Forced Marriage - More Books than Time

Guilty of Love by Jennifer Taylor

October 24, 2023 by Kathy Leave a Comment

I wish this author wrote more in the straight Harlequin line instead of the medical line because she always has some unusual plot points and character attributes. Guilty of Love features Alexandra Campbell, in her mid 20s, attractive, who designs, makes and sells her own jewelry and lives with her younger brother, Kenny, in a flat over her shop.

Kenny is a problem. Although he’s 20 years old and has a job, he has little common sense and Alex has shielded him and helped him out of his constant problems. Recently Kenny lost more gambling than he could possibly pay and Alex had to squeak out of her bank business loan to pay his debts. He also got into trouble at his work, Lang’s Engineering, and is generally immature. The story opens in late fall when Alex is tense and worried about her overdue loan and working flat out to prepare for Christmas shoppers.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Kenny’s latest stunt is swiping design plan printouts for Lang’s top secret engine. He panics when he gets home and realizes what he did. Oops. What now? Kenny asks Alex to go with him to the factory, slip in to his boss’s office and return them. Kenny will distract the security guard for her. What could go wrong?

Well, two things go wrong. First Jordan Lang, the boss, comes in as Alex slips out. Second, Jordan knows that someone has sold some engineering designs to his competitor. He knows there is industrial espionage and now he know who did it. Alexandra Campbell is the spy.

Jordan needs a week to get his engine finished. He grabs Alex, forces her into his car and kidnaps her to his remote Wales cottage, intending to hold her for the week he needs. Alex tries to fight, tries to get away but cannot. She does not tell him her name and he calls her Jane as in Jane Doe. They stop at Jordan’s neighbor to exchange the car for a 4-wheel drive car to get up the rough hill track.

The power goes out at the cottage. Jordan goes to fix the generator and gets banged on his head, nearly knocked out. Alex finds him and helps him in the cottage, grabs the keys and drives off. As she walks out the door Jordan yells “I shall find you, Jane. Even if I have to move heaven and earth, I shall find you and make you pay for what you’ve done!” Jordan believes Alex is the spy and attacked him, hit him on the head – he’s not thinking rationally around her.

Jordan does not know who Alex is, has no idea that she is related to Kenny who works for him. Even so she is terrified that he will find her. And he does.

Alex is working when the shop bell rings and someone throws aside the bead curtain that separates her workroom from the store. It’s Jordan.

He threatens Alex. He will go to the police and report her and Kenny to the police for industrial espionage and assault. And if by some miracle Alex gets off then he will do everything he can to ruin her business and her personally. In fact he will ruin her business if he goes to the police since the bank will call her loan.

Jordan offers her a choice. Face ruin or marry him. Design flaws have delayed his engine development and that plus his competitors announcing a nearly identical design have caused his investors to drop out. He needs money and he needs it now. His mother left him enough money to complete his engine but he must be married to receive it. Thus marry Alex.

Jordan makes it clear it would be a short term, paper marriage although he demonstrates that they both are attracted to the other. He kisses Alex, acts seductive, then when she’s enthralled backs off and makes nasty comments about how they could make it a marriage in bed and on paper.

Alex is angry at him and even angrier at herself for responding to his pseudo passion (actually there was nothing pseudo about it although Jordan claims it was). She agrees and the date is set three weeks ahead.

Alex claims her innocence again and gets Jordan to agree that if he finds out that she was not the spy that he will drop the marriage idea. And they can divorce after six months. Jordan agrees with both but insinuates she might decide she likes being married. He’s insulting.

Jordan takes her to a fancy restaurant dinner with many friends to announce their engagement. One guest is James Morgan, Lang’s chief designer and Kenny’s boss. A lady asks Alex how they met and she tells the truth. Jordan saw her at his factory, jumped to conclusions and kidnapped her! Morgan asks the obvious next question, did Jordan realize he was wrong? Alex is saved from answering since the lady jumps in that of course he must have since they are now in love and engaged. Everyone laughs, although Alex doesn’t think Morgan is laughing at all or that he believes it.

