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Shadow Play
Nell Masters had suffered enough traumas in her life, so who could blame her for being wary of men? Then she met Ben Rigby and longed for something more...more than sex with no strings attached. But, she was afraid.
Nell's past was beginning to catch up with her. Her child--her lost child whom she had never even had the chance to see--shared the same birthday as Ben's adopted son.... Was fate being cruel or kind? And would Ben ever forgive her when he found out that she was just marking time?
Nell's past was beginning to catch up with her. Her child--her lost child whom she had never even had the chance to see--shared the same birthday as Ben's adopted son.... Was fate being cruel or kind? And would Ben ever forgive her when he found out that she was just marking time?
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
4 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Sally Wentworth
106 books93 followersDoreen was born on 1936 or 1937 in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She married Donald Alfred Hornsblow, with whom she has a son Keith, in 1968. The family lived in Braughing, England.
Doreen began her publishing career at a Fleet Street newspaper in London, where she thrived in the hectic atmosphere. She started writing after attending an evening class and sold her first novel to Mills & Boon in 1977, she published her novels under the pseudonym Sally Wentworth. Her novels were principally set in Great Britain or in exotic places like Canary Islands or Greece. Her first works are stand-alone novels, but in 1990s, she decided to create her first series. In 1991, she wrote a book in two parts about the Barclay twins and their great love, and in 1995, she wrote the Ties of Passion Trilogy about the Brodey family, that have money, looks, style, everything... except love.
Doreen was an accounts clerk at Associated Newspapers Ltd. in London, England, and accounts clerk at Consumers' Association in Hertford, England. In 1985, she was the founding chair of the Hertford Association of National Trust Members, and named its life president. She also collected knife rests and she was member of The Knife Rest Collectors Club.
Doreen Hornsblow died from cancer on 30 August 2001, at 64 years of age.
Doreen began her publishing career at a Fleet Street newspaper in London, where she thrived in the hectic atmosphere. She started writing after attending an evening class and sold her first novel to Mills & Boon in 1977, she published her novels under the pseudonym Sally Wentworth. Her novels were principally set in Great Britain or in exotic places like Canary Islands or Greece. Her first works are stand-alone novels, but in 1990s, she decided to create her first series. In 1991, she wrote a book in two parts about the Barclay twins and their great love, and in 1995, she wrote the Ties of Passion Trilogy about the Brodey family, that have money, looks, style, everything... except love.
Doreen was an accounts clerk at Associated Newspapers Ltd. in London, England, and accounts clerk at Consumers' Association in Hertford, England. In 1985, she was the founding chair of the Hertford Association of National Trust Members, and named its life president. She also collected knife rests and she was member of The Knife Rest Collectors Club.
Doreen Hornsblow died from cancer on 30 August 2001, at 64 years of age.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 13, 2018
Re Shadow Play - Sally Wentworth does a fairly realistic HP Plus outing with this one.
The book starts with the 25 yr old h getting the go ahead on adapting an old privately published book she found into a TV 3 hour miniseries. The only complication is that the h is not a veteran screenwriter, most of her work has been in radio adaptations and so she is told by the man who is buying the idea that she has to have a co-writer.
The h has a tragic background, she was a very late life baby and raised by two indifferent and extremely parochial parents. When she was 17, she had a moment of teenaged rebellion and snuck off to a school acquaintance's party.
The guy who volunteered to walk her home after the party lured her to a secluded area and raped her. She became pregnant and her horrified and tart shaming parents moved her to another town, heaping tons of guilt upon her head as her pregnancy developed. Then when she was knocked unconscious in an accident at eight months, she went into labor.
The h was unconscious for three days, when she woke up she was told by her mother that her baby died. A few months later, the h found out her mother lied. The woman forged her name and gave the baby up for adoption and everyone told the h she was better off that way.
The h left home when she turned 18 and never went back and has never confronted the slime slurpers who raised her or dealt with the guilt she feels for giving her baby away. Instead she went about learning about modern life and getting herself established as a media scriptwriter. She is doing fairly well at it and this forced collaboration could mean a big step up for her.
The h is wary of a collaboration tho, it is her idea and she has learned that the male dominated script writing business isn't very kind to women and especially to women who look like her, feminine and pocket Venus like. The h has them write into the contract that she gets full input and consultation on the script.
The guy who wants to make the series gives in, he knows the h has a lot of talent and he doesn't want to alienate her for future projects. The other writer, who has a host of popular and major screenwrites behind him, is okay with the stipulations and so the collaborations begin.
The h's book is the secondary love story in this. The book was written in the Regency period and is a memoir of a young woman married off in an aristocratic marriage to an older man. The marriage isn't really happy, the young woman is horrified by her husband and the marital conjugal duties.
One winter she was on her way back from visiting her parent's house and there was a coaching mishap. She takes shelter in a nearby manor house and during the night she is visited by what she thinks is a dream lover, she is groggy and out of focus and the big event is the best ever.
The next few nights are the same and then the woman goes home after her coach is repaired. She finds herself pregnant a little while later and knows that her dream lover is real. The woman has to lure her husband back to her bed to hide the fact that her pregnancy is from another man.
The woman manages to keep visiting the house in the winter for the next 12 years. She has four children from her dream lover and when one of the children died in the summer, the grieving woman went back to the empty house and left a locket on the bed.
The next winter after her child's death, the same dream lover event occurred and this continued on until the woman's husband died. The woman was hoping to be able to find her dream man, but when she went through her husband's effects, the locket was with them and the woman figured out that the whole thing was her being seduced for years by her own husband.
She was walloped with the knowledge that her entire marriage could have been much happier if her husband hadn't drugged her repeatedly and told her what he did. The woman spent a lot of her life in mourning for her lost love and wrote a privately published book about the whole thing. The h found the book in a jumble sale years later and got the idea to make a TV show out of it.
The H is the writer collaborator and he has baggage of his own. He is a single dad with a seven year old son and his wife died two years earlier. The H and h are attracted to each other early on, soon the h is inviting the H to one of her dinner parties and tho the H doesn't come to her first one, after he explains his widowed status, he definitely shows up for the private dinner the h makes for him later on.
We find out that the H has been on ice for the last two years. His son was in the car when his wife hit a lorry. The four year old threw his toy at his mum cause he did not want to be in his car seat and it blinded her and she hit the truck.
At the emergency room, the H's mother in law got there first and the dying daughter explained what happened. The MIL then told the little boy that he killed his mother, who wasn't really his mother cause he was adopted and his own mother did not want him either.
The H has spent two years dealing with the fall out from that little drama, the little boy is very wary and has been in tons of counseling for trauma. The H himself has had to work himself out of his grief and support his son and the h is the first woman he has met who has interested him.
The h figures this is because she is small and dark, the complete opposite of the H's wife, who was tall and blonde. She and the H agree to a no strings attached affair for the duration of the scriptwriting. The h doesn't think the H can go any further than some lurve club events, the first night the H slept over, he called her by the name of his deceased wife in his sleep.
That is actually okay with the h. First, she doesn't do relationships and after her teen rape and one subsequent very depressing lurve club event in the years after, she isn't too sure she has much of a sex drive. The H turns her on immensely, but she is sure she isn't fit to have a relationship with anyone because she gave away her child.
Which leads to the second part of the h's dilemma, she thinks the H's son might be hers. His birth date and age are compatible to when her own son would have been born and she would hate to damage the H if it turned out that his adopted child was hers, she thinks the H would be disgusted by her.
So most of the story is writing the screenplay,the h and H falling in love, the h trying to find out who adopted her son and finding out if the story the woman wrote in the book is true. It turns out that the woman's book is true, the H manages to track down the family and the houses where the events took place.
While they are at the place where the book lady's seduction occurred, (it is now a country hotel,) the H declares that he loves the h and as they have been growing closer, he wants to make the relationship official and get married.
The h is adamantly against this and tells the H that she was only in it for the lurve club and now wants to break up. She has tried without success to find out who adopted her child and she has never told the H any of her history.
The H is very upset, but he forces the h to accompany him and his son on a boating weekend because he doesn't want to upset his son and his family has extended an invitation that includes all of them and he supposedly needs to save face.
