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Hope Valley Brides #2
One Mother Wanted
One Mother Wanted by Jeanne Allan released on Sep 24, 1999 is available now for purchase.
187 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
65 people want to read
About the author
Jeanne Allan
34 books12 followersBarbara Blackman was under the pseudonym Jeanne Allan, the author of 25 romance novels for Harlequin. On the cover of her first novel, Peter's Sister, her surname was misspelled as "Allen".
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 29, 2012
This is the book that started my binge on Jeanne Allan's books.
The premise just stabs my heart. At her sister’s wedding, our heroine Allie meets the daughter of her ex-fiance Zane…the daughter that her cheating, drunk louse of an ex-fiance irresponsibly begot from a one-night stand five years ago.
Flashback five years ago: when she was away at school, she heard reports that Zane was drinking and driving. She confronted him with it and he accused her of not trusting him and spying on him. In a snit, she handed him back her engagement ring. In a huff, he hightailed it to the nearest bar where he drank himself stupid and set out to prove that he was still desirable to someone other than Allie.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Two days later, he returned to Allie, all apologetic but omitting to mention his infidelity. She accepted him back and fell for his promise to change for the better. So, their engagement was back on again.
But of course, this is HP-land and one-night stands are seldom without repercussions. Shortly before their wedding, he informed her that the infamous night resulted into a pregnancy and that he was going to have to do the honorable thing and marry his baby’s mother.
I give the heroine's reaction two-thumbs up then. She behaved the way I would have, given the bombshell: hurl the ring back at him, slay him with curse words, and airbrush him out of my life ala-Stalin.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t rate her actions quite as highly five years later. When she next meets him again -- at her sister's wedding -- she has lost her spunk. Or I would say...vindictiveness.
And this is why the book is so frustrating after all that delicious, angsty set-up. When they next meet again, she turns into a loser. She holds all the aces yet she ends up with the joker each. and. every. time.
The guy tricks her into helping him with a filly? she acquiesces. The guy needs a nanny for her daughter? she gets guilt-tripped into doing it. The guy needs a surrogate wife to fight a custody issue? she falls for the emotional blackmail and marries him. The guy accuses her of being a selfish stepmom? she accepts it. The guy changes his mind and foists child upon her because he again needs a caretaker? she’s grateful because he trusts her.
Where is his big comeuppance? Where is his grovel?
Why is it that she is the one who has to prove her love for this rancher-oaf?
Isn’t there some kind of cosmic justice out there?
For all the wonderful backstory, the book simply didn’t live up to expectations. Skip this Jeanne Allan book for her other ones or be prepared to do a mental rewrite of your own.
2nd book in a series of 4:
One Bride Delivered
One Mother Wanted
One Man to the Altar
One Husband Needed
The premise just stabs my heart. At her sister’s wedding, our heroine Allie meets the daughter of her ex-fiance Zane…the daughter that her cheating, drunk louse of an ex-fiance irresponsibly begot from a one-night stand five years ago.
Flashback five years ago: when she was away at school, she heard reports that Zane was drinking and driving. She confronted him with it and he accused her of not trusting him and spying on him. In a snit, she handed him back her engagement ring. In a huff, he hightailed it to the nearest bar where he drank himself stupid and set out to prove that he was still desirable to someone other than Allie.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Two days later, he returned to Allie, all apologetic but omitting to mention his infidelity. She accepted him back and fell for his promise to change for the better. So, their engagement was back on again.
But of course, this is HP-land and one-night stands are seldom without repercussions. Shortly before their wedding, he informed her that the infamous night resulted into a pregnancy and that he was going to have to do the honorable thing and marry his baby’s mother.
I give the heroine's reaction two-thumbs up then. She behaved the way I would have, given the bombshell: hurl the ring back at him, slay him with curse words, and airbrush him out of my life ala-Stalin.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t rate her actions quite as highly five years later. When she next meets him again -- at her sister's wedding -- she has lost her spunk. Or I would say...vindictiveness.
And this is why the book is so frustrating after all that delicious, angsty set-up. When they next meet again, she turns into a loser. She holds all the aces yet she ends up with the joker each. and. every. time.
The guy tricks her into helping him with a filly? she acquiesces. The guy needs a nanny for her daughter? she gets guilt-tripped into doing it. The guy needs a surrogate wife to fight a custody issue? she falls for the emotional blackmail and marries him. The guy accuses her of being a selfish stepmom? she accepts it. The guy changes his mind and foists child upon her because he again needs a caretaker? she’s grateful because he trusts her.
Where is his big comeuppance? Where is his grovel?
Why is it that she is the one who has to prove her love for this rancher-oaf?
Isn’t there some kind of cosmic justice out there?
For all the wonderful backstory, the book simply didn’t live up to expectations. Skip this Jeanne Allan book for her other ones or be prepared to do a mental rewrite of your own.
2nd book in a series of 4:
One Bride Delivered
One Mother Wanted
One Man to the Altar
One Husband Needed
July 29, 2023
2 ⭐⭐ - Meh!
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no backbone - too dumb to live - moron heroine - cheater hero
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no backbone - too dumb to live - moron heroine - cheater hero
February 25, 2014
Hmm... how to start this...well I liked the book....I am a glutton for punishment I abhor cheating but am always hoping that I will read a book where when it happens you believe the ending result.... This story is about Allie (Alberta) and her longtime love Zane. 5 years back Zane and Allie were about to get married when Zane shows up to tell her 1)he cheated when they had a spat..that he walked away straight to a trashy bartender and bedded her without protection.... 2) that said tramp now claims to be pregnant and his first action is to dump his longtime girlfriend and marry tramp...check. We are now 5 years later and at heroine's sister wedding....where they come across each other as she meets an adorable little girl...who of course is the reason she did not get the hero...
Allie is the closest to the cheaters victims that I can relate too, she walks away...AFTER she destroys him by calling him every vile thing she can...she did...he deserved it...all. She however has decided that after that example that all men are scum between her cheating father and her faithless hero she has had that theory proven.
Zane I never warmed too...didn't care that he didn't love his wife....especially when you discover that he knew a reason not to marry the tramp and did it anyway.....and when that is revealed I am sorta done...no matter the result of that knowledge in the end... he had an out and chose to destroy his "beloved" and marry a woman he didn't like nor care for....makes sense...to no one.
Zane uses his battered animals...his motherless daughter everything to get to the heroine...she eventually gets caught in a trap of her own making and ends up married to him,(for revenge, to make him feel as desperate and sad as she was when he destroyed her for her...for him to get his happily ever after and to keep his inlaws from taking his daughter...both have agendas... he uses everything he has as does she....but he never seems to redeem to me....her attitude lets you know she would never be able to do it...but he has proven to be as un-heroic as he could be. He sets her up wanting her to be his daughters mother and then punishes her for it. He overhears part of a conversation about her feelings toward his daughter when they split up and used it to punish her...sorry buddy but a baby that is proof your a tramp bedder is not going to make me feel insta love for her or you for having her....and this conversation was about how she felt..not how she felt now....only a idiotic man would assume so...aka our "hero", he did not hear the whole conversation and he uses it against her at several turns...then he has the audacity to use the tramp"s (he married) actions against the heroine because she did this...so must the heroine. He blows it big time several times (for me at least). What she said she felt was natural to the circumstances she hated the tramp and the baby as well as she did her former hero....anyone who says they do not is probably lying....now you can work thru it...but put a bow around it as it is a package of loathing they are all tied together in...rationality has nothing to do with it...it is human.
spoilers: there is another man who could be the father...Zane has always known this...and they are having a discussion and Allie hears most of it and what she heard was exactly what he said that ALlie could not make up to him if he lost Hannah.... which I understand as one child can never replace another but the way he said it was pretty much that neither Allie nor any child they had would ever matter as much as Hannah...and if he felt that way..good for him....but he should have never pretended to ever want to be with Allie if that was what it was....and later at almost the ending he tears Allie apart for taking Hannah somewhere, says some pretty unforgivable things and this close to the ending unless Jesus shows up for an intervention there is not a chance in hades that he can ever be forgiven...and to me he wasn't...this book is a series..I am waffling on reading the next one as I honestly do not want to read another thing about Zane Peters and as always a perfect child born of a dirtbag father and a tramp...apparently in bookland..those children are perfect....no other child ever is...but apparently add one of each of those demographics and you get "angelic perfect, your loathsome to not insta love them"...I need to back away..now I am hating that perfect child as well...lol....go away Zane...there is a bar up the road....
Allie is the closest to the cheaters victims that I can relate too, she walks away...AFTER she destroys him by calling him every vile thing she can...she did...he deserved it...all. She however has decided that after that example that all men are scum between her cheating father and her faithless hero she has had that theory proven.
Zane I never warmed too...didn't care that he didn't love his wife....especially when you discover that he knew a reason not to marry the tramp and did it anyway.....and when that is revealed I am sorta done...no matter the result of that knowledge in the end... he had an out and chose to destroy his "beloved" and marry a woman he didn't like nor care for....makes sense...to no one.
Zane uses his battered animals...his motherless daughter everything to get to the heroine...she eventually gets caught in a trap of her own making and ends up married to him,(for revenge, to make him feel as desperate and sad as she was when he destroyed her for her...for him to get his happily ever after and to keep his inlaws from taking his daughter...both have agendas... he uses everything he has as does she....but he never seems to redeem to me....her attitude lets you know she would never be able to do it...but he has proven to be as un-heroic as he could be. He sets her up wanting her to be his daughters mother and then punishes her for it. He overhears part of a conversation about her feelings toward his daughter when they split up and used it to punish her...sorry buddy but a baby that is proof your a tramp bedder is not going to make me feel insta love for her or you for having her....and this conversation was about how she felt..not how she felt now....only a idiotic man would assume so...aka our "hero", he did not hear the whole conversation and he uses it against her at several turns...then he has the audacity to use the tramp"s (he married) actions against the heroine because she did this...so must the heroine. He blows it big time several times (for me at least). What she said she felt was natural to the circumstances she hated the tramp and the baby as well as she did her former hero....anyone who says they do not is probably lying....now you can work thru it...but put a bow around it as it is a package of loathing they are all tied together in...rationality has nothing to do with it...it is human.
spoilers: there is another man who could be the father...Zane has always known this...and they are having a discussion and Allie hears most of it and what she heard was exactly what he said that ALlie could not make up to him if he lost Hannah.... which I understand as one child can never replace another but the way he said it was pretty much that neither Allie nor any child they had would ever matter as much as Hannah...and if he felt that way..good for him....but he should have never pretended to ever want to be with Allie if that was what it was....and later at almost the ending he tears Allie apart for taking Hannah somewhere, says some pretty unforgivable things and this close to the ending unless Jesus shows up for an intervention there is not a chance in hades that he can ever be forgiven...and to me he wasn't...this book is a series..I am waffling on reading the next one as I honestly do not want to read another thing about Zane Peters and as always a perfect child born of a dirtbag father and a tramp...apparently in bookland..those children are perfect....no other child ever is...but apparently add one of each of those demographics and you get "angelic perfect, your loathsome to not insta love them"...I need to back away..now I am hating that perfect child as well...lol....go away Zane...there is a bar up the road....
nope-not-for-me
February 9, 2019Lousy second chance romance with cheating H and baby with OW he cheated with that he dumps the h to marry. There are not enough antacids in the world to get me to read this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2015
Basic plot- H/h are childhood sweethearts. While away at college the h friends are telling her about the young H drinking at parties, driving fast and being reckless. She is terrified the H is just like her father and nags him whe she comes home. The H is upset by her lack of trust, they fight, she breaks off their engagement and he goes out and has a ONS. They make up a few days later(he doesn't tell her about the barfly) but alas, this is a HQ so the barfly gets preggo and the H goes cap in hand to the h and tells her he's marrying the other girl, of course this occurs just weeks from their own wedding. The book begins 5 years after their breakup.
I had a hard time with this one, Both the H and the h make a LOT of mistakes. They are both angry, mistrustful people and they constantly take it out on each other.
The H mistakes...
While the h..
The H is really the aggressor in this book, chasing the h and making silly excuses to keep her in his life. The h recognizes they are silly, but goes with it, running hot and cold on the H, getting close than backing off. I think I would have liked this more of the h had been more obviously in love. We get a clear picture of how desperately the H loves the h, and how awful his life has been since their break up, but it's not the case with the h.
All in all a bit of a disappointment.
I had a hard time with this one, Both the H and the h make a LOT of mistakes. They are both angry, mistrustful people and they constantly take it out on each other.
The H mistakes...
While the h..
The H is really the aggressor in this book, chasing the h and making silly excuses to keep her in his life. The h recognizes they are silly, but goes with it, running hot and cold on the H, getting close than backing off. I think I would have liked this more of the h had been more obviously in love. We get a clear picture of how desperately the H loves the h, and how awful his life has been since their break up, but it's not the case with the h.
All in all a bit of a disappointment.
September 4, 2015
I'm in need of a rant after reading this book but don't feel well, so haven't the energy. Some of the other reviewers say it pretty well.
All I can say is early on it had flashes of some really angsty brilliance which all comes to nothing because the H was a douche in the past and the present but the h regressed from righteousness to the proverbial doormat.
All I can say is early on it had flashes of some really angsty brilliance which all comes to nothing because the H was a douche in the past and the present but the h regressed from righteousness to the proverbial doormat.
February 4, 2022
I didn’t have high hopes but I was positively surprised. I found myself engaged in the story and felt with the heroine. The H was frustrating and I had problems to feel his love when he treated the heroine poorly and not once but repeatedly. I understand that his daughter was his main priority but his mistrust was not deserved. Nevertheless the book was fun read.
May 29, 2018
4 Stars
Cute 4 star beach read. At first I didn’t like the main characters but they all grew in me and I enjoyed this book
Cute 4 star beach read. At first I didn’t like the main characters but they all grew in me and I enjoyed this book
February 17, 2021
So Many Typos
I didn't like either of the main characters, the story was unoriginal, and the book was full of typos. Beware of the poor editing.
I didn't like either of the main characters, the story was unoriginal, and the book was full of typos. Beware of the poor editing.
Read
September 15, 2023Dnf after such eye opening reviews.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews