Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux ***

Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm giving this 3 stars as in "I liked it" but not more than 3 stars. However, the narration by Davina Porter was definitely 5 stars! In fact, she may have saved the book for me. I'm a sort of on-again, off-again Jude Deveraux follower - I love some of her books, and hate some. I did not particularly like A Knight in Shining Armor.

This one starts in 1766 Scotland, with a young, orphaned British heiress living with an uncle who won a Scottish keep in a game of cards with the original laird. Edelean finds herself in a number of scrapes - falling in love with a young British fellow who tries to scam her fortune; her uncle tries to marry her off to one of his old cronies, again for the fortune. She ends up being smuggled out of Scotland with her gold and the most recent laird, Angus MacTern, and the two of them cross the ocean disguised as man and wife, with false names.

Once in America, more - well, misunderstandings, some standard Deveraux story twists, a stint in the army for Angus, more scrapes for Edelean who finally creates her own business. Truly, with Davina Porter reading the story, I'm convinced it was much more likable than if I had read it in print. Her wonderful Scots accents and warm British accents are so delightful (and having listened to literally dozens of hours of her voice I feel I can say that!). I'll say this: Deveraux is no Gabaldon!

Still, it was an enjoyable (enough) listen.

The Mulberry Tree by Jude Deveraux **

Ahhh... Jude Deveraux - sometimes I love her stories and sometimes... I don't.

I didn't love this one. At all.

The story revolves around Lillian Manville who changes her identity to Bailey after her wealthy husband Jimmie dies and leaves her nothing except a pittance in funds and a run-down farm in Virginia. The billions he leaves to his older brother and sister whom he despised - in fact they get everything, including Bailey's clothes.

The mystery is why - and to be honest, now that I've finished, I don't have a clue why. OK, I know the mystery but I still don't get WHY.

For one thing, when one dies and leaves everything to his/her spouse of 15 or so years, how can anyone contest that and win? Especially when the deceased is a billionaire? So that doesn't seem to be the real reason.

OK set that aside and follow Bailey's journey to discover herself. She was married at 17 to a man some years older than she, somewhere between 9 and 15 years (the years don't all add up in the book...) older, who was on the road to being rich and famous. He plucked her out of a local state or county fair where she was the winner of a jam contest - she was overweight and had an awful crooked, broken nose, but somehow she was the love of his life in the few minutes they spent together before getting married that same day. Go figure.

From the flashbacks and memories Bailey has, we learn that Jimmie did indeed seem to really treasure and love her. But he also had affairs - or seemed to, I guess (same thing in her mind). He was also incredibly, abusively controlling - he kept her fat and ugly and hidden away on purpose, to keep her dependent on him. Then he died and suddenly she was lost. Her mother dead, her only other living relative was her estranged sister; she really had no friends, no one - except Jimmie's lawyer who helped set her up in the farm house.

Then we meet the odd characters of the little town in Virginia. Creepy odd. At first I thought maybe it was going to be a paranormal, since the first 2 women we meet don't seem to think the other one exists. However, it is just a family feud, and they are cousins who don't speak to each other although they are constantly together. They are 2 of the more normal people in town.

Then we spend time with Bailey who is trying to figure out what to do with her life and while doing so, she stumbles over some town secrets. What do the secrets have to do with her? Wellll - maybe there's a connection between this town and her dead husband? Maybe that's the reason he left the billions to his brother and sister and not her?

By the time we get to the turning point in the mystery, I needed a damn scorecard to follow the players. Frankly, I didn't care enough to bother to find paper and write down who was married to whom, who was sleeping with whom, who the parents were of various people. It was a case of a group of small town bullies with a secret that they did everything they could to cover up - and succeeded for years. Where Bailey fits into the story is what you learn when you get to the end. (well, she doesn't really fit in - how's that for a spoiler?)

Since it turns out Jimmie knew the secret all along, why didn't he do something about it while he was alive?? Why did he let his brother and sister get away with so much? Were we supposed to believe he was planning on doing it later or something? And the biggest mystery of all is - why did so many people write positive reviews about this??

There is a (mild) love interest in the story - Matt. Well. I dunno. He's just a local guy, related to but unaware of the town's secret. But it really isn't Matt and Bailey's story - it is more a story of the town, as uncovered by Bailey while she tries to get on her feet after being left destitute by her dead billionaire husband. There was very little romance in this book - I'm not even going to tag it romance. One reviewer mentioned that she feels Deveraux is good at writing about women who have come to crossroads in their lives - maybe that's what I missed about this book, it was about a turning point and not about romance at all. There were several turning points - Bailey's, after Jimmie's death; Jimmie's, when he left the small town and became a billionaire - it seemed every character (and there were a bunch of them) had a major crossroad issue.