Alex quickly finds out that Morgan did not believe it. Jordan takes her to the factory and is called away. Morgan inveigles her into touring the building, starts with his office, insists on showing her the engine plans then he leaves her in his office with the plans. Alex should have walked away but she knows the plans are confidential and starts to fold them up to shove into the file cabinet when Jordan and Morgan come in the office. Morgan denies getting the plans out, denies asking Alex to look at them and of course Jordan assumes she is back to her old espionage tricks.

Jordan is furious and disappointed. and moves the wedding up to a few days ahead. Alex reluctantly marries him and they go to his house in a close by town. He makes a pass at her, insults her some more, then leaves her to go back to work.

One night, after three weeks of steadily increasing sexual tension Alex cannot face going back to his house after she closes her shop. She goes shopping and out for a meal by herself, then back to her flat. She’s in the tub when Jordan rings the doorbell and keeps ringing it. She wraps herself in a towel (apparently no one in Harlequin land owns a bathrobe) and answers the door. Jordan is furious; he was worried she was injured or dead or had left him. They make love.

Next morning both are so happy, Alex decides to go home early on the off chance Jordan also came home. Unfortunately James Morgan is there, full of poison and eager to spill it all over Alex. Turns out that Jordan discovered before they married that it was Morgan, not Alex, who sold company secrets, moreover, Jordan only got half his inheritance. He gets the other half when he has a child.

Horrified Alex tries to dismiss Morgan’s insinuations, but she remembers. She remembers Jordan promised to let her off the marriage if he found the true spy beforehand. He knew she was innocent of his spy charge yet forced her to marry him. She remembers Jordan never said he loved her. Wanted, yes. Loved, no. She remembers that the only thing Jordan seems to care about is his business. He never seemed to care about her. She does not know that Jordan slept with her because of the will, but by now she doesn’t care. She is in love with Jordan and he broke her heart.

Alex lays into Jordan when he gets home; rather than defend himself or claim any love he gets on his high horse. “Lang’s isn’t some little two-bit concern. It’s been in my family for years. It’s part of me and yes, I would do anything to stop it being taken from me.” That seals it for Alex. She starts to walk out the door when Jordan grabs her and tries to seduce her into staying. Now she’s angry on top of hurt. She returns to her flat and shop and tries to stop hurting, stop caring about Jordan.

A few weeks later, just before Christmas, Jordan comes in the store as she’s closing up. She refuses to sell him anything nor will she talk to him. She hits the panic alarm when he refuses to leave, then runs upstairs and packs to go stay with Kenny since she know Jordan will return. Jordan catches her when she leaves the building and tries to compel her towards his car, but stops when she refuses to go with him or listen. Finally he tells her that he simply wants to talk to her, to explain, but if she won’t then he will get out of her life. He walks away, she yells and runs into his arms. (Cue Tchaikovsky.)

They drive into the country and Jordan tries to explain to her. He HAD to have the funds or Lang’s would go bankrupt since he had invested everything into his new project. He didn’t think she would marry him if she didn’t have to (apparently he didn’t think of the handy Harlequin buy-a-wife scenario) so he didn’t tell her he knew she had not spied on him. He loves her. He slept with her because he loved her, it went way beyond sex for both of them; he knows it, she knows it and he won’t let her cheapen it by claiming it was just sex. Jordan realized the company meant nothing compared to Alex. He sold a good chunk to a Japanese firm and put all the inheritance money into a trust fund for any children they might have.

Happy ever after.

Believable Romance

When you read the plot without reading the story the romance seems off kilter. How can Alex love a man as cold as Jordan? As obsessed about his business as Jordan? Who breaks a serious promise as did Jordan? True Jordan is immensely attractive and has a compelling personality. True, we can love people who do not “deserve” our love – in fact does anyone “deserve” another’s love? It’s fairly easy to believe Alex’s love is real.

Can we believe that Jordan turned himself around as he claims? That he truly puts Alex first, ahead of Lang’s? Jordan himself tells Alex that he knows she would find it difficult to believe him, that he repaid the inheritance into the trust fund he set up for any children, that he found investors in order that she can believe him. It’s remarkable and it is believable.

