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Husband Material
HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO
Dream Lover...
Though Rose told herself that she wasn't looking for another involvement, it would be nice if the man of her dreams swept her off her feet. But the trouble with daydreams about Mr. Right was that sometimes you found him! When Sam Horton arrived in town, Rose instantly recognized Husband Material; he also came as part of a family package, with daughter included. However, foolish fantasies were one thing, reality quite another: Sam was acting as lawyer for Chad Westbrook, local Romeo and cheater of widows, who had hired him to sue Rose!
Dream Lover...
Though Rose told herself that she wasn't looking for another involvement, it would be nice if the man of her dreams swept her off her feet. But the trouble with daydreams about Mr. Right was that sometimes you found him! When Sam Horton arrived in town, Rose instantly recognized Husband Material; he also came as part of a family package, with daughter included. However, foolish fantasies were one thing, reality quite another: Sam was acting as lawyer for Chad Westbrook, local Romeo and cheater of widows, who had hired him to sue Rose!
- GenresRomanceHarlequin Romance
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 9, 2012
This book was published in 1996, but it reads like a throwback to another era. I used to like Emma Goldrick’s books, back in the late 80s/early 90s, when I was young and easy under the apple boughs. I don’t remember precisely what I thought of the handful of books that I read, but I had enough of a positive feeling associated with the author’s name that when I saw some titles re-released in the Harlequin Treasury ebooks, I decided to buy one. That was a different book,The Ninety-Day Wife. I wasn’t bowled over by greatness, but I was willing to try another (forgiving or slow learner – you decide).
What I think I probably liked about Goldrick before is a sense of coziness. If you’re in the mood for a “warm bowl of porridge” kind of romance – old-fashioned, pretty starchy – you might really like these books. I like books that have considerably more heat, but I don’t mind the occasional break from that.
However, the cozy quality is mixed up with some other elements. Sometimes there are so many elements in the mix that it’s not clear what effect exactly the author was trying to achieve. The same things that bothered me in The Ninety Day Wife were problems here.
1. The child. The child does not sound anything like a human being of adolescent years. She doesn’t behave like an adolescent either. She swings from being like a 4-year-old to a geriatric from scene to scene. For example, she has a cat, which has two kittens. The father gives away the kittens to the heroine. The child, who has previously decided she wants her father to marry the heroine, now wants to sue the pants off her. Five minutes later (not literally, but ridiculously soon after), she’s baking cookies/brownies (hard to tell which, because the text keeps changing the story) at the heroine’s house, smiling beatifically and declaring “We’re the best of friends, you know". On top of that, she generally sounds like a character from a 1940s film:
2. The hero. He doesn’t seem to have an actual character. He just does (or says) whatever would be the stupid thing to do (or say) in any given circumstance. (This also goes for the heroine, Rose) He does things like punch a guy out in front of policemen. For another example, one minute he’s giving sweet and warm kisses, the next minute he bawling about something completely irrationally. When his daughter is seasick, his reaction is to yell at Rose “accusingly.” When he is offered pills from the first aid kit: ”My daughter doesn’t take pills without a doctor’s prescription,” he yelled back up at her angrily. When another adult there tells him she’s a nurse: ”That’s not good enough for my child,” he retorted. Once the romance is well under way, he’s constantly making pronouncements about how he’s the boss, the man of the house and the “king of the hill in this family” and so on. It could be amusing if it came across as facetious. But it doesn’t. This is partly because of the heroine’s response, which is to basically knuckle under with sighs, and to think about ways of getting around him. Even his daughter promises to help Rose because she knows “all the tricks in the book.” Even Betty Neels’ books, as unfeminist as they come, don’t strike me as having quite this antiquated an attitude. My “favourite" line – when Rose offers to help him get a loan to pay for his daughter’s surgery:
3. The heroine. She is as idiotic as the hero. When he gives her the lecture above, her answer is “Yes, sir.” An another example comes earlier, when the adults decide to go sailing with the child. The heroine is supposedly someone who is expert. When they are ready to depart, she tells him to cast off the bow line. He doesn’t know what that means, so the wharfinger does it. The boat starts drifting, but the stern is still tied up. After seeing that he has no idea what to do, does she give instructions he can follow? No. She just keeps yelling the same thing to him. “Aft!” she screamed at him. He stared back at her. The wharfinger sets them loose, and they drift towards another boat. Her response? “Duck!” Rose yelled, completely confused. Naturally, they have a near-miss. Now, I can understand that this is supposed to be comical. However, after it’s all sorted, and he says they did well, Rose has this response:
4. The kitchen sink approach: There are a slew of other things going on in the book, that are brushed over and don’t emotionally register in the way that you’d think they should. The heroine is defrauded of scads of money (like at least half a million dollars, possibly more). She’s the widow of a man who lost his legs serving in Somalia. The daughter was born with a “defect” that is keeping her in a wheelchair and enough pain for Percocet to be prescribed, but which is being “cured” through a series of surgeries. There’s a smarmy villain who accounts for all the assorted bad things in town. The bad women can all be recognized by their inability to cook and tendency to take off from their families. The heroine is apparently a millionaire, but she lives poor (apart from her $18 000 watch). She claims at one point to own 80% of the stock in a bank, but later the amount invested is identified at $451 000. Either her math isn’t very good, or that bank is the saddest bank I ever heard of.
I won’t even go into the editing. OK, a couple examples. In one line, we meet Dou£ Fishman … bai bondsman. In another part, we hear about how the hero only has a few dollars in his wallet, but a short time later (with no mentions of going to a bank or ATM), he’s got money for a tip that makes the recipient choke.
Overall, the book doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be – suspenseful, funny, touching. I can see the attempts to be all of those things. However, the characters are patchworks with pieces that don’t fit together, and I found myself irritated more often than not. It’s not the worst book in the world, I guess, but for me it certainly merits the rating of “I didn’t like it.”
What I think I probably liked about Goldrick before is a sense of coziness. If you’re in the mood for a “warm bowl of porridge” kind of romance – old-fashioned, pretty starchy – you might really like these books. I like books that have considerably more heat, but I don’t mind the occasional break from that.
However, the cozy quality is mixed up with some other elements. Sometimes there are so many elements in the mix that it’s not clear what effect exactly the author was trying to achieve. The same things that bothered me in The Ninety Day Wife were problems here.
1. The child. The child does not sound anything like a human being of adolescent years. She doesn’t behave like an adolescent either. She swings from being like a 4-year-old to a geriatric from scene to scene. For example, she has a cat, which has two kittens. The father gives away the kittens to the heroine. The child, who has previously decided she wants her father to marry the heroine, now wants to sue the pants off her. Five minutes later (not literally, but ridiculously soon after), she’s baking cookies/brownies (hard to tell which, because the text keeps changing the story) at the heroine’s house, smiling beatifically and declaring “We’re the best of friends, you know". On top of that, she generally sounds like a character from a 1940s film:
“And that’s my dad,” Penny went on. “He’s some kind of a stick, but ya hafta expect that with lawyers. Do you need a lawyer? We need the business."Nobody talked like that in the mid-1990s, let alone adolescents.
2. The hero. He doesn’t seem to have an actual character. He just does (or says) whatever would be the stupid thing to do (or say) in any given circumstance. (This also goes for the heroine, Rose) He does things like punch a guy out in front of policemen. For another example, one minute he’s giving sweet and warm kisses, the next minute he bawling about something completely irrationally. When his daughter is seasick, his reaction is to yell at Rose “accusingly.” When he is offered pills from the first aid kit: ”My daughter doesn’t take pills without a doctor’s prescription,” he yelled back up at her angrily. When another adult there tells him she’s a nurse: ”That’s not good enough for my child,” he retorted. Once the romance is well under way, he’s constantly making pronouncements about how he’s the boss, the man of the house and the “king of the hill in this family” and so on. It could be amusing if it came across as facetious. But it doesn’t. This is partly because of the heroine’s response, which is to basically knuckle under with sighs, and to think about ways of getting around him. Even his daughter promises to help Rose because she knows “all the tricks in the book.” Even Betty Neels’ books, as unfeminist as they come, don’t strike me as having quite this antiquated an attitude. My “favourite" line – when Rose offers to help him get a loan to pay for his daughter’s surgery:
“Don’t do that,” he whispered urgently. “I told you, I’m the boss in this family. You and I are equal, but not very! I’ll get the money. Got it?”
3. The heroine. She is as idiotic as the hero. When he gives her the lecture above, her answer is “Yes, sir.” An another example comes earlier, when the adults decide to go sailing with the child. The heroine is supposedly someone who is expert. When they are ready to depart, she tells him to cast off the bow line. He doesn’t know what that means, so the wharfinger does it. The boat starts drifting, but the stern is still tied up. After seeing that he has no idea what to do, does she give instructions he can follow? No. She just keeps yelling the same thing to him. “Aft!” she screamed at him. He stared back at her. The wharfinger sets them loose, and they drift towards another boat. Her response? “Duck!” Rose yelled, completely confused. Naturally, they have a near-miss. Now, I can understand that this is supposed to be comical. However, after it’s all sorted, and he says they did well, Rose has this response:
”Yes,” she managed to get out. “Yes, we did that rather cleverly didn’t we?” And I hope the coast guard won’t take my instructor’s license away from me, she thought.I have no idea, being a Prairie woman, whether that’s something the coast guard can do, but I got quite stuck on the idea that anybody who would be so incompetent at giving instructions to someone she knows has no boating experience could be an instructor. And this exemplifies the contradictions of these characters – they never behave in a way that is consistent with what is stated about them.
4. The kitchen sink approach: There are a slew of other things going on in the book, that are brushed over and don’t emotionally register in the way that you’d think they should. The heroine is defrauded of scads of money (like at least half a million dollars, possibly more). She’s the widow of a man who lost his legs serving in Somalia. The daughter was born with a “defect” that is keeping her in a wheelchair and enough pain for Percocet to be prescribed, but which is being “cured” through a series of surgeries. There’s a smarmy villain who accounts for all the assorted bad things in town. The bad women can all be recognized by their inability to cook and tendency to take off from their families. The heroine is apparently a millionaire, but she lives poor (apart from her $18 000 watch). She claims at one point to own 80% of the stock in a bank, but later the amount invested is identified at $451 000. Either her math isn’t very good, or that bank is the saddest bank I ever heard of.
I won’t even go into the editing. OK, a couple examples. In one line, we meet Dou£ Fishman … bai bondsman. In another part, we hear about how the hero only has a few dollars in his wallet, but a short time later (with no mentions of going to a bank or ATM), he’s got money for a tip that makes the recipient choke.
Overall, the book doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be – suspenseful, funny, touching. I can see the attempts to be all of those things. However, the characters are patchworks with pieces that don’t fit together, and I found myself irritated more often than not. It’s not the worst book in the world, I guess, but for me it certainly merits the rating of “I didn’t like it.”
February 17, 2018
This is a good example of how you can finish a book in six minutes. Emma Goldrick is the pseudonym of a husband-and-wife team, and we know exactly which parts have been written by Colonel Bob and which parts have been written by his doormat of a wife. In every book, There is going to be a hero named Sam. Or maybe his pig is called Sam. Or perhaps the dog. Or perhaps the goose, which is going to be dumped on The heroine, of which to take care.
The female is either widowed, divorced or a virgin. Her height is always going to be between 4 feet eight to 5'2 totally deformed and a sideshow freak but BUSTY.
The Hero is going to be 6 feet and more. Widower/ divorced,with 2/3/4 kids, he does not remember quite how many, his wife had them, when he was away Coloneling in the Army, without any help from him one presumes because now that she is dead and gone, he needs a woman to take care of those brats ,he is still trying to get their names right,and livestock.
And there is a female, right in his neighborhood with a 44 inch bust, which he gropes at every opportunity. Excellent wife material, for him, as taught by his precocious illiterate kids.An older person is going to call him a good-looking boy. The heroine is going to call him ugly. And then when he smiles she is going to think he is almost handsome. Poor blind female. Also with her dwarfish diminutive size, she has to have a 44 inch bust. Col. Bob was fixated with 44 inch busts, which the hero grabs whenever he sees them..
It is only in a stupid M and B book, with terrible editing, that such an idiotic story is considered to be romantic and acceptable fare. The heroine has a vocabulary of two standard sentences – oh my, oh wow. That is what happens when the hero "seals her mouth" with hot kisses, which happens after every two paragraphs. And then she starts calling him Sir.
The heroines are all rich, but have absolutely no idea of how to manage money. They leave it to the hero. While they go. Oh my, oh wowing away.
The females of all these books, especially when they are widowed, have a friend/housekeeper, who tells them that it is the job of a woman to be married. She cannot do without a man.
The obnoxious kid of the hero – he is either an Army officer, or an engineer or a lawyer – hint, hint, guess what the profession of the Goldrick team male was, may have a rich father, but she has absolutely no education. She is going to say sentences like – I do not have no mother. American as taught in America.
The kid decides that the heroine should be her next mother because she can cook. And she tells her dad that. And the dad announces in public that the girl is his fiancée, and when she protests otherwise, he seals her mouth. I was going to throw this book at the wall, the moment the first sealing of the mouth occurred on page 4, and then began to browse through, to see if all the other tropes had been followed. The heroine in this book is of course colorblind, because on one page, she is looking into his brown eyes, and five pages later , she is wondering whether his eyes are dark blue.
Who reads this stuff? Sad that it is being published. But if it is I man master of the house, you female doormat have to be made wife to take care of my children, Yes sir, form of fiction, I pity a society, where this sort of behavior is considered manly, and romantic. The six minutes were for noting the bad grammar, bad editing, inconsistencies, and of course there is a villain who has taken away all the money, but does the heroine go after him? No, she is busy indulging in mouth sealing and allowing the Lord and the master to do all the work. As Nero Wolfe would say Pfui.
Definitely not readable. In fact none of her books are.
The female is either widowed, divorced or a virgin. Her height is always going to be between 4 feet eight to 5'2 totally deformed and a sideshow freak but BUSTY.
The Hero is going to be 6 feet and more. Widower/ divorced,with 2/3/4 kids, he does not remember quite how many, his wife had them, when he was away Coloneling in the Army, without any help from him one presumes because now that she is dead and gone, he needs a woman to take care of those brats ,he is still trying to get their names right,and livestock.
And there is a female, right in his neighborhood with a 44 inch bust, which he gropes at every opportunity. Excellent wife material, for him, as taught by his precocious illiterate kids.An older person is going to call him a good-looking boy. The heroine is going to call him ugly. And then when he smiles she is going to think he is almost handsome. Poor blind female. Also with her dwarfish diminutive size, she has to have a 44 inch bust. Col. Bob was fixated with 44 inch busts, which the hero grabs whenever he sees them..
It is only in a stupid M and B book, with terrible editing, that such an idiotic story is considered to be romantic and acceptable fare. The heroine has a vocabulary of two standard sentences – oh my, oh wow. That is what happens when the hero "seals her mouth" with hot kisses, which happens after every two paragraphs. And then she starts calling him Sir.
The heroines are all rich, but have absolutely no idea of how to manage money. They leave it to the hero. While they go. Oh my, oh wowing away.
The females of all these books, especially when they are widowed, have a friend/housekeeper, who tells them that it is the job of a woman to be married. She cannot do without a man.
The obnoxious kid of the hero – he is either an Army officer, or an engineer or a lawyer – hint, hint, guess what the profession of the Goldrick team male was, may have a rich father, but she has absolutely no education. She is going to say sentences like – I do not have no mother. American as taught in America.
The kid decides that the heroine should be her next mother because she can cook. And she tells her dad that. And the dad announces in public that the girl is his fiancée, and when she protests otherwise, he seals her mouth. I was going to throw this book at the wall, the moment the first sealing of the mouth occurred on page 4, and then began to browse through, to see if all the other tropes had been followed. The heroine in this book is of course colorblind, because on one page, she is looking into his brown eyes, and five pages later , she is wondering whether his eyes are dark blue.
Who reads this stuff? Sad that it is being published. But if it is I man master of the house, you female doormat have to be made wife to take care of my children, Yes sir, form of fiction, I pity a society, where this sort of behavior is considered manly, and romantic. The six minutes were for noting the bad grammar, bad editing, inconsistencies, and of course there is a villain who has taken away all the money, but does the heroine go after him? No, she is busy indulging in mouth sealing and allowing the Lord and the master to do all the work. As Nero Wolfe would say Pfui.
Definitely not readable. In fact none of her books are.
November 13, 2025
I don’t often start a book and not finish it, but this one… I wish I had read the reviews before I started. I couldn’t get more than two chapters in before I threw in the towel. This is the first book I’ve read by this author, but if this is a good example of her work, I have no idea how she ever got published.
dnf
May 23, 2023I got bored. The manga was more fun.
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