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The Crowd Pleasers
They are flawless faces on giant screens, and Anne Hyatt escaped a loveless marriage to be one of them. Anne is no innocent lost in the Hollywood jungle. And starving for the passion her heart craves, she is ready to take on the world's most ruthless people--and beat them at their favorite games. Reissue.
520 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Rosemary Rogers
111 books420 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Rosemary Jansz Navaratnam Rogers Kadison
Rosemary Jansz was born on 7 December 1932 in Panadura, British Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka), she was the oldest child of Dutch-Portuguese settlers, Barbara "Allan" and Cyril Jansz. Her father was a wealthy educator who owned three posh private schools. She was raised in colonial splendor: dozens of servants, no work, summers at European spas, a chaperone everywhere she went. A dreamy child, she wrote her first novel at eight, and all through her teens scribbled madly romantic epics in imitation of her favorite writers: Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini.
At 17, Rosemary rebelled against a feudal upbringing and went to the University of Ceylon, where she studied three years. She horrified her family by taking a job as a reporter, and two years later marrying with Summa Navaratnam, a Ceylonese track star known as "the fastest man in Asia." The marriage had two daughters. Unhappily, he often sprinted after other women. Disappointed with her husband, in 1960, she moved with her two daughters and took off for London.
In Europe she met her future second husband, Leroy Rogers, an african-american. "He was the first man," she recalls, "who made me feel like a real woman." After getting a divorce from her first husband, she married Rogers in his home town, St. Louis, Missouri. They moved with her family to California, where she had two sons. Six years later, when that marriage broke up, Rosemary was left with four children to support on her $4,200 salary as a typist for the Solano County Parks Department. In 1969, in the face of a socialist takeover of Ceylon, her parents fled the island with only ?100, giving Rosemary two more dependents. At 37, the rich girl from Ceylon was on her uppers in Fairfield.
Every night for a year, Rogers worked to perfect a manuscript that she had written as a child, rewriting it 24 times. When she was satisfied with her work, she sent the manuscript to Avon, which quickly purchased the novel. That novel, ''Sweet Savage Love'', skyrocketed to the top of bestseller lists, and became one of the most popular historical romances of all time. Her second novel, ''Dark Fires'', sold two million copies in its first three months of release. Her first three novels sold a combined 10 million copies. The fourth, ''Wicked Loving Lies'' sold 3 million copies in its first month of publication. Rosemary Rogers became one of the legendaries "Avon Queens of Historical Romance". The difference between she and most of others romance writers is not the violence of her stories, it is the intensity. She says: "My heroines are me", and certainly her life could be one of her novels.
In September of 1984, Rosemary married a third time with Christopher Kadison, but it was a very brief marriage and they soon began to live apart. "I'd like to live with a man," she admits, "but I find men in real life don't come up to my fantasies. I want culture, spirit and sex all rolled up together."
Today single, Rosemary lives quietly in a small dramatic villa perched on a crag above the Pacific near Carmel. Her four children are now away from home and she continues to write.
Rosemary passed away at the age of 87 on November 12, 2019 in Carmel, California where she called home since the early 1970s.
Rosemary Jansz Navaratnam Rogers Kadison
Rosemary Jansz was born on 7 December 1932 in Panadura, British Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka), she was the oldest child of Dutch-Portuguese settlers, Barbara "Allan" and Cyril Jansz. Her father was a wealthy educator who owned three posh private schools. She was raised in colonial splendor: dozens of servants, no work, summers at European spas, a chaperone everywhere she went. A dreamy child, she wrote her first novel at eight, and all through her teens scribbled madly romantic epics in imitation of her favorite writers: Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini.
At 17, Rosemary rebelled against a feudal upbringing and went to the University of Ceylon, where she studied three years. She horrified her family by taking a job as a reporter, and two years later marrying with Summa Navaratnam, a Ceylonese track star known as "the fastest man in Asia." The marriage had two daughters. Unhappily, he often sprinted after other women. Disappointed with her husband, in 1960, she moved with her two daughters and took off for London.
In Europe she met her future second husband, Leroy Rogers, an african-american. "He was the first man," she recalls, "who made me feel like a real woman." After getting a divorce from her first husband, she married Rogers in his home town, St. Louis, Missouri. They moved with her family to California, where she had two sons. Six years later, when that marriage broke up, Rosemary was left with four children to support on her $4,200 salary as a typist for the Solano County Parks Department. In 1969, in the face of a socialist takeover of Ceylon, her parents fled the island with only ?100, giving Rosemary two more dependents. At 37, the rich girl from Ceylon was on her uppers in Fairfield.
Every night for a year, Rogers worked to perfect a manuscript that she had written as a child, rewriting it 24 times. When she was satisfied with her work, she sent the manuscript to Avon, which quickly purchased the novel. That novel, ''Sweet Savage Love'', skyrocketed to the top of bestseller lists, and became one of the most popular historical romances of all time. Her second novel, ''Dark Fires'', sold two million copies in its first three months of release. Her first three novels sold a combined 10 million copies. The fourth, ''Wicked Loving Lies'' sold 3 million copies in its first month of publication. Rosemary Rogers became one of the legendaries "Avon Queens of Historical Romance". The difference between she and most of others romance writers is not the violence of her stories, it is the intensity. She says: "My heroines are me", and certainly her life could be one of her novels.
In September of 1984, Rosemary married a third time with Christopher Kadison, but it was a very brief marriage and they soon began to live apart. "I'd like to live with a man," she admits, "but I find men in real life don't come up to my fantasies. I want culture, spirit and sex all rolled up together."
