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Surrender #3
Paradise Lost
Paraiso Perdido by Robyn Donald released on Apr 24, 1996 is available now for purchase.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
1 person is currently reading
56 people want to read
About the author
Robyn Donald
448 books148 followersRobyn Elaine Donald was born on 14 August 1940 in Northland, New Zealand. She was the oldest child in her family, and as a child, she thrilled her four sisters and one brother with bloodcurdling adventure tales, usually very like the latest book she'd borrowed from the library.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 7, 2018
A heroine-centric story that promises her third romance will be the charm, but not before some angst.
Artist and sequel-bait heroine is on RD's favorite Polynesian island of Fala'isi to recover from her divorce to a cheating milquetoast and to pursue her career in earnest. After her fiance cheated on her when she was twenty-two, she then married the wrong guy only to be abducted as a sex slave in the Middle East. Girlfriend is just ready for some peace and quiet.
Enter hunky international lawyer with a secret and an attitude. ***Don't read spoilers if you want to keep the impact of the story. **** The two dance around each other until they finally succumb to passion after he rescues her from a would-be rapist. Heroine is ready to be a long-distance girlfriend if that's what it takes to have great sex. Hero is not so sure.
When the hero's secret comes to light the heroine vows to never see him again and pursues her work in earnest.
Both pine for each other for months.
How you feel about "seizing the day" and "soul mates" will determine how you judge the hero's actions in light of his secret. I wanted a happy ending for the heroine's sake and not the hero's. Hero was stupid to . Since hero was in a predicament of his own making, I didn't feel the least bit of sympathy for him. Like heroine said, by the hero keeping his secret, *her* choice was taken away.
RD is never afraid to play the "life is messy" card and she does it here. It was an interesting read and I liked the heroine and I'm glad she got the man she wanted.
Artist and sequel-bait heroine is on RD's favorite Polynesian island of Fala'isi to recover from her divorce to a cheating milquetoast and to pursue her career in earnest. After her fiance cheated on her when she was twenty-two, she then married the wrong guy only to be abducted as a sex slave in the Middle East. Girlfriend is just ready for some peace and quiet.
Enter hunky international lawyer with a secret and an attitude. ***Don't read spoilers if you want to keep the impact of the story. **** The two dance around each other until they finally succumb to passion after he rescues her from a would-be rapist. Heroine is ready to be a long-distance girlfriend if that's what it takes to have great sex. Hero is not so sure.
When the hero's secret comes to light the heroine vows to never see him again and pursues her work in earnest.
Both pine for each other for months.
How you feel about "seizing the day" and "soul mates" will determine how you judge the hero's actions in light of his secret. I wanted a happy ending for the heroine's sake and not the hero's. Hero was stupid to . Since hero was in a predicament of his own making, I didn't feel the least bit of sympathy for him. Like heroine said, by the hero keeping his secret, *her* choice was taken away.
RD is never afraid to play the "life is messy" card and she does it here. It was an interesting read and I liked the heroine and I'm glad she got the man she wanted.
April 23, 2019
Re Paradise Lost - Robyn Donald's final book of the Surrender Series
*** Words of Warning Here - This book is well done, but it is very controversial and this will be a complete spoilerization. Part of the huge intense impact of this book is the big seekrit that doesn't come out until the very last part of the book. If you want the shock effect, stop reading this now. But if you need to know what you are getting into, come along on our Fantastic HPlandia Voyage.***
This book concerns Blair, the BFF of Tegan, (who was the h of Pagan Surrender,) and it is two years after her abduction from El Amir. Blair is now divorced from the whiny nematode pustule Snot Sniffer who cheated on her after she had an understandable mini breakdown from her time in captivity.
To make things even worse, the Snot Sniffer ex got his little gutter pop bimbo pregnant. After forcing Blair to sell out her stake in her interior decorating firm for his half of the marital assets he never contributed to, the announcement of his new child was an utter slap in the face to Blair.
Snot Sniffer had told Blair for the five years of their marriage that he did not want kids ever and even tho she did, she went along with Snot Sniffer.
(Which turns out to be the right decision. Snot Sniffer is lost to the Hplandia mists, so let us all hope Snot Sniffer is miserable and his teen gutter pop bimbo turns into a nagging shrew who dumps his hiney for a Rugby player.)
So Blair has some issues. Not the least of which is overcoming the trauma of being abducted to be a confined sex slave and being given forced instruction in that particular skill set, with no one caring whether she wanted to be there or not.