On the boating outing, the H gets hit by the boom and is knocked overboard. The H's son goes almost catatonic until the h makes him steer the boat and throw a rope and then explains to him that far from killing his father, he saved his life.
The drama of the accident and the h's reactions tell the H that she really loves him and so she finally admits that she had a child and gave it up for adoption and the H reassures her that her son isn't the child that he adopted. He met his son's bio mother and it was not the h.
The h is okay with things now and she loves the H, so we leave them all happy and planning the wedding for a nice little pink sparkly HEA.
This book was interesting, but it was also rather depressing. I thought the jump from the h being wracked with guilt over her child and then okay with things was much too easy for the amount of mental torment the h had over everything.
Plus, I wasn't big on the h still not revealing the whole story about how her child was adopted, even at the end. The h had strong reactions to things based on her past baggage and I wasn't exactly feeling that these two were long lost soul mates reunited on the earthly plain because the h glossed over so much of what made her who she was.
The other thing was that the H came across as more a serial monogamist rather than the True Love HP H I like to read about. Sure he loved his wife, he loves the h and if something happens to their relationship, he will love another woman too. That doesn't shout undying love and a really Happy HEA for me, but that is also a personal taste, so take it with a grain of salt about the book.
A lot of readers give this book high marks and it is a very interesting premise. But the book lady's story frankly horrified me, drugged up and having a dream lover and being lied to for 12 years isn't a romance in my book, it is a nightmare.
Especially when the supposed heroine is forced to lie and endure an act that she detests with a man she thinks is indifferent to her to cover up the truth about her own children. Then she spends years in mourning over a supposed great love that never was and if I had read that book, you can bet I would be swinging multiple skillets and plotting a huge bonfire.
So while this just wasn't my cuppa, there is enough melancholy drama to give a pretty normal relationship development story some depth and you could probably do worse for a day at the HP office.
The book starts with the 25 yr old h getting the go ahead on adapting an old privately published book she found into a TV 3 hour miniseries. The only complication is that the h is not a veteran screenwriter, most of her work has been in radio adaptations and so she is told by the man who is buying the idea that she has to have a co-writer.
The h has a tragic background, she was a very late life baby and raised by two indifferent and extremely parochial parents. When she was 17, she had a moment of teenaged rebellion and snuck off to a school acquaintance's party.
The guy who volunteered to walk her home after the party lured her to a secluded area and raped her. She became pregnant and her horrified and tart shaming parents moved her to another town, heaping tons of guilt upon her head as her pregnancy developed. Then when she was knocked unconscious in an accident at eight months, she went into labor.
The h was unconscious for three days, when she woke up she was told by her mother that her baby died. A few months later, the h found out her mother lied. The woman forged her name and gave the baby up for adoption and everyone told the h she was better off that way.
The h left home when she turned 18 and never went back and has never confronted the slime slurpers who raised her or dealt with the guilt she feels for giving her baby away. Instead she went about learning about modern life and getting herself established as a media scriptwriter. She is doing fairly well at it and this forced collaboration could mean a big step up for her.
The h is wary of a collaboration tho, it is her idea and she has learned that the male dominated script writing business isn't very kind to women and especially to women who look like her, feminine and pocket Venus like. The h has them write into the contract that she gets full input and consultation on the script.
The guy who wants to make the series gives in, he knows the h has a lot of talent and he doesn't want to alienate her for future projects. The other writer, who has a host of popular and major screenwrites behind him, is okay with the stipulations and so the collaborations begin.
The h's book is the secondary love story in this. The book was written in the Regency period and is a memoir of a young woman married off in an aristocratic marriage to an older man. The marriage isn't really happy, the young woman is horrified by her husband and the marital conjugal duties.
One winter she was on her way back from visiting her parent's house and there was a coaching mishap. She takes shelter in a nearby manor house and during the night she is visited by what she thinks is a dream lover, she is groggy and out of focus and the big event is the best ever.
The next few nights are the same and then the woman goes home after her coach is repaired. She finds herself pregnant a little while later and knows that her dream lover is real. The woman has to lure her husband back to her bed to hide the fact that her pregnancy is from another man.
The woman manages to keep visiting the house in the winter for the next 12 years. She has four children from her dream lover and when one of the children died in the summer, the grieving woman went back to the empty house and left a locket on the bed.