Today single, Rosemary lives quietly in a small dramatic villa perched on a crag above the Pacific near Carmel. Her four children are now away from home and she continues to write.
Rosemary passed away at the age of 87 on November 12, 2019 in Carmel, California where she called home since the early 1970s.
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March 22, 2011
What a glorious, fucked up, depraved, over the top, delicious, trashy train wreck mess of a book this is!!!!
Whoever wrote the synopsis for the back of the book deserves an award. To be able to condense a book like this into 2 paragraphs is fucking amazing. Or, to put it another way, to be able to find the main story in 520 pages of movie stars, politicians, models, CIA operatives, parties, murders, sex, mafiosos, millionaires, billionaires, a gang-bang, Arabs, lesbians, filming a movie, bitches, more parties, more sex, Cuban guerillas, drugs, race car driver/playboys, voyeurism, threesomes, producers, a whipping, yoga, a shrink and did I say sex? is a feat that I would be completely unable to match.
How does one describe a Rosemary Rogers novel? After I re-read The Insiders I said this: Only Rosemary Rogers, she of the overwrought dialogue ("Good God, you bitch! You witch-woman, Eve!") and use of the romance novel as an endurance contest for abusive behaviour, could write a book like this.
Well, only she could have written this book as well.
You have to adopt a certain mind set to read her books, I think. Crank your cap a certain way, grit your teeth, and strap yourself in for the ride of your life. Get ready, because you will encounter every single cardboard, cliched, one-dimensional excuse for a character out there in romance fiction -- the straight-laced virginal heroine, the alpha, machismo Hero . All the other women are bitches - you have the old-school-chum-who-has-slept-with-the-Hero bitch, the Cuban guerilla long-thought-dead-wife of Hero bitch, spoiled-Italian-actress-who-has-also-slept-with-Hero bitch, author of book-turned-into-movie-starring-H/h-who-too-has-slept-with-Hero-bitch and a couple of other minor bitches - they are mostly harmless, bi-sexual and had a threesome with Hero type bitches. The other men? Again, mostly caricatures: the chauvinist-pig-arrogant-but-impossibly-handsome-in-an-Arabic-sheik-way actor Karim, the gazabillionaire Harris Phelps - he of the slim build, exquisite clothes and pencil thin mustache; the French director, Yves, whose eyes glaze over when his actors have sex on camera and he forgets to say cut!; a European race-car driver/playboy/actor, a stogie-smoking, big fat producer money man type, throw in a couple of Secret Service/CIA/shadow operative types and you've got about half of the cast of fucking thousands that run through this book. And they all speak in paragraphs, not sentences, and end most of their sentences with exclamation points! So they talk lots but don't really say anything!
So, strap in, and here we go:
Meet Anne Reardon Hyatt. Innocent, virginal, sheltered, child of a shadowy, puppet-master political type and married to his young protege, Craig Hyatt. Anne thinks she is frigid at 21, and as the book opens she is staying at her father's New England compound waiting to tell him the bad news - that she wants to fly, to be free - in Europe for a year or two out from under everyone's influence. But first, she happens to see a playbill showing her old school chum Carol (Bitch #1) in a Broadway play rehearsing in her home town. Off she goes to the theatre to renew her acquaintance. There she runs smack into Webb Carnahan -- Hero. Bitch #1, oh, I mean Carol, talks her into playing a trick on Webb, which results in a whole bunch of silly stuff that sets up the whole book. Including Anne's first one night stand, and first orgasms. Yay! She's not frigid! We also meet Harris Phelps, producer/gazabillionaire who is instantly taken with Anne. Carol gets bitchy, tells Anne Webb is sleeping with Carol, and Tanya (the understudy) and Anne. Anne's feelings get hurt, then she gets bitchy too. Then Anne's husband Craig shows up, so does her father, everyone talks about how Anne is being indiscreet, and so ends Anne's first bid at independence.
Flash forward to a year later, and Anne is a huge model in Europe and living in London. Sharing a flat with a perky little Brit named Violet (not a Bitch, so naturally she gets killed right away quick) and working part-time for some oil company (which I think is a front for the CIA and her father, although Anne is ALWAYS the last to know this stuff) and a really nice dude named Duncan (also not a Bitch, so of course he ends up dead later, too). Anyway. Craig, her ex, shows up out of nowhere, wants to get back together so he can get into politics. She says, uh, I dunno, then sees a picture of Carol (remember her, Bitch #1?) together with Webb (Manwhore of the year for 1978) in the paper - they're coming to London.
Anne, after having a few deep conversations with herself about the possible implications of all this:
She calls up Harris Phelps and renews their acquaintance. If this book were a roller coaster, right now we would be chugging up the first really big hill - can you hear the chains clinking?
So. She meets up with Harris, and Carol, and Webb (not all at the same time of course!) visits and exchanges bitchy remarks with Carol, gets an offer for a movie from Harris, and shacks up with Webb. Violet gets a crush on Craig, Duncan is afraid he is losing his best part-time whatever-she-did for the oil company, and everyone goes to lots of parties, where most of the women are bitches who have all slept with Webb. Violet is killed in a burglary, Craig comes to see Anne and plants the seeds of suspicion in her mind ('have you ever wondered what a man like Webb Carnahan would see in you?'), Webb goes to Ireland for something (a movie? a fuck? a meeting with his Mafioso uncle Vito?) and Anne, taking the advice of Bitch #1 and the altruistic Craig, moves out of Webb's apartment and goes with Harris to California to make a movie. I think. There was so much sleeping around and veiled references to Anne's father, the CIA and the bombshell that Webb used to work for Anne's father as an operative until he bailed and went to the CIA (WTF???) that by this point I was having trouble keeping track.
Back to the roller coaster -- down the hill we go!!!!! And we're off to California to make a movie!
I had thought to try to keep track of all the characters and who was with who in order to do this review but it didn't work out too well. It all starts out straightforward enough, but by the time you get to California the characters start to look like this:
On the movie set is where the bulk of the book takes place. All bets are off, the cast of thousands are all stuck together in Anne's childhood home on a closed set, shooting a historical romance epic. (I found this hilarious on so many levels). I think Rosemary Rogers even wrote herself into this book -- the author character "Robbie Savage" sounds just like her, writes romances full of rapes, and best of all, she gets to sleep with ManWhore Webb! Because every female in this bloody book has fucked the guy at one time or another. Sometimes one right after another. Sheesh.
I don't think I could describe what follows if I tried, so here are some tidbits:
- They bring in a shrink to 'help everyone relax'. He is really there to use hynopsis on Anne to bring back her repressed memories from her mother's murder when she was a child. As an added bonus, he throws in a trick that every time Anne hears the word "Action", she thinks everything is real. So she can be a better actress, dontcha know.
- The house has been rigged with hidden cameras in every bedroom, so everyone gets taped having sex with almost everyone else. No secrets in that house, let me tell you!
- Webb used to work for Anne's father, but then he quit after his wife died. But wait, she's not dead, she showed up on set with the race car driver/playboy/actor. Webb might be in the mob, might be in the CIA, might be still working for her father, and maybe his sister has been abducted to make sure he co-operates. But with who? Your guess is as good as mine.
By the end of the book there are people running around with guns fitted with silencers, the Coast Guard and Secret Service are on their way, there's a huge forest fire and the whole island needs to be evacuated, Anne's ex-husband Craig has popped back up and all of Anne's repressed memories have come back with a vengeance.
I tried really hard while reading this book this time round to find any character development, or any clue to their inner thoughts, or feelings. Nope. Nada. Anne talks about love, so does Webb (once, I think) but I have absolutely no idea why they love each other. All they do trade cheap shots at each other and fuck. I lost track of how many times during the day the Hero had sex with different people, how many times the Heroine took too many valium to go to sleep (on one memorable occasion only to be woken up having sex with Karim, the creepy Arab, blech), how many times everyone called everyone else baby. So, I gave up. I think that's what you have to do with a book like this -- just forget about anything deep or approaching emotional, just strap in and hold on. Rogers throws almost everything you could possibly think of and more at you in this book -- you just keep reading, ducking, weaving and bobbing so you don't get hit with shit, and hope you can figure out what the fuck is going on by the end.
Speaking of the end, I'm pretty sure it's a standard HEA, but by the time I got to it I was completely exhausted!!!!
This book isn't for everyone, but if you can stomach Rosemary Roger's style it's a whole lotta fun. If nothing else, it's a time capsule back to the 70s - the days when sex was plentiful and meaningless, everyone wore see-through chiffon and lip gloss, drank scotch and smoked grass.
5 stars, mostly just for the WTF factor.
Whoever wrote the synopsis for the back of the book deserves an award. To be able to condense a book like this into 2 paragraphs is fucking amazing. Or, to put it another way, to be able to find the main story in 520 pages of movie stars, politicians, models, CIA operatives, parties, murders, sex, mafiosos, millionaires, billionaires, a gang-bang, Arabs, lesbians, filming a movie, bitches, more parties, more sex, Cuban guerillas, drugs, race car driver/playboys, voyeurism, threesomes, producers, a whipping, yoga, a shrink and did I say sex? is a feat that I would be completely unable to match.
How does one describe a Rosemary Rogers novel? After I re-read The Insiders I said this: Only Rosemary Rogers, she of the overwrought dialogue ("Good God, you bitch! You witch-woman, Eve!") and use of the romance novel as an endurance contest for abusive behaviour, could write a book like this.
Well, only she could have written this book as well.
You have to adopt a certain mind set to read her books, I think. Crank your cap a certain way, grit your teeth, and strap yourself in for the ride of your life. Get ready, because you will encounter every single cardboard, cliched, one-dimensional excuse for a character out there in romance fiction -- the straight-laced virginal heroine, the alpha, machismo Hero . All the other women are bitches - you have the old-school-chum-who-has-slept-with-the-Hero bitch, the Cuban guerilla long-thought-dead-wife of Hero bitch, spoiled-Italian-actress-who-has-also-slept-with-Hero bitch, author of book-turned-into-movie-starring-H/h-who-too-has-slept-with-Hero-bitch and a couple of other minor bitches - they are mostly harmless, bi-sexual and had a threesome with Hero type bitches. The other men? Again, mostly caricatures: the chauvinist-pig-arrogant-but-impossibly-handsome-in-an-Arabic-sheik-way actor Karim, the gazabillionaire Harris Phelps - he of the slim build, exquisite clothes and pencil thin mustache; the French director, Yves, whose eyes glaze over when his actors have sex on camera and he forgets to say cut!; a European race-car driver/playboy/actor, a stogie-smoking, big fat producer money man type, throw in a couple of Secret Service/CIA/shadow operative types and you've got about half of the cast of fucking thousands that run through this book. And they all speak in paragraphs, not sentences, and end most of their sentences with exclamation points! So they talk lots but don't really say anything!
So, strap in, and here we go:
Meet Anne Reardon Hyatt. Innocent, virginal, sheltered, child of a shadowy, puppet-master political type and married to his young protege, Craig Hyatt. Anne thinks she is frigid at 21, and as the book opens she is staying at her father's New England compound waiting to tell him the bad news - that she wants to fly, to be free - in Europe for a year or two out from under everyone's influence. But first, she happens to see a playbill showing her old school chum Carol (Bitch #1) in a Broadway play rehearsing in her home town. Off she goes to the theatre to renew her acquaintance. There she runs smack into Webb Carnahan -- Hero. Bitch #1, oh, I mean Carol, talks her into playing a trick on Webb, which results in a whole bunch of silly stuff that sets up the whole book. Including Anne's first one night stand, and first orgasms. Yay! She's not frigid! We also meet Harris Phelps, producer/gazabillionaire who is instantly taken with Anne. Carol gets bitchy, tells Anne Webb is sleeping with Carol, and Tanya (the understudy) and Anne. Anne's feelings get hurt, then she gets bitchy too. Then Anne's husband Craig shows up, so does her father, everyone talks about how Anne is being indiscreet, and so ends Anne's first bid at independence.
Flash forward to a year later, and Anne is a huge model in Europe and living in London. Sharing a flat with a perky little Brit named Violet (not a Bitch, so naturally she gets killed right away quick) and working part-time for some oil company (which I think is a front for the CIA and her father, although Anne is ALWAYS the last to know this stuff) and a really nice dude named Duncan (also not a Bitch, so of course he ends up dead later, too). Anyway. Craig, her ex, shows up out of nowhere, wants to get back together so he can get into politics. She says, uh, I dunno, then sees a picture of Carol (remember her, Bitch #1?) together with Webb (Manwhore of the year for 1978) in the paper - they're coming to London.
Anne, after having a few deep conversations with herself about the possible implications of all this:
"First Craig, and now Webb. Could there be a connection? Was that why Craig had suddenly turned up in London - to "rescue" her from Webb? Again? Stupid...what did it matter? She must cling to her newfound independence. Think of herself first for a change, her feelings. And damn Craig and damn Webb! She'd show them both exactly how much she'd changed in the past 18 months!"
She calls up Harris Phelps and renews their acquaintance. If this book were a roller coaster, right now we would be chugging up the first really big hill - can you hear the chains clinking?
So. She meets up with Harris, and Carol, and Webb (not all at the same time of course!) visits and exchanges bitchy remarks with Carol, gets an offer for a movie from Harris, and shacks up with Webb. Violet gets a crush on Craig, Duncan is afraid he is losing his best part-time whatever-she-did for the oil company, and everyone goes to lots of parties, where most of the women are bitches who have all slept with Webb. Violet is killed in a burglary, Craig comes to see Anne and plants the seeds of suspicion in her mind ('have you ever wondered what a man like Webb Carnahan would see in you?'), Webb goes to Ireland for something (a movie? a fuck? a meeting with his Mafioso uncle Vito?) and Anne, taking the advice of Bitch #1 and the altruistic Craig, moves out of Webb's apartment and goes with Harris to California to make a movie. I think. There was so much sleeping around and veiled references to Anne's father, the CIA and the bombshell that Webb used to work for Anne's father as an operative until he bailed and went to the CIA (WTF???) that by this point I was having trouble keeping track.
Back to the roller coaster -- down the hill we go!!!!! And we're off to California to make a movie!
I had thought to try to keep track of all the characters and who was with who in order to do this review but it didn't work out too well. It all starts out straightforward enough, but by the time you get to California the characters start to look like this:
On the movie set is where the bulk of the book takes place. All bets are off, the cast of thousands are all stuck together in Anne's childhood home on a closed set, shooting a historical romance epic. (I found this hilarious on so many levels). I think Rosemary Rogers even wrote herself into this book -- the author character "Robbie Savage" sounds just like her, writes romances full of rapes, and best of all, she gets to sleep with ManWhore Webb! Because every female in this bloody book has fucked the guy at one time or another. Sometimes one right after another. Sheesh.
I don't think I could describe what follows if I tried, so here are some tidbits:
- They bring in a shrink to 'help everyone relax'. He is really there to use hynopsis on Anne to bring back her repressed memories from her mother's murder when she was a child. As an added bonus, he throws in a trick that every time Anne hears the word "Action", she thinks everything is real. So she can be a better actress, dontcha know.
- The house has been rigged with hidden cameras in every bedroom, so everyone gets taped having sex with almost everyone else. No secrets in that house, let me tell you!
- Webb used to work for Anne's father, but then he quit after his wife died. But wait, she's not dead, she showed up on set with the race car driver/playboy/actor. Webb might be in the mob, might be in the CIA, might be still working for her father, and maybe his sister has been abducted to make sure he co-operates. But with who? Your guess is as good as mine.
By the end of the book there are people running around with guns fitted with silencers, the Coast Guard and Secret Service are on their way, there's a huge forest fire and the whole island needs to be evacuated, Anne's ex-husband Craig has popped back up and all of Anne's repressed memories have come back with a vengeance.