I didn't hate it and I finished it, so it gets 2 stars.

Twin of Fire by Jude Deveraux **

Ok, now that I've read the companion book to Twin of Ice, I can definitely say it was a 2 star read.

I was so confuzzled by Twin of Ice that, to be fair, I gave it 3 stars, hoping that maybe reading Twin of Fire would clear it up and I'd at least find it average or mediocre.

Nope. I struggled and slogged and... ok, I finally ended up skimming just to get it over with, because I couldn't bring myself to DNF it. ("did not finish")

This is Blair's side of the story - how she managed to boink her twin sister's fiancé and marry him, then rewrite her personal history to be that she was always in love with him.

There were so many odd things in this story. For one thing, everyone in town always called both girls Blair Houston, since they were identical twins, one named Blair, one named Houston. However, the girls are now 21 and Blair has been living with relatives in Pennsylvania since she was 12. Uh, no one realized that it was only Houston living there all this time? Go figure. Mind you, this is even when they call her house where she is living with her husband - uh, they still can't tell which twin would be answering? What is it, a town of dolts?

Once again, there was weird dialogue where the response had nothing to do with the statement it was in reply to, over and over. As an example, Blair asks Lee, How often do you come here (to a cabin)? and Lee replies, Since I was a child. Hmmm. I'm thinking, and how does that quantify how often you come here, Lee?

Plus we had oodles of that obnoxious plot conceit where the heroine is determined to, no matter what, follow - or lead - the hero into every dangerous situation there is, because... well, because she said so. And the flip side of that is the hero insisting he'll tie her to the bed to keep her safe while putting himself in numerous dangerous situations, even though he's not an ex-Navy SEAL or undercover operative. Arg. Hate that.

Well, all in all, the story was bizarre, the characters odd, the writing so weird I found myself staring at the page wondering if it was a translation from a foreign language. A Bad Translation.

I'm not even going to elaborate any more on the plot - something about mines, lady doctors, twins (did I mention Blair already had a fiancé when she had sex with her sister's fiancé?), well too many different things were going on and...

2 stars. I've wasted enough time on this series.

Twin of Ice by Jude Deveraux **

What a truly odd book this was.

I sometimes really like Jude Deveraux's stories, and sometimes I really don't like them. But this one - well, I just found it truly odd.

First of all, it often seemed as if major chunks of information were missing. And - they were. See, this is 2 stories, Twin of Ice and Twin of Fire, taking place at the same time. The Ice Twin is Houston Chandler, always a lady. The Fire Twin is her identical twin sister, Blair Chandler, apparently the opposite. But I read Ice first, and felt a lot of the time like I was missing something.

This isn't the only instance of an author writing different books that take place at the same time. The most recent I've read is Julia Quinn's The Lost Duke of Wyndham/Mr Cavendish, I Presume. In fact, I am thinking maybe I picked up Ice/Fire from a discussion on books with this conceit.

OK - Houston's story is that she is the "good" twin. She has been in love with Dr. Leander Westfield for as long as she can recall, and has been engaged to him for years. In fact, their wedding is just around the corner, so the "evil" (? I guess - since I haven't read her story) twin Blair is in town for the wedding. Blair has become a doctor and was living... elsewhere.

The chain of events that led up to the twins deciding to switch places for an evening still has me baffled. Kane Taggert, the hero, was such a buffoon with such bad language and habits that I was convinced he was going to later "out" himself as just kidding. He somehow appeals to Houston to come to his house for dinner on an evening she has a date with Leander. Houston convinces Blair to go with Leander in her place, since Leander doesn't seem to be able to tell them apart (although Kane can?). Blair - I guess I'll learn more when I read Twin of Fire - manages to sleep with Leander even though up to this point Blair and Leander can barely have a civil conversation. Go figure, 1 week before the wedding and the sister sleeps with her future brother-in-law.

I can't resist letting the cat out of the bag about Kane - he wasn't kidding. He was as rough a hero as I've read about, and pretty obnoxious about it too. Because Blair slept with Leander, they were forced to marry (not sure who told on them though), and the next thing you know, Houston is planning a double wedding with her and Kane as couple #1 and Blair and Leander as couple #2. And if sleeping with her sister's fiancé (and then marrying him) wasn't enough, the Fire Twin bitch tried to switch grooms at the wedding as if no one would notice, theoretically to save Houston from being forced to marry the madman Kane. Maybe after I've read Blair's story I'll feel more empathy for her, but during this book I just wanted to bitch slap her. Hadn't it occurred to Blair that it didn't matter which twin stood where, the wedding license would have the right names??

The balance of the plot is just how Houston and Kane manage to find their HEA - he thinks she married him for money, and nothing she says changes his mind. She discovers he married her to get revenge on another character, and that's another obstacle they have to overcome. The whole thing was just weird enough, though, that I had trouble following.

There seemed to be odd jumps in dialog too, where one person would say something and the response would be so out of left field, I wondered if I skipped a page. Another oddity to me was the juxtaposition of humorous and macabre - lots of suicides and death in this story, surrounded by jokes and people making fun of each other. I Just Did Not Get It.

Sometimes I find a book has characters I dislike, or a story line that annoys me, or even bad grammar. I can't exactly pinpoint what it is about this book that baffled me so. I didn't really hate it as much as I think I should. Maybe reading Twin of Fire will allow me to understand them both better - or maybe I'll read it and decide I really did hate it [ETA: the decision is in: Did Not Like It]. After all, I want my emotions engaged, I want to feel something besides confused when I read, and confused is all I felt about Twin of Ice. Disgusted is was I felt after finishing Twin of Fire: disgust at having wasted a PBS credit or 2 (hopefully I got a deal on them) as well as several hours of reading.

The AAR Reviewer used 2 words in her review of this that I should have used: incoherent (as in, incoherent writing) and barbarian (as in Kane, the barbarian hero). Yep. I shoulda said that. She seemed to like Blair and Lee better, so maybe I'll like them too.

So for now, 3 stars because I can't honestly say I did not like it, I just don't know how I feel. Scratch that: now that I've finished Twin of Fire, I'm demoting it to 2 stars, Did Not Like It. I reserve 1 star for DNF or really hated it, and this didn't stir up that much emotion.

And dangit, it didn't even fall under any of my reading challenges!!

Remembrance by Jude Deveraux ****

Another day, another book. Actually, I'm feeling a little flustered - somehow, I'm a day behind!!

Ok - Remembrance - it's a paranormal, I think - not really time travel, but a past life regression, except...

Romance writer Hayden Lane is obsessed with a hero she's created. She loses a real-life fiancé, time, friends - all while holed up creating this fellow. She isn't even really writing the book - she just accumulates hundreds and hundreds of pages of descriptions of Jamie, her medieval Scottish hero, who then becomes English, and then changes times...

Hayden consults therapists, friends, others trying to get over her obsession. Finally she finds herself in the office of Nora - a woman passing as an astrologist who is really a psychic. Nora is the real deal - and she knows things, reads Hayden's thoughts. Hayden decides that she'll listen to Nora's ideas only for the research value, so she can maybe write a book using the information. Truth is - she's fascinated by Nora's assertion that Hayden has a soul-mate that she has kept through the ages, but that she is destined not to meet again for 3 more lifetimes.

Given some details and ideas, Hayden is off on another tangent - researching about the woman who might have been her in a past life. Next thing she knows, and against Nora's advice, she undergoes hypnosis with a past-life regressionist - and finds herself in her past life's body in 1901. Her persona, Catherine, lets her in - and Hayden overpowers her. Catherine's husband, Adam Tavistock, is getting ready to divorce her and marry Fiona - as it turns out, Catherine's and Adam's marriage was never consummated because he is suffering from ED, but only with her. With other women, he's as virile as any romance novel hero, but the only one he loves is Catherine. Why are Catherine and Adam doomed even though they are in love and are true soul-mates? Why can they not realize their love? Hayden is desperate to find out the truth.

Once again a hypnotist comes into play - and Hayden is suddenly inside an infant as she is being born - in the mid 16th century.

Here is where the story of the soul-mates begins. Callasandra and Talis are born on the same day, at almost the same time, to 2 women. Talis' mother dies in birth after issuing a proclamation about them that joins the babies' fates; Callasandra's mother gives birth to yet another girl, and claims the boy as hers instead. In a tragic turn of events, she decides to have both children die in a fire - but their wet nurse and her husband run away with the children, and raise them together for 16 years as their own. Everyone at the castle believe the children are dead, until one day...

Their story is the key to Hayden's search for her soul-mate. Hayden's 20th century self doesn't emerge in Callie's life, but when the story of Talis and Callie ends, Hayden was witness to the fate and the curse that led to her current situation. When she returns to consciousness, it's to Catherine's body, not her own, and she still needs to solve the problem between Adam and Catherine before she can wake up as Hayden in 1994.

Truthfully, it was a good story but oh sooo frustrating. The continuing miscommunication between Talis and Callie about drove me nutz, which after reading this book was a very, very short trip. If I had to read one more scene where Talis did something to make Callie jealous, or where Talis had to remain true to Alida because of honor - sheeeeesh!!! I wanted to scream!

But I was touched by the end of the stories - for Talis and Callie, for Catherine and Adam - and then for Hayden and her soul-mate. 4 stars.

The Velvet Promise by Jude Deveraux ****

This is the first in the Velvet Series, about the 4 Montgomery brothers. This story is about Gavin, the eldest, and his marriage to Judith Revedoune.

Here's a shorty-type review. 4 stars - the story was good, but frankly Gavin will never make my "favorite hero" list. Maybe it's because it was published in 1981, maybe it's because Deveraux thinks 16 century men rape and beat women as a matter of course, but I was pretty much disgusted with his behavior towards Judith about 98% of the time. In spite of that, Deveraux tells such a good story that I stuck with it for Judith's sake, and liked the story. I hope his brothers will be more honorable in their own stories - already I like them much better than their brutish and disloyal adulterer/batterer brother. (hmmm, how could I like this book?? This is why I have this blog, to write my thoughts directly after reading so I'll remember why I felt the way I did - now I have another book in my head.)

First Impressions by Jude Deveraux ****

Another in my list of books picked out of a bag destined for charity! I've almost finished all of them, and I'm still feeling a little greedy and wishing I'd taken the whole bag for myself.

I liked it!

The story centers around Eden Palmer, a 45-year-old single mother, and her inheritance of a home in a small North Carolina town. When Eden was 17, she was raped, became pregnant, and was thrown out of her uptight parents' home and left homeless and almost penniless. She lucked into meeting Mrs. Farrington, who took her in as her private assistant and allowed her to live there and raise her daughter. Unfortunately, Mrs. Farrington's son was a convicted pedophile, and when he was found watching her daughter sleep, Eden and daughter Melissa ran away in the night, never to return or have any contact.

Mrs. Farrington did manage to keep track of Eden, and since her son died before she did, she left everything to Eden on her death. That's the backstory - now we follow Eden back to the house while she decides what to do.

Her options are pretty limitless, really. She's a book editor, and can apparently work from anywhere, and easily leaves her job in NYC to go to NC. Melissa and husband Stuart have been living with her in NYC - unhappily for all 3 - and so she has few qualms about leaving them, either temporarily or permanently. She could move to NC. She could sell the house. What to do?

Her options are actually limited by the fact that there is a mystery - a spy is murdered, and in his stomach contents is a piece of paper with Eden's name and social security number on it. Now the FBI is watching her, sending an agent there to woo her and get her secrets - Jared McBride (his pseudonym).

In addition, there's Brad Granville, the local guy - a widowed lawyer. He's interested in Eden. Real interested - but why? More mysteries to solve. One woman, never married, is now being pursued romantically by 2 fellows - yep, pretty mysterious!

As it turns out, it's pretty fun too. It wasn't "funny" but fairly light, considering it's a sort of thriller/suspense/murder mystery with romance. And well done - credible plot, twists which had me guessing, well fleshed out characters - yep, I enjoyed it. I did really wonder throughout which of the 2 heroes was the Hero, and had my opinion (I was rooting for Jared the whole time). But Brad was a nice heroic fellow as well, so it wasn't 100% clear...

It was a Deveraux HEA - were they happy? We don't really know, but it was possible. 4 stars.

The Summerhouse by Jude Deveraux *****

I'm a Deveraux fan - sort of. Some of her books I've loved - and some I've not. So, in my reading journey, I pick up her books cheap and free when I can and fit them in when I'm in the mood. This book is one of the 8 I scored on my road trip, browsing through an offering of a couple dozen books destined for charity.

I'm wondering if The Summerhouse is considered more Chick Lit than Romance, if someone were parsing genres. While there is love and romance and a HEA, the story is driven by the events of 3 women's lives. The story is about these women who share the same birth date, who met through Fate at the NYC DMV getting their drivers licenses renewed. They were each in NYC to pursue a dream - of dancing professionally, of modeling, of being an artist. Because of a mixup (contrived as it was), they have to stay in the DMV for a few hours, and develop a short friendship based on their birthday and their situation.

Fast forward 19 years when one of the 3 arranges for a reunion.

Now - here's the premise. What if - what if you were given the chance to go back into your past and relive 3 weeks, from any point in time you chose? You could do whatever you wanted in that 3 weeks, and you would be there in the past knowing what you know today. To top it off, you get to choose when you get back which of the 2 lives you want to now continue with, and whether or not you will remember both versions.

(Actually - IMO, the real topper is that it only affects your life and not the whole world - but that's a different subject to debate - like a butterfly's wings starting the breeze the creates the hurricane that... Deveraux's time travel theory does not take that notion into account.)

Of course, it could be like a bargain with the Devil - there could be unknown and unplanned consequences. But - you choose - continue on as you were, or take the new life lived by your new actions.

So - we have 3 women, poised to change their lives. Ellie was the artist at 21 - but she met a musician who changed her path. He felt his music would be better appreciated in LA, so she gave up art and moved to LA. From her perspective, she did everything she could to help him further his goal, but he couldn't/didn't hold a job. She ended up writing 5 mystery novels and becoming a bestselling author, and when they divorced, she lost everything because he convinced the judge he was co-author and managed her career. When she arrives at their reunion, she's gained 40 pounds and has writer's block.

SPOILERS ABOUND IN THIS REVIEW:

Her choice is to go back to 3 weeks before the divorce so she can go through the divorce differently and maintain her career and her self-esteem. But it doesn't go exactly as she thinks - she ends up meeting someone else. When she returns, she chooses the new life and also to remember - and in her new life, she has a new husband, a child and lots more writing left in her.

The model was Madison - a western girl almost 6 feet tall, she was sent to NYC by her small town to make it in modeling. Even though she was strikingly beautiful, she wasn't prepared for the cut-throat modeling world. She returned home when her ex-boyfriend needed her to help him get through a life-changing accident that left him paralyzed. She married him, had a miscarriage that resulted in a hysterectomy, and he divorced her, leaving her childless, broke and broken. She had one almost-affair with a medical student named Thomas but chose not to go through with it; later, Thomas was killed in a plane crash.

Her choice was to go back to the DMV day, moments later. With her current knowledge, she threw out her loving-hands-at-home portfolio, bought a new wardrobe and convinced a then-unknown but soon to be famous photographer to shoot a new portfolio for her. In 3 weeks, she managed to get the attention of a top modeling agency - and on her return, chose the new life as Ellie did - only she chose to forget the old life.

Now, in her new life, she has to explain to Ellie and Leslie who she is and what she is - a medical doctor with 4 kids, married to Thomas. They ask about Roger, the original husband, and she tells them about his accident which left him a paraplegic, where in her first life she helped him learn to walk again. Since she approached her new life with the knowledge of her 40-year-old self, she saw things differently this time around. Where she had reacted as a young person with rage and anger, she was cool and cunning. Things that had outraged her then were used to her benefit on her do-over. It was wonderful!

The best story is Leslie, the dancer - now she's a homemaker, married to the boy next door, Alan, with 2 teenagers. She feels she has paid her dues over and over again for jilting him originally to go to NYC only to learn she wasn't talented and motivated enough to make it in the dance world. She went back and married him after all, but now feels empty and used and unappreciated. Her husband has hired a younger, well endowed secretary named Bambi with whom he spends more and more time, causing lots of gossip.

She goes back to a fateful spring break in college. In her first life, Alan's car breaks down on his way to pick her up so she spends the week alone in her dorm room. In her do-over, she accepts an invitation to spend the week at the home of another student, a wealthy boy who in current times is a successful politician on the road to the presidency. Her time with him and his family and the other students shows her how things could have been with another man who was attracted to her, and then she spends the other 2 weeks with Alan.

Her revenge on returning is to choose both her same life and to remember - and she goes home to start changing things on her own. Her story is the most compelling and wonderful, because it reaffirms the notion that she always had the power to do what she wanted, and even now has the power to take control and do what she wants with her life. I'm not going to spoil the entire book with her satisfying ending - suffice it to say, I was well pleased with how it turned out.

5 stars - there were some bumps in it (not story bumps so much as events/sentences/words that had me scratching my head and wondering how that fit in) that almost demoted it to a 4, but I felt so good at the end of the book I have to give it a 5.

The Blessing by Jude Deveraux

What is it with me getting all these single mom stories? Anyway, The Blessing (which I now own 2 copies of, dangit!) is the single weirdest, most contrived premise for a story I have yet to come across, and in spite of that, I liked it enough to give it 3 stars.

Somehow, older brother Jason - the rich one, the responsible one - is duped into coming home to his Kentucky small town by his younger brother David. Jason has a history of helping David - now a successful doctor, mind you - since their mother died when David was a baby. Mind you, their father is alive and well, even though the ruse is that he's on his death bed, and it's right before Christmas. Not sure how long before - the whole book was so weird, and I never exactly understood where we were in time.

David convinces Jason he must move in with single mom Amy to take care of her child while David courts her - like, for a week, I guess. David can't stand the child, who turns out to be an infant. What a great way to start a relationship with a mom, huh? He convinces Amy that Jason is gay and temporarily homeless so that Amy will let him live there. WTF?? None of this made a lick of sense. Amy didn't have a clue that David was courting her either. Go figure.

Jason moves heaven and earth to do things for Amy's baby in ways meant to make her think she was just lucky, not that he had paid for it all. Although he kept saying he wasn't a billionaire, I kept thinking his coffers would be pretty much empty by the end of the book the way he was shelling it out.

It was weird too to have 2 full years go by with the conceit of putting "One Year Later" in front of 2 chapters. Jason of course was madly in love with Amy and baby almost from the beginning, and managed to get David out of the way, but Amy disappeared - for 2 years. So, in truth, it was a truly weird, contrived plot that made no sense while not being particularly humorous or witty. And yet I didn't hate it. So, 3 stars.

A Knight In Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux ***

A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux is an AAR Top 100 Romance novel, first released in 1988 and apparently re-written and re-released in 2002. I read the 1988 version.

I have only read 1 other Deveraux, a paranormal about the Devil, which I like pretty well. AKISA is a time-travel novel, written before Outlander, that has time travel in 2 directions: the hero travels from the 16th c to the present and back, and then the heroine travels to the 16th c and back.

One thing I liked about The Time Traveler's Wife and Outlander was how time travel was handled, and what happened when you change history. Actually, in both, history is never changed: it is as it was - in other words, what happened in the past always did happen. Claire was always in the past with Jamie - he didn't have 2 pasts, one where there was no Claire and then another where she existed. And Henry's time travel was the same: it was as it happened, he didn't go back and change history.

Deveraux takes a different tack: history changes from as it was 2 times, so we have at least 3 different results. However - she never explores how much changing the past might change the future (or the present) in untold other ways. In fact - when the heroine is put back into the present, although the hero's 16th c death date has changed - and all his houses are now standing and owned by present descendants, nothing else has changed. Her life is no different; her boyfriend has had a change of heart but nothing else. She has the same parents, the same siblings, all doing exactly what they were doing before she went back in time and changed history. When she returns, the travel books now have different information; the tour guide now lauds the hero's past life instead of laughing at his rakishness. But life as we know it has not changed one iota.

Wouldn't changing the past have many more repercussions? Not in Deveraux's world.

Ok, the plot: heroine Dougless has a surgeon boyfriend that she is desperate to marry to prove her worth in life. Her backstory: her family is wealthy but doesn't let the kids inherit til age 35, and they must make it on their own before that. He apparently strings her along but we learn at the end how he has resented her wealth and her "playing" at being poor. Basically, we learn that he and she have not been communicating at all, and she is portrayed as pretty pathetic.

She certainly cries a lot.

When the boyfriend ditches her, without money, passport, plane ticket or clothes, in England on a vacation, she conjures up her Knight - the hero, Nicholas, born in the 16th c, wearing full armor. Why sometimes he is called Colin and sometimes Nicholas really never makes any sense, although there is a mention at the end that makes you think, Oh, this is why, but not really.

He adapts pretty quickly to 20th c life, all things considered, and lucky for him, he arrived with money which needless to say was incredibly valuable. They were able to sell it to a rare coin dealer and live quite well for the few days he was around (or was it weeks? I never got a true sense of time passing.) They decide he has been called to her for a Reason other than love - when he arrives and they do some checking, he died the day he left, slumped over a letter he is writing to his mother, 3 days before his scheduled execution for treason. They deduce that he needs to find out who betrayed him, since he says what he did wasn't treason at all.

I guess he couldn't have been called forward for love, then. She and he dance around their attraction, but he's a ladies' man and proceeds to flirt with and neck with anything in skirts, which irked me - wasn't he the hero?? It's sorta explained why he gets so cozy with Arabella, a descendant of a woman he dallied with in his own time: he thinks she will reveal what is written in his mother's diaries, just discovered in Arabella's home. yeah right.

The betrayer IS revealed, but Nicholas doesn't just magically go back, and so they continue on their journey - and finally DO IT at which point, whoosh, he gets swept back to his time. Hello?

Of course, she is grief-stricken and bereaved - alone again, no man, wah wah wah. What a cry baby. Then she discovers more information that Nicholas needs and Whoosh - she gets swept back to HIS time. But - oops - it's before he went to her, and he doesn't recognize her.

She somehow manages to charm everyone but him into letting her stick around, and she spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to revive his memories of her. He shows 1 sign of remembering, and she then works on him until he relents. He doesn't really remember but he has these feelings or something. He feels her soul calling to him, both in the past and the future. He feels what she is feeling, and can find her wherever she is. She has this connection as well, but only in the past, apparently.

When I finished reading this book, I thought maybe I'd give it 4 stars. But as I write this review, it's slipped to 3 stars and is just barely hanging in there. She was a whiny crybaby who just couldn't stand up for herself - and I didn't really see that much growth in her, even after her sojourn to the past. The whole plot device of her trying to stop his marriage to Lettice is incredible. First, in the future, he realizes that if she falls in love with him, she will grieve when he returns. He decides to lie to her, telling her he is in love with his wife (Lettice) in the past so she will not fall for him. Of course she does anyway, but it does color her feelings - he is, after all, a married man. (but he doesn't love Lettice one teeny bit.)

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT - I've already revealed a lot, but from this point on I actually let the cat out of the bag, feed it and change its litter - exposing the ending. So if you don't want to know, click the close or back button on your browser or step away from the computer NOW.

Then, in the past, she tries to stop the marriage because she learns that Lettice is actually the betrayer that causes his death (that was change of history #1 - after he goes back, he no longer dies before the execution, but is actually executed). But she was so inconsistent - she didn't want to leave him, but she couldn't imagine staying, letting him marry Lettice and sticking around anyway. She has decided (not "figured out" because she isn't sure) that if she has sex with him in his time, she will be catapulted back into the future, so she plans to never have sex with him, just follow him around like a puppy. He actually asks her if he is supposed to remain celibate because of all this. I mean - come on!

Plus she just cannot grasp the fact that he is marrying Lettice out of duty and honor to his family and that what he is doing is morally the right thing to do, especially for his time. She's like a dog with a bone and just won't let it go. Hello, Dougless? Are you really just going to stay in the past, celibate, and watch him?

No she isn't: he leaves Lettice at the altar, rushes back and they do it like bunnies until sunrise when WHOOSH she is back in the future. And in the future, it's only a couple of minutes later. All signs of him are gone - everything that was in her tote that she used in the past is still there. But now - his tomb has a death date much later. He has lived into his 60s. But, she learns, he never remarried. What a fucking waste! He lived another 30+ years, making architectural and health history, but alone. His son - who died in the first iteration of history - lived and went on to prosper and now they're a wealthy family with several holdings.

So - she gave him up for that? So his family could be wealthy? But then, in a way, she had to give him up, or live in the 16th c, celibate. Assuming that is really what sent her back...

She then flies back to the States and meets a fellow on the plane that we are lead to believe contains Nicholas' soul, maybe by reincarnation, and that's the end. ??? So she might get her HEA (we aren't told), but Nicholas sure didn't. He got to boff her a couple of times, and then he just held out to the end, for all we know hoping she'd return. (Well, he probably got some but never married.) A lot of reviewers found that disappointing, but somehow this book still made it to the AAR Top 100, in 32nd place. In fact, there are 2 reviews at AAR, both A reviews.

I didn't hate it, so I'll stick with 3 stars. Maybe I should re-read it to see if I feel differently at some point.

gotta lotta reading to review

Wow - I have some reviewing to do. Finished Baby, I'm Yours by Susan Andersen for the 2nd read. I picked up 2 books from my seriously-old physical TBR pile next to the bed - Nan Ryan's You Belong to My Heart and Jude Deveraux's Wild Orchids, both purchased months ago at the Portal library book sale.

I had been avoiding Wild Orchids because the Amazon.com reviews indicated it was a paranormal, and not a Romance. Wrong! Well - there is a paranormal element, but it's not vampires or some weird alternate reality. And it's a Romance through and through. I really enjoyed the writing - this was my first Deveraux - and the book was written from the hero's and heroine's first person POV, each chapter from 1, back and forth. The story is about a best-selling author, our hero, after his wife died, trying to get back his writing mojo and deciding to write a book about ghost stories, and a young researcher (our heroine) - engaged to be married but jilting her fiance at the altar to join the hero as his assistant. She has a devil story from her youth that interests the hero, and he takes them both to the story's town of origin to research the story.

The book had me crying twice in the first 26 pages as the hero talks about his now-deceased wife and her family - I knew from those first pages I would love this book. Then as we get closer and closer to the devil story, it picks up pace. The actual solving of the town's problem was almost a let-down for me, but then when the Real Reason the Devil is there comes to light, it becomes tense as the hero fights his own devils and of course, being a Romance novel, he wins. Think The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

You Belong to My Heart was another good book. It takes place in Memphis before and during the Civil War, and involves our wrong-side-of-the-tracks hero and plantation belle heroine as they grow up as best friends then young lovers, thwarted by her parents who think he's not good enough for her. Years go by, there's that Big Misunderstanding thing between them, the Civil War starts and they meet again - and must overcome the wrong done to them by someone else and not, as they each think, by the other one. The actual unveiling of the Big Mis was a little too pat, and made me wonder what made the fellow admit the truth and since he did, why did he wait so long?? But I still loved the story enough to give it 4 stars.

I happened across 2 LaVyrle Spencer books at the Rodeo book exchange in the cafe: Family Blessings and A Heart Speaks. My previous Spencer reads have me glomming her backlist - although I was surprised how much I liked her writing style, since the 2 I read were both "sweet" romances. Turns out she did write some steamier and more graphic stuff, and contemporaries at that (well, in the 80s - so contemporary to that). Family Blessings concerns an older heroine/younger hero - he's the roommate of her son who is killed at the beginning of the story. They turn to each other for support, one thing leads to another - and the big conflict is of course how her family feels about their age difference, and how they deal with that. Yeah, lotsa tearing up at the beginning as the death happens, and they deal with the grief. Since he's 30 (to her son's 25) and she's 45, it's a credible plot but they still overcome. He's something like the hero in Morning Glory - really bad upbringing, and somewhat needing mothering as well as loving from the heroine, although he's made a much better life for himself on his own.

A Heart Speaks is actually 2 short novels, Forsaking All Others and A Promise To Cherish. Forsaking All Others has our photographer heroine not yet over being dumped and screwed by a former boyfriend/male model, meeting the hero - guess what, he's a male model she's hired to pose for a Romance novel cover she's doing. A Promise To Cherish has a Native American heroine trying to make it in a man's world and trying to get over her divorce, from which she loses custody of her kids to the ex-husband (something we don't learn the details of till the end, really). The hero is the owner of a rival firm, who hires her when she quits her job. The Big Secret here is, she has a chip on her shoulder about being part Cherokee - she thinks it's why the kids were taken away - and she learns the hero's mother is also part Cherokee. Of course, there's the conflict of her being the employee and not wanting to sleep with the boss - but it's very 80s and that conflict isn't really dealt with much. The biggest conflict is her not telling him about having children because of her shame of losing custody. Three stars for Promise, and 4 for Forsaking. Neither one was as compelling a story as Morning Glory or That Camden Summer, but I still like her prose.

From PBS, I got Spencer's Separate Beds. Now I'm starting to think maybe her earlier stuff isn't really as good as the later stuff, or I just lucked out by reading her best stuff first. I enjoyed Separate Beds (ok, 4 stars) but it's very dated with 80s styles and such. I have to agree with an Amazon reviewer who mentions how it pulled her out of the story to read about how they dressed and how they decorated. I guess someday it could be a period piece. We have a rich law-school student hero, who has a fight with his rich girlfriend, and for revenge goes on a date with our wrong-side-of-the-tracks college student heroine during which she gets pregnant. That's backstory - we start with the heroine's alcoholic father going to the rich kid's parents to see if he can profit from this.

The protagonists choose a marriage of convenience (I guess it's 80s that they didn't even talk about prenups, even though the father is a big lawyer, and hero a law student??) that only they know will end after he finishes law school, within the year. She's so completely screwed up by her upbringing that she cannot allow herself to ever be nice to the hero - even though she decided early on she loved him. That was frustrating. Bring in the Rich Girlfriend to complicate matters - it's intimated the hero kept up the relationship during the marriage, although he denies it. Then - lo and behold, he does go back to the Rich GF and actually moves in with her for several months, which - yeah - I found that squicky. I mean, he knows RGF lied to the heroine. Then - this is kinda messed up - he just leaves RGF one day and calls heroine, and they get back together. I wondered (1) why he didn't visit the baby more and (2) why she didn't take the baby to his parent's more. And she saved the get-back-together scene for the very last page, so... well, I still liked it ok, but again, comparing it to Morning Glory and That Camden Summer, it just didn't live up to the promise of those 2 wonderful books.

Did I mention I did listen to David Dukes' narration of That Camden Summer? And I'm still working on the audio of DIA - we've just fought Prestonpans, so it isn't long now til Culloden. Which leads nicely into the next 2 books I have from PBS by Marsha Canham, which take place during the '45.