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Free Spirit
Free Spirit by Penny Jordan released on Jul 25, 1990 is available now for purchase.
187 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
11 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
Penny Jordan
1,124 books668 followersPenelope Jones Halsall
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 6, 2018
Re Free Spirit - PJ takes on the social cause of sexual harassment at work in this one, she is definitely against it. But then how do you have an office romance with a vice president h and her Chairman boss H if nobody is allowed to schedule in chasing each other around the desks?
PJ goes the social commentary route with descriptions of workplace inappropriateness and the inner angsting of the h, who soon realizes that her carefully controlled, temper-suppressed, deliberately placid mental attitude is thoroughly shaken when she get within three feet of her boss.
It makes for an interesting story, but there are few fireworks with this one because both the H and h are nice people and the big hurdle is the h learning to let go of years of rigidity in her "free-spirited but really imprisoning" mental outlook towards men, her life and her career.
This one starts with the h seeking a new high-powered finance job. She is brilliant at maths and unlike our h's in A Bitter Homecoming and Dangerous Obsession, this h chooses to take on the masculine world of finance and is very dedicated to her career.
She soon learns that those biases that women aren't as good at finance and maths as men are is compounded by the fact that she is a natural born goddess in the looks department and she soon learns to imitate the males she works with in dress and emotionless mannerisms. She doesn't mind tho, she wants to be a success, and to her that means getting a new job as a vice president at the H's finance company.
But first she has to resist kicking her chauvinistic, middle-aged, lecherous leech of a boss and help her BFF out with an unfortunate tax situation. She manages to ignore the boss and get her bewildered friend over to Inland Revenue, where she represents her friend to the young agent who is assigned her case.
She and the young agent are running over their allotted time in the verbal battle to hammer out her friend's tax situation, when they are interrupted by a handsome man in a bespoke suit that the h assumes is a Senior Tax Agent. Tho she is indignant that a tax agent is wearing an expensive bespoke suit and pricey watch and is giving her a melty feeling in the nether regions, the h graciously agrees to wait on a judgement and goes back to her quest for getting a job with the H's firm.
She succeeds in getting her dream job after and interview, but is outraged and embarrassed that Mr. Bespoke Suit is not a tax agent, or a competitor for the job she was hired for, but her new boss who was only at Inland Revenue to collect his Godson Tax Agent for lunch. The h panics, cause she recognizes that the man is making her knees weak, but she loves the job and she is excited when the H puts her in charge of a big plan to develop a derelict manor house and the surrounding estate as a free vacation retreat for single parent's and their kids in the lovely Dorset countryside.
On the h's first day she is cheerfully told that the H doesn't tolerate any sort of harassment of his female staff, any infractions on that edict and that person is either fired-- or if they are a client, dropped from the firm. ( The reason is the H's parents passed to the next plain of existence early on and his aunt, who was an accountant, raised him single handedly. But she had to suffer a lot of harassment over the course of her career, so the H has dedicated himself to stamping it out. In fact this H is pretty feminist for even a regular person, not to mention an HP H.)
We get a few hair raising examples of workplace harassment and some pithy advice on how to discreetly stop it:
Never dress up or wear feminine jewelry or clothing. Drop files by "accident," messing up important notes if someone gets a little handsy, spill hot coffee - again by accident - if it gets extremely gropey, and if the harasser is married, mention that your mother knows his wife or his mother in law.
The h is also told that while power dressing in the Boxy Suit with Toning Tie isn't a business requirement with the firm, all the ladies are expected to keep a smart appearance and since they are NOT men, they get an extra hour off every week to get their hair done.
(I kinda thought the H was falling down on the perks here, he really just needed to add a fully staffed day spa behind the employee dining room for the ladies to indulge and maintain their appearance. I guess PJ thought that would be going overboard.)
So the h is happy in the new job and really enjoying it, except for the nagging torment that she has over her more enticing-by-the-day boss. Part of the job is spent working from the H's estate in the country and things come to a crisis pitch when the H and h attend a "keep the local landowner's sweet to get the single parent holiday home done" dinner and the local landowner's much younger wife turns out to be crass man-eater who wants to gobble up the H. The h is shattered to find she is a raging mess of jealously. The woman's vulgar and probing comments about the H and h's relationship make it worse, but the final kicker is when the H and h indulge in a roofie kiss moment and the h is shocked at her response.
She immediately decides that she loves the H and she is too afraid of subsuming herself in lurved up submissive domesticity, with no outlet for her career. So she decides to turn in her resignation. The h's mother tries to tell her that marriage and love and career can all be balanced, but the h is too terrified to try. So she quits and then has a week long mopey moment until the H turns up to declare he loves her and wants her to be his partner in all things - including their work- so the h can admit she loves him back and we leave them lurvin it up for the HEA.
As far as romances go, this one isn't PJ's best. But she tackles the very sensitive subject of harassment and she does it pretty tactfully. Tho PJ rarely has any clue about how a business is actually run, her husband was an accountant and the descriptions of harassment on the job along with various ways of handling it all seem to carry the ring of veracity. Perhaps PJ knew ladies in the financial field through her husband and got some of them to recount their real life experiences.
While this book is nowhere near the serious intensity of Donna Huxley's Intimate, it was a very timely protest against harassment in the workplace. Considering how the United States would shocked by the testimony of Anita Hill approximately a year from the publication of this story, it is a fairly well done example of how real word changes and more people awareness can shift the tides of HPlandia, where H bosses chasing h secretaries around staff rooms and desks have been embedded in the foundations since HP's began.
PJ goes the social commentary route with descriptions of workplace inappropriateness and the inner angsting of the h, who soon realizes that her carefully controlled, temper-suppressed, deliberately placid mental attitude is thoroughly shaken when she get within three feet of her boss.
It makes for an interesting story, but there are few fireworks with this one because both the H and h are nice people and the big hurdle is the h learning to let go of years of rigidity in her "free-spirited but really imprisoning" mental outlook towards men, her life and her career.
This one starts with the h seeking a new high-powered finance job. She is brilliant at maths and unlike our h's in A Bitter Homecoming and Dangerous Obsession, this h chooses to take on the masculine world of finance and is very dedicated to her career.
She soon learns that those biases that women aren't as good at finance and maths as men are is compounded by the fact that she is a natural born goddess in the looks department and she soon learns to imitate the males she works with in dress and emotionless mannerisms. She doesn't mind tho, she wants to be a success, and to her that means getting a new job as a vice president at the H's finance company.
But first she has to resist kicking her chauvinistic, middle-aged, lecherous leech of a boss and help her BFF out with an unfortunate tax situation. She manages to ignore the boss and get her bewildered friend over to Inland Revenue, where she represents her friend to the young agent who is assigned her case.
She and the young agent are running over their allotted time in the verbal battle to hammer out her friend's tax situation, when they are interrupted by a handsome man in a bespoke suit that the h assumes is a Senior Tax Agent. Tho she is indignant that a tax agent is wearing an expensive bespoke suit and pricey watch and is giving her a melty feeling in the nether regions, the h graciously agrees to wait on a judgement and goes back to her quest for getting a job with the H's firm.
She succeeds in getting her dream job after and interview, but is outraged and embarrassed that Mr. Bespoke Suit is not a tax agent, or a competitor for the job she was hired for, but her new boss who was only at Inland Revenue to collect his Godson Tax Agent for lunch. The h panics, cause she recognizes that the man is making her knees weak, but she loves the job and she is excited when the H puts her in charge of a big plan to develop a derelict manor house and the surrounding estate as a free vacation retreat for single parent's and their kids in the lovely Dorset countryside.
On the h's first day she is cheerfully told that the H doesn't tolerate any sort of harassment of his female staff, any infractions on that edict and that person is either fired-- or if they are a client, dropped from the firm. ( The reason is the H's parents passed to the next plain of existence early on and his aunt, who was an accountant, raised him single handedly. But she had to suffer a lot of harassment over the course of her career, so the H has dedicated himself to stamping it out. In fact this H is pretty feminist for even a regular person, not to mention an HP H.)
We get a few hair raising examples of workplace harassment and some pithy advice on how to discreetly stop it:
Never dress up or wear feminine jewelry or clothing. Drop files by "accident," messing up important notes if someone gets a little handsy, spill hot coffee - again by accident - if it gets extremely gropey, and if the harasser is married, mention that your mother knows his wife or his mother in law.
The h is also told that while power dressing in the Boxy Suit with Toning Tie isn't a business requirement with the firm, all the ladies are expected to keep a smart appearance and since they are NOT men, they get an extra hour off every week to get their hair done.
(I kinda thought the H was falling down on the perks here, he really just needed to add a fully staffed day spa behind the employee dining room for the ladies to indulge and maintain their appearance. I guess PJ thought that would be going overboard.)
So the h is happy in the new job and really enjoying it, except for the nagging torment that she has over her more enticing-by-the-day boss. Part of the job is spent working from the H's estate in the country and things come to a crisis pitch when the H and h attend a "keep the local landowner's sweet to get the single parent holiday home done" dinner and the local landowner's much younger wife turns out to be crass man-eater who wants to gobble up the H. The h is shattered to find she is a raging mess of jealously. The woman's vulgar and probing comments about the H and h's relationship make it worse, but the final kicker is when the H and h indulge in a roofie kiss moment and the h is shocked at her response.
She immediately decides that she loves the H and she is too afraid of subsuming herself in lurved up submissive domesticity, with no outlet for her career. So she decides to turn in her resignation. The h's mother tries to tell her that marriage and love and career can all be balanced, but the h is too terrified to try. So she quits and then has a week long mopey moment until the H turns up to declare he loves her and wants her to be his partner in all things - including their work- so the h can admit she loves him back and we leave them lurvin it up for the HEA.
As far as romances go, this one isn't PJ's best. But she tackles the very sensitive subject of harassment and she does it pretty tactfully. Tho PJ rarely has any clue about how a business is actually run, her husband was an accountant and the descriptions of harassment on the job along with various ways of handling it all seem to carry the ring of veracity. Perhaps PJ knew ladies in the financial field through her husband and got some of them to recount their real life experiences.
While this book is nowhere near the serious intensity of Donna Huxley's Intimate, it was a very timely protest against harassment in the workplace. Considering how the United States would shocked by the testimony of Anita Hill approximately a year from the publication of this story, it is a fairly well done example of how real word changes and more people awareness can shift the tides of HPlandia, where H bosses chasing h secretaries around staff rooms and desks have been embedded in the foundations since HP's began.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 5, 2020
Oy. Penny Jordan’s attempt at writing a strong, smart, career woman. That lasted about a chapter before her protagonist devolved into a blubbering, quivering mess who yo-yos from blistering hot to shivering cold every time her Uber masculine boss brushes his powerful thigh muscle anywhere near her power business suit-clad bombshell body. Our heroine spends so much time slut-shaming her rival for the hero’s affections, tripping, twisting, and blundering her way out of buildings and restaurants, and blanking out on reality to indulge in fierce daydreams about her boss, I wonder how she ever found time to squeeze in some work as the vice-president of a large, busy corporation! For your reading pleasure, there is also plenty of page-filling social commentary on the awful trade-off young women have made in choosing once male-dominated careers over the utopian Kinder, Kirsche, Kuche lifestyle of previous generations. Not only are they subjected to sexual harassment by resentful and confused male supervisors and colleagues, they must stifle their natural biological longings for babies and a man of their own until they wake up one day to see that life, sadly, has passed them by. Lest you think women are the only victims, the author has her male protagonist sexually harassed as well, though not by the heroine but by the skank wife of a business associate. Unlike the heroine, he doesn’t seem to mind too much that he may have to “put out” for a couple of nights to secure his pet project (a vacation resort designed solely for single parents LOL). I will say this, the book works quite well as a time capsule of social and cultural attitudes of late 20th centuries. I particularly enjoyed the nugget that the liberal-minded hero ensured an extra hour off per week for his female staff so they could get their hair done! 😂😂😂 Would recommend it to PJ fans and anthropologists.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2014
Another night shift and another Penny Jordan romance - this one is from 1989 and utterly exemplifies how Jordan was an author of her time. This one features Hannah, the "free spirit" of the title, although to be fair, she's much more imprisoned by her own hang ups about her gender and how men treat her in the workplace. She's a vicar's daughter and high-flying finance expert, immersed in the world of yuppies, stripey ties and red porsches (remember that?) and telling herself that she's never going to marry because she needs to work and be independent. Obviously this ethos only lasts until she meets Silas, her new boss, who she is immediately attracted to. In fact, she fancies him so much she can no longer focus on her job and ends up resigning in order to get away from him, thus rendering herself unemployed. Not to worry though, it's a Mills and Boon after all, and there's a happy ending in view.
Despite constantly harping on about issues contemporaneous to 1989, there is a peculiar old-fashioned charm about this book. Consider, for example, one of the secretaries at Silas's company informing Hannah: "There’s no sexual discrimination at all within the Jeffreys Group, but neither does he expect us to be token men. All the girls get an extra hour off one day a week so that they can get their hair done." p. 77. Then there's the fact that Silas intends to spend some of his millions on - shock, horror! - a holiday home for single mothers and the wrangles he has with the local council on introducing these into the area. Finally, there is the nearly the last paragraph of the book where Silas informs Hannah that she can't get married in white because he's about to deflower her. It's all a bit silly really and all it really serves to show is that Jordan knew nothing about the world of high finance (I never got an extra hour off a week to get my hair done in 1989, that much I do know...)and was very much an old-fashioned girl.
Putting my bitterness aside about all those extra hours off a year I've missed out on, however, this is still a lovely read. Hannah is, like all Jordan heroines, charmingly written - and the fact that she's so determined to be treated as an equal, and yet all she manages to do is render herself unequal to the men (and some of the women who do use their sex to get what they want) around her lends a humour to the novel (I suspect, it's unwitting, but it's still there).
Despite constantly harping on about issues contemporaneous to 1989, there is a peculiar old-fashioned charm about this book. Consider, for example, one of the secretaries at Silas's company informing Hannah: "There’s no sexual discrimination at all within the Jeffreys Group, but neither does he expect us to be token men. All the girls get an extra hour off one day a week so that they can get their hair done." p. 77. Then there's the fact that Silas intends to spend some of his millions on - shock, horror! - a holiday home for single mothers and the wrangles he has with the local council on introducing these into the area. Finally, there is the nearly the last paragraph of the book where Silas informs Hannah that she can't get married in white because he's about to deflower her. It's all a bit silly really and all it really serves to show is that Jordan knew nothing about the world of high finance (I never got an extra hour off a week to get my hair done in 1989, that much I do know...)and was very much an old-fashioned girl.
Putting my bitterness aside about all those extra hours off a year I've missed out on, however, this is still a lovely read. Hannah is, like all Jordan heroines, charmingly written - and the fact that she's so determined to be treated as an equal, and yet all she manages to do is render herself unequal to the men (and some of the women who do use their sex to get what they want) around her lends a humour to the novel (I suspect, it's unwitting, but it's still there).
December 1, 2010
Hannah Maitland congratulated herself
"There's no man in my life...no love to whom I'm committed. Not now, not in the past and not in the future."
A bleak picture for most women - but for career-minded Hannah it was satisfying. She thought she knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and men, even attractive ones like Silas Jeffreys, didn't rate very high on her list.
It was a situation that Silas was determined to remedy as fast as he could!
"There's no man in my life...no love to whom I'm committed. Not now, not in the past and not in the future."
A bleak picture for most women - but for career-minded Hannah it was satisfying. She thought she knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and men, even attractive ones like Silas Jeffreys, didn't rate very high on her list.
It was a situation that Silas was determined to remedy as fast as he could!
November 7, 2019
One star because I finished the book and one star because I liked Silas. I got to the stage, reading this book, where I was skimming through all the descriptions of the family and houses and other history. Took up too much of the story. The ending was too sharp and over without any thing else to tell us what happened.
September 3, 2022
Hard to believe this is a PJ book, it just sort of meanders along with not a lot going on. We spend a *lot* of time reading the repetitive, circular thoughts of the h, and we are forced to endure needless descriptions of houses, decor, paintings etc that read like filler more than anything. This feels like a 180 page book that was dragged out to an unnecessary 220 pages.
March 23, 2021
Just another day at the office. Some good moments but overall just boring and too much of the same old thing. Did not finish
April 5, 2015
Usually love Penny Jordan books but I think with it been an old book I just couldn't get into this book. Also hannah comes across as a hard face cow and stuck up so I really struggled to like her. Did like Silas but that not enough to balance hannah.
May 9, 2010
Hannah thought she wanted to be a career woman until she met the right man - ugh!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 9, 2013
Maybe 3.5 stars. I usually enjoy Penny Jordan stories with a besotted hero a little more, but this one lacked oomph.
July 7, 2016
Not bad but not a fantastic one either. Decent story very dated
July 25, 2015
Like another reader said: "hannah comes across as a hard face cow and stuck up so I really struggled to like her."
May 2, 2016
Good plot, boring narrative.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews