Long Way From Home

by Laurey Bright

CAUGHT IN HER OWN TRAP ...

Nicola Grey had told the lie only to soothe her battered ego. She had never expected it to get back to Jethro Vallance, the enigmatic man she had met on a cruise and whom she had claimed was the new love in her life.

But the news did get back to Jethro, and the consequences went beyond anything Nicola could have envisioned. She soon found herself married to a man she barely knew. And though that seemed to be no barrier to her love, she would have given anything to know what he was feeling.

Genres: Australia, Silhouette

187 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1985

About the author

Laurey Bright is another pen name of Daphne Clair.

Daphne Clair de Jong decided to be a writer when she was eight years old and won her first literary prize for a school essay. Her first short story was published when she was sixteen and she's been writing and publishing ever since. Nowadays she earns her living from writing, something her well-meaning teachers and guidance counsellors warned her she would never achieve in New Zealand. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and a collection of them was presented in Crossing the Bar, published by David Ling, where they garnered wide praise.

In 1976, Daphne's first full-length romantic novel was published by Mills & Boon as Return to Love. Since then she has produced a steady output of romance set in New Zealand, occasionally Australia or on imaginary Pacific islands. As Laurey Bright she also writes for Silhouette Books. Her romances often appear on American stores' romance best-seller lists and she has been a Rita contest finalist, as well as winning and being placed in several other romance writing contests. Her other writing includes non-fiction, poetry and long historical fiction, She also is an active defender of the ideology of Feminists for Life, and she has written articles about it.

Since then she has won other literary prizes both in her native New Zealand and other countries. These include the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, with Dying Light, a story about Alzheimer's Disease, which was filmed by Robyn Murphy Productions and shown at film festivals in several countries. (Starring Sara McLeod, Sam's wife in Lord of the Rings).

Daphne is often asked to tutor courses in creative writing, and with Robyn Donald she teachs romance writing weekend courses in her home in the "winterless north" of in New Zealand. Daphne lives with her Netherlands-born husband in a farmlet, grazing livestock, growing their own fruit and vegetables and making their large home available to other writers as a centre for writers' workshops and retreats. Their five children, one of them an orphan from Hong Kong, have left home but drift back at irregular intervals. She enjoys cooking special meals but her cake-making is limited to three never-fail recipes. Her children maintain they have no memory of her baking for them except on birthdays, when she would produce, on request, cakes shaped into trains, clowns, fairytale houses and, once, even a windmill, in deference to their Dutch heritage from their father.

Daphne frequently makes and breaks resolutions to indulge in some hearty outdoor activity, and loves to sniff strong black coffee but never drinks it. After a day at her desk she will happily watch re-runs of favourite TV shows. Usually she goes to bed early with a book which may be anything from a paperback romance or suspense novel to history, sociology or literary theory.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A casual friendship aboard a Pacific cruise ship turns into romance when the jilted, New Zealander heroine and the otherwise engaged, Aussie hero coincidentally meet again on mainland Australia. The hero's engagement to the psychotic OW soon implodes and from then on, the hero is in hot pursuit of the heroine.

Nice, compelling writing but not a whole lot happens and the secondary romance, between heroine's colleague and her dashing Italian suitor, takes up quite a bit of the action. This is a sequel of sorts to Fetters Of The Past and When Morning Comes and provides nice updates on the couples who starred in those previous projects. I was especially pleased that Jess from Fetters of the Past did end up completing and publishing her book on Australian female convicts of the 19th century, to great acclaim.

Bonus is that the psycho OW does a humble, albeit half-hearted apology to the heroine instead of the usual catfight that is one of the most overused cliches of HPlandia (Yes, I'm looking at you Helen Bianchin). She has resigned herself to marry a bald, stocky, George Costanza type while the heroine walks away with the prize hero :) Was it an EPIC comeuppance? No, but it was very satisfactory.

[Ellyn (Mrs. Darcy in my Dreams) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This dragged a little. The hot and cold of the h was annoying! I think the H could have been more patient with her as well. The angst at the ending was anticlimactic.

[Live2Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I have to choose, I will say the book started better then how it ended…like one of the other reviewers said the story ended anticlimax. There were some memorable moments of characters that set it apart from others, otherwise the rest was unmemorable. I didn’t know that majority of the plot was based on her flashback & once we hit present time it was just draggy. While relationship buildup & intimacy was evident, I still don’t see that he loves her. It has to do with the fact that the author made them both said I love you under pressure, right when he proposed, without significance threw me off. An unnecessary stiff exchange as it was supposed to be? For what reason? Idk, because surely it didn’t do any good for the story or for them. In my opinion, it actually took away from the story. He wasn’t near affected by her words & she barely knows her mind then. Neither party act accordance to the confession, never questioning it as if it was never exchanged…under pressure or not.

Definitely not a case of love. He wasn’t that into her, vise versa. The engagement was a weak game. Moving on to present time there were too many unnecessary intimate scenes that didn’t go anywhere. She then begun an underdeveloped agenda of trying to get under his skin by accepting almost all his dates, letting him maul her whenever while she play stature to his touches…for what? What’s the reasoning here? Idk. Then everything calmly ends, they say their I love you one more time. Maybe they meant it now? Or not…

[s · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too shabby!