The next winter after her child's death, the same dream lover event occurred and this continued on until the woman's husband died. The woman was hoping to be able to find her dream man, but when she went through her husband's effects, the locket was with them and the woman figured out that the whole thing was her being seduced for years by her own husband.
She was walloped with the knowledge that her entire marriage could have been much happier if her husband hadn't drugged her repeatedly and told her what he did. The woman spent a lot of her life in mourning for her lost love and wrote a privately published book about the whole thing. The h found the book in a jumble sale years later and got the idea to make a TV show out of it.
The H is the writer collaborator and he has baggage of his own. He is a single dad with a seven year old son and his wife died two years earlier. The H and h are attracted to each other early on, soon the h is inviting the H to one of her dinner parties and tho the H doesn't come to her first one, after he explains his widowed status, he definitely shows up for the private dinner the h makes for him later on.
We find out that the H has been on ice for the last two years. His son was in the car when his wife hit a lorry. The four year old threw his toy at his mum cause he did not want to be in his car seat and it blinded her and she hit the truck.
At the emergency room, the H's mother in law got there first and the dying daughter explained what happened. The MIL then told the little boy that he killed his mother, who wasn't really his mother cause he was adopted and his own mother did not want him either.
The H has spent two years dealing with the fall out from that little drama, the little boy is very wary and has been in tons of counseling for trauma. The H himself has had to work himself out of his grief and support his son and the h is the first woman he has met who has interested him.
The h figures this is because she is small and dark, the complete opposite of the H's wife, who was tall and blonde. She and the H agree to a no strings attached affair for the duration of the scriptwriting. The h doesn't think the H can go any further than some lurve club events, the first night the H slept over, he called her by the name of his deceased wife in his sleep.
That is actually okay with the h. First, she doesn't do relationships and after her teen rape and one subsequent very depressing lurve club event in the years after, she isn't too sure she has much of a sex drive. The H turns her on immensely, but she is sure she isn't fit to have a relationship with anyone because she gave away her child.
Which leads to the second part of the h's dilemma, she thinks the H's son might be hers. His birth date and age are compatible to when her own son would have been born and she would hate to damage the H if it turned out that his adopted child was hers, she thinks the H would be disgusted by her.
So most of the story is writing the screenplay,the h and H falling in love, the h trying to find out who adopted her son and finding out if the story the woman wrote in the book is true. It turns out that the woman's book is true, the H manages to track down the family and the houses where the events took place.
While they are at the place where the book lady's seduction occurred, (it is now a country hotel,) the H declares that he loves the h and as they have been growing closer, he wants to make the relationship official and get married.
The h is adamantly against this and tells the H that she was only in it for the lurve club and now wants to break up. She has tried without success to find out who adopted her child and she has never told the H any of her history.
The H is very upset, but he forces the h to accompany him and his son on a boating weekend because he doesn't want to upset his son and his family has extended an invitation that includes all of them and he supposedly needs to save face.
On the boating outing, the H gets hit by the boom and is knocked overboard. The H's son goes almost catatonic until the h makes him steer the boat and throw a rope and then explains to him that far from killing his father, he saved his life.
The drama of the accident and the h's reactions tell the H that she really loves him and so she finally admits that she had a child and gave it up for adoption and the H reassures her that her son isn't the child that he adopted. He met his son's bio mother and it was not the h.
The h is okay with things now and she loves the H, so we leave them all happy and planning the wedding for a nice little pink sparkly HEA.
This book was interesting, but it was also rather depressing. I thought the jump from the h being wracked with guilt over her child and then okay with things was much too easy for the amount of mental torment the h had over everything.
Plus, I wasn't big on the h still not revealing the whole story about how her child was adopted, even at the end. The h had strong reactions to things based on her past baggage and I wasn't exactly feeling that these two were long lost soul mates reunited on the earthly plain because the h glossed over so much of what made her who she was.
The other thing was that the H came across as more a serial monogamist rather than the True Love HP H I like to read about. Sure he loved his wife, he loves the h and if something happens to their relationship, he will love another woman too. That doesn't shout undying love and a really Happy HEA for me, but that is also a personal taste, so take it with a grain of salt about the book.
A lot of readers give this book high marks and it is a very interesting premise. But the book lady's story frankly horrified me, drugged up and having a dream lover and being lied to for 12 years isn't a romance in my book, it is a nightmare.
Especially when the supposed heroine is forced to lie and endure an act that she detests with a man she thinks is indifferent to her to cover up the truth about her own children. Then she spends years in mourning over a supposed great love that never was and if I had read that book, you can bet I would be swinging multiple skillets and plotting a huge bonfire.
So while this just wasn't my cuppa, there is enough melancholy drama to give a pretty normal relationship development story some depth and you could probably do worse for a day at the HP office.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 6, 2019
"Shadow Play" is the story of Nell and Ben.
Meet our h Nell- she's is a upcoming screenwriter, learning to adapt books into movies and TV shows. When one of her beloved novels gets chosen, she is asked to assist famous screenwriter Ben to do the same. They begin a professional relationship, which soon turns into so much more.
The h soon realizes that the H has a 7 year old son Mark, who was adopted. This information pushes the h back to her own past, where as a young child her child was taken away and given for adoption without her permission, by her religious parents. Is Mark her son? How will Ben react when he realizes that he could be marrying the potential birth mother of his adopted son? Why does Mark not like her?
Find out in this story.
Overall, this was an average read at the best. The H was nice, the h a bit bipolar. She spends the book keeping the hero at bay instead of communicating her problems with him- and even when she does at the very end, the truth is anticlimactic and the story abruptly ends. No epilogue, no big grovel. Just finis.
Quite disappointed by this one.
Safe
2/5
Meet our h Nell- she's is a upcoming screenwriter, learning to adapt books into movies and TV shows. When one of her beloved novels gets chosen, she is asked to assist famous screenwriter Ben to do the same. They begin a professional relationship, which soon turns into so much more.
The h soon realizes that the H has a 7 year old son Mark, who was adopted. This information pushes the h back to her own past, where as a young child her child was taken away and given for adoption without her permission, by her religious parents. Is Mark her son? How will Ben react when he realizes that he could be marrying the potential birth mother of his adopted son? Why does Mark not like her?
Find out in this story.
Overall, this was an average read at the best. The H was nice, the h a bit bipolar. She spends the book keeping the hero at bay instead of communicating her problems with him- and even when she does at the very end, the truth is anticlimactic and the story abruptly ends. No epilogue, no big grovel. Just finis.
Quite disappointed by this one.
Safe
2/5
March 7, 2012
Nell, the h, is 25 years old. She's lovely, smart, and successful in her career as a writer, but she's never been in love, has never had a close relationship. Her parents had her late in life and it was clear they didn't want her but they did their duty. They raised her strictly and kept her away from other children so by the time she was 17 she was ready to rebel. Unfortunately the one time she snuck out to a party with some of her classmates she was taken advantage of by a boy and became pregnant.
She had the baby and he was adopted and she was told that he died but she found out later her mother had lied and signed the adoption papers herself. So Nel waited until she was 18 and left home and kept only a distant relationship with her parents. Now Nel has met fellow writer Ben who is a widower and has an adopted son who was born the same day as Nel's son was born. She's fallen in love for the first time and Ben loves her but she fears that if Mark, his adopted son, is her birth son that everyone will be hurt, so she pushes Ben away.
This was really well written and I found myself wanting to skip ahead and find out what happened but unwilling to stop reading in order to skip ahead. Also within the book was another love story. Ben and Nel were collaborating on writing a script for a TV series based on a romance novel written in the late 19th century. That love story was as compelling as Ben and Nel's romance.
She had the baby and he was adopted and she was told that he died but she found out later her mother had lied and signed the adoption papers herself. So Nel waited until she was 18 and left home and kept only a distant relationship with her parents. Now Nel has met fellow writer Ben who is a widower and has an adopted son who was born the same day as Nel's son was born. She's fallen in love for the first time and Ben loves her but she fears that if Mark, his adopted son, is her birth son that everyone will be hurt, so she pushes Ben away.
