This Bittersweet Love

by Barbara Andrews

In the space of one nippy November afternoon she'd lost her coveted spinning wheel-- utterly outbid at auction--and now she was losing her heart-- utterly undone by a stranger's charm.Sara Gilman bristled at the danger. Growing up as an army brat, she had a long history of short stays in too many homes. She'd given up a promising career to come to Vermont. She meant to dig in her heels. To settle. To stay. But Jason Marsh--professional restorer of old homes-- was clearly a nomad... a gypsy... an unsettling sort of man. What would she do once he had taken her into his arms, kissed her spun dreams of love and threads of passion that would bind her to him heart and soul-- wherever he chose to go? What would she do once he had made her heart his home?

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Barbara Andrews wanted a career she could combine with motherhood and four children. She made her first sale to Highlights for Children, when her children were in kindergarten. Barbara Andrews is the author of 20 romance novels under her own name. Her daughter Pam grew up within earshot of her mother's manual typewriter. Pam majored in journalism in college and later worked as a reporter. Pam married with with Mr. Hanson, a college-professor, and they created a family. Barbara teamed up with her daughter after the birth of Pam's first child, Erik. They published their books under the pseudonyms Jennifer Drew and Pam Rock. For several years their partnership was long-distance, fueled by high phone bills! They make writing a lot easier these days. So does the fact that mom and daughter share digs in West Virginia, along with Pam Hanson's husband and their two sons, Erik and Andrew. Barbara is the mother of four and the grandmother of seven.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sleepy small town Vermont romance where nothing much happens: the conflict is entirely within heroine, who doesn’t want a nomadic existence like the hero proposes, moving from city to city as he restores old homes to their past glory and she follows around like a camp follower, without roots, without stability, without a sense of community. She persists in dating the bland, boring, but stable OM even as she is engaging in a torrid affair with the hero. Finally, she realizes home is not the four square walls of her modest cottage, nor the collection of tchotkes she unearths at local antique auctions, but really where her heart is. Hero and heroine finally compromise on a semi-nomadic lifestyle.

I didn’t like the wish-washiness of the heroine in this one but neither did I like the hero’s pushiness. He is actually a full on stalker. Taunts that she is going to end up a frigid little spinster and cat lady when the heroine doesn’t agree to immediately drop everything in her life and follow him to wherever his contract next takes him didn’t sit well with me. He even called her a bitch at one point. This was not offset by his schmaltzy romantic gestures of bidding for an antique shawl and spinning wheel to gift her. Not my idea of romance.