I usually like Robyn Donald’s Harlequin Presents for their strong stories, interesting well-developed characters and good dialogue. The Sweetest Trap is disappointing. I made myself finish it despite stopping every few pages to do fun things like dishes and laundry. The plot was simply not enticing enough to overcome wooden characters, continuity problems, spotty dialogue and the cheesy idea of a 35 year old man seducing an 18 year old, unworldly girl.
Plot Synopsis
Cressida, just 18, sails with her domineering father all over the world, gaining him raw material for his philosophical musing/travelogue books that sell well, until her dad has a fatal heart attack off the coast of New Zealand during a dangerous storm. Cressida radios for help since she cannot handle the yacht alone and Luke arrives in his fishing launch to help her bring the yacht into shore.
Luke takes her to his New Zealand home which he shares with his mom, helps her with the inquest, financial settlements, emotional turmoil. Cressida has longed to live the way Luke does, settled in a home surrounded by country yet close enough to the ocean to sail or swim for fun. She had wanted to go to college, had never wanted to accompany her father, but he had promised his dead wife to keep Cressida with him. Now she’s unable to grieve and can feel only bitter regret.
Luke has a long time girlfriend, Paula, who visits several weekends. Luke’s mom tells Cressida that Paula has not wanted to marry Luke since it meant she would have to give up the law career she loves. Later we see that Paula does want to marry Luke and Luke tells Cressida that he had thought seriously about marrying Paula since he cares greatly for her.
Cressida is wise enough to realize she has a crush on Luke and is hoping that it is nothing more, just the usual adolescent strong feelings that dissipate in time. They are physically attracted and Luke kisses her, makes it clear that he wants more. Eventually they take her yacht out on a farewell cruise before she sells it, get caught overnight in a storm and make love. Cressida is horrified afterwards because she knows that was the worst thing to do when she does not want to love Luke and does not want to be pregnant and there’s Paula. Luke says he’ll marry her but it doesn’t sound to Cressida or to me as though he wants to.
When they get back Paula is waiting for Luke in the garage, throws herself in his arms and says “You have to help me. I think I’m pregnant!” Exit Cressida.
She ends up sharing an apartment in Auckland with a nice girl, Jan, who’s pretty fed up with guys – at the moment. Luke shows up and Cressida delivers a great self-sufficiency speech: She wants to find out who Cressida Godwin is and all she’ll ever be if she marries Luke is Mrs. Luke. He’s angry and tells her Paula has been having an affair with someone else, admits he loves Paula, leaves.
Luke’s mom calls Cressida when Luke is hospitalized. Cressida charters a plane to get there and sits with him while he’s unconscious. Paula arrives too and agrees with Cressida that one of the two of them can stay with Luke, and it will be whosever voice he responds to. Luke ignores Paula but reaches for Cressida’s hand. Paula leaves, banished to the cold reaches of discarded HP Other Women. Luke then wakes up and kicks Cressida out.
Things proceed until Luke shows back up one evening when Jan is out, informs her he loves her, won’t take no for an answer, they sleep together again and agree to marry.
Characters and Dialogue
Luke starts his role in The Sweetest Trap by jumping in the ocean during a storm to reach Cressida’s boat, grinning and having a wonderful time playing Viking. Later Robyn Donald tries to show Luke as a thoughtful, emotional, warm and kind man but it doesn’t quite work. Luke is extremely kind to Cressida, supporting her through the horribleness of her dad’s death, offering her a home, helping her gain some basic skills, but he also rides over her and ignores what she wants when it conflicts with what he wants.
Case in point: Luke asks one of his employees to take Cressida shopping since all her clothes are suited to sailing in warm weather, casual or outgrown. Cressida has some money the lawyer for her father’s estate advanced her and she intends to budget only part of that for new clothes. Luke goes behind her back and has his employee go back and get all the other things that Cressida liked but didn’t buy. True, the new things are wonderful and Cressida wants them, but her whole point throughout the story is she wants to be independent, at least long enough to prove to herself that she is a separate person and can take care of herself. Luke was disrespectful.
Let’s not even go to the age difference. The experience gap is even larger and more momentous than the age gap. Cressida went to a convent school in England when she wasn’t cloistered on the yacht with her dad. She met people yes, including a repulsive guy who wanted to buy her for a short term affair, but she was completely under her father’s control. Luke has been an independent adult for almost 20 years.
Cressida had the dubious pleasure of being in the room behind a bookcase when Paula and Luke came in and started kissing and making out. Luke claimed later that was Paula’s last attempt to show him they could make marriage work, supposedly because she didn’t want the affair with the other man. I don’t buy this. This little passionate interlude took many minutes and neither one spoke. It sounded as if Luke enjoyed having Paula try to persuade him, even if he ended up rejecting her.
Cressida has the best dialogue and develops a spine although she berates herself for being weak and easily intimidated. I didn’t think she had allowed herself enough time to discover who she was but overall she was characterized as a person we could visualize being happy. The author tells us instead of showing us a little too much. Cressida is described as feeling empty, bitter, afraid several times but we don’t really see that.
I didn’t like the huge age/experience difference nor that Cressida and Luke sleep together even when Cressida believes he is in love with Paula. She doesn’t seem able to think clearly when Luke is around with his manly self.
The big romance between Cressida and Luke is inconsistent, varying from almost completely physical to metaphysical. Luke says he recognizes Cressida as bone of his bone, part of himself, but this is after he’s tried to push her away, after he’s seduced her, after he’s hurt her, after she’s seen him first make love to Paula then later reject her, after Cressida has escaped his hand. As for Cressida it’s possible for a young lady to truly love a man so much older and more experienced, but it’s far more likely to be a short term crush. Cressida was wise to leave to find out the difference; I was not convinced that she knew what she felt even at the end.
Luke uses Paula. He tells Cressida that he’d seriously considered marrying Paula, that they both cared for the other, that he didn’t love her but knew they could have a happy life together. He keeps seeing Paula and seems to swing between chasing Cressida for physical delight and clinging to Paula for emotional comfort. He finally dumps her, which is when Paula turns to her married co-worker.
The minor characters, Luke’s mom, gossipy neighbors, the young lawyer and his wife, roommate Jan, are nice touches and all have some depth, but are essentially spear carriers, foils to carry the action. I couldn’t visualize any of them.
Style and Continuity
Robyn Donald did not make me care about the characters nor believe any of them are real people. The pace is slow. Sometimes a slow pace with a slow tension build works great with romance novels but this one doesn’t have the tension.
The novel lacks a clear emotional peak. Was it when Luke and Cressida make love in the yacht? When Paula throws herself at him begging for help with a suspected pregnancy? When Luke is in hospital and Cressida and Paula joust over who he will respond to? Is it when Cressida tells Luke she needs to be on her own to find out who she is? The ending is not the peak; in fact it simply happens. Time to sleep together, yay!
I picked a page at random, #104, right after Cressida tells Luke about the degenerate rich guy who wanted her for a couple weeks. There are 6 paragraphs on this page, all quite short. Four paragraphs are tell paragraphs, Robyn Donald tells us what Cressida thinks or describes inconsequential action. Two are mostly dialogue. That ratio is pretty typical, a bit more telling than showing and that, along with the slow pace and icky age difference make this story bland and less interesting than Donald’s usual.
There are at least two glaring and some smaller continuity problems.
- Luke broke ribs and hurt his arm in a bulldozer accident but Cressida asks him several times about his leg, does it hurt, can he walk OK? Luke says it aches.
- Cressida doesn’t earn a lot in Auckland yet she charters a plane to get to Luke in the hospital instead of taking the bus.
- Luke and Cressida make love in the apartment she shares with Jan. I can see Jan having a fit when she comes home and finds them both there, especially if Cressida and Jan share a room.
- A small problem is when the yacht sells. The buyers are getting it refitted so Luke and Cressida take it out for a last sail. The boat must have been docked near Luke’s house yet we never hear that the buyers came to see it in person. I noticed that which means either the story was weak or the problem was glaring; I usually forgive small problems in a good story.
Overall
The Sweetest Trap combines the big age and experience gap with a domineering man and girl who wants to grow up and develop a spine and personality. I think this should have caused tension and conflict all on its own, and indeed that is so. However the tension is mild and Donald does not develop the conflicts. Instead we have a lot of Luke chasing Cressida around the couch (more or less) and Cressida bemoaning that she has a crush on Luke, a most unsuitable crush object.
The story does not come together.
2 Stars, OK
I got my paperback copy of The Sweetest Trap in a lot on eBay. It is available on Thriftbooks here, and Amazon here, both new and used. I didn’t see it available in E format except in pdf format to borrow on Archive.org.
All Amazon links are paid ads.
Leave a Reply