Robyn Donald writes romances that are intense, with strong emotional connections among the characters that cause us readers to care about them as people. Iceberg is intense, with four main characters who react to each other to create tension and conflict.
Plot Synopsis – Skip to Miss Spoilers
The basic plot is straightforward, although the characters’ motives are anything but straight.
- Linnet comes to New Zealand, back to the house she lived in her first 8 years, to stay with her half sister Bronwyn. Years earlier Linnet’s mother divorced her husband, Linnet’s and Bronwyn father, when the father sided with Bronwyn instead of his wife. The wife fled to Australia and recently married. Linnet thought she was in love with the man who eventually became her stepfather and left to get herself in order.
- Bronwyn has sold the house to Justin who tore it down and built a large, modern home. Bronwyn lives in a flat at the back.
- Justin is cold to Linnet when she arrives and tells her she is greedy and unscrupulous because she is contesting her father’s will. This is not true; Bronwyn lied to make herself appear more in need of Justin’s help.
- Linnet and Bronwyn get along quite well. Bronwyn claims she is nearly engaged to Justin. Justin’s wife died several years ago, leaving a 7 year old daughter, Sarah, and Sarah and Bronwyn don’t like each other. Sarah attaches herself to Linnet and proceeds to make trouble.
- Linnet is looking for a job and a place to stay when Justin offers her a paid position as Sarah’s companion. When Sarah refuses he gets nasty, says Linnet won’t exert herself at all for Sarah. This is another lie. Linnet spends most of her time with Sarah who is clingy and needy and throws tantrums when Linnet can’t be with her.
- Linnet doesn’t allow Justin to browbeat her into taking on Sarah, but she does spend time with Sarah and thus with Justin. He takes the two of them to his cottage on an island north of Auckland where he leaves Sarah and Linnet to spend a week.
- Justin tries to seduce Linnet when he returns to the island bring them home. Linnet is attracted to him, decides she loves him, but she manages to avoid sleeping with Justin because the phone rings or Sarah comes in. Linnet is certain that he either is still in love with his dead wife or close to marrying Bronwyn. She is appalled that Justin would seduce her when he’s nearly engaged but is honest enough with herself to acknowledge that she would like to make love with him.
- Sarah gets the bright idea her daddy should marry Linnet and starts pushing and shoving and having meltdowns and temper tantrums to the point where she gets herself sick when Linnet says no. Justin does nothing to curb Sarah’s increasing intrusiveness and hints that he thinks it’s a dandy idea.
- Finally Justin preempts the situation by telling Sarah that yes, he and Linnet are marrying. Linnet is furious, tells him this is blackmail, but for some unknown reason she agrees. Justin says that all’s fair in love or war but Linnet is certain that he does not love her.
- Things come to a head when Linnet and Justin walk in on Bronwyn kissing Justin’s cousin Stewart. Stewart and Bronwyn are getting married. Linnet worries this will hurt Justin but he is not at all bothered.
- Justin has true confession time and tells Linnet about his first marriage; he thought he was in love with his wife but turned out not so and he blames himself because he forced his wife to marry him. Linnet is infuriated. Why on earth is he doing it again?
- True love confessions abound.
Characters
Linnet is a reasonable character, more or less a generic Harlequin heroine albeit with some common sense and has a backbone in the beginning. She is strong with Justin and somewhat with Bronwyn, a pushover for Sarah.
Daughter Sarah and the interaction between Sarah and Linnet downgrades the story. Linnet loves Sarah from the moment shes sees her and she never once tells Sarah that her questions and comments are completely inappropriate, nosy, rude, unprincipled, out of line. Sarah is perfectly happy as long as she gets her own way all the time and throws fits and makes herself sick when she does not. Her father panders to her.
After he confesses he loves Linnet we can surmise that Justin lets Sarah get her own way via bad behavior because he wants the same thing as Sarah, i.e., Linnet as his wife. As a mother, I am appalled that any parent would allow a child to manipulate and browbeat someone, using tantrums and tears to get their own way. Linnet is just as culpable. She should have told Sarah to stop it, spent less time with her, distanced herself so Sarah didn’t feel she was entitled to all of Linnet’s time.
Bronwyn had planned to send Sarah to boarding school if she had married Justin, and perhaps that would be a good plan for a an emotional vampire like Sarah. Justin had decided against marrying Bronwyn because Sarah did not like her. It’s clear that Sarah was looking out for her own self interests, knew she couldn’t manipulate Bronwyn and made sure her dad knew she disliked Bronwyn.
I kept wanting Linnet to give Sara a piece of her mind, to tell her to stop asking nosy questions and pushing and teasing her to marry Justin. That kid isn’t going to get better on her own and if Linnet and Justin don’t smack her down a few times she will be a monster when she’s older.
Linnet should have refused to knuckle under in plot step 11. As she points out to Justin, what is different this time than his first marriage? He is desperately in love. Check. He wants to marry her. Check. He is willing to force her. Check. His wife-to-be loves him. Check. Justin claims it is completely different; after all he loves Linnet and he only thought he loved his first wife. Really? How does he know? At a minimum Linnet should wait a few months to get married, give Justin time to decide whether this time is calf love too.
Bronwyn is not really an Other Woman. She dates Justin, claims she will marry him, but she doesn’t do anything to stop the romance between Justin and Linnet, she doesn’t belittle Linnet, in fact she praises her. Bronwyn is a decent sister aside from the lie about Linnet contesting their father’s will.
Justin is a typical Robyn Donald hero, not particularly cruel or mean, only determined and unscrupulous about getting what he wants. We can see Sarah’s behavior mirrors Justin’s. Linnet should grab her stuff and run for the hill, not marry into this gang of ace champion manipulators.
The title Iceberg refers to Justin who maintains a cold demeanor throughout and avoids emotional entanglements. He had thought to marry Bronwyn in an emotion-free marriage – neither loved the other – but fell in love with Linnet despite his attitude towards love.
The minor characters, housekeeper Anna, cousin Stewart, islanders Mike and Cherry play spearcarrier roles. Sara drives the plot.
Setting
Iceberg takes place in New Zealand, in a large home in Auckland and at an island cottage set near a nature preserve. Author describes the nature preserve and the trees and beach in loving detail and leaves the Auckland house as a blank space.
Overall
If it weren’t for Sara the emotional vampire and wanna-be Boss of All Things, I would have enjoyed Iceberg as much as I do most of Robyn Donald’s novels. Sarah gives me the creeps and I can’t see how Linnet can possibly be happy married to a man who will use such underhanded and despicable methods to blackmail her into marriage. Linnet thinks she is in love with Justin, but she thought she was in love with her new stepfather before that. Linnet is 20 and Justin is in his early to mid 30s and miles ahead of her in worldly experience. He has been with enough women to know how to seduce Linnet into thinking she is in love with him.
3 Stars
I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks. Amazon has copies and most likely you can find this on other used book sites and eBay. You can borrow a pdf copy from Archive.org here.
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