What do you think?
Innocent Abroad
"You've been well paid for the bargain."
The deep voice over the phone made no sense at all until Reggie's sister Bella hastened to explain the immensity of the problem.
It seemed that Bella had agreed to act as Severo Cardenosa's fiancee, but then had to run out on him. So, to help her sister, soft-hearted Reggie went to Uruguay to the despicable Severo.
Once there, however, Reggie learned that Severo meant to carry the charade to its bitter conclusion--meaning marriage! How on earth would she get out of this mess?
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Jessica Steele
353 books114 followersJessica Steele was born on May 9, 1933 in the elegant Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa. She has two super brothers, Colin and George, and a lovely sister, Elizabeth. She was a delicate child and missed a lot of school. In fact, she left school at aged 14, when she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis. At 16, she started work as a junior clerk. In 1967, Jessica married with her husband, Peter and within a very short space of time they had moved from her hometown to the lovely area where they now live. Their house is built into the side of a hill, and has beautiful views over more hills and valleys. Her brothers and her sister are very close and she has plenty of nephews and nieces to make up for the fact that she and her husband have no children of their own. Both she and her husband are more than a little dog-oriented, and their current dog is a Staffordshire bull terrier named Florence. Florence is gorgeous. She loves everybody but, since she is 40 pounds of dynamite and would hurl her boisterous self at everyone she meets - given half a chance - she has to be restrained (as much as possible). She is fun.
Her husband spurred Jessica on to her writing career, giving her every support while she did what she considers her five-year apprenticeship (the rejection years) while learning how to write. She published her first books in 1979. Jessica has tried using a typewriter, but it just doesn't work for her. She is much happier writing in longhand, and in actual fact has a dozen or so fountain pens filled and ready to go at the start of any one session. A friend has a secretarial agency and, after deciphering Jessica's writing, returns an immaculately typed manuscript. To gain authentic background for her books, she has travelled and researched in Greece, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
Her husband spurred Jessica on to her writing career, giving her every support while she did what she considers her five-year apprenticeship (the rejection years) while learning how to write. She published her first books in 1979. Jessica has tried using a typewriter, but it just doesn't work for her. She is much happier writing in longhand, and in actual fact has a dozen or so fountain pens filled and ready to go at the start of any one session. A friend has a secretarial agency and, after deciphering Jessica's writing, returns an immaculately typed manuscript. To gain authentic background for her books, she has travelled and researched in Greece, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
November 5, 2019
Heroine did not get the vintage romance memo so of course she found herself in Uruguay(!) in a fake engagement/marriage with a besotted hero.
Missing memo to heroine:
*Clive is an OM name so don’t fall in love.
*When you find out OM’s married and just stringing you along, don’t be tempted to fall in with his plans. It shows lack of moral fiber even though you did the right thing at the end.
*Your older sister is a lying liar who lies. She flounced off to Uruguay (!) after a fight with her BF. Once there, she was angry hero didn’t feed her vanity so she used your name to rip off the hero for a house deposit and then skipped the country.
*Sis omits to tell you that she agreed to a MOC for money and that hero is expecting her and not you.
*Oh, and Sis gets no comeuppance whatsoever. She marries her “possessive” BF who has no idea she is a lying liar who lies.
*The H’s grandpa dies but there is still grandma to fool with your fake engagement/marriage.
*All that anger you feel toward the H is sexual tension.
*All that anger he feels toward you is sexual tension.
*Uruguay is really beautiful.
*Hero is not broke, but it’s a nice way to convince him you love him and not his money.
*Keep that ocean between you and your lying liar of a sister who lies.
Missing memo to heroine:
*Clive is an OM name so don’t fall in love.
*When you find out OM’s married and just stringing you along, don’t be tempted to fall in with his plans. It shows lack of moral fiber even though you did the right thing at the end.
*Your older sister is a lying liar who lies. She flounced off to Uruguay (!) after a fight with her BF. Once there, she was angry hero didn’t feed her vanity so she used your name to rip off the hero for a house deposit and then skipped the country.
*Sis omits to tell you that she agreed to a MOC for money and that hero is expecting her and not you.
*Oh, and Sis gets no comeuppance whatsoever. She marries her “possessive” BF who has no idea she is a lying liar who lies.
*The H’s grandpa dies but there is still grandma to fool with your fake engagement/marriage.
*All that anger you feel toward the H is sexual tension.
*All that anger he feels toward you is sexual tension.
*Uruguay is really beautiful.
*Hero is not broke, but it’s a nice way to convince him you love him and not his money.
*Keep that ocean between you and your lying liar of a sister who lies.
January 20, 2013
If you like a besotted hero, this one is for you. He is all alpha without being an asshat. She is ditzy and misses every sign of his devotion. So rolling your eyes will be a must. But hey, that's why we read these category romances, right?
I prefer Jessica Steele's older books. She writes great Alpha heroes, without making them asshats. Her newer, more recently published works, are kind of boring. Everyone acts so refined. Yawn.......
I prefer Jessica Steele's older books. She writes great Alpha heroes, without making them asshats. Her newer, more recently published works, are kind of boring. Everyone acts so refined. Yawn.......
October 11, 2017
3.5 stars. Old School romance with a besotted alpha H and innocent, flighty h - just the way I like it! It's love at first sight on the H's part and he tries everything from emotional blackmail to blatant lies to get the h to feel the same way about him. I love these kind of stories that actually have a moving plot and isn't just about the H and the h getting it on and getting over their commitment phobia (usually with the help of a baby). There's an actual romance in here, that's sweet and somehow believable - as OTT as it is in parts (but thats what I love about vintage M&Bs - the sweeping, crazy loves stories). I'm ashamed to say this is my first read from this author. I will definitely be trying more from her in the near future.
November 1, 2021
Loved! Best book by JS for me. This guy was so crazy about her that he lied and cheated to win her.😂
Free on Open Library.
Age gap: H36, h22
Free on Open Library.
Age gap: H36, h22
April 3, 2026
Early 80s Mills & Boon/Harlequin in which a young English woman gets tricked (in an incredibly convoluted way) in going to Uruguay to pretend to be the fiancée of a wealthy, handsome man with the wonderful name of Severo Cardenosa. Fun.
April 16, 2015
4 Stars ~ At 10, Regina witnessed her parents die in a car crash, and then she and her older sister went to live with their grandparents. Now 22, her grandparents also deceased, Reggie still holds dear the old fashioned ideals she was raised with. Her only close family was her sister Bella, who lived a more exciting life as a dancer. Bella had recently broken a dancing contract in South America, in order to make things right with her boyfriend, James. In a matter of weeks, Bella would be marrying James and moving into their first home in a town where James was an architect. Reggie too thought she was about to be proposed to, but instead her boyfriend, Clive, confessed that he was already married and that his wife wouldn't grant him a divorce. Clive was going to America for work for a month, and he asked Reggie to think hard about moving in with him. After his departure, Reggie had a visit from his wife, who confirmed that she wouldn't grant a divorce, not until some sort of security was in place for the children. Reggie is devastated; not only is Clive married but he has children! With the wife gone, Reggie receives a bizarre telephone call from South America; the caller assuming she is Bella and demanding she fly back immediately to fulfill her part of their bargain. Thinking it a prank call, Reggie hangs up on him, only to learn later that he indeed exists and that Bella indeed made a bargain with him. This Severo Cardenosa has paid Bella a large sum of money to pretend to be his fiancee to please his dying grandfather. Bella spent the money on the down payment for the house with James; lying about an inheritance. Fearing that Severo will ruin her marriage to James, Bella convinces Reggie to take her place.