This was really well written and I found myself wanting to skip ahead and find out what happened but unwilling to stop reading in order to skip ahead. Also within the book was another love story. Ben and Nel were collaborating on writing a script for a TV series based on a romance novel written in the late 19th century. That love story was as compelling as Ben and Nel's romance.
September 2, 2015
I loved this story, it was so wonderful. The H and h were such normal people with normal reactions which you hardly get in Harley land. The H and h are both writers that are collaborating on a script. They meet, 2 attractive people, and start working together. Slowly we get to see their relationship develop, they're both on the same wave length and they make each other laugh. It turns out that the H is a widower with a small son, soon after the attraction comes to a head and they become lovers. I liked it because the H and h were normal and charming and reacted in ways that were believable. No vengeful, asshat manipulation going on. Anyway a bit of angst does turn up when the h finds out that the little boy is adopted. She had had a teenage pregnancy and had given up her son. She is now conflicted and suspects that the child might be her baby. Won't give away the ending but even this was handled very well. Great little book.
March 18, 2025
This is such a sad book, with many emotional triggers as it deals with heroine's brutal rape when she was a teenager, her resulting pregnancy, and the adoption of her baby, unbeknownst to her: Her parents told her he had died at birth. She later finds out they lied but by then, he has already been adopted out. With great feelings of guilt, she resigns herself that this is probably in the baby’s best interests to be adopted into a loving family rather than be raised by a struggling teenager who also has to deal with the psychological trauma that her son is the product of a rape.
Heroine moves on with her life, gets some education, then some work experience as a writer for a few years. She meets the hero, a fellow writer, when they are teamed up by a TV exec to work on a TV adaptation of an obscure historical book called a Midwinter's Night Dream. Parallel to the courtship of the hero and the heroine, we are also able to follow the tragic romance of those long-ago lovers, which the hero and heroine are able to unravel by doing some clever sleuthing.
The hero is dealing with his demons too. He was in love with his wife and very happy. They had a son. Life was rosy and sweet. Then, when their son was four, hero’s wife died in a tragic car accident. The hero had been grieving deeply and remained celibate for two years, focusing on being the single parent to an emotionally traumatized little boy.
As the hero and heroine work together, they get closer and eventually engage in an affair "with no strings" though the hero falls in love pretty fast and expresses it ardently to the heroine. The heroine is falling in love too but she gets the shock of her life when the hero tells her that his son was in fact adopted. His late wife could not conceive and her greatest dream was to be a mother. The heroine, who is normally a level-headed young woman who has done her best to move on with her life and survive her trauma, is convinced that this is her bio child. After all, the birth dates match, and by staring at him really hard, she thinks they share numerous physical traits. She investigates as much as she can even going back to the hospital when her baby was taken from her but cannot find any hard evidence. She is too ashamed to share her turmoil with the hero because she feels guilty of having “abandoned” her child. Of course this isn't true but she has convinced herself over the years that she is a bad person. It is so so sad and so realistic.
The heroine thinks she has to break up with the hero so as not to put him and his son through more trauma, and she does it with cruelty because that is the only way the besotted hero could let her go. But the hero sees through her and does not give up. A life and death situation leads the heroine to break down and be honest. The hero surprises her by being understanding and non-judgmental. Turns out that his son is NOT in fact the baby that she gave birth to. Hero and his late wife had met the young university student who was the bio mother. But that does not matter anymore because the hero's son is now accepting of the heroine and the heroine has fallen in love with being a mother to him as much as being the wife and writing partner of the hero.
In other hands, this kind of melodramatic plot could have been campy or eye-roll worthy but Sally Wentworth managed to write a plausible, realistic story and make her heroine so relatable that you could not help seeing everything from her point of view, rooting for her, and feeling all her emotions. Very nicely done!
Heroine moves on with her life, gets some education, then some work experience as a writer for a few years. She meets the hero, a fellow writer, when they are teamed up by a TV exec to work on a TV adaptation of an obscure historical book called a Midwinter's Night Dream. Parallel to the courtship of the hero and the heroine, we are also able to follow the tragic romance of those long-ago lovers, which the hero and heroine are able to unravel by doing some clever sleuthing.
The hero is dealing with his demons too. He was in love with his wife and very happy. They had a son. Life was rosy and sweet. Then, when their son was four, hero’s wife died in a tragic car accident. The hero had been grieving deeply and remained celibate for two years, focusing on being the single parent to an emotionally traumatized little boy.
As the hero and heroine work together, they get closer and eventually engage in an affair "with no strings" though the hero falls in love pretty fast and expresses it ardently to the heroine. The heroine is falling in love too but she gets the shock of her life when the hero tells her that his son was in fact adopted. His late wife could not conceive and her greatest dream was to be a mother. The heroine, who is normally a level-headed young woman who has done her best to move on with her life and survive her trauma, is convinced that this is her bio child. After all, the birth dates match, and by staring at him really hard, she thinks they share numerous physical traits. She investigates as much as she can even going back to the hospital when her baby was taken from her but cannot find any hard evidence. She is too ashamed to share her turmoil with the hero because she feels guilty of having “abandoned” her child. Of course this isn't true but she has convinced herself over the years that she is a bad person. It is so so sad and so realistic.
The heroine thinks she has to break up with the hero so as not to put him and his son through more trauma, and she does it with cruelty because that is the only way the besotted hero could let her go. But the hero sees through her and does not give up. A life and death situation leads the heroine to break down and be honest. The hero surprises her by being understanding and non-judgmental. Turns out that his son is NOT in fact the baby that she gave birth to. Hero and his late wife had met the young university student who was the bio mother. But that does not matter anymore because the hero's son is now accepting of the heroine and the heroine has fallen in love with being a mother to him as much as being the wife and writing partner of the hero.
In other hands, this kind of melodramatic plot could have been campy or eye-roll worthy but Sally Wentworth managed to write a plausible, realistic story and make her heroine so relatable that you could not help seeing everything from her point of view, rooting for her, and feeling all her emotions. Very nicely done!
August 25, 2020
Nell was raped as at seventeen. The rape resulted in a pregnancy. Her older, holier than thou parents gave her baby up for adoption without her knowledge or consent. Her mother thinks her her son died. She learns the truth from a random meeting with one of the nurses from her son’s birth.
Years later, Nell is an budding screenwriter who gets the opportunity to work with one of the best, Ben. Ben has a son Mark, that is approximately the same age as her son. She starts a relationship with Ben and begins to believe that Mark may be her son.
The entire book is about her torturing herself on whether Mark is her child or not and the effect it would have on Mark and Ben if they find out. While Ben is falling in love with her, she is seeing doom and gloom around every corner.
Nell annoyed me. Ben is such a good guy he didn’t deserve her drama. The best bits of the book was them working and researching the screen play. The book it was based on seemed much more interesting that the actual book.
Years later, Nell is an budding screenwriter who gets the opportunity to work with one of the best, Ben. Ben has a son Mark, that is approximately the same age as her son. She starts a relationship with Ben and begins to believe that Mark may be her son.
The entire book is about her torturing herself on whether Mark is her child or not and the effect it would have on Mark and Ben if they find out. While Ben is falling in love with her, she is seeing doom and gloom around every corner.
Nell annoyed me. Ben is such a good guy he didn’t deserve her drama. The best bits of the book was them working and researching the screen play. The book it was based on seemed much more interesting that the actual book.
December 11, 2020
The story could have been good but it's more suited to a short story than a full novel, even a Harlequin Presents 187 pager. I didn't see the big love affair, it seemed to progress more as a done deal than a growing sense of togetherness, yet there wasn't a gob-smacking moment either.
The side story with the lady who had an all-too-real dream lover was intriguing, sad but creepy too, and it's hard to believe that that woman's husband wouldn't have treated her differently after their first tryst.
Overall just OK. I like a lot of Sally Wentworth novels but this one is not a good example.
The side story with the lady who had an all-too-real dream lover was intriguing, sad but creepy too, and it's hard to believe that that woman's husband wouldn't have treated her differently after their first tryst.
Overall just OK. I like a lot of Sally Wentworth novels but this one is not a good example.
November 26, 2019
The pacing was off, IMO. But I liked elements of it. I enjoyed the whole writing process stuff. IDK it just didn't quite gel for me. I was bemused by the final twist.
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