I tried really hard while reading this book this time round to find any character development, or any clue to their inner thoughts, or feelings. Nope. Nada. Anne talks about love, so does Webb (once, I think) but I have absolutely no idea why they love each other. All they do trade cheap shots at each other and fuck. I lost track of how many times during the day the Hero had sex with different people, how many times the Heroine took too many valium to go to sleep (on one memorable occasion only to be woken up having sex with Karim, the creepy Arab, blech), how many times everyone called everyone else baby. So, I gave up. I think that's what you have to do with a book like this -- just forget about anything deep or approaching emotional, just strap in and hold on. Rogers throws almost everything you could possibly think of and more at you in this book -- you just keep reading, ducking, weaving and bobbing so you don't get hit with shit, and hope you can figure out what the fuck is going on by the end.
Speaking of the end, I'm pretty sure it's a standard HEA, but by the time I got to it I was completely exhausted!!!!
This book isn't for everyone, but if you can stomach Rosemary Roger's style it's a whole lotta fun. If nothing else, it's a time capsule back to the 70s - the days when sex was plentiful and meaningless, everyone wore see-through chiffon and lip gloss, drank scotch and smoked grass.
5 stars, mostly just for the WTF factor.
August 17, 2009
I'm not sure what to think of this book. It's just wrong. The heroine gets gang-raped and the so-called hero is on the scene. Supposedly he didn't participate, but he didn't stop it either. Later on he helps her recover and they fall in love. That's really stretching believability for me. I am somewhat lenient on forced seduction and rape in romance, depending on the circumstances, but that's something I couldn't really get past. I think he should have helped her and stopped the rape. I'm still scratching my head over this one. I believe in forgiveness and all, but I just can't see her forgiving this.
March 20, 2023
The Crowd Pleasers is a totally fucked up book. It's not a good novel by any means but it's so ridiculous and moves at such a brisk pace it's wildly entertaining... and frustrating.
Our wholesome heroine Anne Hyatt sneaks into the town theater to visit her old friend, Carol, who is performing in a pre-Broadway production. Anne is a politician's daughter newly divorced from her husband who wants to turn Anne in a Real Housewife of DC. Anne almost gets kicked out of the theater and is "rescued" by hunky manwhore Webb Carnahan, the male slut star of said production. Seriously. He screws anything.
Anne is instantly wet in the panties for him and knows immediately that he's the one. She is then convinced by her worldly actress friend Carol to play a trick on Webb. The trick doesn't go over as planned and an angry Webb ends up raping Anne to orgasm in the dressing room — or, at the very least, he forces himself on her and she doesn't resist.
Anne is now head over heels in love and ends up screwing Webb two more times (to orgasm of course). Webb tells Anne she's so hot she's going to drive him to rape her (again, I suppose?). Then a scandal erupts involving Carol's jealous boy friend, a gal in the play Webb is screwing on the side, and Anne's ex-husband causing Webb and Anne to go their separate ways. Yet not before Anne realizes she can't live without Webb. For real.
Ah...the power of the orgasm.
And all of this happens over the course of 9 hours. I even went back and reread several sections just to make sure.
To forget Webb Anne moves to Europe and becomes a top fashion model. Every man Anne comes in contact with takes sexual advantage of her (or wants to). In the meantime, to forget Anne, every woman Webb comes in contact with he screws. From time-to-time Anne and Webb’s paths cross and whenever it does, something bad happens.
Anne is eventually cast as the leading lady in a movie co-starring Webb filmed at a mansion on a secluded island. Much intrigue, double crossing, and subplots ensue including Anne getting raped — not once but twice —by a fellow actor. The second time actually turns into a gangbang rape that Webb watches but doesn't stop. However, such minor nuisances as a gangbang rape or physical violence has no effect on Anne at all because she's in love with Webb and will stop at nothing to get her man. Or rather she will sit around waiting for her man to rescue her from getting repeatedly abused by those around her.
Sheesh.
What's really frustrating is that I read the entire thing. I remember reading this as a pre-teen but I was only looking for the dirty parts. No one is likeable and Anne is possibly the biggest blockhead heroine I’ve ever encountered. What’s additionally frustrating is how Rosemary Rogers has a thing for rape. Just sayin'. I'm not kidding, though. She really does. There hasn’t been a single novel of hers that I have read where our heroine isn’t raped at least once. It’s bizarre and kind of disturbing and leaves me with one question: What the hell is wrong with Rosemary Rogers?
Our wholesome heroine Anne Hyatt sneaks into the town theater to visit her old friend, Carol, who is performing in a pre-Broadway production. Anne is a politician's daughter newly divorced from her husband who wants to turn Anne in a Real Housewife of DC. Anne almost gets kicked out of the theater and is "rescued" by hunky manwhore Webb Carnahan, the male slut star of said production. Seriously. He screws anything.
Anne is instantly wet in the panties for him and knows immediately that he's the one. She is then convinced by her worldly actress friend Carol to play a trick on Webb. The trick doesn't go over as planned and an angry Webb ends up raping Anne to orgasm in the dressing room — or, at the very least, he forces himself on her and she doesn't resist.
Anne is now head over heels in love and ends up screwing Webb two more times (to orgasm of course). Webb tells Anne she's so hot she's going to drive him to rape her (again, I suppose?). Then a scandal erupts involving Carol's jealous boy friend, a gal in the play Webb is screwing on the side, and Anne's ex-husband causing Webb and Anne to go their separate ways. Yet not before Anne realizes she can't live without Webb. For real.
Ah...the power of the orgasm.
And all of this happens over the course of 9 hours. I even went back and reread several sections just to make sure.
To forget Webb Anne moves to Europe and becomes a top fashion model. Every man Anne comes in contact with takes sexual advantage of her (or wants to). In the meantime, to forget Anne, every woman Webb comes in contact with he screws. From time-to-time Anne and Webb’s paths cross and whenever it does, something bad happens.
Anne is eventually cast as the leading lady in a movie co-starring Webb filmed at a mansion on a secluded island. Much intrigue, double crossing, and subplots ensue including Anne getting raped — not once but twice —by a fellow actor. The second time actually turns into a gangbang rape that Webb watches but doesn't stop. However, such minor nuisances as a gangbang rape or physical violence has no effect on Anne at all because she's in love with Webb and will stop at nothing to get her man. Or rather she will sit around waiting for her man to rescue her from getting repeatedly abused by those around her.
Sheesh.
What's really frustrating is that I read the entire thing. I remember reading this as a pre-teen but I was only looking for the dirty parts. No one is likeable and Anne is possibly the biggest blockhead heroine I’ve ever encountered. What’s additionally frustrating is how Rosemary Rogers has a thing for rape. Just sayin'. I'm not kidding, though. She really does. There hasn’t been a single novel of hers that I have read where our heroine isn’t raped at least once. It’s bizarre and kind of disturbing and leaves me with one question: What the hell is wrong with Rosemary Rogers?
March 3, 2016
Moving away from the historicals that made her a legend, Rosemary Rogers wrote a jet-set novel that flies higher than anything by Jackie Collins or Jacqueline Susann. The difference is in the class -- the way shy, gentle Anne is always sympathetic, a heroine who is too sensitive and romantic for the brutal passions and greed of the Hollywood world.
Anne is drawn to Webb, a man who seems to be all wrong for her. Webb is hard and brutal and successful, so masculine he threatens to dominate Anne like the other men in her life. Frightened, she runs off with a long succession of older, seemingly kinder men, yet they turn out to be more manipulative than truly caring. As a neglected trophy wife, Anne develops a dangerous dependency on pills like Valium -- Rosemary Rogers shows clearly how a jet-set world that makes drug abuse seem chic and sophisticated can easily harm the innocent. Drifting this way and that, pursued by men and losing herself in sensation, Anne nearly loses it all -- before Webb comes to the rescue.
THE CROWD PLEASERS is scary sometimes, touching and poignant and even melancholy -- but always oh so powerful and sexy!
Anne is drawn to Webb, a man who seems to be all wrong for her. Webb is hard and brutal and successful, so masculine he threatens to dominate Anne like the other men in her life. Frightened, she runs off with a long succession of older, seemingly kinder men, yet they turn out to be more manipulative than truly caring. As a neglected trophy wife, Anne develops a dangerous dependency on pills like Valium -- Rosemary Rogers shows clearly how a jet-set world that makes drug abuse seem chic and sophisticated can easily harm the innocent. Drifting this way and that, pursued by men and losing herself in sensation, Anne nearly loses it all -- before Webb comes to the rescue.
THE CROWD PLEASERS is scary sometimes, touching and poignant and even melancholy -- but always oh so powerful and sexy!
September 29, 2023
Pocas veces me dan ganas de abandonar un libro y cuando eso ocurre, normalmente lo hago y no tengo remordimientos. Pero con este, algo extraño del tercer tipo ocurrió.
Hablemos de: "Los amantes del placer"
Rosemary Rogers nos presenta a Anne. Una chica de extremada belleza virginal que, según en su cabeza, es aparentemente frígida. O al menos ella se considera así.
No sé por dónde empezar.
Vamos a ver, de entrada me atrapó porque yo pensaba que era una historia de romance-erótico-chick lit y pues tenía ganas de leerlo porque ajá.. también soy romántica, aunque no me lo crean.😝
La novela se divide en 5 partes. La primera de ellas, es donde se encuentran los Protas y dices.. huuuuuy enemies to lovers. Empieza la tensión, la acción, el fuego y luego... todo se va al caño.
Pocas veces.. muy pocas veces he leído un romance con tanta toxicidad tan sin sentido. Es que Wey, el protagonista, es el ser más egocéntrico, grosero, manipulador, barbaján y nefastete que yo haya leído en... bueno, la verdad no me había tocado uno así. Y me refiero a "sin sentido" porque el tipo no tiene una razón para hacer lo que hace, tipo, "le daré una lección" "la voy a rescatar" "la voy a despertar de su burbuja" wey.. al menos, que no lo diga, sino que Anne crezca como personaje a partir de lo mal que la trata Web.
Pero no.
Web es un rufián, porque quiere, porque puede y porque Anne se lo permite y lo peor, ella es feliz de que siquiera él se voltee a mirarla. La usa, la utiliza, la humilla y solo tiene que besarla para que ella se olvide de todo porque, casualmente, con él si tiene orgasmos. El típico, mátame si quieres, pero no me dejes.
¿Queeeeee?
En cuanto a la trama secundaria, no tiene pies ni cabeza y todo ocurre mientras están grabando una película en una Isla en ¡Ajá! Monterrey. Hay demasiados personajes de relleno insustancial, se enrollan en un lío político-conspirador cuya finalidad es destruir la forma de vida de la sociedad mundial.
El final es súper acelerado, todo se arregla matando a los malos y Web y Anne son felices a pesar de que, hasta el final, él la trata como una cualquiera.
Además, literalmente, Anne es violada una vez por uno de los actores y cinco veces (5) de manera tumultuaria durante la grabación de la película, frente a todo el staff y Anne anda como si nada y todavía tiene ganas de "hacer el amor" con Web un par de horas después porque Ajá... el la hace olvidar su dolor.
Weeeey... WTF
Quedan como mil cabos sueltos y Anne perdona a todos porque así de buena es.
Les diré que la terminé de leer, aunque ya esperaba un final así de malo, solo por la morbosa idea de que en algún momento ella reaccionaria. Pero no. Nunca lo hace, incluso después de que, al ser violada por cinco tipos y él le dice que es una zorra que le gusta que la forcen, incluso, mientras se está muriendo en el hospital porque la balean y casi la matan por culpa de Web, ella sigue triste porque él no la visita.
Háganse un favor y si no quieren perder su tiempo... no la lean.
Solo harán corajes.
No digo que las Mery Su, estén mal. Pero Anne no tuvo desarrollo, nunca crece como personaje, nunca se defiende, todos, todos... la manipulan y la usan como ficha de cambio (especialmente Web) es, literalmente tonta.
Así que mejor ya no me enojo.
Ya saben que siempre trato de encontrar las áreas de oportunidad en los libros, pero esta vez desperdicié 125 pesos a lo wey.
Bye😣
Hablemos de: "Los amantes del placer"
Rosemary Rogers nos presenta a Anne. Una chica de extremada belleza virginal que, según en su cabeza, es aparentemente frígida. O al menos ella se considera así.
No sé por dónde empezar.
Vamos a ver, de entrada me atrapó porque yo pensaba que era una historia de romance-erótico-chick lit y pues tenía ganas de leerlo porque ajá.. también soy romántica, aunque no me lo crean.😝
La novela se divide en 5 partes. La primera de ellas, es donde se encuentran los Protas y dices.. huuuuuy enemies to lovers. Empieza la tensión, la acción, el fuego y luego... todo se va al caño.
Pocas veces.. muy pocas veces he leído un romance con tanta toxicidad tan sin sentido. Es que Wey, el protagonista, es el ser más egocéntrico, grosero, manipulador, barbaján y nefastete que yo haya leído en... bueno, la verdad no me había tocado uno así. Y me refiero a "sin sentido" porque el tipo no tiene una razón para hacer lo que hace, tipo, "le daré una lección" "la voy a rescatar" "la voy a despertar de su burbuja" wey.. al menos, que no lo diga, sino que Anne crezca como personaje a partir de lo mal que la trata Web.
Pero no.
Web es un rufián, porque quiere, porque puede y porque Anne se lo permite y lo peor, ella es feliz de que siquiera él se voltee a mirarla. La usa, la utiliza, la humilla y solo tiene que besarla para que ella se olvide de todo porque, casualmente, con él si tiene orgasmos. El típico, mátame si quieres, pero no me dejes.
¿Queeeeee?
En cuanto a la trama secundaria, no tiene pies ni cabeza y todo ocurre mientras están grabando una película en una Isla en ¡Ajá! Monterrey. Hay demasiados personajes de relleno insustancial, se enrollan en un lío político-conspirador cuya finalidad es destruir la forma de vida de la sociedad mundial.
El final es súper acelerado, todo se arregla matando a los malos y Web y Anne son felices a pesar de que, hasta el final, él la trata como una cualquiera.
Además, literalmente, Anne es violada una vez por uno de los actores y cinco veces (5) de manera tumultuaria durante la grabación de la película, frente a todo el staff y Anne anda como si nada y todavía tiene ganas de "hacer el amor" con Web un par de horas después porque Ajá... el la hace olvidar su dolor.
Weeeey... WTF
Quedan como mil cabos sueltos y Anne perdona a todos porque así de buena es.
Les diré que la terminé de leer, aunque ya esperaba un final así de malo, solo por la morbosa idea de que en algún momento ella reaccionaria. Pero no. Nunca lo hace, incluso después de que, al ser violada por cinco tipos y él le dice que es una zorra que le gusta que la forcen, incluso, mientras se está muriendo en el hospital porque la balean y casi la matan por culpa de Web, ella sigue triste porque él no la visita.
Háganse un favor y si no quieren perder su tiempo... no la lean.
Solo harán corajes.
No digo que las Mery Su, estén mal. Pero Anne no tuvo desarrollo, nunca crece como personaje, nunca se defiende, todos, todos... la manipulan y la usan como ficha de cambio (especialmente Web) es, literalmente tonta.
Así que mejor ya no me enojo.
Ya saben que siempre trato de encontrar las áreas de oportunidad en los libros, pero esta vez desperdicié 125 pesos a lo wey.
Bye😣
March 3, 2016
This is a soap opera of outlandish WTF moments and indiscriminate promiscuity with lots of drug use. I had to write down the names of the characters to keep them straight and when I filled the page I stopped. RR's just seemed to add names of characters just to add them. She didn't just add names, they had to be full names of people who had no consequence to the story. The hero, Webb Carnahan ( again his name is almost always written in full), an actor, former ?CIA agent,connected to the Mob, male slut and major a-hole, calls all his women "baby" like the bald headed, lolly pop sucking, Tele Savalas of that same time period. The heroine, Anne Mallory-Reardon, skinny, beautiful model and actress, was too emotionally weak and was at the mercy of all these bizarre characters. Despite being too long, it was absorbing at times.
November 5, 2011
This was an AWFUL book! There are so many weird characters and absolutely horrendous situations (including gang rape). I read this book a while ago but the negative feeling I derived from this book still lingers. Do not read.
May 18, 2021
You can tell this book was written in the 70's, when so much trash was published. Rosemary Rogers books were much better in the 80's, which is true of a lot of authors in the genre. I'm guessing what happened is that, with the new freedom to write scenes and storylines that would have been banned just a decade before, they tended to go overboard, "forbidden fruit syndrome", like young people escaping from strict parents. Thankfully, they grew up.
January 29, 2024
This book was interesting from the first chapter to the last chapter. It was about the life of the rich and glamorous, of course. I have no idea on how authentic anything is, but the storyline took me away while I was reading it and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
February 5, 2024
I can imagine this book raised some eyebrows in its day. The characters participate in lots of scandalous behavior. I did enjoy the plot and the twists were timed fairly well. My rating was boosted to four stars instead of three by the description of high fashion modeling and movie making.
April 18, 2021
Good book, a little slow in the middle, but really picks up the twists and turns at the end.
May 23, 2011
I have no problem with a good trashy book now and then. After coming off a rather difficult read, I picked this one up, thinking it would fall into that category. Not so. This book is so ridiculously over-the-top that it reaches the point of absurdity. The dialogue is so campy and dramatic that it is alternately laughable and cringe-worthy. (Ex: "Damn your eyes, Annie, for making me want you!" Huh?) The "hero" (for lack of a better word as there is no hero in this schlock) uses the term "baby" so much that it would make a stellar drinking game... if one was going for alcohol poisoning. And I quit counting the blatant over-use of exclamation points after the first 50 pages or so.
The characters are nothing more the cardboard cut-outs: the naive ingenue, the studly (anti)hero with a mysterious past, the debonair producer, the trampy movie star, the swarthy Egyptian, the too-patient-to-be-true ex-husband. Not one character had any depth - just cookie-cutter types with bad dialogue.
The plot was ridiculously convoluted and was never adequately explained. Even now, I have no idea which were the good guys, which were the bad guys, or what they were trying to accomplish.
The sex scenes were too numerous to count. The male lead had sex with virtually every female character in the book. (Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single female character he didn't do... with the possibility of one exception who was killed early on. I'm sure he would have gotten around to her had she lived.) I realize this was written in the "anything goes" late 70's but come on... the guy should have switched professions because obviously his true calling was male sex machine.
Between the non-existant characterization, the absurd dialogue, the confusing plot (maybe I was trying to hard to find a plot that wasn't there), and the believability factor (as in: there was none), this was 520 pages of schlock that no one should have to suffer through.
The characters are nothing more the cardboard cut-outs: the naive ingenue, the studly (anti)hero with a mysterious past, the debonair producer, the trampy movie star, the swarthy Egyptian, the too-patient-to-be-true ex-husband. Not one character had any depth - just cookie-cutter types with bad dialogue.
The plot was ridiculously convoluted and was never adequately explained. Even now, I have no idea which were the good guys, which were the bad guys, or what they were trying to accomplish.
The sex scenes were too numerous to count. The male lead had sex with virtually every female character in the book. (Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single female character he didn't do... with the possibility of one exception who was killed early on. I'm sure he would have gotten around to her had she lived.) I realize this was written in the "anything goes" late 70's but come on... the guy should have switched professions because obviously his true calling was male sex machine.
Between the non-existant characterization, the absurd dialogue, the confusing plot (maybe I was trying to hard to find a plot that wasn't there), and the believability factor (as in: there was none), this was 520 pages of schlock that no one should have to suffer through.
June 24, 2013
I really wanted to like this one after "The Insiders" but the character development was non-existant. The author kept beating the reader over the head with how Webb and Anne were a perfect match or meant to be together, but then made most of their loves scenes fade to black and left most of their dialogue petulant and bickering. Every other character was either lusting after Anne or jealous of her. These limited dimensions and the large amount of characters made it hard to care about anyone. The only high point was the bodice ripper film, "Greed for Glory", being made throughout the novel. Every scene they shot was unintentionally hilarious and melodramatic. The majority of the scenes they shot either had Anne/Glory nodding quietly to her on-screen parents or being shaken and seduced by Webb/Jason in her nightgown. Also, how exactly does a REAL gang rape and REAL torture (in the case of Webb/Jason's whipping) go un-noticed on set?! As if the many backstage techs and entourage involved in film making wouldn't be able to tell the difference between acting and real abuse! Many reviewers were disturbed by this part of the book but I just found it stupid and had to suspend some serious disbelief. The espionage/political conspiracy sub-plot was too convoluted to follow fluidly. At some point I just skimmed.
May 5, 2016
Half way through the book now. I am loosing interest. Webb literally just fucks anything (w a vagina) that moves, and Anne Mallory doesnt seem to have a character at all - any guy can touches her LOL And she just let men fuck her. And she barely talks, ever. Actually, neither of the 2 main characters ever open their mouths to say sth w meaning. And the timeline and sequence of happenings just get more n more weird.
March 31, 2013
Too many actors and not enough characters...
Plot not developed, justa string of enecdotes that finally fall together.
If this had beenwell-written it could have been a 300 page book instead of 520.
Plot not developed, justa string of enecdotes that finally fall together.
If this had beenwell-written it could have been a 300 page book instead of 520.
Read
February 25, 2012Read a long time ago and remember really liking it but I want to read again someday.
Want to read
August 3, 2012I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/7396844
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/7396844
November 12, 2014
Couldn't get into this book.
April 20, 2016
This book stuck with me my whole life. Loved it and still own a copy.
Read
March 2, 2019I have the english and the german edition: Die Blonde
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