Arriving in Uruguay, Reggie is left to stew for days in a luxurious hotel while she waits for Severo to come and get her. Fed up, on the fourth day she sends him a telegram to remind him that she's waiting and "can't wait to see you, darling". At first meeting sparks fly, Severo assumes that Reggie is as calculating a gold digger as Bella, and Reggie, insulted by his attitude lets him know what she thinks of him. But Severo holds the highest card, if Reggie doesn't fulfill the bargain, Severo is quite happy to let James know all about Bella's double dealing. The reason for Severo's delay was the day of her arrival his grandfather passed away and has now been buried. He also informs her that now he's worried about his grandmother who since her husband's death has been depressed. This touches Reggie's soft heart, as her own grandmother survived her husband by only six months, and so Reggie agrees to continue the sham. There's an instant bond between Reggie and Severo's grandmother who is also English. And much to Reggie's surprise she has learned that their wedding date has been set for in three weeks time. No matter how Reggie insists to Severo that she will not marry him, she finds herself more and more pulled into his life. Not wanting to break the elderly woman's heart, Reggie resigns herself to the marriage, but she insists that it be one of convenience, that Severo could seek his passion elsewhere.
From the first pages you could just tell that Reggie was the girl with the soft heart who was bound to find herself in overwhelming situations. From their first meeting, their relationship is volatile, with Reggie's normally calm demeanor flaring up quickly in temper. I laughed with her as she realized that rarely did she get to enjoy a desert because she was always storming out when Severo provoked her temper. He seemed to take delight in getting a rise out of her, but it was clear from the start that he was enchanted with her. He cleverly maneuvered her into marrying him before she could run away. I found it great fun reading Severo and Reggie's combustible ride to HEA.
Arriving in Uruguay, Reggie is left to stew for days in a luxurious hotel while she waits for Severo to come and get her. Fed up, on the fourth day she sends him a telegram to remind him that she's waiting and "can't wait to see you, darling". At first meeting sparks fly, Severo assumes that Reggie is as calculating a gold digger as Bella, and Reggie, insulted by his attitude lets him know what she thinks of him. But Severo holds the highest card, if Reggie doesn't fulfill the bargain, Severo is quite happy to let James know all about Bella's double dealing. The reason for Severo's delay was the day of her arrival his grandfather passed away and has now been buried. He also informs her that now he's worried about his grandmother who since her husband's death has been depressed. This touches Reggie's soft heart, as her own grandmother survived her husband by only six months, and so Reggie agrees to continue the sham. There's an instant bond between Reggie and Severo's grandmother who is also English. And much to Reggie's surprise she has learned that their wedding date has been set for in three weeks time. No matter how Reggie insists to Severo that she will not marry him, she finds herself more and more pulled into his life. Not wanting to break the elderly woman's heart, Reggie resigns herself to the marriage, but she insists that it be one of convenience, that Severo could seek his passion elsewhere.
From the first pages you could just tell that Reggie was the girl with the soft heart who was bound to find herself in overwhelming situations. From their first meeting, their relationship is volatile, with Reggie's normally calm demeanor flaring up quickly in temper. I laughed with her as she realized that rarely did she get to enjoy a desert because she was always storming out when Severo provoked her temper. He seemed to take delight in getting a rise out of her, but it was clear from the start that he was enchanted with her. He cleverly maneuvered her into marrying him before she could run away. I found it great fun reading Severo and Reggie's combustible ride to HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 22, 2021
Sweet vintage HP with an H who was crazy for the h. Reggie’s sister goes to a foreign country with her dance troupe and meets the H. Incidentally she comes back home to marry her bf and leaves Reggie to pick up on her troubles.
Reggie has no inkling what her sister had been up to while away and being gullible she falls for her sister’s tales and travels abroad to meet the H. There is much boring talk between the sisters in the beginning of the book and I was about to give up on it. I’m glad I kept going.
The h and H marry in an MOC. They don’t get much time post marriage but their chemistry is packing! The H is incorrigible in his pursuit of the h. The h is sweet and shy and can be easily taken on a trip and the H can’t but help to incessantly tease her on it. I loved their sparring.
An old fashioned read with an Uber alpha possessive H. Go for it!
Reggie has no inkling what her sister had been up to while away and being gullible she falls for her sister’s tales and travels abroad to meet the H. There is much boring talk between the sisters in the beginning of the book and I was about to give up on it. I’m glad I kept going.
The h and H marry in an MOC. They don’t get much time post marriage but their chemistry is packing! The H is incorrigible in his pursuit of the h. The h is sweet and shy and can be easily taken on a trip and the H can’t but help to incessantly tease her on it. I loved their sparring.
An old fashioned read with an Uber alpha possessive H. Go for it!
November 27, 2019
Even if H was soo naive and H was not mean, I liked the meaningless drama a lot!
December 14, 2019
"Innocent Abroad" is the story of Reggie and Severe.
The book begins with the young h finding out that her boyfriend is a married father of two kids, and getting a visit from his estranged wife. Wanting to escape her guilt and unresolved feelings for him, she instead ends up in Uruguay to help her sister out. The reason being her sister's broken promise to the H that in exchange for money, she would pretend to be his fiance. She soon meets the domineering man, and is confused by her feelings for him, but really loves and respect his family and friends. He then coerces her to marry him, in lieu for hiding her newly married sister's deceit from her husband. After ample protests, she reluctantly agrees. Some drama, consummation and jealousy later, the book ends in a HEA.
Interesting characters who failed to communicate until the end and the h did get on my nerves as she tried to relentlessly push the H away. I like the h's moments with his grandmother, and enjoyed the confessions at the end. It had its moments, but overall an average read.
Safe
2.75/5
The book begins with the young h finding out that her boyfriend is a married father of two kids, and getting a visit from his estranged wife. Wanting to escape her guilt and unresolved feelings for him, she instead ends up in Uruguay to help her sister out. The reason being her sister's broken promise to the H that in exchange for money, she would pretend to be his fiance. She soon meets the domineering man, and is confused by her feelings for him, but really loves and respect his family and friends. He then coerces her to marry him, in lieu for hiding her newly married sister's deceit from her husband. After ample protests, she reluctantly agrees. Some drama, consummation and jealousy later, the book ends in a HEA.
Interesting characters who failed to communicate until the end and the h did get on my nerves as she tried to relentlessly push the H away. I like the h's moments with his grandmother, and enjoyed the confessions at the end. It had its moments, but overall an average read.
Safe
2.75/5
May 28, 2015
Can two sisters be such an opposite in characters? Yes they can! We had Bella, the older sister, beautiful on the outside and ready to be married to a man she loved in about a month... but in my opinion a very selfish, self centered, a gold digging bitch without an ounce of moral kind of girl. In Regina, the younger sister we found a bestowed girl who found out the man she loved and expected to pop the question was already married and the question he popped was, " Will you move in with me after I come back from a month work in the states?"... the very next day Regina met the guy's wife and found out he also had two young children that she wasn't aware of. Regina needed to get a way because she knew she could never agree to be with a man without marriage and when she founds out what her older sister has done, she decided to cover the role her sister was paid to do and kill two birds with one stone.
Reggie had an air of innocent and genuine good girl about her.
In Severo, we found a man who knew what he wanted and had no problem going after it. I adored him.
Reggie had an air of innocent and genuine good girl about her.
In Severo, we found a man who knew what he wanted and had no problem going after it. I adored him.
February 25, 2012
Reggie's sister Bella agreed to "marry" Severo when she went Uruguay for vacation. Severo paid Bella money to be his fake fiance for the sake of his grandfather and grandmother. Instead Bella took the money, ran back to England and married James, leaving Severo "fianceeless". What was even worse is when Bella was in Uruguay, she said her name was Reggie and pretended to be her sister.
When Severo calls to demand Reggie come to Uruguay to be his fake fiancee, Reggie thinks it's a prank until she talks to Bella. Even when Reggie talks to Bella, Bella only tells half the truth. So when Reggie goes to Uruguay, she actually had to marry Severo, which is worse because Reggie thinks she's in love with Clive. Clive is a married man with children trying to get a divorce from his wife.
After a whole lotta mixed emotions, Reggie and Severo get it sorted and become lovers. It was a good book overall, the emotions were high and the characters were decently written.
When Severo calls to demand Reggie come to Uruguay to be his fake fiancee, Reggie thinks it's a prank until she talks to Bella. Even when Reggie talks to Bella, Bella only tells half the truth. So when Reggie goes to Uruguay, she actually had to marry Severo, which is worse because Reggie thinks she's in love with Clive. Clive is a married man with children trying to get a divorce from his wife.
After a whole lotta mixed emotions, Reggie and Severo get it sorted and become lovers. It was a good book overall, the emotions were high and the characters were decently written.
September 5, 2014
3.5 stars
some of JS' writing is atrocious with long sentences and one becomes more involved with the writing style rather than the writing itself... :) but still her plots are unique and her style easily recognisable. Her heroines are actual 'innocents abroad'- guileless naive virgins who are always misunderstood n accused by the heroes.I don't mind reading a JS now n then. Infact this book is one of the very first HPs i ever bought..so yes memories! n so I have a soft corner for this one.
and this author's characters have such unique and different names...she really works on the names i think...
some of JS' writing is atrocious with long sentences and one becomes more involved with the writing style rather than the writing itself... :) but still her plots are unique and her style easily recognisable. Her heroines are actual 'innocents abroad'- guileless naive virgins who are always misunderstood n accused by the heroes.I don't mind reading a JS now n then. Infact this book is one of the very first HPs i ever bought..so yes memories! n so I have a soft corner for this one.
and this author's characters have such unique and different names...she really works on the names i think...
February 5, 2021
Jessica Steele has a strange writing style using convoluted sentences but she creates sympathetic characters and situations. Innocent Abroad has Reggie coming from England instead of her older, harder sister, to pretend to be rich rancher Severo's fiancee. Severo, in true Harlequin fashion, falls in love with her at first sight and schemes and uses emotional blackmail to keep her at his ranch and marry her.
The novel is set in Uruguay and describes beautiful countryside.
Overall I enjoyed this although Steele's style is tiring!
The novel is set in Uruguay and describes beautiful countryside.
Overall I enjoyed this although Steele's style is tiring!
January 3, 2011
I love all Jessica Steele's novels.
July 30, 2024
Written in typical HQN style this book is angst from beginning to end. But it’s a good read though.
December 11, 2015
It was just alright to me. I guess it was too old schoolish for me and the writing just seemed a little disjointed. Loved the H for being so arrogant and besotted with the h. He wasn’t a big alpha meanie, but still an alpha nevertheless. h was a bit too – I don’t know the right word to describe her – but I was just so-so on her. I thought she blamed too much for her predicament when really she should put ALL the blame on her older sister – which by the way I was so unsure of her character (not that the older sister had a big part in the story other than the beginning.) I thought the older sister really really cared/loved her younger sister but by the end we don’t even see her inquiring about the welfare of her little sister whom she placed in such a bad predicament! Also the OM that the initially “thought” she loved, I thought that storyline seemed lacking and either I skimmed it but I don’t know if the h even informed him that she didn’t love him anymore or ended it! And if I’m not mistaken she didn’t even tell her older sister that she was married now. (I would have been curious about her reaction). Anyway, I gave it a 3 stars just cause I liked the H, lol. I love alpha besotted heroes who fall in love at first sight at the h.
July 10, 2020
“My true beloved,” Severo breathed tenderly, “you’re the most gullible idiot I have ever met, you are also a doormat and you jump to conclusions with an imagination that would make any author jealous. But I love you forever and ever.”
That was of course made up but really, he should have said that. Both characters are lovely. Severo is hot. Reggie is... see above. When they first meet he says “Don’t worry. You’re my responsibility now.” Good thing too cause Reggie is TSTL. But lovable. And fun to read about.
I especially liked Severo. He’s got all the alpha hotness without being mean. He’s fun, he’s funny, he’s caring, he’s sweet. Siiiiigh...
Bonus points: I got to know where Uruguay is and read up a bit on a country I only knew the name of :)
That was of course made up but really, he should have said that. Both characters are lovely. Severo is hot. Reggie is... see above. When they first meet he says “Don’t worry. You’re my responsibility now.” Good thing too cause Reggie is TSTL. But lovable. And fun to read about.
I especially liked Severo. He’s got all the alpha hotness without being mean. He’s fun, he’s funny, he’s caring, he’s sweet. Siiiiigh...
Bonus points: I got to know where Uruguay is and read up a bit on a country I only knew the name of :)
October 25, 2012
I love how Jessica Steele creates conflict in her heroes, who end up loving the very one they hate and distrust. Then they must grovel a little! Her heroes can be ruthless.
Jessica Steele writes Harlequin Romances and some Hqn Presents. She is now about 80 years old, sad to say. Steele is one of the worst writers, in terms of syntax, grammar, etc. Her sentence construction is ... unusual. But IMO, she is among the best at Hqn in terms of storytelling and sexual tension. Her heroines are virgins, and the wanting drives the heroes nuts.
I read this eons ago, and never forgot it, keeping it on hand.
Jessica Steele writes Harlequin Romances and some Hqn Presents. She is now about 80 years old, sad to say. Steele is one of the worst writers, in terms of syntax, grammar, etc. Her sentence construction is ... unusual. But IMO, she is among the best at Hqn in terms of storytelling and sexual tension. Her heroines are virgins, and the wanting drives the heroes nuts.
I read this eons ago, and never forgot it, keeping it on hand.
November 16, 2019
You've been well paid for the bargain."
The deep voice over the phone made no sense at all until Reggie's sister Bella hastened to explain the immensity of the problem.
It seemed that Bella had agreed to act as Severo Cardenosa's fiancee, but then had to run out on him. So, to help her sister, soft-hearted Reggie went to Uruguay to the despicable Severo.
Once there, however, Reggie learned that Severo meant to carry the charade to its bitter conclusion--meaning marriage! How on earth would she get out of this mess?
The deep voice over the phone made no sense at all until Reggie's sister Bella hastened to explain the immensity of the problem.
It seemed that Bella had agreed to act as Severo Cardenosa's fiancee, but then had to run out on him. So, to help her sister, soft-hearted Reggie went to Uruguay to the despicable Severo.
Once there, however, Reggie learned that Severo meant to carry the charade to its bitter conclusion--meaning marriage! How on earth would she get out of this mess?
March 28, 2015
It was a great romantic story about a young innocent girl Reggie going to Uruguay to take her sister place as fiancé to rich man Severo. She starts off believing she is in love with a jerk of a married man and fall for him instead. She was sweet and kind and you could tell the hero was in love with her even when he said some nasty things to her. I loved it. Worth a read and no real sex scenes for those who are offended by that kind of thing.
August 30, 2015
the author packed a load of ludicrous facts and tried to make romance out of it. the heroine was supposedly in love wid clive and contemplated adultery. then she met severo and fell for him !? this was preposterous and i did not feel any connection between them. the sex was not dat good as well.
December 29, 2024
This was a long read, not that the book was longer than usual. It just felt that way because of the long monologues.
I have a weak spot for stories with Latin american Heroes (who doesnt?) and that's what kept me reading.
Anyway, this was love at first sight for the H who immediately decided to marry our reluctant heroine.
An okay, safe read. Nothing spectacular though.
I have a weak spot for stories with Latin american Heroes (who doesnt?) and that's what kept me reading.
Anyway, this was love at first sight for the H who immediately decided to marry our reluctant heroine.
An okay, safe read. Nothing spectacular though.
August 15, 2026
3.8 stars, rounded up to 4
Innocent Abroad was generally an enjoyable, well-paced romance with several tropes I like, particularly an autocratic hero who misunderstands the heroine while quietly revealing that he cares far more than he admits. I would probably have given it a straightforward four stars if the ending had not made Reggie rather too much of a doormat. The angst also operated at perhaps 80% of its potential rather than reaching the emotional intensity the premise seemed to promise.
One major reason was that Reggie does not realise she is in love with Severo until very late in the book, at around the 90% mark. I prefer a heroine to fall first and spend more of the story pining for an apparently unattainable hero. Without that, potentially angsty developments such as other-woman drama simply do not have the same impact, and her being mad at him about it merely made her seem like a harpy.
I was also disappointed by what I had expected to be one of the central tropes. The premise appeared to offer a situation where Reggie's beautiful older sister Bella had been the woman Severo originally wanted, only for Bella to take his money and abandon their arrangement, leaving him with the supposedly inferior sister instead. That could have produced wonderful anguish if Reggie believed Severo had genuinely wanted Bella and now resented being saddled with her while punishing her for her sister's betrayal.
In reality, Severo had never been interested in Bella at all. That entire potential source of romantic conflict therefore disappeared.
The beginning also made it difficult for me to like any of the principal characters. Reggie is involved with a man named Clive and has fallen deeply in love with him without knowing he is married. That part is not her fault. What bothered me was that, after discovering the truth, she still believes she will probably let him persuade her into becoming his mistress.
Even when Clive's wife comes to see her and reveals that they have two young children, Reggie remains afraid that she loves him too much to refuse him. Considering that she was raised with fairly traditional values by her grandparents, I found her willingness to contemplate an affair with a married father deeply unappealing. It was not a sympathetic starting point for the heroine.
Bella is as bad. While working as a dancer in South America, she agrees to pretend to be Severo's fiancée in return for a large sum, because his dying grandfather desperately wants to see his grandson settled with an English girl. Bella takes the money, runs out on the agreement and then uses it as part of the deposit on a house with the man she actually intends to marry.
She also gave Severo Reggie's name rather than her own.
Bella is supposedly the beloved older sister for whom Reggie is prepared to make enormous sacrifices, yet her behaviour is selfish and dishonest enough that I struggled to understand why I was supposed to care whether her happiness was disrupted.
Severo is hardly a model of honesty himself, but ruthless Harlequin heroes manipulating circumstances to get the heroine they want is at least familiar territory. Once I got past the unpleasant opening setup, I found Reggie much easier to like and was able to settle into the romance.
Reggie knows she must get away from Clive because she fears he will eventually persuade her into an affair. At the same time, she learns about Bella's arrangement with Severo. Bella is now happily engaged to someone else and terrified that Severo will expose what she did and wreck her forthcoming marriage.
Since Severo believes his contractual fiancée is called Reggie, Bella comes up with an appalling solution: Reggie can simply go to Uruguay in her place. It will solve Bella's problem while conveniently getting Reggie far enough away from Clive that he cannot pressure her.
So Reggie sells her car to afford the flight and travels to Uruguay.
She arrives at the expensive hotel Severo has booked but spends several days waiting for him, increasingly panicked because she cannot afford the bill or even a flight home. Eventually she sends word that she is waiting, and Severo finally appears.
Reggie returns to her room one day to find a strange man simply sitting there.
She is furious at the intrusion, while Severo is equally furious because she is plainly not the woman with whom he made his bargain. Only then does Reggie discover that Bella never even bothered to inform him that her sister would be arriving instead.
Severo insists on examining Reggie's passport before believing that Reggie is genuinely her name. Even then, he initially assumes that the sisters have concocted another scheme to squeeze an additional large sum out of him. Reggie's furious response appears to make him reconsider, and he agrees to take her home with him to fulfil Bella's side of the bargain.
He conveniently doesnt tell her that his grandfather has already died.
Only when they arrive does Severo explain that his grandmother is now elderly and fragile after losing her husband, and he wants Reggie to continue pretending to be his fiancée for her sake. He also knows exactly how to manipulate Reggie into agreeing. Both were raised by their grandparents, and Reggie has already told him how her own grandmother died only six months after her grandfather because she never recovered from the grief.
After Reggie meets Severo's grandmother and becomes fond of her, she cannot bring herself to upset the old woman. She therefore agrees to continue the deception for a while.
Severo conveniently refuses to define how long "a while" means.
Before Reggie knows what is happening, his grandmother is happily discussing a wedding date only three weeks away. Reggie confronts Severo in horror, only for him to claim that Bella's original bargain was not merely an engagement but an actual marriage. Since Reggie has been sent as Bella's substitute, he insists she must fulfil the entire contract.
SPOILERS
Reggie repeatedly refuses. Eventually she tells him the strongest truth she has available: she is already in love with another man named Clive.
Severo does not react well to hearing about Clive.
From fairly early on, there are subtle indications that his interest in Reggie has become personal, although we never have his point of view and she does not recognise what is happening. He pushes her steadily towards marriage while also threatening to expose Bella's dishonesty and destroy her new happiness if Reggie refuses to cooperate.
Reggie therefore eventually capitulates and marries him.
This manipulation is harsh, but the book balances it reasonably well by repeatedly showing that Severo pays close attention to her. He notices small things about her preferences and quietly arranges them for her. When she goes walking for longer than expected, he is obviously worried and later asks her quite gently to tell someone where she is going so that they know she is safe.
One tiny touch I particularly liked occurs after Reggie loses her appetite over something Severo says at dinner. He notices which dessert she had wanted and later instructs his housekeeper to make it again so that she can actually enjoy it.
Those little acts made his eventual declaration of long-standing feelings far more believable than it otherwise would have been. Severo could be ruthless and unpleasant when jealousy took over, but underneath that behaviour there was consistent evidence that Reggie's comfort and happiness mattered to him.
There is also apparent other-woman drama. Severo frequently visits the home of a beautiful married woman of around 30, and Reggie sees enough intimate-looking exchanges between them to become increasingly suspicious and jealous.
Unfortunately, this was another trope that ultimately did less for me than I hoped.
I prefer other-woman drama to involve a genuine romantic threat. Here, it eventually turns out that the woman was never Severo's lover at all. He was visiting because her husband's business was in serious financial trouble and he was trying to help them. Severo admits that he allowed Reggie to misunderstand partly because he wanted to make her jealous.
It works as evidence that he wanted a reaction from her, but it deprived the storyline of some of the anguish it could have generated.
After the wedding, Reggie continues resisting a physical marriage. Eventually a thunderstorm, which terrifies her, sends her running into Severo's room for comfort. They sleep together, and he discovers that she is a virgin.
Again, I thought the book underused the moment.
Severo has been tormented by her supposed love for Clive and clearly assumed that they had been lovers. He does not condemn Reggie for supposedly having had sex before marriage, which I appreciated, but discovering that she had actually been untouched could still have produced a much stronger emotional reaction from such a possessive man.
Instead, his response is comparatively restrained.
What does work nicely is that he expects Reggie to be angry with him the following morning. He is conscious that she was frightened and vulnerable and assumes she will accuse him of taking advantage of the situation. That concern shows that her feelings matter to him.
Reggie refuses to put all the responsibility on him, acknowledging that she chose to go into his bedroom barely dressed and threw herself at him for comfort. But instead of allowing the intimacy to bring them closer, Severo becomes mocking again and remarks that he had expected her to blame him for taking what she had been saving for Clive.
Reggie is hurt because she had hoped their night together might alter something between them.
His reaction makes sense considering what has happened shortly beforehand. Reggie received a letter from Clive telling her that his wife has finally agreed to divorce him and asking Reggie to come home so that they can marry. The letter makes Reggie realise she no longer wants him.
Unfortunately, Severo saw her reaction to the letter and completely misread it. He thought she was delighted that Clive is finally free, so his jealousy sent him back into attack mode.
This was the kind of misunderstanding that worked for me because his cruelty was visibly connected to his feelings rather than simply existing for its own sake.
The apparent other woman then becomes increasingly prominent. Reggie and Severo sleep together again, yet afterwards he once more disappears to the other woman's house. Reggie finally reaches breaking point and packs her belongings.
I would have much preferred the book to follow this through.
By this stage, Reggie knows that Severo has lied extensively to get what he wanted. He has admitted that Bella's original agreement never required marriage at all. He simply wanted Reggie and invented that part of the contract to force her into marrying him.
This should have been the moment when he finally lost control of the situation.
I wanted Reggie to make it all the way back to England and force Severo to come after her. It would also have allowed her to confront Clive properly and tell him exactly what she thought of a man who conducted a relationship with her while concealing a wife and two children. Equally, I would have enjoyed seeing her confront Bella for sending her halfway across the world into a situation Bella had completely misrepresented.
Instead, Reggie leaves only to turn around almost immediately.
While driving away, she remembers part of a Spanish telephone conversation she overheard Severo having on the phone just before she drove off and suddenly realises that Severo's business appears to be collapsing. She thinks he will lose his cattle and his fortune.
Her immediate reaction is that she cannot abandon the man she loves when he has lost everything. She also cannot bear the thought that everyone will assume she left because he was no longer wealthy. So she turns the car around, determined to stand beside him and help him rebuild.
There is something admirable about that response. Unfortunately, dramatically and romantically, I found it frustrating.
Severo has controlled almost everything throughout the book. He has lied to her, threatened her, pushed her into marriage and repeatedly used Bella's situation to force Reggie's compliance. This was finally his opportunity to experience what it meant to lose her.
Instead, Reggie capitulates before he really has to suffer.
At least Severo is already coming after her. Their cars meet on the road, confirming that the moment he discovered her note he immediately went in pursuit.
He follows her home and, once there, angrily pulls her from the car. He is convinced that she tried to run back to Clive and tells her in no uncertain terms that he would never have allowed her to go because she belongs with him.
Then Reggie admits she was actually returning to him.
Severo initially makes yet another insulting assumption: that she was returning for his money as he is richer than Clive. This made little sense to me. By this stage Reggie has given him more than enough evidence that money has never motivated her.
She explains that she overheard his telephone conversation and came back because she thought he had lost everything. She intended to stay, help him rebuild and face whatever came with him.
That finally gets through to Severo. He realises she must care for him, not his money.
The business in trouble actually belongs to his neighbour, not him, and the supposedly suspicious visits to the married woman were connected with his efforts to help her husband. There was never an affair. Severo also admits that he deliberately allowed Reggie to be jealous.
He then reveals that his feelings began almost from their first real conversation.
This was reasonably convincing because the book had planted enough small evidence throughout. His attention to Reggie's needs, worry over her safety, jealousy of Clive and seemingly disproportionate reactions to her behaviour all make more sense once we know that he was emotionally involved far earlier than she realised.
My frustration is that Reggie gives in far too easily at exactly the point where I wanted Severo finally to be put on the back foot.
I wanted him to experience genuine fear of loss after everything he had done to keep her under his control. Instead, they meet each other halfway on the road—literally and emotionally—and although that is quite romantic in one sense, it removes much of the catharsis I wanted from the ending.