Blair was not molested, but she wasn't given any kind of say on anything either and that loss of freedom and control over her own person was more devastating than a physical attack. (RD demonstrates that vividly with a just a few sentences too.)
She hasn't been intimate with anyone since her abduction and she isn't sure she will ever be. Blair believes she just has bad taste in men. Her first love was wonderful, until they got engaged and he still couldn't stop chasing anything that wiggled and she had to dump his cheatin' hiney.
Then she married Snot Sniffer years later, cause she thought he was kind and safe. Until he found his own little wiggle worm who wouldn't say no when he wanted to get a groove on and since Blair did say no in the aftermath of her trauma, he just moved on to his new sub-sewer location.
But Blair is a smart lady and she got some therapy to help and now she is setting out on a new path in life. Blair has taken up Art and doing pretty great at it. When the Prime Minister of New Zealand bought one of her paintings, he had a word with Grant and Tamsyn Chapman of Dilemma in Paradise and Blair found herself in a beach house on Fala' isi, watching the waves roll in and really creating in awesome artistic painting style.
Blair sells her paintings at the local upscale resort and has made lots of friends. She has a nice semi -flirty relaxed freindship with the resort manager, who is fresh off the divorce wars himself, but overall she is just painting and healing and appreciating her life.
Then Hugh Bannatyne shows up. He is a good friend of the Chapman's, who are defacto island royalty, and Hugh is a bit enigmatic. Blair and Hugh's eyeballs meet across the room and we all feel the blast of the Lurve Force Mojo. But this is RD's HPlandia and nothing ever is easy in her stories.
Hugh is a loner and very, very self contained. He strides around like he owns the universe and while he is exquisitely polite, he is also rather lofty and disdainful of lesser mortals than him. Blair is a bit disconcerted when she doesn't get the usual male appreciation looks for her red gold hair and statuesque curves, instead Hugh looks at her like she might be a bug he has to step on.
Blair is able to laugh at herself tho and a team of NZ Rugby players are relaxing at the resort, so Blair can't complain about a lack of admirers. Blair and Hugh start to circle each other like wary cats looking for their own sand box.
Hugh buys a few of Blair's paintings, but Hugh's ultra controlled persona and his way of dismissing a person without saying a word lead to some supremely uncomfortable feelings on Blair's part.
Hugh is a red-headed fascination for Blair, but he is also the epitome of the original uber controlled Ice Man and it isn't until one of the Rugby players thinks that No Means Yes and attacks Blair that the two of them really connect. Hugh saves Blair from the drunken trouble maker and he carries her home and cuddles her up when she almost goes into shock.
Blair gets a wild hair and a big lurve club moment ensues. Huge runs off like a big baby the next day, but Blair is confused and more than a little bewildered. Her therapist told her she would get her Mojo Motor back, but Blair has never felt anything like what she and Hugh put into motion between them in her life.
Still, Blair is a master at endurance and she gets on with her art and starts doing deeper and more meaningful pieces. Then Hugh comes back, he isn't too happy about the heat the two them generate, but he wants it more than anything he has ever wanted in his life and the two of them start an affair. Blair avoids the relationship discussion and lets Hugh move into her beach house instead of staying at the resort.
However, even in the midst of wild attraction and the beginnings of a real mental and emotional connection, Blair is determined to be independent. She may be a mistress, Hugh only makes sporadic visits in between business trips, but she certainly isn't going to dedicate her life to following Hugh's dictates.
Blair and Hugh are having good times and passionate lovings, until Blair takes Hugh to one of her remote mountain painting sites and Hugh tries to tell her she can't continue to go there. Blair is assertive and nicely tells Hugh to go jump. Then she almost has a bad fall, but Hugh catches her and this near miss triggers Hugh to start to withdraw again. Hugh gets remoter and remoter and we are back with supercilious iceman we started with.
Later that night, Hugh announces he is leaving. Blair thinks it is because he did not get his own way. Blair isn't too happy about the situation and her yearning, burning need for the physicality of Hugh is very strong.
After a brief contemplation of the ethics of essentially acting like an HP H and just taking what she wants, Blair decides to put all her harem skillz to work on a sleeping Hugh and there is a major Blair seduction with Hugh just hanging on for the ride. (It was a quite unique turn around from the usual H Lurve Mojo Force Lurve Explosion and RD did a good job of it.)
The next morning Hugh is gone and Blair is a bit ashamed of her midnight pouncing roofie Mojo moves, but life does go on and soon Blair finds herself in a dire situation. Blair took a little boat out to one of the mini islands around Fala'isi to paint. Unfortunately, the ground she was standing on collapsed and she twisted her ankle badly and then she knocked herself out when her head hit the tree trunk she was next to.
Blair was unconscious and unable to move for several hours before she was found and eventually she wakes up in hospital. The man she borrowed the boat from finally came to rescue her and she was pretty badly dehydrated and ill. Blair has missing Hugh mopey moments and a lonely hospital recovery. Then Hugh shows up, frantic.
Tamsyn Chapman called him and Hugh rushed over to be by Blair's side because he just cannot deny his immense love for her any more. Blair is relieved and happy, cause she finally figures out that she loves Hugh back and the two of them go back to Blair's place for a little loverly bliss.
All seems to be well and then the bomb drops. Hugh gets a phone call and it is some kind of emergency. Blair helps him pack and wants to see him off at the airport, but Hugh bluntly tells her that she can't, his wife just had a stroke and he doesn't want her accompanying him.
Blair is in utter shock and devastation. Blair did wonder if he was married at the beginning, but the way Hugh is portrayed in the earlier chapters makes both Blair and the reader believe that Hugh is just a workaholic driven international lawyer and since he promised fidelity to Blair for the length of their affair, his being married comes as a big shock.
(Also, RD has party scenes at the Chapman's home where there is obvious adultery between two background couples going on and neither Blair nor the Chapman's are very pleased. So Blair and the reader naturally assumed that if Tamsyn, who was very pure and virtuous in her own book, wasn't making married man comments to Blair, then Hugh was a free man.)
Hugh comes back after a few days, his wife has died. But Blair sends him off, she knows for sure she has horrible taste in men now and she thinks her love life is now officially at an end. RD and Hugh try to convince both Blair and the reader that we must have known Hugh had a wife, but Blair is too angry to even give face time to that statement.
Hugh goes off again and Blair gets to paint and have more mopey moments. Tamsyn Chapman tries to chide Blair for not even letting Hugh explain things, but Blair bluntly relates her cheating ex history and explains that the first she knew of any wife was the phone call Hugh got right before he had to do an emergency exit.
Tamsyn is a little witchy that Blair won't give Hugh a chance, but she is only a minor character and we don't have to listen to her. Blair continues on with things, until an Auckland art gallery owner lady comes to Fala'isi and wants to show Blair's work. Blair explains that she might be booed off the walls, as everyone in Auckland knows her as an interior decorator, but the gallery lady is unfazed.
So Blair goes to Auckland and stays with Tegan, who is now massively preggers, and Tegan's H Kieran. We find out that Kieran's whacked out sister Andrea is now married to her boyfriend from Pagan Surrender and that Tegan actually gave her a job in the decorating firm. Apparently Andrea has reformed from her whacktastic trouble-making in the prior two books and is now doing a good job on the design front.
Blair gets her showing, it is a huge success. Her and BFF Tegan have a nice heart to heart and Tegan offers to go do bodily damage to Hugh, once she gets over being preggers. Blair goes into the gallery early the next day and over hears Hugh and the gallery owner talking about her. Blair flips out, cause she thinks Hugh is manipulating things again and she takes off.
Hugh chases her back to Tegan's and breaks down Blair's bedroom door when she won't let him in. Hugh and Blair are alone in the house and the whole reconciliation scene begins. After a boudoir bouncing moment, Hugh explains that the gallery owner is his cousin and saw the paintings that Hugh had bought and wanted to know who the painter was, so Hugh pointed her to Blair.
Hugh also explains that he liked his wife when he first met her seven years earlier. The two of them were in the same social circle and she was nice and good in bed and would be a great mom, so they got engaged. It wasn't a huge, passionate romance, but they were compatible and Hugh felt things would be okay.
Then Hugh's fiancee had stroke a week before the wedding and Hugh went ahead and married her, the lady thought that marriage would help her recover. But it was not to be and she only deteriorated further, becoming completely bedridden. Hugh and the lady had no chance for any type of regular marriage, but Hugh stayed faithful and loyal. Until he met Blair and got knocked off his feet and his egotistic, self righteous pedestal.
He tried to fight it, but the HP Lurve Force Mojo rules all and eventually they just had to come together. He knew Blair's views on loyalty, so he deliberately omitted any hints he was married in order to at least have a little small spot of happiness in his lonely, barren life.
Blair reluctantly admits that if he had explained his situation earlier, she probably still would have become his lover and the two of them are renewing their love declarations when Tegan walks in.
She is shocked by the broken down door and laughs when she finds Blair and Hugh in bed and happy. Blair laughs too at Tegan's amused shock and it was nice to see RD write such a positive friendship bond between the two ladies.
Then Tegan tells Hugh that Kieran was wondering if he should go hunt him down and she welcomes Hugh to the family, but can they please call Kieran and then get her to the hospital, cause the baby is on the way.
We get a cute little epilogue where Tegan had a baby boy, Kieran is awestruck over his wife and new son and Hugh and Blair are planning on getting married within the week. Then they plan to get right on the mini-Hugh and mini-Blair production for another intense RD HP outing HEA.
This one was really well done. Tho I am not sure Hugh deserved the fourth chance and the forgiveness at the end. Plus, I really was a bit appalled that Tamsyn voices the opinion that Hugh should have never married his fiance when she had the first stroke and that other minor characters in the book felt the same way.
Blair was the true star of this one, her recovery and her discovery of her own path in life was very well done. So if you can stomach the H married to another woman trope, this is a really good day's voyage in HPlandia. It is well worth the time spent reading it for the sheer intensity and passion and utterly fabulous trainwreckiness, with a very well done HEA.
*** Words of Warning Here - This book is well done, but it is very controversial and this will be a complete spoilerization. Part of the huge intense impact of this book is the big seekrit that doesn't come out until the very last part of the book. If you want the shock effect, stop reading this now. But if you need to know what you are getting into, come along on our Fantastic HPlandia Voyage.***
This book concerns Blair, the BFF of Tegan, (who was the h of Pagan Surrender,) and it is two years after her abduction from El Amir. Blair is now divorced from the whiny nematode pustule Snot Sniffer who cheated on her after she had an understandable mini breakdown from her time in captivity.
To make things even worse, the Snot Sniffer ex got his little gutter pop bimbo pregnant. After forcing Blair to sell out her stake in her interior decorating firm for his half of the marital assets he never contributed to, the announcement of his new child was an utter slap in the face to Blair.
Snot Sniffer had told Blair for the five years of their marriage that he did not want kids ever and even tho she did, she went along with Snot Sniffer.
(Which turns out to be the right decision. Snot Sniffer is lost to the Hplandia mists, so let us all hope Snot Sniffer is miserable and his teen gutter pop bimbo turns into a nagging shrew who dumps his hiney for a Rugby player.)
So Blair has some issues. Not the least of which is overcoming the trauma of being abducted to be a confined sex slave and being given forced instruction in that particular skill set, with no one caring whether she wanted to be there or not.
Blair was not molested, but she wasn't given any kind of say on anything either and that loss of freedom and control over her own person was more devastating than a physical attack. (RD demonstrates that vividly with a just a few sentences too.)
She hasn't been intimate with anyone since her abduction and she isn't sure she will ever be. Blair believes she just has bad taste in men. Her first love was wonderful, until they got engaged and he still couldn't stop chasing anything that wiggled and she had to dump his cheatin' hiney.
Then she married Snot Sniffer years later, cause she thought he was kind and safe. Until he found his own little wiggle worm who wouldn't say no when he wanted to get a groove on and since Blair did say no in the aftermath of her trauma, he just moved on to his new sub-sewer location.
But Blair is a smart lady and she got some therapy to help and now she is setting out on a new path in life. Blair has taken up Art and doing pretty great at it. When the Prime Minister of New Zealand bought one of her paintings, he had a word with Grant and Tamsyn Chapman of Dilemma in Paradise and Blair found herself in a beach house on Fala' isi, watching the waves roll in and really creating in awesome artistic painting style.
Blair sells her paintings at the local upscale resort and has made lots of friends. She has a nice semi -flirty relaxed freindship with the resort manager, who is fresh off the divorce wars himself, but overall she is just painting and healing and appreciating her life.
Then Hugh Bannatyne shows up. He is a good friend of the Chapman's, who are defacto island royalty, and Hugh is a bit enigmatic. Blair and Hugh's eyeballs meet across the room and we all feel the blast of the Lurve Force Mojo. But this is RD's HPlandia and nothing ever is easy in her stories.
Hugh is a loner and very, very self contained. He strides around like he owns the universe and while he is exquisitely polite, he is also rather lofty and disdainful of lesser mortals than him. Blair is a bit disconcerted when she doesn't get the usual male appreciation looks for her red gold hair and statuesque curves, instead Hugh looks at her like she might be a bug he has to step on.
Blair is able to laugh at herself tho and a team of NZ Rugby players are relaxing at the resort, so Blair can't complain about a lack of admirers. Blair and Hugh start to circle each other like wary cats looking for their own sand box.
Hugh buys a few of Blair's paintings, but Hugh's ultra controlled persona and his way of dismissing a person without saying a word lead to some supremely uncomfortable feelings on Blair's part.
Hugh is a red-headed fascination for Blair, but he is also the epitome of the original uber controlled Ice Man and it isn't until one of the Rugby players thinks that No Means Yes and attacks Blair that the two of them really connect. Hugh saves Blair from the drunken trouble maker and he carries her home and cuddles her up when she almost goes into shock.
Blair gets a wild hair and a big lurve club moment ensues. Huge runs off like a big baby the next day, but Blair is confused and more than a little bewildered. Her therapist told her she would get her Mojo Motor back, but Blair has never felt anything like what she and Hugh put into motion between them in her life.
Still, Blair is a master at endurance and she gets on with her art and starts doing deeper and more meaningful pieces. Then Hugh comes back, he isn't too happy about the heat the two them generate, but he wants it more than anything he has ever wanted in his life and the two of them start an affair. Blair avoids the relationship discussion and lets Hugh move into her beach house instead of staying at the resort.
However, even in the midst of wild attraction and the beginnings of a real mental and emotional connection, Blair is determined to be independent. She may be a mistress, Hugh only makes sporadic visits in between business trips, but she certainly isn't going to dedicate her life to following Hugh's dictates.
Blair and Hugh are having good times and passionate lovings, until Blair takes Hugh to one of her remote mountain painting sites and Hugh tries to tell her she can't continue to go there. Blair is assertive and nicely tells Hugh to go jump. Then she almost has a bad fall, but Hugh catches her and this near miss triggers Hugh to start to withdraw again. Hugh gets remoter and remoter and we are back with supercilious iceman we started with.
Later that night, Hugh announces he is leaving. Blair thinks it is because he did not get his own way. Blair isn't too happy about the situation and her yearning, burning need for the physicality of Hugh is very strong.
After a brief contemplation of the ethics of essentially acting like an HP H and just taking what she wants, Blair decides to put all her harem skillz to work on a sleeping Hugh and there is a major Blair seduction with Hugh just hanging on for the ride. (It was a quite unique turn around from the usual H Lurve Mojo Force Lurve Explosion and RD did a good job of it.)
The next morning Hugh is gone and Blair is a bit ashamed of her midnight pouncing roofie Mojo moves, but life does go on and soon Blair finds herself in a dire situation. Blair took a little boat out to one of the mini islands around Fala'isi to paint. Unfortunately, the ground she was standing on collapsed and she twisted her ankle badly and then she knocked herself out when her head hit the tree trunk she was next to.
Blair was unconscious and unable to move for several hours before she was found and eventually she wakes up in hospital. The man she borrowed the boat from finally came to rescue her and she was pretty badly dehydrated and ill. Blair has missing Hugh mopey moments and a lonely hospital recovery. Then Hugh shows up, frantic.
Tamsyn Chapman called him and Hugh rushed over to be by Blair's side because he just cannot deny his immense love for her any more. Blair is relieved and happy, cause she finally figures out that she loves Hugh back and the two of them go back to Blair's place for a little loverly bliss.
All seems to be well and then the bomb drops. Hugh gets a phone call and it is some kind of emergency. Blair helps him pack and wants to see him off at the airport, but Hugh bluntly tells her that she can't, his wife just had a stroke and he doesn't want her accompanying him.
Blair is in utter shock and devastation. Blair did wonder if he was married at the beginning, but the way Hugh is portrayed in the earlier chapters makes both Blair and the reader believe that Hugh is just a workaholic driven international lawyer and since he promised fidelity to Blair for the length of their affair, his being married comes as a big shock.
(Also, RD has party scenes at the Chapman's home where there is obvious adultery between two background couples going on and neither Blair nor the Chapman's are very pleased. So Blair and the reader naturally assumed that if Tamsyn, who was very pure and virtuous in her own book, wasn't making married man comments to Blair, then Hugh was a free man.)
Hugh comes back after a few days, his wife has died. But Blair sends him off, she knows for sure she has horrible taste in men now and she thinks her love life is now officially at an end. RD and Hugh try to convince both Blair and the reader that we must have known Hugh had a wife, but Blair is too angry to even give face time to that statement.
Hugh goes off again and Blair gets to paint and have more mopey moments. Tamsyn Chapman tries to chide Blair for not even letting Hugh explain things, but Blair bluntly relates her cheating ex history and explains that the first she knew of any wife was the phone call Hugh got right before he had to do an emergency exit.
Tamsyn is a little witchy that Blair won't give Hugh a chance, but she is only a minor character and we don't have to listen to her. Blair continues on with things, until an Auckland art gallery owner lady comes to Fala'isi and wants to show Blair's work. Blair explains that she might be booed off the walls, as everyone in Auckland knows her as an interior decorator, but the gallery lady is unfazed.
So Blair goes to Auckland and stays with Tegan, who is now massively preggers, and Tegan's H Kieran. We find out that Kieran's whacked out sister Andrea is now married to her boyfriend from Pagan Surrender and that Tegan actually gave her a job in the decorating firm. Apparently Andrea has reformed from her whacktastic trouble-making in the prior two books and is now doing a good job on the design front.
Blair gets her showing, it is a huge success. Her and BFF Tegan have a nice heart to heart and Tegan offers to go do bodily damage to Hugh, once she gets over being preggers. Blair goes into the gallery early the next day and over hears Hugh and the gallery owner talking about her. Blair flips out, cause she thinks Hugh is manipulating things again and she takes off.
Hugh chases her back to Tegan's and breaks down Blair's bedroom door when she won't let him in. Hugh and Blair are alone in the house and the whole reconciliation scene begins. After a boudoir bouncing moment, Hugh explains that the gallery owner is his cousin and saw the paintings that Hugh had bought and wanted to know who the painter was, so Hugh pointed her to Blair.
Hugh also explains that he liked his wife when he first met her seven years earlier. The two of them were in the same social circle and she was nice and good in bed and would be a great mom, so they got engaged. It wasn't a huge, passionate romance, but they were compatible and Hugh felt things would be okay.
Then Hugh's fiancee had stroke a week before the wedding and Hugh went ahead and married her, the lady thought that marriage would help her recover. But it was not to be and she only deteriorated further, becoming completely bedridden. Hugh and the lady had no chance for any type of regular marriage, but Hugh stayed faithful and loyal. Until he met Blair and got knocked off his feet and his egotistic, self righteous pedestal.
He tried to fight it, but the HP Lurve Force Mojo rules all and eventually they just had to come together. He knew Blair's views on loyalty, so he deliberately omitted any hints he was married in order to at least have a little small spot of happiness in his lonely, barren life.
Blair reluctantly admits that if he had explained his situation earlier, she probably still would have become his lover and the two of them are renewing their love declarations when Tegan walks in.
She is shocked by the broken down door and laughs when she finds Blair and Hugh in bed and happy. Blair laughs too at Tegan's amused shock and it was nice to see RD write such a positive friendship bond between the two ladies.
Then Tegan tells Hugh that Kieran was wondering if he should go hunt him down and she welcomes Hugh to the family, but can they please call Kieran and then get her to the hospital, cause the baby is on the way.
We get a cute little epilogue where Tegan had a baby boy, Kieran is awestruck over his wife and new son and Hugh and Blair are planning on getting married within the week. Then they plan to get right on the mini-Hugh and mini-Blair production for another intense RD HP outing HEA.
This one was really well done. Tho I am not sure Hugh deserved the fourth chance and the forgiveness at the end. Plus, I really was a bit appalled that Tamsyn voices the opinion that Hugh should have never married his fiance when she had the first stroke and that other minor characters in the book felt the same way.
Blair was the true star of this one, her recovery and her discovery of her own path in life was very well done. So if you can stomach the H married to another woman trope, this is a really good day's voyage in HPlandia. It is well worth the time spent reading it for the sheer intensity and passion and utterly fabulous trainwreckiness, with a very well done HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2022
It's not the trope of the dishonest married man engaging in an affair with a heroine who has no self-esteem and accepts the crumbs of his attention that had me one-starring this book. It's par for the course for these Old Skool toxic non-romances and Robyn Donald is the Queen of Toxicity, at least in her earlier works. What actually shocked me was the "friend" who kept pushing the heroine and her cheating, lying, no strings attached, married-to-someone-else fuckbuddy together, and part of her justification was that he was married to a disabled woman, whom she described as sad and pathetic therefore excusing the hero's actions and even making the heroine feel guilty for denying him a bit of happiness! Like WTF??? This "friend" is the heroine of another one of RD's books (can't remember which one) and happily married herself, so would she expect HER husband to cheat on her if she happened to have a debilitating illness or accident that rendered her disabled? I was honestly grossed out. Then the author kills the wife character in a stroke, I mean what a great romance that has to hinge on someone else's demise to achieve a happy ending for the two big fat cheaters. Everything is geared towards making you feel that the reader should feel elated that the hero finally is freed from the constraints of an unhappy marriage that he stayed in out of pity because his wife relied on him for everything. Now he can pursue real happiness with a woman who is "whole" and therefore can give him what he needs in and out of bed. So disabled people have no value and dying is a relief not only to them but to their family and spouse. A happy ending can only be achieved between two able-bodied people. It is really interesting when you pick up clues as to the author's real life opinions and attitudes from these types of scenarios. Methinks she would have been quite at home with the eugenics theorists of the early 20th century :(
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2018
Blair showed up in 'Pagan Surrender' - where she was married to a generically weak man, and spent most of the plot held in captivity in the imaginary coup-stricken country of El Amir. Two years later she's 30, divorced, and living on the imaginary tropical island of Fala'isi as a painter. Her marriage fell apart after she returned because she wouldn't have sex with Gerald. She should have had sex with Gerald at all, ever, so there's no real loss, but she's had to sell her share in the interior design company to 'Pagan Surrender's' Tegan to give Gerald money. Gerald got some grad student pregnant and married her. Geralds, in romances, suck.
Blair is hot. She's blonde and has a devastatingly fine body, and men show up on holiday and salivate over her. She's not interested, until she sees Hugh. He's chiselled and perfect and indifferent. However, she wants to have sex with him. And his distant praise of some of her best paintings is a huge turn on.
Blair and Hugh spend a lot of time smouldering at each other and having intelligent conversations but leaving out a fairly significant source of conflict, so that it can get a big dramatic revelation later. I wasn't too keen on how that all panned out.
Still, Blair's a great heroine. She's tough, creative, 30, not a virgin, and she isn't torturing herself over feeling sexual desire. Hugh is fairly terrible. He's remote, initially contemptuous, and his Big Secret does him no favours in engaging reader sympathy. Still, Donald noticeably delivers another passionately eloquent hero when he does finally get around to declaring his love, and that balanced out his overall slight tinge of yuck.
Blair is hot. She's blonde and has a devastatingly fine body, and men show up on holiday and salivate over her. She's not interested, until she sees Hugh. He's chiselled and perfect and indifferent. However, she wants to have sex with him. And his distant praise of some of her best paintings is a huge turn on.
Blair and Hugh spend a lot of time smouldering at each other and having intelligent conversations but leaving out a fairly significant source of conflict, so that it can get a big dramatic revelation later. I wasn't too keen on how that all panned out.
Still, Blair's a great heroine. She's tough, creative, 30, not a virgin, and she isn't torturing herself over feeling sexual desire. Hugh is fairly terrible. He's remote, initially contemptuous, and his Big Secret does him no favours in engaging reader sympathy. Still, Donald noticeably delivers another passionately eloquent hero when he does finally get around to declaring his love, and that balanced out his overall slight tinge of yuck.
January 14, 2022
Wow…Boogenhagen gives a great play by play of the story, however, I agree with Boogenhagen that you do not want to read any of the spoilers ahead of time! There are times I can’t help myself and I read spoiler reviews or skip to the end just because I can’t read fast enough to get to the kicker. I did not do that this time and I am so happy I enjoyed this ride from RD without knowing what was around the bend. Dianna and Stmargarets give reviews without giving away the meat of the story.
The h, Blair, in this story was best friends with Tegan the h from Pagan Surrender. If you read that book then you know she was a successful interior decorator, married to Gerald(weak, non hero material), and was kidnapped and held for a few months in a foreign country. Well, after suffering PTSD her professor husband cheats on her with a young college student(getting her pregnant, although he told the h he never wanted children), due to the divorce she has to sell her 1/2 of the business, and now she is living on an island painting pictures and basically having to start over at the age of 30. An age when most people have their careers, and family figured out. Since her first love affair at 22 was also with a cheating jerk, she has pretty much sworn off men(plus her ptsd doesn’t allow her to respond to men)
The H, Hugh has friends on the island and goes here to get away. He is an international Lawyer, quite a big shot, so he has to work a lot. We don’t know why, (because he is a sexy beast) but he is as sour on women as the h is on men. Unfortunately for the both of them they can not deny their mutual attraction for each other. So, they have a one night stand. The H comes back a couple of months later. The pull between these two is too strong so they end up being island lovers. He promises her that he will be faithful to her and he will come to the island as much as his work allows. He does. Things go very, very well. Then things don’t go so well. The story takes place over several months.
This was a pretty sexy book. Unlike most HPs, the sex happens early on in the book and keeps going on throughout. Our h also has some moves of her own when it comes to bedroom seduction. Unlike other HP heroines, she is not a trembling virgin waiting to be deflowered.
There is angst throughout the story, but the biggest angst happens in the last quarter. In the essence of making the book enjoyable for others, I am going to stop my review now.
The h, Blair, in this story was best friends with Tegan the h from Pagan Surrender. If you read that book then you know she was a successful interior decorator, married to Gerald(weak, non hero material), and was kidnapped and held for a few months in a foreign country. Well, after suffering PTSD her professor husband cheats on her with a young college student(getting her pregnant, although he told the h he never wanted children), due to the divorce she has to sell her 1/2 of the business, and now she is living on an island painting pictures and basically having to start over at the age of 30. An age when most people have their careers, and family figured out. Since her first love affair at 22 was also with a cheating jerk, she has pretty much sworn off men(plus her ptsd doesn’t allow her to respond to men)
The H, Hugh has friends on the island and goes here to get away. He is an international Lawyer, quite a big shot, so he has to work a lot. We don’t know why, (because he is a sexy beast) but he is as sour on women as the h is on men. Unfortunately for the both of them they can not deny their mutual attraction for each other. So, they have a one night stand. The H comes back a couple of months later. The pull between these two is too strong so they end up being island lovers. He promises her that he will be faithful to her and he will come to the island as much as his work allows. He does. Things go very, very well. Then things don’t go so well. The story takes place over several months.
This was a pretty sexy book. Unlike most HPs, the sex happens early on in the book and keeps going on throughout. Our h also has some moves of her own when it comes to bedroom seduction. Unlike other HP heroines, she is not a trembling virgin waiting to be deflowered.
There is angst throughout the story, but the biggest angst happens in the last quarter. In the essence of making the book enjoyable for others, I am going to stop my review now.
December 26, 2022
Blair had three traumatic experiences, not least of which her divorce after her husband's betrayal. She was apprehensive of the thought of never tasting that fulfilling love to the heart, body and soul. Therefore, she quit being a decorator and went to Fala'isi tropical island and started painting which gave her a lot of independence, but left a great inner part inside her wanting so much more. One night, she met Hugh Bannatyne, an international lawyer, who was both perilous and illusive to Blair. She did not want anything to do with him, and to her utter shock, she discovered he felt the same about her!! Unfortunately, life has a way of breaking all barriers when one least expects it and that's what happened to her!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 11, 2022
I've reread (several times). I'm such a massive fan of RD's Hs. Hugh is incredibly hard to crack. It's not often I get absorbed into angst (because it's usually so melodramatic and unreal) but on this occasion I honestly felt the h's pain. There are some breathtaking (in a good bad way) shocking one liners from Hugh. And all the separations! Blair was made of stern stuff and totally deserved her hea. It's quite a physical relationship from early on, which is appropriate for the storyline. You really get the sense of being on a tropical island too. Sometimes I read a RD and feel such respect for her craftsmanship. This is one of them.
January 17, 2022
2.5 ⭐️⭐️
***Major Spoilers***
I took a half star away for RD’s lack of understanding of what “In sickness and in health” means! I am glad I read this without knowing the big secret which was hidden well. I thought the guy (can’t say Hero) was going to have a fiancé tucked away or a child. But I was wrong! The whole thing gave me a bad taste in my mouth. The whole harem thing was strange too! But it did keep me reading and wondering what would be revealed. I think the h could have done better! I would have gone for Sam the motel manager.
***Major Spoilers***
I took a half star away for RD’s lack of understanding of what “In sickness and in health” means! I am glad I read this without knowing the big secret which was hidden well. I thought the guy (can’t say Hero) was going to have a fiancé tucked away or a child. But I was wrong! The whole thing gave me a bad taste in my mouth. The whole harem thing was strange too! But it did keep me reading and wondering what would be revealed. I think the h could have done better! I would have gone for Sam the motel manager.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 11, 2022
A melodramatic but believable story. The conflict was real, not a misunderstanding. Personally I would have preferred more of a Mr Rochester situation. I am more forgiving of adultery when the spouse is irreparably mentally ill than physically incapacitated
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 22, 2024
Wow that was pretty crazy. The plot and couple had too much to overcome. It was a mess. Everyone had a messed up past… but withheld it. Forgettable side characters. Just skip it.
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