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Fantasy in the Night #1
Fantasy for Two
Era una questione di pelle. I suoi occhi sono blu come il mare dei Caraibi, tuttavia Mollie Barnes è convinta che Alex Villiers, uno dei più affascinanti e rispettati proprietari terrieri della zona, si sia arricchito a suon di soprusi e ingiustizie. Il fiuto giornalistico non l'ha mai tradita, così non vede l'ora di affrontarlo e di "inchiodarlo" alla sue presunte responsabilità. La "scintilla" giusta potrebbe essere l'arrivo di...
186 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published June 1, 1998
4 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Penny Jordan
1,125 books667 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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February 25, 2019
Re Fantasy for Two - Penny Jordan kicks off the July of 1998 HP line up and we are still celebrating 25 years of HPlandia. Hurray!
This month's offerings are a bit different from what we have been reading in the HP'verse recently. All of the books this month are from either extremely long time HP authors, OR HP authors that can write in the HP tones and tropes used in previous decades.
It is a bit disconcerting to read a Vintage HP that is actually a modernized pastiche of a even More Vintage HP, but that is what July of 1998 is all about. So we get some tropes and sub tropes that we haven't seen used a lot in the last four or five years.
In true classic vintage HP style, we will get social causes, May/December romance, extreme misogyny, some really funny romantic romps and marriage of conveniences done REALLY old skool style - (which for newbies to HPlandia means that the marriage is unconsummated and the married H cheats for a large portion of it.)
But most of that is for later in the monthly line up, right now we are going on an outing with our favorite HP author for depicting relevant social causes, Penny Jordan.
Penny Jordan actually has two connected books, a duology called Fantasy in the Night.
Fantasy for Two is the first of this duo and honestly, there is not a ton of romance in this book. PJ devotes a lot of page time to her quest to show HP readers both sides of Real World at the Time Social Causes and she invests a lot of page count in giving the background set up for the second book.
Which means that this is one of the few times that PJ does INSTANT insta-love and she has the H and h meet by almost crashing into each other, roofie kissing in three sentences and then in bed together and banishing unicorn grooming licenses by the last part of chapter two - considering most chapters are about 9 or 10 pages, that is meet cute to boudoir bouncing in about 15 pages.
Which is really supersonic speed for PJ. This devotion to the back story and social trope also means that almost no relationship develops between the h and H, so PJ goes the purple passion moment route to wedded HEA bliss in this one.
We get three extended and very passionate lurve club moments, which is practically unheard of for a vintage PJ romance. (And for once nobody was drunk or intoxicated either.) But PJ substituted deep lusty passion for a real development of h/H love.
Moving onto PJ's social cause in this is another shock for anyone who is not a Great Britain HP voyager as well. I am not sure how this book is perceived in other countries, but in the US it was quite an eye opener when I first read it years ago, mainly cause the US takes private property rights REALLY seriously.
PJ's real world topic is an English take on non-owners taking over unoccupied private lands. In other words PJ is showing us both sides of the quintessentially English custom called squatting.
Squatting in England is an action that has a really long history. One of the most famous squatting incidents of all time happened in England in 1381 - most of the world knows it as the "Peasants' Revolt" or "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" - English serfs rebelled against the landowners of the time and it took a 14 year old King Richard II to negotiate with the rebellion long enough to get a military group together to put the rebels down.
There were and continue to be a lot of factors involved in squatting situations, but for the most part English squatting boils down to people wanting to choose their own way of life and needing space to do it in. As England is an island and land mass is limited, this can lead to some big problems. Especially since traditionally land in England was held as the basis for the power of a very limited few.
Ironically, the squatting supportive laws prior to 2012 in Great Britain came about in response to another real world crisis, WW II. World War II saw the bombing of a large part of London and it destroyed a lot of homes and housing. After the war was over, England was still in the midst of economic depression and new construction was lagging.
Londoner's literally had no place to live, so they began moving into unoccupied buildings. Ignoring the fact that those buildings were owned by other people, the government, for the most part, let them stay and in many instances passed laws that prevented the squatters' evictions.
As the 1960's developed and more people began charting a course they felt was more in tune with a more 'natural' past of people movements, England again sees the resurgence of vagabond groups of people moving and essentially camping out, for years in some cases, on privately owned lands.
These Travelers were often made up of various groups of people from all different political and societal spectrum's. It isn't entirely accurate to call them Gypsies, because as Sara Wood would tell you, the title of Gypsy specifically refers to a group of people called the Rom - or the Romney as many an English Regency refers to.
PJ uses a group of Travelers squatting on a genuine English Earl's hereditary lands as the backdrop and main conflict of this story. The h is a fresh out of uni TSTL, would be future blogger looking for a cause. Tho our little editorial h thinks she really wants to be a prime time roving correspondent reporter.
(But she only took that route cause the internets weren't really booming yet and PJ hadn't learned about blogs.)
The only problem is our h is impulsive, passionate, illogical and quite emotional. She doesn't like being confined to a small market town newspaper where the local farmer's wife's great grandmother's award wining chutney recipe is the big news of the day.
Our h wants drama and social causes and in-depth investigative reporting that digs deep into exposing the possible corruption of the movers and shakers of society and government. But as the h's old uni advisor tells her, even the big fish have to start out as a small minnows somewhere, so small market town news reporting it is.
The h is sent out to get the facts on another award winning chutney recipe when she almost smashes into the H's land rover. The H is the titled Earl of the area and PJ abandons her beloved Saxons here and makes the H a title holder from the Norman, William the Conqueror instead.
The tall, dark and handsome and EXTREMELY nice H takes one look at the tiny, feisty, ready to rumble h and cannot keep his lips off of her oh-so-luscious rosebud mouth.
The h gets lost in the roofieness of the kissing moment, until she remembers that she is a rebel and has to storm off to write a completely one sided op ed piece on evil landowners throwing retiring pensioners out of their homes, to make room for newer workers on the great estates.
She very carefully doesn't name the H as the source of all this evil landowning, but as he owns most of the shire, everybody is going to know that that is who the h is referring to.
The h gets really angry when her boss won't publish her passion rant piece, she calls it local landowner favoritism bias, but in reality her boss doesn't want to get sued for libel.
Because the H is the nicest and most caringest landowner in half the country. He lets his elderly pensioner's stay in their homes, if they need to be closer to towns for access, he builds them nice cottage clusters with all kinds of modern conveniences.
The H even forgoes getting a new Land Rover in favor of buying his tenant farmers more modern equipment and everyone everywhere is in agreement that the H is the nicest and most supportive landowner since Alfred the Great - and he isn't even a Saxon.
It is only the h, who is biased about a guy who can roofie her with a simple kiss and make jokes about exercising his droit du seigneur with his tempting village maiden h and the H's spoilt brat stepsister, who is the h of the next book, who complain that the H is a mean, horrible person.
Naturally all the rest of us think these two babes are whacked.
Especially when the stepsister, who has a horrible mother and is angry that the H wouldn't let her live with him due to said mother's refusal, decides to tell her fake Traveler drug dealing boyfriend about the H's hopes to preserve a special section of his estate's Home Woods.
After the H got the local people together to restore the area into a special habitat with rare plants, red squirrels and endangered kestrels, the brat stepsister gets her drug dealer and a group of fellow outcasts to move into the woods and start destroying habitat in the name of squatters' rights.
The H is trying to find a peaceful relocation solution, as there is a real campground area ten miles away that would have proper facilities and no danger of tiny tots falling into an unfenced deep lake.
But the H's estate manger is livid over the step sister's antics and we see the two of them square off in preparation for their romance in the next book.
Meanwhile the h is busy trying to write human interest stories on the various Travelers and having random purple passion tower of power moments with the H. The stepsister eventually figures out that her charming drug dealer is a dangerous guy, when he smacks her around, and the girl winds up hiding with the h in her Georgian cottage that is owned by the H.
We get a little black moment when the H believes that the h is hiding a lover and not his stepsister, but it all culminates in a big moment of drama when the h goes out to interview the drug dealer and gets caught up in the seekrit undercover drug raid organized by the police and the H.
After the h passes out from almost being killed by really irked drug runners, the H is there to hold her hand and roofie kiss her out of her wanna-be-horribly-bad-reporter ways and also declare his deep love and devotion.
The h finally admits that her idiotic ranting and non-fact finding was based on her knowing that if she admitted her deep love and devotion to the H, she will have to give up being a female Anderson Cooper.
But the H's roofie kisses and fantastic lurve mojo skills win in the end and the two of them finally marry and HPlandia is safe from idiotic biased reporting once again.
We leave the married H and h fully exploring the subject of droit du seigneur, the stepsister takes herself off to America to finish uni and escape her mother and the H for the next book is patiently managing the H's estates, until it is time for his own HP romantic expedition in PJ's HPlandia once again.
This month's offerings are a bit different from what we have been reading in the HP'verse recently. All of the books this month are from either extremely long time HP authors, OR HP authors that can write in the HP tones and tropes used in previous decades.
It is a bit disconcerting to read a Vintage HP that is actually a modernized pastiche of a even More Vintage HP, but that is what July of 1998 is all about. So we get some tropes and sub tropes that we haven't seen used a lot in the last four or five years.
In true classic vintage HP style, we will get social causes, May/December romance, extreme misogyny, some really funny romantic romps and marriage of conveniences done REALLY old skool style - (which for newbies to HPlandia means that the marriage is unconsummated and the married H cheats for a large portion of it.)
But most of that is for later in the monthly line up, right now we are going on an outing with our favorite HP author for depicting relevant social causes, Penny Jordan.
Penny Jordan actually has two connected books, a duology called Fantasy in the Night.
Fantasy for Two is the first of this duo and honestly, there is not a ton of romance in this book. PJ devotes a lot of page time to her quest to show HP readers both sides of Real World at the Time Social Causes and she invests a lot of page count in giving the background set up for the second book.
Which means that this is one of the few times that PJ does INSTANT insta-love and she has the H and h meet by almost crashing into each other, roofie kissing in three sentences and then in bed together and banishing unicorn grooming licenses by the last part of chapter two - considering most chapters are about 9 or 10 pages, that is meet cute to boudoir bouncing in about 15 pages.
Which is really supersonic speed for PJ. This devotion to the back story and social trope also means that almost no relationship develops between the h and H, so PJ goes the purple passion moment route to wedded HEA bliss in this one.
We get three extended and very passionate lurve club moments, which is practically unheard of for a vintage PJ romance. (And for once nobody was drunk or intoxicated either.) But PJ substituted deep lusty passion for a real development of h/H love.
Moving onto PJ's social cause in this is another shock for anyone who is not a Great Britain HP voyager as well. I am not sure how this book is perceived in other countries, but in the US it was quite an eye opener when I first read it years ago, mainly cause the US takes private property rights REALLY seriously.
PJ's real world topic is an English take on non-owners taking over unoccupied private lands. In other words PJ is showing us both sides of the quintessentially English custom called squatting.
Squatting in England is an action that has a really long history. One of the most famous squatting incidents of all time happened in England in 1381 - most of the world knows it as the "Peasants' Revolt" or "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" - English serfs rebelled against the landowners of the time and it took a 14 year old King Richard II to negotiate with the rebellion long enough to get a military group together to put the rebels down.
There were and continue to be a lot of factors involved in squatting situations, but for the most part English squatting boils down to people wanting to choose their own way of life and needing space to do it in. As England is an island and land mass is limited, this can lead to some big problems. Especially since traditionally land in England was held as the basis for the power of a very limited few.
Ironically, the squatting supportive laws prior to 2012 in Great Britain came about in response to another real world crisis, WW II. World War II saw the bombing of a large part of London and it destroyed a lot of homes and housing. After the war was over, England was still in the midst of economic depression and new construction was lagging.
Londoner's literally had no place to live, so they began moving into unoccupied buildings. Ignoring the fact that those buildings were owned by other people, the government, for the most part, let them stay and in many instances passed laws that prevented the squatters' evictions.
As the 1960's developed and more people began charting a course they felt was more in tune with a more 'natural' past of people movements, England again sees the resurgence of vagabond groups of people moving and essentially camping out, for years in some cases, on privately owned lands.
These Travelers were often made up of various groups of people from all different political and societal spectrum's. It isn't entirely accurate to call them Gypsies, because as Sara Wood would tell you, the title of Gypsy specifically refers to a group of people called the Rom - or the Romney as many an English Regency refers to.
PJ uses a group of Travelers squatting on a genuine English Earl's hereditary lands as the backdrop and main conflict of this story. The h is a fresh out of uni TSTL, would be future blogger looking for a cause. Tho our little editorial h thinks she really wants to be a prime time roving correspondent reporter.
(But she only took that route cause the internets weren't really booming yet and PJ hadn't learned about blogs.)
The only problem is our h is impulsive, passionate, illogical and quite emotional. She doesn't like being confined to a small market town newspaper where the local farmer's wife's great grandmother's award wining chutney recipe is the big news of the day.
Our h wants drama and social causes and in-depth investigative reporting that digs deep into exposing the possible corruption of the movers and shakers of society and government. But as the h's old uni advisor tells her, even the big fish have to start out as a small minnows somewhere, so small market town news reporting it is.
The h is sent out to get the facts on another award winning chutney recipe when she almost smashes into the H's land rover. The H is the titled Earl of the area and PJ abandons her beloved Saxons here and makes the H a title holder from the Norman, William the Conqueror instead.
The tall, dark and handsome and EXTREMELY nice H takes one look at the tiny, feisty, ready to rumble h and cannot keep his lips off of her oh-so-luscious rosebud mouth.
The h gets lost in the roofieness of the kissing moment, until she remembers that she is a rebel and has to storm off to write a completely one sided op ed piece on evil landowners throwing retiring pensioners out of their homes, to make room for newer workers on the great estates.
She very carefully doesn't name the H as the source of all this evil landowning, but as he owns most of the shire, everybody is going to know that that is who the h is referring to.
The h gets really angry when her boss won't publish her passion rant piece, she calls it local landowner favoritism bias, but in reality her boss doesn't want to get sued for libel.
Because the H is the nicest and most caringest landowner in half the country. He lets his elderly pensioner's stay in their homes, if they need to be closer to towns for access, he builds them nice cottage clusters with all kinds of modern conveniences.
The H even forgoes getting a new Land Rover in favor of buying his tenant farmers more modern equipment and everyone everywhere is in agreement that the H is the nicest and most supportive landowner since Alfred the Great - and he isn't even a Saxon.
It is only the h, who is biased about a guy who can roofie her with a simple kiss and make jokes about exercising his droit du seigneur with his tempting village maiden h and the H's spoilt brat stepsister, who is the h of the next book, who complain that the H is a mean, horrible person.
Naturally all the rest of us think these two babes are whacked.
Especially when the stepsister, who has a horrible mother and is angry that the H wouldn't let her live with him due to said mother's refusal, decides to tell her fake Traveler drug dealing boyfriend about the H's hopes to preserve a special section of his estate's Home Woods.
After the H got the local people together to restore the area into a special habitat with rare plants, red squirrels and endangered kestrels, the brat stepsister gets her drug dealer and a group of fellow outcasts to move into the woods and start destroying habitat in the name of squatters' rights.
The H is trying to find a peaceful relocation solution, as there is a real campground area ten miles away that would have proper facilities and no danger of tiny tots falling into an unfenced deep lake.
But the H's estate manger is livid over the step sister's antics and we see the two of them square off in preparation for their romance in the next book.
Meanwhile the h is busy trying to write human interest stories on the various Travelers and having random purple passion tower of power moments with the H. The stepsister eventually figures out that her charming drug dealer is a dangerous guy, when he smacks her around, and the girl winds up hiding with the h in her Georgian cottage that is owned by the H.
We get a little black moment when the H believes that the h is hiding a lover and not his stepsister, but it all culminates in a big moment of drama when the h goes out to interview the drug dealer and gets caught up in the seekrit undercover drug raid organized by the police and the H.
After the h passes out from almost being killed by really irked drug runners, the H is there to hold her hand and roofie kiss her out of her wanna-be-horribly-bad-reporter ways and also declare his deep love and devotion.
The h finally admits that her idiotic ranting and non-fact finding was based on her knowing that if she admitted her deep love and devotion to the H, she will have to give up being a female Anderson Cooper.
But the H's roofie kisses and fantastic lurve mojo skills win in the end and the two of them finally marry and HPlandia is safe from idiotic biased reporting once again.
We leave the married H and h fully exploring the subject of droit du seigneur, the stepsister takes herself off to America to finish uni and escape her mother and the H for the next book is patiently managing the H's estates, until it is time for his own HP romantic expedition in PJ's HPlandia once again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2020
Disappointing especially since the second book in the series, One Night in His Arms, was so good. Heroine Mollie was an idiot in addition to being an unprofessional journalist. She planned on running a slanderous story on the hero, Alex, without first gathering any solid facts or evidence. Is she for real? I honestly don't know what Alex saw in her. As for the romance, it took a backseat to the traveler subplot and suffered as a result.
September 10, 2013
I've read a lot of Penny Jordan books and I'm seeing a definite pattern in her books. Okay, they are all Mills and Boons and essentially the same story anyway, but what I mean is that during the 80s, she specialised in red hot men with dark curly hair who had a nasty, cruel side, during the 90s she went in for nicey, nicey too good to be true men (with dark curly hair) and then when you get to her later books of the 2000s, we get into the royalty territory/millionaires, etc (with dark curly hair). One of her strengths, her publisher has often written of her, is that she was able to adapt her work to meet the fashions/needs of the readers of the times - so I'm guessing that during the 90s, M&B readers were really into nice men. (Oh we were all so much more charitable back then - now in the 2000s, we're only interested in rich men!) It's interesting, as a student of her work and literature in general, to see that marked trend reflected by a writer who has a career history of writing the same type of book over three decades.
This is a typical story from the late 90s featuring Alex, the Earl of St Otel - a man who is basically Mother Theresa if she'd been a tall dark and handsome man and Mollie, a newly-graduated reporter, who's a bit of an idiot. Mollie ends up working for the local newspaper covering women's interest stories about jam-making etc and Alex goes around providing pensions and social housing for his ex-employees. He's also busy bringing the countryside to life with ecological good works including singlehandedly reinstating red squirrels into the area (good luck with that!)
It's a Penny Jordan book, so, of course, Mollie gets the wrong idea about this paragon of virtue (even though it's quite obvious from the outset that that's what he is) and believes him to be a ruthless member of the landed gentry who is grinding everyone down beneath his feet. In reality, Mollie isn't actually a very good reporter. She jumps to conclusions and writes sweeping (possibly libellous) pieces without establishing any facts whatsoever. Her boss (in desperation) sets her onto the story of some new age travellers who are moving into the area (drug dealing, smashing the area up, ruining the countryside and smoking the red squirrels) and then, after a short interlude for some hanky panky with the Earl, Mollie gets on to investigating the story. Unfortunately at this point she nearly gets murdered by some drug dealers (probably high on red squirrel).
As a Mills and Boon story goes, the premise is utterly ridiculous. Inevitably they end up together, (Alex "looks after her" after her rescue from the drug dealers - although his interpretation of "looking after her", i.e. by getting into bed naked with her, is probably quite different from the discharging hospital's expectations of how he will take care of her) and Mollie can give up being a crap reporter and concentrate on being a member of the aristocracy instead.
If you can appreciate the probably unwitting comedy in this book, it is really a very funny story. I laughed most of the way through it. However, I wouldn't advise approaching it without a sense of humour - that would just render it ridiculous. Interestingly enough, Penny Jordan used to live in a similar area of Cheshire to myself when I was growing up and there was a large convoy of new age travellers who moved into that area and decimated part of the Whitegate Way (a woodland site local to the area) during the time I lived there (probably during the late 90s in fact). It's nice to see the inspiration behind the story.
This is a typical story from the late 90s featuring Alex, the Earl of St Otel - a man who is basically Mother Theresa if she'd been a tall dark and handsome man and Mollie, a newly-graduated reporter, who's a bit of an idiot. Mollie ends up working for the local newspaper covering women's interest stories about jam-making etc and Alex goes around providing pensions and social housing for his ex-employees. He's also busy bringing the countryside to life with ecological good works including singlehandedly reinstating red squirrels into the area (good luck with that!)
It's a Penny Jordan book, so, of course, Mollie gets the wrong idea about this paragon of virtue (even though it's quite obvious from the outset that that's what he is) and believes him to be a ruthless member of the landed gentry who is grinding everyone down beneath his feet. In reality, Mollie isn't actually a very good reporter. She jumps to conclusions and writes sweeping (possibly libellous) pieces without establishing any facts whatsoever. Her boss (in desperation) sets her onto the story of some new age travellers who are moving into the area (drug dealing, smashing the area up, ruining the countryside and smoking the red squirrels) and then, after a short interlude for some hanky panky with the Earl, Mollie gets on to investigating the story. Unfortunately at this point she nearly gets murdered by some drug dealers (probably high on red squirrel).
As a Mills and Boon story goes, the premise is utterly ridiculous. Inevitably they end up together, (Alex "looks after her" after her rescue from the drug dealers - although his interpretation of "looking after her", i.e. by getting into bed naked with her, is probably quite different from the discharging hospital's expectations of how he will take care of her) and Mollie can give up being a crap reporter and concentrate on being a member of the aristocracy instead.
If you can appreciate the probably unwitting comedy in this book, it is really a very funny story. I laughed most of the way through it. However, I wouldn't advise approaching it without a sense of humour - that would just render it ridiculous. Interestingly enough, Penny Jordan used to live in a similar area of Cheshire to myself when I was growing up and there was a large convoy of new age travellers who moved into that area and decimated part of the Whitegate Way (a woodland site local to the area) during the time I lived there (probably during the late 90s in fact). It's nice to see the inspiration behind the story.
doubtful-because-not-v
July 11, 2020Opposites attract!
Just what did impulsive Mollie Barnes and powerful landowner Alex Villiers, Earl of St. Otel, have in common? Mollie always championed the underdog, while Alex represented the privileged classes. He declared she was stubborn and willfully determined to believe the worst of him, while she thought he was simply amusing himself with her.
So why had she confessed her secret fantasy to him? It soon became clear that they shared the same dream--and Alex was perfectly happy to make it come true
Just what did impulsive Mollie Barnes and powerful landowner Alex Villiers, Earl of St. Otel, have in common? Mollie always championed the underdog, while Alex represented the privileged classes. He declared she was stubborn and willfully determined to believe the worst of him, while she thought he was simply amusing himself with her.
So why had she confessed her secret fantasy to him? It soon became clear that they shared the same dream--and Alex was perfectly happy to make it come true
January 16, 2012
This book would have been soooo much better without the bratty little sister/gypsy storyline. Who cares?
It is becoming a chore getting through this thing now.
It is becoming a chore getting through this thing now.
June 22, 2015
The heroine was an obnoxious know it all which made the book difficult to get in to. Not my favorite book from Penny Jordan.
July 4, 2017
Hahaha dit was echt heel erg slecht en daarom ook heel vermakelijk. Ik had een Bouquet Special waardoor ik drie meukverhalen heb gelezen die geenszins van elkaar verschilden. Ze volgen allemaal hetzelfde stramien: twee mensen kunnen elkaar niet uitstaan maar zijn stiekem verliefd en op het eind delen ze de passie weer. Meine gute hier zijn heel wat hersencelletjes van kapot gegaan.
October 27, 2018
Audiobook
Was ok for a M&B style book, although maybe a bit TOO much ronchy for an audio book in the car. Glad I don't car share.
Was ok for a M&B style book, although maybe a bit TOO much ronchy for an audio book in the car. Glad I don't car share.
November 8, 2021
Ohmygosh I'm only 1/3rd of the way through but had to come here and write something first. The h is a first class TWIT who is trained for journalism with a fancy degree but is the gold medalist in jumping to unresearched biased conclusions! She fell into instant lust with the H and dealt with it by absolutely putting the worst possible conclusion on all inyourface obvious scenarios with the H - and actively creating road blocks for the H to no end.
The H is so perfect its ridiculous. I legit want someone like him in my life. Even better if mine is an Earl like this one lol. He was flawless with a heart of gold and he easily admits to himself that he is crazy in love at first sight with the h. He had a million philanthropic projects too.
Okay I'm back. The h was in total denial of how nice the H was because apparently that would mean accepting she is in love with him. We get multiple POVs at some points, including at least 3 non-main characters. That was nice. The ending was nicely wrapped up with a baby on the way (which the H's gorgeous house could feel being conceived, LMAO). I think this had one of the most descriptive purple passion scenes I have ever read from PJ, 3 descriptive ones, with multiple references to oral and at least a suggestion of 69. I wonder if they h was truly a unicorn groomer because their first time was actually with her on top but interestingly PJ didn't let us know about that.
The H is so perfect its ridiculous. I legit want someone like him in my life. Even better if mine is an Earl like this one lol. He was flawless with a heart of gold and he easily admits to himself that he is crazy in love at first sight with the h. He had a million philanthropic projects too.
Okay I'm back. The h was in total denial of how nice the H was because apparently that would mean accepting she is in love with him. We get multiple POVs at some points, including at least 3 non-main characters. That was nice. The ending was nicely wrapped up with a baby on the way (which the H's gorgeous house could feel being conceived, LMAO). I think this had one of the most descriptive purple passion scenes I have ever read from PJ, 3 descriptive ones, with multiple references to oral and at least a suggestion of 69. I wonder if they h was truly a unicorn groomer because their first time was actually with her on top but interestingly PJ didn't let us know about that.
November 8, 2018
I got to about page 60 and actually threw the book aside, I nearly didn't pick it up again to finish it. Alex is gorgeous, there is no argument there but Mollie. I just want to slap her. What a bigot she is. She is supposed to be a journalist........she sees only one side of everything. The only reason this book gets three stars is because the last few chapters were good. I don't see this book as a to be re-read. The story had such great potential. Alex is one of those gorgeous men you want to read about but why he kept coming back to Mollie when she spoke to him the way she did is beyond me.
September 5, 2011
Awful book!
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