The biggest thing I hated about the ending, though, was Reggie’s attitude towards Severo’s supposed relationship with the other woman. It was bad enough that, after everything he had done, Reggie was already turning around to go back to him because she believed his business was collapsing and wanted to stand beside him and help him rebuild. But then she actually told him that she was prepared to tolerate him continuing to have the other woman as his mistress, provided he did her the courtesy of not coming to Reggie’s bed afterwards on the same night. I found that utterly disgusting. At that point, what exactly was Reggie not prepared to put up with? Severo had lied to her, manipulated her into marriage and repeatedly got his own way, and now she was essentially offering to remain his loyal wife, help him save face socially, support him through his supposed financial ruin and rebuild his life with him, while also accepting that he could continue sleeping with another woman. Her one pathetic boundary was apparently: please don't sleep with your mistress and then come to my bed immediately afterwards.
That made Reggie look like an absolute doormat at precisely the point when I most needed her to find some pride and make Severo work for her. She was effectively saying that he could have both his wife and his mistress, and she would continue sleeping with him herself as long as he observed that one small courtesy. Why was this necessary? It added nothing positive to her character or to the romance and actually undermined the stronger emotional journey that had come before it. I found it genuinely infuriating. It does make me want to knock the book down further, but I’m keeping my 3.8 stars because, taken as a whole, the romance had enough strengths and enough of a convincing emotional journey to outweigh this particularly awful moment.
The book overall worked better for me in its smaller romantic details than in several of its supposedly major tropes. Severo's quiet attentiveness felt real. His jealousy felt real. His tendency to lash out when he felt threatened by Clive made emotional sense, and the final conversation gave us enough explanation of his behaviour for the relationship to feel broadly convincing.
But the more obvious sources of potential angst were strangely underused. Bella was never really an other woman because Severo never wanted her. The apparent married lover was not a genuine rival either. Clive primarily damaged my opinion of Reggie at the beginning rather than creating meaningful other-man drama. Reggie's very late realisation that she loved Severo also meant that she spent too little of the novel genuinely pining for him.
So while Innocent Abroad contains many of the elements I enjoy, they rarely reach their full emotional potential. The romance itself is authentic enough to work, and Severo's understated acts of care helped considerably, but I wanted the story to push harder on the jealousy, longing and fear of loss that its setup could have provided.
I'm settling on 3.8 stars, rounded up to 4.
Innocent Abroad was generally an enjoyable, well-paced romance with several tropes I like, particularly an autocratic hero who misunderstands the heroine while quietly revealing that he cares far more than he admits. I would probably have given it a straightforward four stars if the ending had not made Reggie rather too much of a doormat. The angst also operated at perhaps 80% of its potential rather than reaching the emotional intensity the premise seemed to promise.
One major reason was that Reggie does not realise she is in love with Severo until very late in the book, at around the 90% mark. I prefer a heroine to fall first and spend more of the story pining for an apparently unattainable hero. Without that, potentially angsty developments such as other-woman drama simply do not have the same impact, and her being mad at him about it merely made her seem like a harpy.
I was also disappointed by what I had expected to be one of the central tropes. The premise appeared to offer a situation where Reggie's beautiful older sister Bella had been the woman Severo originally wanted, only for Bella to take his money and abandon their arrangement, leaving him with the supposedly inferior sister instead. That could have produced wonderful anguish if Reggie believed Severo had genuinely wanted Bella and now resented being saddled with her while punishing her for her sister's betrayal.
In reality, Severo had never been interested in Bella at all. That entire potential source of romantic conflict therefore disappeared.
The beginning also made it difficult for me to like any of the principal characters. Reggie is involved with a man named Clive and has fallen deeply in love with him without knowing he is married. That part is not her fault. What bothered me was that, after discovering the truth, she still believes she will probably let him persuade her into becoming his mistress.
Even when Clive's wife comes to see her and reveals that they have two young children, Reggie remains afraid that she loves him too much to refuse him. Considering that she was raised with fairly traditional values by her grandparents, I found her willingness to contemplate an affair with a married father deeply unappealing. It was not a sympathetic starting point for the heroine.
Bella is as bad. While working as a dancer in South America, she agrees to pretend to be Severo's fiancée in return for a large sum, because his dying grandfather desperately wants to see his grandson settled with an English girl. Bella takes the money, runs out on the agreement and then uses it as part of the deposit on a house with the man she actually intends to marry.
She also gave Severo Reggie's name rather than her own.
Bella is supposedly the beloved older sister for whom Reggie is prepared to make enormous sacrifices, yet her behaviour is selfish and dishonest enough that I struggled to understand why I was supposed to care whether her happiness was disrupted.
Severo is hardly a model of honesty himself, but ruthless Harlequin heroes manipulating circumstances to get the heroine they want is at least familiar territory. Once I got past the unpleasant opening setup, I found Reggie much easier to like and was able to settle into the romance.
Reggie knows she must get away from Clive because she fears he will eventually persuade her into an affair. At the same time, she learns about Bella's arrangement with Severo. Bella is now happily engaged to someone else and terrified that Severo will expose what she did and wreck her forthcoming marriage.
Since Severo believes his contractual fiancée is called Reggie, Bella comes up with an appalling solution: Reggie can simply go to Uruguay in her place. It will solve Bella's problem while conveniently getting Reggie far enough away from Clive that he cannot pressure her.
So Reggie sells her car to afford the flight and travels to Uruguay.
She arrives at the expensive hotel Severo has booked but spends several days waiting for him, increasingly panicked because she cannot afford the bill or even a flight home. Eventually she sends word that she is waiting, and Severo finally appears.
Reggie returns to her room one day to find a strange man simply sitting there.
She is furious at the intrusion, while Severo is equally furious because she is plainly not the woman with whom he made his bargain. Only then does Reggie discover that Bella never even bothered to inform him that her sister would be arriving instead.
Severo insists on examining Reggie's passport before believing that Reggie is genuinely her name. Even then, he initially assumes that the sisters have concocted another scheme to squeeze an additional large sum out of him. Reggie's furious response appears to make him reconsider, and he agrees to take her home with him to fulfil Bella's side of the bargain.
He conveniently doesnt tell her that his grandfather has already died.
Only when they arrive does Severo explain that his grandmother is now elderly and fragile after losing her husband, and he wants Reggie to continue pretending to be his fiancée for her sake. He also knows exactly how to manipulate Reggie into agreeing. Both were raised by their grandparents, and Reggie has already told him how her own grandmother died only six months after her grandfather because she never recovered from the grief.
After Reggie meets Severo's grandmother and becomes fond of her, she cannot bring herself to upset the old woman. She therefore agrees to continue the deception for a while.
Severo conveniently refuses to define how long "a while" means.
Before Reggie knows what is happening, his grandmother is happily discussing a wedding date only three weeks away. Reggie confronts Severo in horror, only for him to claim that Bella's original bargain was not merely an engagement but an actual marriage. Since Reggie has been sent as Bella's substitute, he insists she must fulfil the entire contract.
SPOILERS
Reggie repeatedly refuses. Eventually she tells him the strongest truth she has available: she is already in love with another man named Clive.
Severo does not react well to hearing about Clive.
From fairly early on, there are subtle indications that his interest in Reggie has become personal, although we never have his point of view and she does not recognise what is happening. He pushes her steadily towards marriage while also threatening to expose Bella's dishonesty and destroy her new happiness if Reggie refuses to cooperate.
Reggie therefore eventually capitulates and marries him.
This manipulation is harsh, but the book balances it reasonably well by repeatedly showing that Severo pays close attention to her. He notices small things about her preferences and quietly arranges them for her. When she goes walking for longer than expected, he is obviously worried and later asks her quite gently to tell someone where she is going so that they know she is safe.
One tiny touch I particularly liked occurs after Reggie loses her appetite over something Severo says at dinner. He notices which dessert she had wanted and later instructs his housekeeper to make it again so that she can actually enjoy it.
Those little acts made his eventual declaration of long-standing feelings far more believable than it otherwise would have been. Severo could be ruthless and unpleasant when jealousy took over, but underneath that behaviour there was consistent evidence that Reggie's comfort and happiness mattered to him.
There is also apparent other-woman drama. Severo frequently visits the home of a beautiful married woman of around 30, and Reggie sees enough intimate-looking exchanges between them to become increasingly suspicious and jealous.
Unfortunately, this was another trope that ultimately did less for me than I hoped.
I prefer other-woman drama to involve a genuine romantic threat. Here, it eventually turns out that the woman was never Severo's lover at all. He was visiting because her husband's business was in serious financial trouble and he was trying to help them. Severo admits that he allowed Reggie to misunderstand partly because he wanted to make her jealous.
It works as evidence that he wanted a reaction from her, but it deprived the storyline of some of the anguish it could have generated.
After the wedding, Reggie continues resisting a physical marriage. Eventually a thunderstorm, which terrifies her, sends her running into Severo's room for comfort. They sleep together, and he discovers that she is a virgin.
Again, I thought the book underused the moment.
Severo has been tormented by her supposed love for Clive and clearly assumed that they had been lovers. He does not condemn Reggie for supposedly having had sex before marriage, which I appreciated, but discovering that she had actually been untouched could still have produced a much stronger emotional reaction from such a possessive man.
Instead, his response is comparatively restrained.
What does work nicely is that he expects Reggie to be angry with him the following morning. He is conscious that she was frightened and vulnerable and assumes she will accuse him of taking advantage of the situation. That concern shows that her feelings matter to him.
Reggie refuses to put all the responsibility on him, acknowledging that she chose to go into his bedroom barely dressed and threw herself at him for comfort. But instead of allowing the intimacy to bring them closer, Severo becomes mocking again and remarks that he had expected her to blame him for taking what she had been saving for Clive.
Reggie is hurt because she had hoped their night together might alter something between them.
His reaction makes sense considering what has happened shortly beforehand. Reggie received a letter from Clive telling her that his wife has finally agreed to divorce him and asking Reggie to come home so that they can marry. The letter makes Reggie realise she no longer wants him.
Unfortunately, Severo saw her reaction to the letter and completely misread it. He thought she was delighted that Clive is finally free, so his jealousy sent him back into attack mode.
This was the kind of misunderstanding that worked for me because his cruelty was visibly connected to his feelings rather than simply existing for its own sake.
The apparent other woman then becomes increasingly prominent. Reggie and Severo sleep together again, yet afterwards he once more disappears to the other woman's house. Reggie finally reaches breaking point and packs her belongings.
I would have much preferred the book to follow this through.
By this stage, Reggie knows that Severo has lied extensively to get what he wanted. He has admitted that Bella's original agreement never required marriage at all. He simply wanted Reggie and invented that part of the contract to force her into marrying him.
This should have been the moment when he finally lost control of the situation.
I wanted Reggie to make it all the way back to England and force Severo to come after her. It would also have allowed her to confront Clive properly and tell him exactly what she thought of a man who conducted a relationship with her while concealing a wife and two children. Equally, I would have enjoyed seeing her confront Bella for sending her halfway across the world into a situation Bella had completely misrepresented.
Instead, Reggie leaves only to turn around almost immediately.
While driving away, she remembers part of a Spanish telephone conversation she overheard Severo having on the phone just before she drove off and suddenly realises that Severo's business appears to be collapsing. She thinks he will lose his cattle and his fortune.
Her immediate reaction is that she cannot abandon the man she loves when he has lost everything. She also cannot bear the thought that everyone will assume she left because he was no longer wealthy. So she turns the car around, determined to stand beside him and help him rebuild.
There is something admirable about that response. Unfortunately, dramatically and romantically, I found it frustrating.
Severo has controlled almost everything throughout the book. He has lied to her, threatened her, pushed her into marriage and repeatedly used Bella's situation to force Reggie's compliance. This was finally his opportunity to experience what it meant to lose her.
Instead, Reggie capitulates before he really has to suffer.
At least Severo is already coming after her. Their cars meet on the road, confirming that the moment he discovered her note he immediately went in pursuit.
He follows her home and, once there, angrily pulls her from the car. He is convinced that she tried to run back to Clive and tells her in no uncertain terms that he would never have allowed her to go because she belongs with him.
Then Reggie admits she was actually returning to him.
Severo initially makes yet another insulting assumption: that she was returning for his money as he is richer than Clive. This made little sense to me. By this stage Reggie has given him more than enough evidence that money has never motivated her.
She explains that she overheard his telephone conversation and came back because she thought he had lost everything. She intended to stay, help him rebuild and face whatever came with him.
That finally gets through to Severo. He realises she must care for him, not his money.
The business in trouble actually belongs to his neighbour, not him, and the supposedly suspicious visits to the married woman were connected with his efforts to help her husband. There was never an affair. Severo also admits that he deliberately allowed Reggie to be jealous.
He then reveals that his feelings began almost from their first real conversation.
This was reasonably convincing because the book had planted enough small evidence throughout. His attention to Reggie's needs, worry over her safety, jealousy of Clive and seemingly disproportionate reactions to her behaviour all make more sense once we know that he was emotionally involved far earlier than she realised.
My frustration is that Reggie gives in far too easily at exactly the point where I wanted Severo finally to be put on the back foot.
I wanted him to experience genuine fear of loss after everything he had done to keep her under his control. Instead, they meet each other halfway on the road—literally and emotionally—and although that is quite romantic in one sense, it removes much of the catharsis I wanted from the ending.
The biggest thing I hated about the ending, though, was Reggie’s attitude towards Severo’s supposed relationship with the other woman. It was bad enough that, after everything he had done, Reggie was already turning around to go back to him because she believed his business was collapsing and wanted to stand beside him and help him rebuild. But then she actually told him that she was prepared to tolerate him continuing to have the other woman as his mistress, provided he did her the courtesy of not coming to Reggie’s bed afterwards on the same night. I found that utterly disgusting. At that point, what exactly was Reggie not prepared to put up with? Severo had lied to her, manipulated her into marriage and repeatedly got his own way, and now she was essentially offering to remain his loyal wife, help him save face socially, support him through his supposed financial ruin and rebuild his life with him, while also accepting that he could continue sleeping with another woman. Her one pathetic boundary was apparently: please don't sleep with your mistress and then come to my bed immediately afterwards.
That made Reggie look like an absolute doormat at precisely the point when I most needed her to find some pride and make Severo work for her. She was effectively saying that he could have both his wife and his mistress, and she would continue sleeping with him herself as long as he observed that one small courtesy. Why was this necessary? It added nothing positive to her character or to the romance and actually undermined the stronger emotional journey that had come before it. I found it genuinely infuriating. It does make me want to knock the book down further, but I’m keeping my 3.8 stars because, taken as a whole, the romance had enough strengths and enough of a convincing emotional journey to outweigh this particularly awful moment.
The book overall worked better for me in its smaller romantic details than in several of its supposedly major tropes. Severo's quiet attentiveness felt real. His jealousy felt real. His tendency to lash out when he felt threatened by Clive made emotional sense, and the final conversation gave us enough explanation of his behaviour for the relationship to feel broadly convincing.
But the more obvious sources of potential angst were strangely underused. Bella was never really an other woman because Severo never wanted her. The apparent married lover was not a genuine rival either. Clive primarily damaged my opinion of Reggie at the beginning rather than creating meaningful other-man drama. Reggie's very late realisation that she loved Severo also meant that she spent too little of the novel genuinely pining for him.
So while Innocent Abroad contains many of the elements I enjoy, they rarely reach their full emotional potential. The romance itself is authentic enough to work, and Severo's understated acts of care helped considerably, but I wanted the story to push harder on the jealousy, longing and fear of loss that its setup could have provided.
I'm settling on 3.8 stars, rounded up to 4.
September 10, 2026
For whatever reason, Jessica Steele sticks some horrendous relatives in a lot of her books that put her h's in an awful pickle. In this case, it was Reggie's sister, Bella. Reggie had fallen in love with a man who she didn't know was already married with children. Bella had been paid ten thousand pounds to pretend to be Severo's fiancee. She told Severo that her name was Reggie. When Severo threatened to come to England from Uruguay to collect his fiancee, Bella talked Reggie into going. It would help her escape from Clide. I loved the travelogue of Uruguay, which included bits of history. I also liked the chemistry between Severo and Reggie. This is on my favorites list, but it is very hard to find. I paid quite a bit for a used paperback, so good luck finding a copy.
February 29, 2016
A fake fiancee tale, with a thoroughly besotted hero. Heroine's sister promises to play fake fiancee to hero but ditches him. Our good Samaritan heroine steps in and fulfills the promise. Hero realizes he prefers the replacement fake fiancee a lot more than the original intended, at first sight !
She goes to Uruguay and helps in conning the ailing grandmother. Wonder how alpha male heroes always land up with cute little grand mothers in M&B tales, either dying or meddling !!
Of course, there are some mundane other man / woman characters thrown in for filling the pages, but they really matter.
3 stars simply because I loved the hero and his desperation to keep the girl with him :)
She goes to Uruguay and helps in conning the ailing grandmother. Wonder how alpha male heroes always land up with cute little grand mothers in M&B tales, either dying or meddling !!
Of course, there are some mundane other man / woman characters thrown in for filling the pages, but they really matter.
3 stars simply because I loved the hero and his desperation to keep the girl with him :)
July 9, 2012
Those old harlequin heroes sure do like their virgins
November 28, 2018
3+
The last Jessica Steele in my big box of old schools (I think). I'll have to get some more.
This one put me in mind of my (so far) favorite JS: Tethered Liberty. If you read between the lines, the heroes are immediately besotted, kind of hate themselves for it but do everything they can to keep the heroine close and maybe (please god) win them over, while the heroine proves herself as nothing like her awful unreliable sibling until the two have their dawning realization and it's all sunshine & HEA.
Interesting setting (dated). I liked the character detail of how moved the heroine was by the countryside and simple pleasures.
As always, some moments of genuinely good tension and zing -- and as always, JS's odder syntax and structure, tried-and-true tropes [emotions run high! clashes! sudden swooping kisses!]. But here the hero clearly struggles from moment one when his whole world is knocked off its axis from meeting the real Regina. And Regina is no pushover who finds her fire.
For me, a classic JS and a good solid satisfying old school.
The last Jessica Steele in my big box of old schools (I think). I'll have to get some more.
This one put me in mind of my (so far) favorite JS: Tethered Liberty. If you read between the lines, the heroes are immediately besotted, kind of hate themselves for it but do everything they can to keep the heroine close and maybe (please god) win them over, while the heroine proves herself as nothing like her awful unreliable sibling until the two have their dawning realization and it's all sunshine & HEA.
Interesting setting (dated). I liked the character detail of how moved the heroine was by the countryside and simple pleasures.
As always, some moments of genuinely good tension and zing -- and as always, JS's odder syntax and structure, tried-and-true tropes [emotions run high! clashes! sudden swooping kisses!]. But here the hero clearly struggles from moment one when his whole world is knocked off its axis from meeting the real Regina. And Regina is no pushover who finds her fire.
For me, a classic JS and a good solid satisfying old school.
May 4, 2025
Reggie's sister Bella's poor planning has landed Reggie in hot water with a man who says she was supposed to marry him for the $10,000 he had given her sister. Bella had already spent the money when she changed her mind to marry James instead. Reggie agrees to go as her replacement, believing the agreement was only for a pretended engagement, not a true MARRIAGE. Reggie finds more problems along the way to their wedding day, which is planned to take place VERY SOON. How can she get herself out of this mess in a matter of weeks?
August 16, 2023
Hahaah
the h was limit
I actually am surprised that don't author proofread their stories and realise how utterly childish and TSTL they make their h sound.
Shouting and cursing at drop of hat.
Assuming things on the basis of nothing
Forgiving and forgetting their relatives and defending them against the people who have been wronged by them.
No brains
I mean the list goes on and on
H was ok, don't envy him at all.
the h was limit
I actually am surprised that don't author proofread their stories and realise how utterly childish and TSTL they make their h sound.
Shouting and cursing at drop of hat.
Assuming things on the basis of nothing
Forgiving and forgetting their relatives and defending them against the people who have been wronged by them.
No brains
I mean the list goes on and on
H was ok, don't envy him at all.
August 8, 2017
Read a scanned copy of this book on open library, it was written almost forty years ago, so it was at times, uncomfortably NOT PC! Today's gender roles have advanced along with the years. If you skip a few of those dated scenes you may enjoy this little harlequin story by the great Jessica Steele. Small note: I love the Harlequin book covers from this time. So so lovely!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews