I read only 12 novels in 2022, which is a disappointingly low number compared to previous years. As in 2019, 2020 and 2021, most of the books that I read this year were romance novels. (Click those links to read my reviews of the books I read in those previous years.)
The books I read in 2022 are listed below in the order in which they were first published, from oldest to newest. I have also included my Goodreads reviews and ratings for each novel, as well as the days that it took me to read them. (Some of my Goodreads reviews may have been revised and expanded for this blog.) I only read print books (no e-books), generally mass-market paperbacks. The covers shown are scans I made of my own copies of the editions that I read. (Right-click the images and open them in a new tab or window to view them at super-size.)
A note about the ratings: Goodreads uses a 5-star rating system, with 5 stars being for the best books, 1 star being for the worst. Goodreads doesn't allow half stars, but I have used them here for this blog. Here is what I intend each star to indicate:
5 stars = I absolutely loved it, highly recommended
4 stars = very enjoyable, better than average
3 stars = generally enjoyable
2 stars = didn't enjoy it much, had many problems with it
1 star = I hated it (Thankfully I've not yet given a book only one star.)
BOOKS I READ IN 2022:
Rating: 3 stars
Read: April 6-16, 2022
Review: According to information online, Daisy Thomson (also sometimes bylined in the UK as D H Thomson) was born in 1918, and wrote romance novels from 1963 to 1985. Her work appears to be mostly forgotten now; in fact I had to create the Goodreads entry for this book in order to write my review. In Britain, many of her novels first appeared in hardcover from publisher Robert Hale and subsequently appeared in Fleetway's Woman's Weekly Library digest magazine. In the 1970s, these novels were reprinted in the US by Pyramid (and later Jove) with a uniform cover design and usually with numbers on the front, evidently an attempt at replicating the success of Barbara Cartland (who Pyramid also published in this manner). A blurb on the covers read "Exciting Romance In The Great Tradition of Barbara Cartland," but judging from My Only Love (the first Thomson novel that I have read so far) her work was nothing like Cartland. A more accurate comparison, I think, would be a combination of the European settings and travelogue flavor of the Harlequin Romance line and the mystery plot of an Arlene Hale book. Or, put more simply, a worldly Arlene Hale.
My Only Love was originally published in 1969, but the Pyramid paperback edition came out in January 1974, and was the 2nd book in their Daisy Thomson line. (According to her bibliography, it was actually her 10th novel.) The cover art is a wonderfully realistic illustration, looking more modern than the Harlequin Romance covers of the period (although they would catch up around 1977). I especially like the light that shines atop the heads of the two figures, giving them a more rounded, three-dimensional look. The name of the artist is unknown to me, but presumably it is the same artist who did all of Pyramid's other Daisy Thomson books, since they have a similar style (and resemble some of Pyramid's Barbara Cartland covers, too). (Update: I soon learned, shortly after writing this review, that the artist was named Len Goldberg. On April 28, 2022, I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel about Thomson's books and Goldberg's covers.)
The plot of the novel is that a young woman named Phyllida is traveling through Europe and arrives at a hotel in Austria where she happens to meet a young man named Sebastian that she had a "schoolgirl's infatuation for" years before. Sebastian is now a popular folk singer who makes his living traveling around the world giving small concerts at places like the hotel where she is staying. Phyllida also meets Sebastian's friends, Marisa and Henry who are there for a writers conference, along with married mystery writers Bella and James. Phyllida helps a policeman who had been physically assaulted in the hotel parking lot (next to Sebastian's car), sending him to the hospital for the duration of the book. The mystery gradually shifts from who attacked the officer, to who is trying to kill Phyllida, and why. The answer, it turns out, involves someone she saw in the opening pages of the book (before she arrived at the hotel) and who she has met again without realizing it.
My Only Love is a thin novel, only 224 pages (and in "Easy Read Large Type," as it says on the cover), but it took me around ten days to finish reading -- although I enjoyed my stay in its pages. The pace picks up at the end as the danger against Phyllida becomes more frequent and the mystery about who is responsible moves to the forefront. There is an interesting twist near the end where our presumed hero Sebastian is suspected as the villain -- and many of the clues point in that direction. Since this was a romance novel written before the "rules" of romantic fiction were necessarily adhered to, I wasn't sure myself if Sebastian would be the villain after all. Thankfully the romantic embrace between hero and heroine that the front cover promises is fulfilled by novel's end.
There is a bit of a "meta" moment when Marisa describes her frustration at the pretentiousness of her fellow authors at the conference. "I am afraid I am a low brow at heart," she tells Phyllida. When Phyllida assures Marisa that her books are "first class," Marisa replies, "First class stories, I hope, but today a good story is not regarded as literature, and most of my colleagues here are literary types! They make me feel small!" (page 168). On page 196, Marisa mentions that she is scheduled to make "a little speech" at the conference that afternoon, "along with my French and Spanish sister romance writers" (page 196). I couldn't help but wonder if there was an autobiographical element in Marisa's comments, reflecting Thomson's own view of her writing and its place in the literary world.
Phyllida is described as "a travel correspondent for one of Britain's national papers" (page 18), but more often is shown demonstrating a talent for doodling cartoons and caricatures of the people she meets, capturing their essence in broad strokes. The novel's prose contains brief descriptions of plants and clothing involving words that aren't in my own everyday vocabulary, which raises the level of writing beyond the basics despite its overall simplicity. There is the occasional vividly-worded passage; in one scene, for example, Marisa is described as "poised and sophisticated-looking in a dress of silver lamé which was so figure revealing that she looked as if she had bathed in a moonlight pool which had left a veneer of silver over her shapely body."
The story is written in first person from Phyllida's perspective, like Gothic novels of the time, which does signal to the reader that she will ultimately survive these attempts on her life (since how else could she be writing about them?). And yet, while writing this review, a thought occurred to me that if one doesn't like happy endings, or finds the resolution of this novel too fanciful and unrealistic, that such a reader could imagine that Phyllida did not survive after all. Near the end of the novel she does become sick and bed-ridden, so perhaps from that point forward what we are reading is what her dreaming mind imagines to be happening to her. At another point later on she is knocked out and her body driven to a remote location where it can be dumped and not found; she awakens and jumps from the car to make her escape, but perhaps instead (for the more morbidly-minded reader) this escape happened only in her imagination. The story gives no suggestion that the book ought to be read that way, but I suppose it's a consideration for anyone who finds the actual ending too convenient to be taken seriously.
All in all, I liked this book. It's not "great," but it's fun and I liked the characters and the setting. I rate it 3 out of 5 stars.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: April 21-29, 2022
Review: The title of this novel is also the last line of the novel, spoken by the heroine to the hero, although it doesn't give any indication of what the novel is about, other than having "love" as an aspect of the plot. This is the second Daisy Thomson novel that I've read, and it's very similar to the first novel of hers that I read (My Only Love). As with that one, I also had to create the entry on Goodreads for the book since none existed already. Both novels have the heroine's life continually in danger, finally being abducted by the villain (someone she knows) and making a desperate escape. In both novels, one of the male protagonists is someone that the heroine grew up with and had a crush on. And in both novels the heroine is staying in a hotel in another country, far from home, and working with the local police chief to try and solve a murder. So, it seems that Daisy Thomson had a bit of a formula for her novels, given the strong similarity of these two books. I look forward to reading more of her novels (I have 15 more) to see if the rest conform to this formula or not.
According to the book's copyright page, the novel was originally published in the UK by Robert Hale & Company in 1972. Pyramid Books released the book in paperback in the US in February 1974; my copy is the 2nd Pyramid printing from December 1974. It was book #3 in Pyramid's line of Daisy Thomson novels. The cover artist was Len Goldberg.
The setting of the story is Venice, where our heroine Melanie is vacationing when she runs into her old friend Ben Ferguson (the object of her girlhood crush) who is now working as a globe-trotting journalist. Melanie finds herself the witness to the murder of the woman in the hotel room next to hers, and subsequently bringing her into contact with the attractive Dr. Peter Somerville. There are two mysteries for the reader to solve here: who murdered the woman in the next room (and why), and which man (Ben or Peter) will turn out to be the romantic hero of the book?
Overall I found the book satisfying, although it did seem a bit absurd that Melanie was enjoying the sights and sounds of the city despite the attempts on her life, and often "forgot all about" the occasional stranger that she suspects is following her. Given that Somerville is aware of the danger to Melanie, it's odd that he walked so fast that he lost her in the crowd during a scene late in the novel. However I put this down to the author needing an excuse for Melanie to get separated from him in order to help the villain get closer to her, for dramatic reasons.
On page 206 there was a weird printing error where three lines of text are in the wrong order. The fourth line from the top of the page should actually be the 20th line. Also, line 21 should be line 4, and line 20 should be line 5! Hopefully this information will help anyone reading the book trying to figure out what is happening, or if the book gets reprinted in a new edition.
I enjoyed the book and rate it 3 (out of 5) stars. It's a good, old-fashioned romantic suspense novel, with likable characters and pleasant locations.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: May 3-21, 2022
Review: Although some internet sites (like Goodreads and Fantastic Fiction) list this book as Super-natural Warnings, because the title is hyphenated on the cover due to lack of space, the actual title as shown on the book's spine and title page is Supernatural Warnings. It was published by Popular Library in 1974 and consists of short (2-to-5 page) accounts of strange "unexplained" happenings. The book runs a total of 192 pages, but I took my time reading it, a few stories at a time. Unlike many other books of this type, most of the incidents are contemporary, taking place in either the late 1960s or early 1970s. Unfortunately most of the stories are fairly forgettable after they've been read, although I enjoyed them for the most part while I was reading them. They reminded me in tone of the ghost comics published by Charlton around the same time, or like the "true" mystic experiences that readers contributed to Fate magazine, where the reader is supposed to be awed by how fate intervened in the lives of these ordinary people. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the stories were all made up by the author, since there is no bibliography in the book with news reports backing up anything that is said. None of the stories are really all that scary either. Nonetheless I enjoyed the book. One drawback with my paperback copy is that the pages kept falling out; I had to put Elmer's glue on the interior spine twice during the course of my reading the book. I put that down to poor production rather than any paranormal sign.
Read: July 20-24, 2022
Review: This was book #6 in the heavily-promoted but ultimately doomed Laser Books line, Harlequin's attempt at replicating their success with romance novels in another genre, science fiction. It's too bad that Laser Books didn't work out because the idea of a line of SF novels aimed at the general public is a good one. Unlike sci-fi movies, which the masses enjoy, prose SF after the 1950s (i.e., since the pulp magazines died out) may seem too intellectual and intimidating for most readers, apart from TV and movie tie-ins (like the Star Trek novels). This has the effect of limiting the audience of prose SF to those who are already fans. Anyway, this was the first Laser Book that I've ever bought, and knowing that they were not held in high regard, I wasn't expecting much. To my surprise I found the novel made for addictive reading, given its heavy emphasis on plot (as opposed to characterization) reminiscent of an old pulp story. The plot of this particular book deals with time travel and alternate history, and since I'll be talking about that in my review, know that there will be Spoilers ahead.
The story begins on a "Homestead" world (basically a farming community) where a young dreamer named Jan Jeroux prefers to sit beneath a tree reading instead of doing his daily chores. Jan is soon abducted into service with the time corps, a secret organization of time travelers who voyage to particular years in Earth history, ostensibly to observe and research. Jan eventually learns that the time corps is trying to change history (and in this story, the focus is on American history) in order to prevent a future takeover of the planet by the Watcher and his followers. The time corps had succeeded in preventing the Watcher's takeover -- which is why Jan's Homestead future existed -- but the Watcher has sent spies into the time corps who are working to undo that work, to change history back. In the real history that leads to the Watcher's takeover, George Washington becomes President and JFK is assassinated, but in the history that leads to the peaceful Homestead future, Washington must be hanged by the British and JFK escape assassination. So, we are rooting for Jan and his colleague Gail to change the history that we know in order to save themselves from a world dictatorship under the Watcher.
As I say, I enjoyed the novel although it does have a pulpy feel. Jan goes from being a layabout in the beginning to being a take-charge action hero by the end. Gail starts out as a more hard-edged character, but by the novel's end she has become more of a typical stock female character needing Jan's action-man leadership. And the novel has a weird ending where he gets the girl, apparently to have sex with her, although previously there had been no hint that they were romantically involved -- apart, perhaps, from Jan's irritation at her interest in one of their male colleagues (who turns out to be a traitor working for the Watcher). The novel is short, only 190 pages, but it packs a punch, and I wouldn't mind rereading it someday to see if there are any details I missed the first time around (since its revelations, such as the true nature of the time corps, are only gradually revealed). The book's brevity may be the reason that some aspects of the story seem unresolved or undeveloped, such as the fate of Jan's parents, or any follow-up info about his Uncle Phineas and older sister Cassie (who we meet at the beginning of the book). Obviously the book spends way too much time on American history at the expense of the rest of the world, and is itself a product of its own time (post-Vietnam War). A writer today would perhaps choose different points in history on which to focus attention. But aside from these minor quibbles, I liked it overall and now have a more favorable opinion of the Laser Books line. I'll have to get some more of them, in time.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: May 2-13, 2022
Review: This novel was originally published in 1968 by Avalon Books. This paperback edition was part of Dell's Candlelight Romance line (book #223), appearing in September 1977. Although the book is copyrighted to Gail Everett inside, this was a pen-name for Arlene Hale, who wrote regularly for Candlelight. It's a thin book, running only 173 pages, but it took me a week to finish because I was taking my time with it. Unlike most of the other Arlene Hale books I've read, this one didn't have a mystery element to the plot, unless one counts a secret that gets revealed near the end of the book (which I got the sense was coming based on some clues in the text earlier).
The plot is about a young woman named Beth Brooks who has returned home from college for the summer to the family farm only to learn that she can't go back to the school because her parents can no long afford to send her. As a result she stays in the small town Hillsdale where she grew up, working as a secretary to the local elderly doctor (Dr. Dexter) and temporarily having to abandon her dream of starting a dress shop with her childhood friend LeAnne. Meeting her at the train station is another friend, the young mechanic Chuck who is her boyfriend although the two may be drifting apart, especially with the arrival of the new young doctor in town, Dr. Jason Weatherford. The assumption is that Jason will replace Dr. Dexter as the town's doctor so that the latter can finally retire, but Jason feels that he has been unable to earn the townsfolk's trust given their preference for seeing the older doctor instead of him. Jason considers leaving the town and going back to the city with his fiancee, who has no love for Hillsdale. There are some dramatic moments at the end of the story, including a tornado hitting the town, and you can probably predict how things will end up.
I'm writing this review around two or three days after I finished reading the book, and the thing that sticks out in my memory about it is its happy ending. The story really picked up at the end, and it felt like watching the ending of a Hallmark TV movie where the whole town comes together and everyone is celebrating. The two older characters (Dr. Dexter and his love interest/longtime friend, the eccentric Melinda Penrose who "wore atrociously ugly hats" and "carried an umbrella and used it as a cane") were particularly memorable and fun to read about, having more personality than the rest. I enjoyed the book about as much as I expected to, since I consider Arlene Hale to be a writer of solid if unspectacular stories.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: July 26-August 5, 2022
Review: Winners was a 3-book mini-series of the Sweet Dreams line of teen romance novels published by Bantam in the 1980s. This book was the first in the series, published in November 1985. Each book is about a cheerleader at Midvale High School, with the first novel being about the captain of the cheerleading squad, Stacy Harcourt. (The next book, which I've already begun reading, is about Italian-American Gina Damone and the last is about Tess Belding, both of whom also feature in this book.) Stacy, a senior in high school, has become bored with her boyfriend Rich and breaks up with him. When Stacy accompanies Tess to a local garage to pick up her car, she meets Nick Cooper, a student at their school who works there as a mechanic. Normally Stacy would never be involved with someone like Nick, who is enrolled in vocational courses unlike her own "college prep" classes. But Stacy finds him "the most handsome boy she'd ever seen" and he gives her feelings that she never felt for her previous boyfriend Rich. The two begin dating, but because they have such different interests and run in different social circles, Stacy spends more time learning about his world rather than bringing him into hers. As a result, she spends less time devoted to cheerleading and hanging out with her friends, which causes some distance between Stacy and Tess and threatens Stacy's re-election as captain in the next semester. Eventually Stacy realizes that her involvement with Nick has a selfish aspect: she's mainly attracted to him because of his good looks, and his being so different from the other boys she knows adds some spice to her life, relieving that boredom she had felt. It turns out, however, that Nick realizes he may be more compatible with someone that shares his passion about cars, especially since he has no interest in the cheerleading part of her life.
I was a little worried at first about how this story was going to turn out, that it was going to send the message that girls shouldn't get involved with boys on "the wrong side of the tracks." Or that a girl needs to choose between sticking with her friends or her boyfriend. But the way that it is written, it all turns out for the best for each of the characters. Stacy may not have a boyfriend at the end, but she knows that she doesn't need one in order to be happy. And Nick is just as happy without her, too, with no hard feelings. The best thing about the book were the scenes showing Nick's life, especially the one about his older sister Cora who was in the same grade as Stacy's sister Sarah. Sarah is away at college now, but Cora had to give up her dream of going to nursing school and now has two small kids to raise. Stacy admires Nick and Cora because of their lives in the gritty real world, unlike many of her college-bound classmates who seem to be engaged in a prolonged adolescence. And yet she finally understands that she may be romanticizing their lives, and that they were denied some of the opportunities for success that she was given. They are making a success of their own lives in their own way, but it's not her own way of living. For example, Stacy would never contemplate marrying as young as Cora did, nor having children of her own, and whenever Nick wanted to be in a more physical relationship with her, she would reluctantly push him away. Despite her excitement at being in his arms, she knew that realistically her future did not involve being his wife and the mother of his children.
The book was a bit slow-going, and I took my time reading it, but it picked up and got more interesting by the halfway point as we saw more of Nick's life and saw how Stacy's life changed due to their relationship. The novel does a good job of depicting high school life and the confusion and emotional turmoil that is felt by teenagers as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to be. I was a little surprised to realize that I was in 10th grade when this book was released in 1985, although I would never have picked it up or even noticed it back then. I'm more open-minded about reading different genres now, so hopefully that is proof that I've changed for the better since those old high school days.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: April 6-25, 2022
Review: This is a thin 86-page "true ghost stories" collection, published by Scholastic's Apple Paperbacks imprint in October 1988. It's a quick read, consisting of 13 chapters, with each chapter about a different haunting, with most of the chapters running 7 pages or less. Presumably the book's title was inspired by the 1960 William Castle movie 13 Ghosts, but has no connection to it. Most of the stories take place in the 1800s or earlier, and they reminded me a bit of the TV series One Step Beyond in their credulity on the subject. Each story is followed by a short paragraph by the author providing some background about the case. I found myself regularly looking up the facts for myself on Google after reading a chapter to learn whether the story had been accurately told, and in most cases I found that the author of the book had emphasized the supernatural and downplayed information that would cast doubt on that interpretation. One example is the chapter titled "The Minister's Haunted House" about Borley Rectory. The author concludes the tale by saying "Later, a number of people criticized [paranormal investigator Harry] Price's work, but the mysteries of Borley Rectory remained unsolved." I think a perusal of the Wikipedia entry for Borley Rectory will put one's mind at ease that there was anything truly supernatural going on there. Anyway, despite this complaint (which I think is common with books of this type) I enjoyed reading it. I read only one or two chapters per day, taking my time, reading it whenever I wanted to hear a spooky story at the end of the day (although not too late at night)!
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: July 7-14, 2022
Review: This was Heartsong Presents #603, a Christian inspirational historical romance novel published in 2004. It's a thin book, the story ending on page 170. The book's heroine is Adelaide Sanborn, a young woman working in a general store in 1856 when the story begins. Adelaide longs to be a seafaring woman, having been inspired by tales of the sea by her late father, but her opportunity to fulfill this dream seems unlikely. One day, however, Josiah Buchanan, captain of a whaling ship, arrives at the store and gives her that opportunity. He needs a cook aboard his ship, and asks Adelaide to take the job, allowing her to go to sea at last. The catch is that Josiah asks her to marry him, so that she will be safe under his protection on board the ship, but it will be a "marriage in name only." Adelaide agrees to the proposal, but gradually she discovers that she has fallen in love with Josiah, and he feels the same way about her, but each one is unwilling to admit this new development, since it was not part of the original bargain. Also on board the ship is Adam, the romantic interest of Adelaide's sister Esther, and Josiah becomes jealous of their conversations, not knowing about Esther. There is a lot of talk about prayer in the book, too, as Adelaide and Josiah learn to trust that God has a plan for their lives together, despite the complications that are thrown into their path.
This was a difficult book to give a rating that reflects how I felt reading it. Although I've never read a Heartsong romance novel before, I enjoyed this one about as much or more than I would expect to enjoy any other Heartsong novel. So, for a Heartsong, it would be a 5-star book for me. However, in the grand scheme of things, I think it would rate as a 3.5 star book -- one that occasionally reaches 4 stars in certain places. I certainly enjoyed reading the book, for the most part, and thought it was well-written. One thing that I didn't like was how the lack of communication between Adelaide and Josiah for much of the novel led to so many misunderstandings. At one point, when Josiah overhears Adam talking about Esther, he assumes that Adam is admitting his love for Adelaide (instead of Esther). I was reminded of how the TV sitcom Three's Company used to have such scenes to create confusion amongst the characters, in order to further the plot. If the characters had been more honest with each other, I would have been less frustrated by their actions -- although admittedly there would be less tension in the drama.
It was the setting which caused me to read this book, since I like stories that take place at sea, and there was a lot of detail about life on a whaling boat that made it come to life on the page. I wonder if the author ever wrote a sequel about the romance between Adam and Esther? I'd read it!
Rating: 3 stars
Read: February 23 - June 15, 2022
Review: This book is part of The Palace of Rogues series, published by Avon in December 2021. I picked it up on a whim after reading the first page or two in the store and liking how it read. Although I generally enjoyed the novel, and found the prose to be well-written, it took me a long time to finish (almost 4 months), perhaps because it lacked a page-turning narrative drive.
The story takes place almost entirely within a boarding-house called The Grand Palace on the Thames. Our heroine, the disgraced opera singer Mariana Wylde, arrives at the house on page 2 and doesn't leave its walls until page 354. Another temporary resident of the building, the famed war hero James, the Duke of Valkirk, departs the house briefly for a dinner date on pages 229-232, and moves out for good on page 338. But for most of the book he is in his room, working on his memoirs and correspondence without much enthusiasm or success. This limited setting may seem a little restrictive and claustrophobic for a 372-page novel, making me wonder if the book would have been better suited for a novel with a shorter page count. James is compelled to give Italian lessons to Mariana as punishment for having insulted her, and so this results in even more of a "forced proximity" situation (a common romance trope). There is tension between the irreverent heroine and the respectable hero in these meetings, but eventually their true feelings for each other cannot be denied, as demonstrated in their clandestine nighttime lovemaking sessions in Valkirk's bedroom. Eventually the duke must decide whether his honor and reputation will prevent him from spending his life with this controversial woman that he loves.
One aspect of the novel that is glossed over is the difference in their ages. We are told on page 49 that James is 43 years old, and on page 294 we are told that Mariana is 25. This is nearly a 20-year age difference, but the age gap is not an issue in the book, perhaps indicative that such age gaps were commonplace in real-life relationships at that time. At various points throughout the novel, Mariana "writes" a letter to her mother in her imagination about what she is experiencing. We often see the planned letters, but we are told that they are not really being written down, and after awhile this felt a bit like a gimmick to me. It was predictable that the novel would end with an actual letter finally written and sent, which brings a sense of closure to the story (the completion of this long-running plot thread), but it has the unintended effect of making Mariana seem inconsiderate towards her poor mother by taking so long to mail her a simple letter to let her know that she's okay.
What I liked best about the book is the quality of the prose. The author has a fine ability at presenting a lovely turn of phrase, and so the actual writing was enjoyable to read. Unfortunately, I thought the author bogged down the story with a lot of internal thoughts, self-reflection, doubts, and so forth from the hero and heroine as they contemplated the situation in which they found themselves. After awhile it felt like padding, despite the nice turns-of-phrases. I wanted the author to just get on with the story instead of telling me how the characters felt about everything that was happening. I also occasionally wondered whether the author's details were accurate to the period. For example, the London Times is mentioned a couple times, printing an item of gossip, which made me wonder if the Times (as the newspaper is normally titled, I believe) published gossip columns back then. On page 291, Mariana "gazed up to find one of the largest [fabricated] stars dangling over her head. She wondered if it was the Star of Damocles, or the sort she ought to wish on." I'm no astronomer, but I wonder if the author confused it with the expression about the "sword of Damocles" that dangles precariously over one's head. Or did the author compare a star overhead to the famous sword on purpose? (If someone knows about a "star of Damocles" that one wishes upon, let me know.)
Despite these criticisms, I enjoyed reading the book and I was fond of the characters, especially Mariana, Valkirk, and the boardinghouse's amusing maid Dot. If the book had been shorter, a bit more to the point and less dragged out, I would have rated it higher.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: June 23-July 6, 2022
Review: This book was Harlequin Medical Romance #1226 (Feb. 2022) and the second part of a story arc titled "Miracle Medics." (The first part was How to Heal the Surgeon's Heart by Ann McIntosh, which I've not read.) This is the third novel by Annie Claydon that I've read, and I enjoyed it. The first half of the book deals with a vintage car rally through villages in Wales and England sponsored by the GDK Foundation in order to raise awareness and get blood donations. One of the vintage car drivers is our heroine, Dr. Emma Owen, who due to unforseen circumstances has to share her vehicle with an old flame, Dr. Josh Kennedy, the adopted son of David Kennedy who runs GDK. So right away we have the "forced proximity" trope. They share the ride with David Kennedy's dog Griff who helps to break the tension between them and provide some welcome comic relief and overall cuteness. Along the way, when they encounter an accident on the road, they are able to use their medical knowledge to help the victims.
At first I wondered if the "medical" angle of this medical romance would be downplayed, given the "on the road" setting, but the car rally plotline is wrapped up by page 126, so the rest of the novel takes us back to London where Emma and Josh work together at his hospital. (Unfortunately Griff goes back with David after the car rally, and therefore is absent from the rest of the book.) Emma is working at the hospital only temporarily, intending to soon move back to her home in Liverpool, believing that a serious relationship with Josh is impractical -- despite the fact that they've resumed their romantic and sexual involvement with each other. Josh has a fear of the pattern in his life of people abandoning him (as his biological father did) and Emma dislikes Josh's desire to control the things around him. Eventually things work out (despite the obligatory third-act breakup, when she goes back to Liverpool) and there is a charming chapter near the end about their exchange of postcards in the mail which they use to help reassure each other of their continued interest.
A gay male couple is introduced in the liver-donation sub-plot (in the novel's second half) although the fact that they are gay is not actually mentioned, but implied. I was reminded of the first Annie Claydon novel I'd read (Forbidden Night with the Duke, 2018) which also had a gay male couple in a similarly subtle manner. This may be Claydon's way of expanding the types of characters depicted in Harlequin romance novels, and if so that is admirable. While this novel is no literary masterpiece, it's enjoyable and entertaining. Annie Claydon is a good writer and I enjoy reading her work.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Read: May 15-30, 2022
Review: This book was Harlequin Desire #2874, published in May 2022. Garbera has written regularly for the Desire line since her first book in 1997. This current novel is the third and apparently final book in the author's "Destination Wedding" series. I've not read the other two books, or anything else by the writer, but I was able to follow what was going on, while being aware that there were references to characters in previous books being made (but more about that later). The heroine is the wedding crasher of the title: Melody Conner, a lobbyist gathering information for her employer who is trying to prevent Senator Dare Bisset from passing a health-care bill that they oppose. Dare realizes that she has not been invited to the wedding, but takes a liking to her and soon the two fall in love (and, not long afterwards, into bed). But when Dare later takes a meeting with the lobbying group, he is shocked to discover Melody among them. Melody and Dare realize that they are drawn to each other, and yet their conflicting careers prevent them from openly pursuing their romance. And there is always a sense of distrust between them, since they had first met due to Melody sneaking into the wedding and not telling Dare why she was really there. There are a couple points during the novel where it seems like they may break up for good, including the obligatory third-act breakup (I call it the "HEA fakeout") that occurs a mere fifteen pages from the end of the book.
I'm rating this book 3.5 stars. It would have been a 4 star book for me if not for two aspects that were occasionally annoying. First, there was Dare's siblings, who I assume are characters from the other two books in the series. If I had read the other two books, I think I would have enjoyed seeing them again, getting an update about their lives, etc. But not having read them before, whenever they entered the story it felt like an intrusion by outsiders that were slowing down the momentum of Melody and Dare's story. The emphasis on "happy families" can be a little nauseating, and everyone is supposed to be glad that they are all related to each other, such as this sentence on page 193: "It was clear that Nick wasn't feeling friendly toward Dare or Logan despite the fact that they all now knew they were related, and that Logan was actually Nick's twin." In the epilogue, there's a hint that Melody's brother Ben is attracted to Nick's sister Olivia, causing Melody to think "they'd make a good couple." As I was reading the book, I jotted down the words "soap opera" when I got to page 57 and read the following: "The other side of the coin was Juliette's revelation about Logan. That she'd swapped him in the hospital for her own stillborn child with none other than Cora Williams, who'd given birth to twins." (Cora was the woman who had an affair with Juliette's husband, i.e. Dare's father. If I'm following all of this correctly. There were a lot of names, whenever Dare's family entered the story.) I really didn't care about the drama involving the Bisset and Williams families. Luckily it was only a small part of the novel, though -- but whenever it popped up, the main storyline about Dare and Melody's romance took a backseat. The author made me like and care about Dare and Melody, but I didn't want to read about their relatives in this novel.
The second thing that kept this from getting a full 4 stars from me is that there was a bit of Dare and Melody second-guessing themselves a lot, questioning their motives, asking themselves questions about how they felt, etc. It wasn't excessive, but it was there (and, to be fair, is characteristic of the genre). But I prefer to find out how the characters feel by seeing how they act, and not have to listen to them doubting themselves all the time. Dare and Melody both seemed to be people who boldly go forth to achieve the things they want to get done, so the worrying thoughts they had seemed at odds with that personality trait. It was surprising to me when Dare was so quick to believe the tabloid headline about Melody near the end of the book, and his impulsive action made him look like a jerk since we had been led to believe by that point (from all his thoughts that we were privy to) he wanted to spend the rest of his days with her. Melody's boss Johnny also had a very direct personality that I found appealing, a straight-shooter who was fair-minded despite having his own opinions.
Although Washington, D.C. is the setting for the book, and politics its backdrop, there is nothing political about the book. I don't think I saw the words "Republican" or "Democrat" in the text, and we weren't told which party Dare belongs to -- which seems a bit unrealistic considering how party membership often determines a politican's positions, especially these days. One might assume that Dare is a Democrat, trying to get a health-care bill passed, since that issue has largely been a Democratic concern for many decades. One might assume that Melody is working for an "evil" corporation putting their own profit over the health of people, but the story presents the lobby's concerns in a sympathetic manner, trying to help deserving people that Dare's bill would unintentionally hurt. So no reader will be offended by the story despite their own political leanings. I think the author succeeded in walking that line of not offending readers who follow politics closely and not turning off readers who dislike any perceived political bias in the entertainment they consume.
All in all, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, and will keep an eye out for other novels by the author.
Rating: 3 stars
Read: September 4-December 29, 2022
Review: This book was Harlequin Presents #4030, published in August 2022. I bought the book on a whim, probably because the face of the woman on the cover vaguely reminded me of Lady Gaga (of whom I'm a fan). This thin 218-page novel took me four months to read because I was busy doing other things at the time. In fact, I probably would not have finished it in 2022 without the incentive of wanting to get it done before it ended up in my "Books I Read in 2023" list instead. With that said, one might assume that I found this to be a dull book that I avoided reading, but in fact I enjoyed it and thought it was well-written overall. It's just that, as I say, I had other things to do, and also because the nature of the romance genre itself made some of the characters' thoughts and actions seem needlessly prolonged and unnecessary. (But more on that later.)
Our heroine is an English fashion model named Lana whose parents recently died in a car crash. In her grief she had gotten involved with an up-and-coming blond actor named Malcolm who ended up using her for her money and leaving her in debt. Our hero is the wealthy Italian Salvatore Luchesi, whose parents died in a plane crash. Salvatore has a business partner named Roberto whose daughter Giavanna is eager to be married to the unwilling Salvatore. When he meets Lana at a party in London, Salvatore hatches a plan that will solve both of their problems: if Lana agrees to marry Salvatore for one year, he will pay the financial debt that Malcolm saddled her with. Lana will play the part of his wife, which will get Salvatore off the hook of having to marry Giavanna and allow him to eventually disentangle his business affairs from Roberto. Lana agrees to this marriage of convenience (a familiar romance trope) and she moves to his home in Italy, appearing to all the world as his devoted wife. Gradually both Lana and Salvatore realize that they are falling in love with each other, but Lana resists his physical advances since that would make her feel like a prostitute (though the word itself is not said), i.e., being paid for her sexual services. Salvatore is eager to make love to her, but the complication on his end is that he does not wish to be permanently married to any woman, due to the negative example of his parents' marriage. (His father had affairs, but his mother stayed married to him anyway.) For their honeymoon, Salvatore takes Lana to a remote log cabin where they spend their days together, just the two of them enjoying nature. This forced proximity (another familiar trope) eventually causes Lana to succumb to her body's desire for Salvatore. Their sex scene is on pages 156 to 159, with another on page 172, i.e., a total of only five pages; I had expected a Harlequin Presents to have a bit more, but perhaps it depends on the author.
The book allows both hero and heroine's feelings and thoughts to be represented on the page, back and forth in separate sections, although both sex scenes are limited to the heroine's perspective. There also seems to be more of her thoughts shown overall than his, which has the unfortunate effect of making Lana seem somewhat timid, internally whining about her feelings rather than expressing them honestly. An integral facet of the romance genre is that we know how it will all turn out in the end, with the two main characters getting together and their problems resolved, and the fun can be in seeing how the author is able to bring this promised resolution about -- hopefully in a credible and satisfying way. Unfortunately we readers in the meantime must sometimes endure the characters worrying about things that we know aren't going to happen anyway, given the fait accompli of the genre's HEA. Sometimes it can feel like a waste of a reader's time to hear them continually fretting about their contrived situation; it's done to create drama, but it can become tiresome after awhile. A few times I wanted to wring their necks for not being more honest with each other, although the blame for this frustration lies entirely with the author for writing the story that way.
Another common trope is the third-act breakup of the couple and, sure enough, we get that when Lana discovers she is pregnant on page 180. Instead of confiding in Salvatore like a rational person, she abruptly leaves him and returns back to her home in England, filing for divorce. (It's explained that she did this to spare him having to be trapped in a loveless marriage like his father was. Or rather, she explains this to the reader, but not to Salvatore, who is left feeling rejected and abandoned with no idea that she is pregnant with his child.) It felt like more manipulation by the author, to create yet more dramatic tension, when the two villains of the story, Malcolm and Giavanna, return to cause more misunderstandings between Lana and Salvatore. (Salvatore thinks that Lana has left him for Malcolm, an idea encouraged by Giavanna.) Eventually it all gets straightened out in a somewhat melodramatic final chapter (not counting the epilogue) where Lana and Salvatore finally express their true feelings aloud for one another in big chunks of dialogue. Kinda makes me wish they had done that earlier on, but then I guess it wouldn't have made for as dramatic a story.
And yet, a little less drama would have been fine with me: I liked the characters and could have read about them just enjoying their lives together without having it forced to fit into the confines of a traditional romance-novel plot with its attendant tropes. "Traditional" is probably the key word here, since this book had the feel of an old-fashioned Harlequin romance novel. For example, no mention of condoms or birth control was made during the (brief) sex scenes. When Lana unexpectedly gets pregnant, there is no consideration whatsoever that she simply get an abortion. I didn't want her to have one, but it would have been more realistic to at least have her consider (and then reject) the option. Perhaps the author might have felt that any such consideration would ruin the heroine in the eyes of some pro-life readers, or cast doubt on Lana's love for the baby's father at their eventual reuniting. Whatever the reasoning, it made the novel feel a little less grown-up than it ought to have been.
Despite my gripes above, I enjoyed reading this novel. It wasn't a masterpiece, and it wasn't perfect, but I liked the characters and I thought the writing itself -- the words that the author used to describe things, for example -- was well-done. I was glad that I read it, and would be interested in reading more books by the author. Heck, I wouldn't mind reading this one again at some point in the future, and hopefully faster this time.
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