Overall

I liked Guilty of Love the first time I read it, reread and still enjoyed, in fact I liked it even better the second time. I bought a paperback copy and have re-reread and still like it. Sometimes it’s not clear why a book appeals so much, but let’s try.
* Jordan is a jerk at the beginning, suspicious, hard-hearted, almost cruel, accuses Alex of espionage and assault, kidnaps her. Whew.
* Alex fights him and wins, at least temporarily. She escapes and goes back to her jewelry business.
* Jordan tells Alex point blank that she’s doing Kenny more harm than good by easing his way through life. Later Alex realizes that Kenny is growing up now that he’s on his own. I detest entitled brats and it’s good to see Kenny grow up.
* Author Taylor shows, she does not tell.
* I like beautiful hand-made jewelry and drooled over the descriptions of Alex’s pieces.
* The love scene isn’t fade to black but it’s not at all explicit. Jordan promised to make it beautiful for them and he succeeds.
* Alex doesn’t rely solely on Morgan’s claims. Jordan sank his own boat when he refused to talk of love.
* Alex confronts Jordan before walking out. She is completely clear why she is going.
* Alex refuses to allow Jordan to seduce her into staying.
* She wins again (temporarily) when she gets Jordan out of her shop via the alarm.
* Jordan not only claims to love her, he defends his decision to force the marriage because Lang’s is so important, yet he also has now given up significant control in order to demonstrate his love.

4 Stars

I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks. Amazon has used copies and you can likely find copies on other used book sites and eBay. As of this writing it is available on Archive.org but note they have lately made many books unavailable (I suspect because they are available to buy in paper or in E form).

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Iceberg by Robyn Donald – Semi Forced Marriage

June 14, 2022 by Kathy Leave a Comment

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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Hell is My Heaven – Blackmail Marriage by Jeneth Murrey

June 8, 2022 by Kathy Leave a Comment

Hell is My Heaven is excellent. Hero Jerome, who wants to be The Boss, has blackmailed heroine Kate into marriage expecting a “loving and obedient wife”. Hah. Just how loving would you be if someone forces you to marry them by a) threatening to take custody of your nephew and prevent you from seeing him and b) threatening to send copies of girlie calendar pictures to all the schools in England to prevent you from working? Loving? Heck no. Obedient? No way. The rest of the story shows Kate gradually falling in love with Jerome while he works to overcome her suspicions, distrust and detestment.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

The backstory here is important and told at the beginning based on what Kate thought was true, then adjusted to what really happened. Kate was happily teaching school when her younger stepsister Shirley showed up pregnant and tearful. Shirley was hiding from her husband Theo and his nasty mother and older brother and she claimed Theo and his family treated her horribly. Kate took her in, and supported her through pregnancy and childbirth at first by teaching, but when Shirley’s baby arrives the teaching salary wasn’t enough. (Especially given Shirley’s expensive tastes.)

Kate is lovely, tall, slim, red haired, and had earlier turned down offers to try her hand at modeling. Now, with the baby and Shirley needing ever more income, Kate reluctantly quit teaching and became a very successful model under the name Noel Lowe. Unfortunately her first foray into modeling was to pose in risque outfits for a girlie calendar. She was never nude but the photos were suggestive and Kate hated them. Shirley went back to Theo after a while. Kate doesn’t ever meet Theo or his family, and it later comes out that Shirley never mentioned Kate to them. She pretended she took care of herself while away from Theo.

Shirley never fooled older brother Jerome and he had her investigated. It took quite a while but he discovered Shirley had an older stepsister who taught school. He couldn’t understand why Shirley never talked about Kate but he figured Kate had been responsible for Shirley and baby Phillip.

Shirley last visited Kate just before the book begins. She and Theo were going on a second honeymoon and would Kate take care of 2-year old Phillip? Shirley and Theo died in a crash.

The book opens with Kate at her friend Helen’s house talking about how Kate will have no chance if Jerome and his mother want custody; not only must Kate work, but she has been (gasp!) a model while Theo’s family is rich, ruthless and upper crust. Kate tells Helen that she must hide herself and Phillip and she intends to stop modeling and go back to teaching. Helen is an artist and realistic. She warns Kate that she is gorgeous and model-trained and that it will be impossible to hide from Theo’s family. She offers to rent Kate her remote cottage, the one with no running water, electricity or central heat.

After four cold months in a drafty cottage Kate is bathing Phillip. Jerome walks in, coolly tells Kate he wants the boy, that he would win any custody suit, that he has the girlie negatives and will ruin Kate with every education authority in the country if she does not go along. But that’s OK because Kate can come too. As Jerome’s wife.

From what Shirley had said Kate knows Jerome is ruthless and vindictive enough to do this so she very reluctantly agrees in order to keep Phillip as she sees it, unspoiled by Jerome’s vicious, rich family. Jerome makes it clear that he expects a loving and obedient wife and we can infer that “loving” means sexually affectionate and emotionally warm.Kate tries to wriggle out of this but she cannot.

Jerome brings them back to his London apartment but not without an argument. Kate wants to clean the cottage and Jerome gives her one hour to get herself packed, cottage cleaned and in the car or he’ll take Phillip and leave. Kate seethes all the way to London. Jerome kisses her, and although she does not like him, Kate does respond.

Jerome gets his mother to come help get the wedding ready and Kate is surprised to discover she likes his mother a lot, that she is kind, not at all ruthless or vicious, down to earth. This is the first chink in the Shirley story.

The wanna-be Other Woman, Estelle, 19 and spoiled, is a neighbor of Jerome’s in the country and bursts into Jerome’s apartment to tell Kate to bug off, that Jerome is hers, that his little flings never last long and that (shock!) Kate is a model and Jerome will kick her out when he learns that! Mother tells Estelle to control herself, that Jerome knows what he’s doing, and that if Estelle decides to kill herself to do it somewhere else where she won’t get the carpets dirty. Kate realizes that Jerome’s mother would have had no patience with Shirley’s drama and tantrums. Kate still doesn’t like Jerome and she doesn’t trust him. She decides she will fight back by making herself so boring and dull he won’t want her.

They marry and go to southern Italy to honeymoon. Phillip comes too because Kate refuses to go without him. Kate dreads the wedding night (postponed a couple of days to allow her to get used to Jerome) but she promised. In fact she is surprised to discover she enjoys making love with Jerome, that he makes her feel what she does not want to feel. She tells him that she hates him now more than ever, especially when Jerome is amazed that it had been her first time. Kate resents that he thought her a tramp and she tries several times to talk to Jerome about letting her take Phillip since he now knows she is not a loose trollop. That doesn’t work and they return to England together with Phillip.

There are several small incidents. Jerome makes Kate pick out a nanny for Phillip, makes Kate take an interest in her new home, drags her off to his mother’s house in the country. Basically he keeps her so busy she doesn’t have time to think about her grievances nor to work on her dull and boring act.

Right about the time Kate is beginning to feel something for Jerome Estelle comes to dinner where she tells Kate that she needs to leave Jerome, that if she cannot afford to go that Estelle can help her, and that Estelle will help Kate get a few pounds from Jerome when they split – maybe even a few thousand! (A few thousand pounds in the mid 1980s would be around $10,000 today, not a lot.) Kate can’t believe that anyone would talk like this and she suspects Estelle is mentally off. She tells Jerome about it but he doesn’t see either the humor or the insult.

Jerome has forbidden Kate to go anywhere alone but she does anyway. (As she put it, if you wanted obedient you should not have married me!) She runs into the guy she had desultorily dated before Shirley died and realizes that he’s a jerk and that he hates her for selling out for money and a comfy lifestyle. Jerome is not impressed when Kate tells him about meeting ex boyfriend.

Jerome decides that Kate needs to learn a few things about her darling step sister. He tells her that it was not Theo but Shirley who did not want Phillip, in fact she had an appointment for an abortion when Theo found out and made her come to the country house with him. Shirley insisted Theo get a vasectomy because she did not want children. It was Theo who took care of Phillip, it was Shirley who decided at the last minute to leave Phillip with Kate and it was Shirley who did not tell anyone else where Phillip was. Jerome and his mother thought Phillip must have died along with his parents at first. Jerome drags Kate to his so-called yacht, actually a small dinghy, which Shirley had claimed he used to womanize around Europe. Kate is shattered by these revelations. She had known Shirley was spoiled but she hadn’t realized how little she had cared for anyone besides herself.

The final crisis comes when Jerome, his mother, Phillip and the housekeeper are gone and Kate comes downstairs to dry her hair, find Estelle has taken an ax to Jerome’s study and destroyed file cabinets, left files strewn around and is clutching a small envelope that Kate knows holds those girlie negatives. Estelle tells her to get out and to make sure Jerome comes to see her because otherwise she will give the negatives to Kate’s ex boyfriend who would love to publish them in a sleazy tabloid.

Kate tries to find Jerome but he’s en route from New York and she panics. When Jerome comes home she grabs him and can barely speak because she is so worried. Kate tells him that he must go see Estelle, that he should have destroyed the negatives, that it will be his name, not hers, that gets dragged through the media. Jerome calms her down, explains he destroyed the negatives and the envelope was empty, fobs his mother off with a housebreaker story, then we have the happy ever after.

Plot Questions

Which Came First? How Did Jerome Decide to Get Kate? I can’t figure out when Jerome decided to go after Kate. He investigated Shirley, discovered she had a step sister, school teacher Kate Forest, fairly soon after Shirley married Theo, which is some time before Kate started modeling. Kate posed for the girlie calendar after Phillip was born, thus after Jerome knew Kate existed.

He says he started with a missing sister and the negatives. He realized Kate was Noel Lowe when he saw her birth certificate – born at Christmas and mother’s maiden name was Lowe. Then he knew how to get both Noel Lowe and Phillip at the same time. That implies he wanted Noel Lowe the model early on, otherwise how could he track down girlie negatives before he knew she was Kate? That seems out of character.

Emotions and Characters

Kate is wonderful heroine. She’s got class, character, intelligence and she is honest. Kate recognizes that she had been unfair when she assumed Jerome and his mother were vicious and she apologizes for that.

Kate is devoted to Phillip, just as she had been devoted to Shirley before, and she does not want to be devoted towards Jerome, she wants to dislike him and fight him and she is angry with herself for being attracted to him and enjoying making love with him. She’s a little confused.

It takes Jerome and Helen forcing Kate to face facts about Shirley to make her realize that first, she had never even met Theo or his family and that Shirley never had invited her to their home or made any effort to help herself. Shirley was a user.

Kate wants to revolt against Jerome, to either make his life miserable or be so boring that he dumps her. She’s not able to keep up her good intentions though, because she is genuinely a kind, loving, friendly person.

I liked how Kate recognizes that Estelle’s actions would hurt Jerome, but she does not carry that to the logical conclusion. She realizes that Estelle could not harm her without harming Jerome, but she panicked and did not stop to think it through. If Estelle embarrasses Jerome, Jerome would never want her, never marry her in place of Kate. Instead of calmly telling Estelle this, Kate lets her escape through the window, leaving a mess and damaged furniture behind. Then Kate pleads with Jerome to give in to Estelle’s dictates, to let Kate go and to go see Estelle. This is out of character. I read the book several times and each time this scene jars, does not fit, does not make sense, does not align to how Kate has behaved throughout the story. Kate is not the type to give into blackmail and certainly she should know that Jerome is not either.

In fact, Kate should have realized Jerome loses all blackmail threat once she marries him. If he were to release the girlie negatives it would hurt him. For some reason she didn’t think this through earlier although she clearly recognizes that he is not likely to trash her name once she became Mrs. Jerome Manfred.

I love Kate all through the book although this last scene strikes me as off key. In fact it bothered me more each time I read it.

Jerome is enigmatic all through the story. He is attracted to Kate, believes she will make a good wife, sleeps with her and takes care that she enjoys lovemaking. He does not try to jolly her along or change her attitude from hostile and negative but waits for her own good nature to take over on its own.

Jerome makes it clear that he wants all of Kate, not just her body, but her mind and her heart and her devotion to him. He says several times he is very well pleased with his wife and the bargain they made; does this mean he loves her? At the end Jerome insists that he tells Kate how he feels every time he touches her, which is all the time. But he doesn’t say it verbally. The fact that he held the negatives over her head and didn’t tell her he had destroyed them makes me wonder about his ethics. Does he prize obedience over unforced love?

Jerome admired Kate for being so loyal to Shirley and to Phillip and I suspect (if this were a real person, not a story) that he wanted a wife to be loyal to him. He is rich, good looking, has had girlfriends. Now he wants a family and he wants Kate.

Jerome should have realized that Estelle had escalated from pest to drama queen/stalker to genuinely deranged when Kate tells him about the dinner conversation where Estelle offers her a few thousand (Jerome’s money, not hers) to leave. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t go see Estelle’s parents about her behavior or do anything to curb her. It makes Kate wonder whether he in fact does care for Estelle or that he thinks it’s good to keep Kate feeling insecure in his life.

Minor characters Mrs. Manfred, the nanny and Mrs. Manfred’s housekeeper all have characters. Mrs. Manfred loves dogs and has a bunch of them. She dresses like a bag lady at home in the country and dolls up to the nines in London and can put on a gaudy, posh wedding in a week. Kate likes her immensely.

Kate hires the nanny because Jerome insists. Traveling with Phillip is a miserable experience that puts sticky stuff and dirt all over Kate’s clothes while he demands endless attention and entertainment. Kate is delighted that the nanny is perfectly happy to entertain Phillip on long car rides and doesn’t object to sticky. The nanny does have a few less enjoyable characteristics. She talks in first person plural, even when she is talking to Kate about Kate. Ugh. On the other hand, having someone who will entertain a 2 year old…

The housekeeper is forthright and tells Mrs. Manfred off for leaving dirty buckets all over the house. She had been a sergeant cook in the army and it shows!

The nanny and housekeeper add a lot of humor to the story. That plus Kate’s character and ongoing attempts to revolt against Jerome make great dialogue.

Cover Complaints

On the cover Jerome would be handsome if he weren’t so grim or had so many deep lines in his face. Ugh. Harlequin used this particular face on several books of the era and I don’t much like it. Jerome is determined but I didn’t find him anywhere near as hard as this cover depicts.

Kate looks like a glamour puss on her last legs. She has a hard look and is wearing a rather unflattering dress, sleeveless with low V neck, that I don’t see her wearing any point in the story. Author describes Kate as very attractive, sweet tempered (mostly, except around Jerome) and with excellent taste.

Cover does not fit the story at all.

My Version of the Ending

I’ve read Hell Is My Heaven several times. I loved it the first few times I read it, and I still love it. Kate, the minor characters, the dialogue, the humor, are excellent and make this a wonderful book to read. The last time I read it in order to write this review I found Kate’s odd behavior – panicking at Estelle’s ultimatum – so out of character that it jarred me. I would love to rewrite the scene. Here’s my dialogue:

Kate: “You do realize, Estelle, that Jerome won’t buckle to blackmail? And that if your friend Gerald publishes photos he will name me as Mrs. Jerome Manfred? That it would be Jerome – not me – that is embarrassed? That Jerome would never turn to you after you pull a stunt like that? That even if he were to kick me out he would blame you for embarrassing him, that he would have only contempt for you?”

Estelle: “*$&U#)#*(#%R$ D!!!D!” He will too want me! Me ME MEEEE. You’re nothing!!!! MEEEEE!!! #$%&$%*&&%!!!!!”

Estelle leaves in a flounce. Estelle and ex BF tear open the envelope and find it’s empty. Hahahah!!

Jerome and Kate together pay a visit to Estelle. Jerome presents the facts of life to Estelle and tells her to keep away from him and his family.

Estelle: “%*&)%$$$!!! You love me, ME, MEEEE!!!!! !#$%#”

Jerome: “No. I love Kate.”

Summary

Allowing for the vagaries of time travel, copyright and authorship, I’m not likely to rewrite Hell Is My Heaven. Darn.

Even with the clunky way Kate panics this is still a wonderful book, one of the best Harlequin Romances I’ve read.

5 Stars

I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks after I had borrowed the pdf version from Archive.org. Amazon has used copies and most likely you can find it on eBay and other used online sites.

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