable.
We can also see the embryonic prototype for future PJ h's in the books Power Play and Silver by the progression of the h in this book. This h even winds up running the H's theatrical agency while he goes back to his regular conglomerate Honcho job - tho the h's in the latter two books are way more developed than what PJ/FR had the page count for here and they are a ton more likable.
What truly make this book readable and literally saves the story, because the h is barely tolerable even by the end, is the H.
He is the epitome of kindness and love and it a very interesting role switch combined with sheer story telling talent that allows the H to keep his HP manliness, yet help the h to become a decent and almost likable person by the end. I can't say that I really wanted this woman to get an HEA. I was very, very biased from the previous book. However in this case I can be happy that the H is happy, and I NEVER thought I'd be saying that in HPlandia.
For further reading in this little mini-series, look for the FR HP's A Law Unto Himself and Gentle Deception as well as the aforementioned Some Sort of Spell. All of the other books have much more conventional HP h's and aren't so intensely character analytical as this one is.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 7, 2016
Another good one in this series that started with Some Sort of Spell. In this one, the evil half-sister who so tormented the Cinderella heroine of Some Sort of Spell gets her own book.
And she is not likable at the beginning, not all, but the H sees a lot of his vulnerabilities of growing up in a famous family and feeling unloved that he pursues her. First he pursues her to convince her to give up her acting dreams to become a casting director/agent in his new company - and later he pursues her to establish a lasting relationship. Emphasis on lasting - he really does want her for the long haul.
Like all bad girl tropes, the story requires a patient and wise hero. This one delivers. Really enjoyable.
And she is not likable at the beginning, not all, but the H sees a lot of his vulnerabilities of growing up in a famous family and feeling unloved that he pursues her. First he pursues her to convince her to give up her acting dreams to become a casting director/agent in his new company - and later he pursues her to establish a lasting relationship. Emphasis on lasting - he really does want her for the long haul.
Like all bad girl tropes, the story requires a patient and wise hero. This one delivers. Really enjoyable.
April 30, 2013
Maybe 4.5 stars -- I really liked this one. I think I especially enjoy spoiled, flawed heroines -- I just really like it when a hero falls in love with a heroine despite her flaws. This one had some good angst and a great resolution. Really enjoyed it.
April 1, 2024
He'd force her to see the truth
Lucilla wanted stardom--had since she was very small--and she was prepared to go to any lengths to get it. Or so she thought...
But the glamorous, sophisticated persona Lucilla presented to the world cloaked a lost and vulnerable little girl, and Nicholas Barrington saw right through her. He was neither bowled over by her beauty nor repelled by her attempts to be ruthless.
Suddenly she was faced with a situation she couldn't handle--one filled with real emotion and a desire for love.
Lucilla wanted stardom--had since she was very small--and she was prepared to go to any lengths to get it. Or so she thought...
But the glamorous, sophisticated persona Lucilla presented to the world cloaked a lost and vulnerable little girl, and Nicholas Barrington saw right through her. He was neither bowled over by her beauty nor repelled by her attempts to be ruthless.
Suddenly she was faced with a situation she couldn't handle--one filled with real emotion and a desire for love.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews